little girl runs quickly to the front door and shrieks excitedly
when she hears her father coming down the driveway to their home. She waits in
anticipation for him to park the car in the garage, pick up his briefcase and walk towards
the front door. As he nears the door she bolts down the pathway and he grabs her in his
arms and hugs her while she chuckles in delight.
Does this illustration seem too far
fetched? Maybe it is a little overdone and there are few homes that have anything remotely
like this, but if only there were homes where this sort of affection and physical love
between parents and children were evident. There would be far more people who were
emotionally stable and able to express their feelings to others, and more importantly, to
the Lord.
I’m beginning to realize more and
more as I share with people, that there are so many who have scars from their childhood,
which relate to a bad relationship with one or both parents. It’s a sad state of
affairs, but the good news is that no matter what your relationship was like and how many
scars there are as a result, the Lord can reach in and heal the past and set you free.
During the time that a mother is pregnant
with her child, and during the years up until puberty, the mother’s relationship is
of utmost importance. She is the one who moulds the child’s character. She builds
into it Christian principles or moral codes that her family have thought important. The
way the child acts and thinks is very strongly influenced by her during that time.
That’s an awesome responsibility isn’t it? Praise the Lord that He is able to
give parents the wisdom if they ask for it.
The father’s relationship with a
child is not quite as important during the pre-teen years. His main function though,
should be simply to love the child unconditionally, and sometimes be the disciplinarian.
This depends on the home, but I don’t disagree with this idea as long as he does it
lovingly and restores love to the child afterwards otherwise the child begins to feel
rejected and unwanted. The Lord has made man the one who brings love into the home, so he
should become the picture the child gets of a loving relationship
When a child reaches his teenage years
then the father’s role becomes vital. He leads a girl into womanhood and shows her
how she should react to a man because he is the only image she has of a man at that stage.
He also leads a boy into manhood and shows him the aspects of fatherhood and leadership.
Another important aspect of a
father’s relationship with a child is that it affects the way a child will see God.
For instance, if your father was very authoritative and tended to withhold things you
wanted from him, the chances are good that you will see the Lord in the same light. You
are likely to think that He is going to punish you if you don’t do what you should do
and won’t want to give you the desires of your heart.
By the end of the first 6 years a
child’s character is firmly established and any hurtful experiences are imprinted in
it’s spirit and he will go through life with them unless they are dealt with.
However, they can be removed through inner healing by someone praying for the Lord to
shine His light on those painful experiences. They influence things that happen later on
in your life and you begin to wonder if you’re going a bit made because you
can’t seem to break out of the way you feel, and there is no logical or rational
explanation for what you’re experiencing.
Let me explain what I’m talking about
from my own experiences so you will understand more fully where I’m coming from. When
I was a youngster I had a bad relationship with both my parents. It was bad, not in the
sense that I was abused or neglected because we were a pretty affluent family and lacked
no physical or material thing. I went to a good private school and everything needed for
my education was taken care of. We had a beautiful home and went on vacation once or twice
every year.
The one thing, however, that was sadly
lacking was love, both in spoken words and physical contact. My parents loved me, I know
because I was told that, but always by others. They never told me themselves and they
never showed me love by hugging or touching or any other manner. I guess they didn’t
know how to communicate it, or maybe they found it hard because I looked so odd when I was
born. My mother had been ill the whole time she was pregnant and was put on a great deal
of tablets to stop her losing me. As a result, I looked decidedly weird when I was born
with no eyebrows or eyelashes, and very small and lanky.
I don’t know the reason for the way
they acted, but I just know the whole situation left me unable to express my emotions by
showing love to others, and yet I cried out for it continually. I also often felt rejected
because if I did something wrong they didn’t make things up to me, so I carried guilt
and negative emotions around continually and felt like I was worthless.
I built a very large protective wall
around me from an early age and as far back as I can remember I lived in a daydream world
where everything was good and sweet, and where there was all the love that I needed from
everybody. It became such a habit in me that I still carried on with it up until the time
Les and I married and he made me aware of it. I would slip into it easily and without even
thinking.
I could neither laugh nor cry easily, but
I always thought it was because expressing emotions, especially negatively, was the wrong
thing to do. You didn’t cry in public, you bit your lip, hid your tears and
controlled your feeling, and that was acceptable. When I look back on it now, I can see
how harmful these ideas were. The Lord created negative emotions for a good reason –
to get rid of things building up inside of you, which harm your spirit. Crying frees your
spirit and allows the joy of the Lord to flow out of you again, and anger can be directed
at a problem so that it can be solved.
When my late husband died I carried around
that grief inside of me for 10 full months until I met Les and it was only then, after his
encouraging me to talk about everything and let it out, that I actually let rip and was
able to release it. It was the most wonderful feeling, in spite of crying my eyes out, but
I felt as though a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt free for the first
time in years.
On and off throughout the early years Les
and I were married, the hurts and bitternesses I’d built up over the past kept
surfacing and the Lord began to deal with them little by little. If you desire to work for
the Lord you are going to have to purge out all negative emotions from the past and all
things which could stand in your way. For me, feelings of injustice had to go because
Satan could use someone to say something which made me feel like it was uncalled for or
unjust, and all the hurts would begin to surface again.
We were praying once and the Lord revealed
that He was going to give me a heart of flesh and remove the heart of stone which I’d
put there myself. The heart of stone prevents your natural emotions from flowing in and
out, but the Lord desires to give us hearts of flesh so that we can be free and flow out
in love and care to one another, fulfilling his commandments to us. This is what it says
in the Bible concerning it:
Ezekiel 11:19 – Then I will give them
one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their
flesh, and give them a heart of flesh…
If you have had this problem and are
wanting to change your heart here are a few things you can do:
