The Perfect Father

The Perfect Father

 

The Door
A healing journey from a haunting past

by JOHN REGIE ANTHONY A. JAMINAL

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” John 17:20-26

I long for a father’s love, security and protection. I know that God is a father as I were taught in the Sunday services, from  Christian books that I have read  and from my Discipleship group that I belong. We often discuss how good God as father. My mind can agree but my heart is having difficulty to accept God as a Father, the perfect Father. He is misrepresented by my past, by my earthly father.

This is not to dishonor my father but this is the reality that I have experienced in relationship with my father.  I believed that I am not the only one who was wounded by my father for this world is in agony and cries of the fatherless. In the Philippines, fathers are going offshore to work for their families sacrificing the formative years of their children to provide their needs, legal separation, adultery, verbal abuse and even sexual abuse, or a present but a distant father. So, I was not surprised about the feelings that I have and kept hidden in my heart and was unsung until it cried through my sleepless nights of longing one. I am insecure, full of rage, anger, fear and rejection.

In my childhood memory, I was growing with the perception that my father is inside the plane, A far from home. A very distant man. He is working hard for my mother and for his four children. He is a good man. He provides our needs as I can see the pictures and memories of bucket of toys and good clothes. That “plane image” was changed to a “Telephone” as time goes by, we had a good conversation but so limited. So, God as a Father was misrepresented by my earthly father. God is inside the plane, a very distant man or a limited voice coming from a telephone. My childhood experience did not satisfy me to become secure and holds me from understanding God as Father. Full of demands that breaking my spirit more every time I come to realize that this demands will not be provided by him.

My emotional wounds, scars me more when the time that I was sexually molested by my cousin who were addicted to methamphetamine. I was in deep pain cries for a father who will rescue his child being offered to sexual sins inside that room. That was horrible! A breakable door lock was my protector.  No one came inside to rescue me for months of recurring abuse. My past haunts me and reminds of my far-limited father. Resentment and anger arise. How could I comprehend God as father?

And God spoke to me from one of a seminar in Thailand about sexual and relational brokenness, were I desperately joined for the reason that no one knows me and will reject me.

Jesus knew my heart and pains not because he bears all these for my salvation but as well experienced the separation from his Father. He had the greatest Father wounds of all! Even he prayed “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39). He is the only son of God and was offered to be mocked, abused, naked, forsaken to make me feel and be accepted as a child of God. “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46”. He knows the motivation of the Father to bring reconciliation so he obeyed. He understand my needs, He was inside that room. He reenacts the recurring memory with peace and confidence when I was in Thailand.

Jesus made me realized that He is not a distant Father but He is the complete expression of love. “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:16, that he could give more than my earthly father (Matthew 7:11), and He is a perfect Father (Matthew 5:48).

Maybe you were “orphaned” from the demands of your parents’ career, emotionally wounded, given to your abusive foster parents, sexually abused, insecure and unwelcomed. He knows it. He feels it. He is in you. He is with you. He loves you! Jesus made the Father known to us! He is the perfect Father!

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