The following is an excerpt from chapter seven of our new book, “Joining Jesus as a Family.” In these final days of Advent, may it also remind you of how much your heavenly Father wants you to experience his love through his Son and how much he wants your children to experience his love through you.
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For a very long time, it’s eluded us.
As parents we want our children not only to know their True Identity in their head (so they can pass a quiz) but be convinced of it in their heart (so they are living in its abundance). We want them to know the truth that they are beloved children of the heavenly King, but we also want them to be convinced of the truth that the heavenly King truly loves them.
But how?
How do we make that connection between their head and their heart? How do we turn knowledge of what is true into conviction of what is true? The answer is to help them experience the very thing they are being told to believe.
Hearing the Truth + Experiencing the Truth = Being Convinced of the Truth
Where did we get that idea? Jesus.
“If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:31-32 (MSG).
Throughout the gospels, as Jesus trains his followers to live in their True Identity, he works at connecting their knowledge of the Father’s love with experiencing the Father’s love in order to convince them that the Father indeed loves them. As Jesus’ followers become convinced of the Father’s love, it sets them free to live in its abundance without reservation or uncertainty and to freely offer it to others.
How does this apply in your family?
The truth is that, because you and your family are “in Christ,” you are beloved children of the heavenly King. There’s really no question about that.
But when you do question it (and we all do), God invites you to look to the cross. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,” (1 John 4:10). And Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13).
The proof of God’s love is the cross of God’s Son. That should settle it, right? “This is most certainly true.”
However, there is the truth that God loves you and then there’s the experience of God loving you. As we’ve seen, human beings, in order to thrive, need both.
People experience God’s love through other people. The design is simple: love comes from God to us, then through us to the people around us (1 John 4:7-12). It is true that we receive love directly from God, but it is also true that we experience his love through other people. And human beings thrive when we have both. Jesus says it plainly, “As I have loved you, now love one another.”
Children experience God’s love through their parents. Husbands and wives experience God’s love through each other. Christians experience God’s love through one another in Christian community. Unbelieving neighbors experience God’s love through Christian neighbors.
So, when your child experiences God’s love through you, the experience becomes the evidence they need to believe that God indeed loves them too. In other words, their experience convinces them of what they have been told is true. Then, the more convinced your child becomes of God’s love, the more they are set free to live in its abundance without reservation or uncertainty and to freely offer it to others.
And your child thrives.
Obviously, a lot is at stake here. So, let’s take a little deeper dive.
As we saw in the last chapter, our True Identity as a beloved child of the heavenly King has been redeemed and restored by Jesus. It’s done. It’s settled. “This is most certainly true.”
However, as adults, we also live with the consequences of how well (or poorly) our parents discipled us to live in our True Identity. Do you feel convinced that you are the Father’s beloved or are you uncertain? Do you fully trust the Father’s love or do you struggle with it? Do you live with a joyful confidence or an anxious doubt?
Of course, we do not rely on our experiences (good or bad) to determine if something God says is true. What is true is determined by what God says, not by our experience. In fact, our faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, clings to what God says is true especially when we aren’t experiencing it. However, it is also true that a child’s ability to experience and trust God’s love is directly connected to how well (or poorly) they experience love through their parents.
As one of my friends once said to me, “I believe God loves me, I just have a very hard time trusting that.” He was raised by parents who were unable to freely express their love to him. The parents were rule-keepers; harsh and disapproving much of the time. The love they did offer him, when it was offered, was conditional. He had to earn it. And then it was quickly withdrawn. He heard about God’s love every week in church. He believed the truth of it by faith. (Thank you, Holy Spirit!) However, because of the way he experienced love through his parents, he had a very difficult time trusting that God could love him abundantly and unconditionally.
If you, like my friend, struggle to trust that you are unconditionally loved by God, it may be because of how you experienced love through your parents. If it is easy for you to trust that you are unconditionally loved by God, likewise, it is probably because of how you experienced love through your parents. The truth that you are unconditionally loved by God is not affected one bit by how your parents loved you. However, your ability to understand and trust that truth is.
Having said that, for those of you who grew up in Christian homes where emotions were suspect or even unwelcomed, reconnecting truth with experience may feel… well, suspect. However, in sending his Son into the world, God himself shows the value he places on reconnecting his truth with our human experience.
For instance, John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory… who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Connecting the Father’s grace and truth with our human experience is one of the reasons Jesus came in the flesh. The Father wanted us, his children, who are flesh and blood, to experience his grace and truth – to see it, hear it and feel it.
So, he sent his Son to become flesh and blood and live among us:
· Touching the leper
· Teaching the crowds
· Taking children into his arms to bless them
· Eating with sinners
· Healing eyes and ears and legs
· Shedding his blood
· Physically rising from the dead
In 1 John 1:1, John unabashedly points to the tangible experiences he had with Jesus as the reason he is convinced of the truth about Jesus. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim…”
Jesus came not only to tell the truth of the Father’s love, but to help us experience the Father’s love so that we become convinced that the Father really does love us (John 15:9). In other words, Jesus reconnected knowing our True Identity in our head with being convinced of it in our heart by helping us experience it in our daily life.
Why is this so important? Because when we become convinced that the Father really does love us, it sets us free to more fully live in the abundance of his love (John 14:21-23) and to join Jesus on his mission.
Being Convinced of the Father’s Love = Being Set Free to Fully Live in Its Abundance
Merry Advent!