One of my favorite “fathers” in the faith was Brennan Manning, who endeared himself to more than one generation of believers seeking intimacy with Abba. One of his contagious habits was that every morning as his first utterance and every evening as his last was this:

“Abba, I belong to you!”

The repetitive remembrance of this fact fosters security that is so deep and rock-solid that it becomes impossible to even consider that Abba is distant from us!

But there is even deeper blessing in this declaration, as I am sure Brennan would agree. Namely, belonging to Abba implies a belonging to Jesus as well, since Jesus and the Father are one [see John 17:22-23]! Our belonging to the Lover of our souls contains blessings too numerous and profound to even imagine, and yet, there is even more blessing that awaits.

As the perfect unity among the disciples of Jesus that he prayed for in John 17:20-23 becomes a reality, we will experience an incredible “belonging” that Abba intends for us as an expression of his incredible love. Namely, because of our perfect, complete unity we will, in effect, belong to each other!

This is one of the amazing blessings of complete unity among the saints, an inter-connectedness that is a core characteristic of the unified Body of Christ! [See several of the writings of the Apostle Paul, for example.] In other words,

I belong to you, and you belong to me!

One of my favorite conclusions stemming from this “belonging” is that my expression of Jesus belongs to you, and yours belongs to me! Seeing Jesus in each other is my strong recommendation to facilitate love for one another.  Even if I don’t seem all that “lovable,” Jesus in me certainly is! Hallelujah! ☺

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Your destiny lives in a place of perfect nurture and protection:  Abba’s heart!

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the favorite verses of many Christians:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. [Jer 29:11]

Among the reasons for this verse being a favorite is the fact that there is no judgment, warning, or condition contained in this exhilarating declaration by the Father.  

Indeed, it is better than we first realize! For example, the Hebrew word translated as “know” is yada, which implies much more than simple “awareness.” It connotates intimate, complete, relational knowledge of the plans he has for us.

In other words, Abba “holds” his plans for us within his heart, as treasures to be protected and nurtured.

If that is not enough to bring you thrill, there is more!  In the Hebrew culture of the day, a man’s thoughts were regarded as part of the man. Contrast that with the Greek way of regarding thoughts as somehow greater than the thinker, and to be valued more highly on their own “merits.” But to the Hebrew, God could no more separate himself from his plans for us than he could separate himself from the Holy Spirit!

So, the Hebrew reader of Jeremiah 29:11 would understand that God’s plans for him were in fact a part of God himself! Thus, we can be greatly encouraged by this conclusion:

Your future is a part of God!

Abba’s plans for you most certainly have, as an integral component, your destiny at their core. In view of the immense value this destiny has in Abba’s sight, you can be thrilled concerning the place where it lives: in the most fascinating place in the universe!

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

There is only one kind of biblical forgiveness:  TOTAL!

In our journey into Christlikeness, Jesus’ command to forgive offenses (see Mt 6:14-15; 18:21-35; Mk 11:25; Lk 17:4) is central to the eventual development of an unoffendable heart like his. Yet, all too often, we are tempted to partially forgive while still harboring a remnant of judgment, bitterness, disgust, superiority, etc. While we may say that we have forgiven someone, sometimes our hearts are slow to line up with our words.

But Jesus calls us to total forgiveness! Ouch! Because our old nature fights against this kind of total surrender to our Lord, we simply must have the help of Holy Spirit to teach us how to bring our partial forgiveness up to the standard of “total.” This is where the link to the companion command to love those who offend us comes in. In other words, total forgiveness is coupled with Jesus-level love for the person we need to forgive.

Let me phrase this connection another way:  

Jesus-level love is embedded in a heart that forgives totally!

A testimony I heard over 25 years ago encouraged me in this regard even as it “haunted” me. A member of the church stood during a Sunday morning service to share what he had seen on a television talk show that week. He related the essentials of a conversation between the host of the popular show and his guest who had an amazing story to tell.  

This guest was a father who had lost his teenage son, murdered in a horrific drive-by shooting by a gang member who was himself only a young teenager. The murderer was caught and sentenced to a long time in prison. The father learned that the murderer had no father in his life, and that he had a very troubled upbringing with no moral compass. He began to have compassion on this boy murderer and visited him on a regular basis in prison, developing a fatherly love for this boy over time.  

The man eventually petitioned the court to allow him to adopt the boy and bring him into his home as a member of his family. The judge agreed to this probationary arrangement and the boy grew into adulthood as he finally experienced the love of a father, and he became an upstanding citizen in the community!

When the show host expressed shock and surprise at this father’s total forgiveness of his son’s murderer, he asked “How could you possibly bring this murderer of your son into your own home and raise him as your own?” The father answered, “Because I am a Christian!”

Jesus-level love begets total forgiveness. May we all let the love of Abba transform us so completely.

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

As I return from an amazing four weeks in Uganda, helping to encourage more than 1,300 leaders in five locations, I am reminded of my first visit to the “Pearl of Africa,” in 2002. So many incredible “God-sightings” occurred on that mission, it would take quite a bit of space to even touch on them briefly.

But let me zero in on an adventure during that trip that impacted our whole team in dramatic fashion.  

During our brief game-viewing safari to Murchison Falls National Park, we were told by our guide that we needed to leave early to try to make it back to the main road (paved), since it had begun to rain and we had quite a distance to travel back along the dirt access road to the Falls.  He was concerned that we might experience significant delay as that road would surely turn into a “mud strip” due to the powerful storm that was about to drench our “escape route.”

Sure enough, our drive to our hotel turned into an all-night “adventure” along the muddy “road!”  This included the team pushing our van back up on the road after sliding off into the ditch at the side, more than once. One of our team members offered to drive the vehicle since he felt a special empowerment from the Lord to control the slippery critter better than our guide, and indeed he did a much better job!  

As we were waiting at about midnight for vehicles in front of us to make their way up a slippery hill, we had a break for a few minutes to stretch a bit. I felt led to encourage the team to prophetically “shovel” mud out of the way in front of our van, as we needed to get some traction to make it up the hill. The team went along with this “crazy idea from Steve” and used their pretend shovels in the prophetic act. Can’t hurt, right?

A few minutes later, six African men came out of the bush along the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with shovels and spades and cleared a way for our van to get some traction! They were wearing tattered clothes like many men in the rural areas but it seemed very strange that they would even be available to help us at midnight! One of our team members offered to pay them something for their trouble, but I discouraged him from doing so, saying that “they don’t need your money.”   

You see, I had the sense that these were not in fact African men, but helpers sent by Abba! As we boarded our van to head up the hill, we turned around to wave goodbye to the “men,” but they had suddenly vanished!  

The rest of the journey to our hotel was accompanied by the loud praise and wonder of our muddied team, grateful for a little help from our “friends!”    

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Vulnerability! A heart that loves makes itself vulnerable – a heart that self-protects cannot truly love.

Because Abba is love [1 John 4:8,16], and he loves us just as much as he loves Jesus [John 17:23], his heart must necessarily be vulnerable to the choices we make. This wonderful aspect of Abba’s heart may not always be at the forefront of our thinking as we make our choices.  Indeed, our self-focus can often relegate the possible impact of our choices on Abba’s heart to some place near the bottom of our priority list.

Part of the wonder of Abba’s heart is that he endures the hurt we cause him with some of our choices. Indeed, his heart is the most vulnerable of all!  He loves us so much that he gave us free will, and because of this choice on his part, he has made his heart vulnerable to the consequences of trillions (at least!) of choices made by his children.

When someone receives the precious gift of adoption into his family through belief in Jesus, there is incredible joy in Abba’s heart and that joy explodes through the universe as angels everywhere rejoice!  But when someone persists in refusing the free gift of salvation, the place in Abba’s heart that has their “shape,” and is reserved for them alone, remains empty forever, causing immeasurable pain for Abba. 

Even after we are born again, we are amazed that our loving Father opened his heart to not only the joy he feels because of our good choices, but also the pain of our not-so-good choices. This love is the most pure and tremendous of any passionate heart that exists! This vulnerability is far beyond our ability to comprehend and is just one of the reasons why Abba’s heart is the most fascinating place in the universe!

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Perfection! Even this very word evokes the thought of our Father in heaven, and his Son Jesus who is our model. When it comes to his creation, the perfection of his handiwork amazes us in both its grand scale and its intricacies of exquisite detail.  

Indeed, what we perceive as “perfection” seems, in many instances, to have been “hard-wired” into us by God himself, and because we are made in his image we can somehow appreciate the beauty of his creation. In other words, we are enough like him that we can “share” his delight in the manifest beauty of something that seems “perfect.”

But Abba’s opinion about what constitutes “perfection” is delightfully different than ours in some key arenas of nature! One of these has to do with creations that seem to be “symmetric” or “well-balanced.” While we can appreciate the beauty in things that have “symmetric” attributes, such as equal-sided triangular design, or a square-shaped object having several reflection and rotation symmetries, Abba seems to have made some choices in his creation that result in apparent “asymmetry” or “broken symmetry.”

For example, there is a clear preponderance of right-handed people vs. those who are left-handed. Why is that?

On a deeper level, physicists have discovered over the course of several decades now that every particle in nature seems to have a possible “equivalent” anti-particle that is like a “mirror-image” with regard to key features. For example, positrons have the same mass as the negatively-charged electrons that comprise an essential part of the atoms in our bodies, but have exactly the opposite amount of electric charge. Hence the name “positron.” [Some “neutral” particles are their own antiparticles; for example: photons (particles of light).] Similarly, the protons and neutrons that comprise the nuclei of our atoms have anti-particle counterparts: antiprotons and antineutrons.  Particles and their anti-particles that happen to encounter each other tend to “annihilate” each other to produce a stable remnant:  photons.

Here’s the rub: If God had produced particles and antiparticles in equal numbers in the universe, then over time they would have annihilated each other to produce photons and we would have wound up with just light. In other words, a “beautiful” symmetry between particles and antiparticles would have resulted in a dearth of particles with which to form the matter that we now see. If God had insisted on preserving the symmetry and did not decide to prefer particles to antiparticles, we would not exist (in our present form). Instead, God chose to cause an asymmetry between the numbers of particles vs. antiparticles so that our bodies (made from particles: electrons, protons, neutrons) could exist!  

What looks like a “flaw” in the symmetry of God’s universe is in fact beautiful. We are the pinnacle of God’s creation and in his sight, we are the “beauty” in the flaw! 

[As a humorous side note, be careful to never shake hands with an alien who extends his left hand to you!]

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Are you blessed by Abba?

Of course you are! In fact, you would have a difficult time counting all the blessings from him.  But did you know that Abba is blessed by YOU?

There are many times that you delight him with your thoughtful deeds, your heart-felt adorations, your obedience to his directions, and the list goes on …

There is a much deeper kind of blessing you provide for your Abba, however. It is not due to something you do, or say, or even think. Rather it is because of what you receive! Namely, when you receive blessing(s) from Abba, he in turn is blessed simply because you are blessed. In other words, because of his immeasurable love for you, your reception of even his “smallest” blessing thrills him! That is the nature of pure love.

Abba is so extremely others-focused (on you in particular) that his blessing because of your blessing is “inescapable,” if you will allow me to claim that God cannot escape something.  

It doesn’t stop there! Because you love your Abba, you also sense (or share in) his blessing because you can “feel” his heart warming because you’ve been blessed. In other words, you become more blessed when he is blessed!  

But wait! Now that you are more blessed, he becomes even more blessed! And then you become even more blessed as a consequence of his blessed heart. This is the nature of a true love-relationship and yours with Abba is the very best there is.

In over 30 years of my explorations of Abba’s heart, I’ve learned that this mutual escalation of blessing continues on and on, and will continue to do so into eternity! So, remember to receive your blessings with a warmed heart, because Abba’s heart will then warm even more in response.

You both will enjoy this exquisite escalation forever!

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Abba delights in surprising us!

Several years ago, I led a small team on a Father’s Touch mission in Tanzania that was full of adventure and amazing miracles that “wrecked us beyond recognition.” But Abba saved a very unique surprise for us until very near the end of our time together as we enjoyed a spectacular game-viewing safari across the famous Serengeti Plain.

Normally on our safaris we see quite a few elephants, but this particular time they seemed to be missing! One lady on our team was very disappointed in the dearth of pachyderms, but she cheered up a bit on our last day as we saw a small herd very far in the distance. Still, she kept asking Abba for a closer view of an elephant.

As we were finishing our game-viewing on that last day and traveling up a steep road out of the famous Ngorongoro Crater, our persistent team member was praying for God to bring her again to Africa so she could see elephants up close.  

All of a sudden, as we rounded a curve on the steep road in our safari vehicle, our driver-guide had to pull over to the side and stop in order to allow a huge bull elephant to pass by us on his way down the road to the crater! Our guide had never seen an elephant on that road, so this was very unusual.

The elephant was so close that if he had turned his head toward us, his tusk would have smashed a window on our van.  It was a sight we will never forget! The lady was miraculously stifling a scream of delight which was very good of her to do, lest the elephant take some defensive action.

As the big boy passed by our van, I had the very strong sense that this pachyderm passing was arranged by Abba in answer to our team member’s prayers. My eyes were fixed on the elephant’s head as I wondered if this was an angel masquerading as an elephant.

The “elephant” caught my eye and winked at me!

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries

Abba’s protection can happen without any direct involvement on our part (and presumably does on a daily basis!), but we need to be obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit when he does warn us, in order to benefit from direct intervention. 

An example of this occurred one day when one of the Father’s Touch team leaders was traveling on the Los Angeles freeway system on his way home from out of town. He had been prompted by the Holy Spirit to plan a small detour to visit a close friend of the family who was near death from cancer and was under hospice care in her home. There was an urgency to make sure that she was certain of her eternal destination. 

As he was driving on the freeway he was also praying for the Lord to give him unhindered access to visit with her, without the other unbelieving family members present to hinder the sharing of the gospel. Up ahead about a car length in the lane to the right was a big semi-truck traveling at the same speed. All of a sudden, he heard a strong inner shout from the Holy Spirit: “Get behind the semi!” Immediately, without even checking his blind spot, he yanked the steering wheel to the right and got right behind the semi! At that instant, several pieces of metal debris went flying past at head level in the lane he had just left! One small piece hit the front left fender and bounced up over the car! 

After asking the Lord to protect everyone else, he started praising God for his deliverance from certain injury (or death!), and the rejoicing began in advance for his imminent visit to the elderly lady with cancer. Surely, the Lord had something wonderful in store! Indeed, a few minutes later as he pulled onto her street, a van carrying the family members was leaving in the other direction. Inside, he had unhindered access to visit and help this woman make certain her relationship with Jesus. (The hospice nurse heard the gospel as well!) The next morning, she graduated to her heavenly home and was healed completely! 

Abba’s ability to thwart the destructive schemes of the enemy is matched by his desire to train us to hear not only his voice, but also the voices of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  When one of them shouts, we need to know it is God who is shouting!  He always has a good reason.

© 2022 The Father’s Touch Ministries