ROOTED

Discovering the Father’s Heart

30 Days of the Father Drawing You to Himself

You know, the longer I walk with the Lord, the more I realize how much I still have to learn about Him.

I don’t mean learning more Bible facts or becoming better acquainted with the history of Israel. Those things are important, and I’ve spent a good portion of my life studying and teaching them. I’m talking about those moments when something you’ve read in Scripture for years suddenly becomes personal. When you begin recognizing the Father’s patience in the way He’s dealt with you, His mercy in the mistakes you’ve made, and His faithfulness through circumstances you weren’t sure you’d ever get through.

And the more you begin recognizing those things, the more you find yourself looking at life a little differently. You still have problems to deal with, decisions to make, and days when nothing seems to go right. But you’re learning to face those things with a growing confidence in the One who has been walking with you all along.

There’s a wonderful difference between believing the Father is faithful because Scripture tells us He is, and being able to look back over your own life and recognize the countless ways He’s demonstrated that faithfulness.

And I believe there’s still so much more of His heart for us to discover.

There’s something about that word Father that means more to me today than it did years ago. Maybe it’s because life has a way of teaching us things we couldn’t have understood when we were younger. We’ve had our share of wonderful days, but we’ve also experienced disappointments, made decisions we wish we could take back, buried people we loved, and walked through seasons when we weren’t quite sure how things were going to turn out.

And somewhere in the middle of all that living, we’ve discovered things about the Lord that we might never have learned any other way.

I imagine you know what I’m talking about.

There have been times when I’ve looked back over something I went through and realized the Father was doing far more than I understood at the time. I couldn’t see it while I was in the middle of it. All I could see were the circumstances in front of me. But looking back, I could recognize His patience, His provision, and sometimes even His protection in things that hadn’t made much sense when they were happening.

---

And here’s something I’ve been thinking about. We can spend years walking with the Lord, faithfully attending church, studying our Bibles, praying, and serving Him, and still find ourselves longing for something more in our relationship with Him.

Not because we haven’t been sincere in our faith. And certainly not because those things don’t matter.

But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we’ve become so accustomed to doing the things that belong to the Christian life that we haven’t fully appreciated the relationship those things were meant to nurture.

Think about that for a moment.

Jesus didn’t give His life simply so we could become better at practicing Christianity. He came to reconcile us to the Father, to bring us into a relationship that sin had broken. And through Holy Spirit, we’re given the wonderful privilege of living in fellowship with Him every day.

Yet how easily we can go about our lives knowing those truths without fully enjoying what they mean.

We know the Father loves us, but have we taken time to discover what His love looks like in the way He’s dealt with people throughout Scripture and in the circumstances of our own lives? We know He’s faithful, but have we learned to recognize His faithfulness even when things aren’t turning out the way we hoped?

And what might begin to change if we started approaching our time in Scripture with a desire to discover the Father’s heart, rather than simply finishing another day’s reading?

I believe that’s where something wonderful can begin to happen.

The Bible accounts we’ve known for years begin revealing things about the Father we may have overlooked. Our prayers become opportunities to talk with Him about what we’re discovering. And as we grow in our understanding of His character, we begin to recognize His work in our lives, follow Jesus with a deeper appreciation for what He’s made possible, and become more attentive to the leading of Holy Spirit.

That’s why I created ROOTED.

It’s a thirty-day invitation to slow down, open God’s Word, and spend some intentional time discovering the Father’s heart. Each day, we’ll explore Scripture together, consider what it reveals about Him, and bring those discoveries into the circumstances of our own lives. There’s also room to reflect, pray, and journal along the way.

My hope is that you’ll discover something about the Father that changes the way you approach Him long after these thirty days are over.

Because there’s a wonderful relationship waiting to be enjoyed, and I believe we’ve only begun to discover how much the Father desires for us to know His heart.