Restored: Transforming the Sting of Your Past Into Purpose for TodaySample

He is the Father to the Fatherless

My dad’s on-again, off-again interest in me left quickly again when he found out I wasn’t going to a big college. That’s the hard thing about people who are in your life for what you can do. You always have to be achieving more to keep them interested. And every time you achieve a new accolade, you secretly hope that this will be the time they are proud enough of you to stick with the relationship.

I had no idea what it meant to be in college, especially a Christian one. Between the disappointment of Dad’s interest in me and striving to be good so I could last at college, I began to discover this Jesus everyone seemed to talk about so much. I liked that they said I didn’t have to try so hard with Him. I felt comforted when they explained that He knew all the darkest parts of my past and was still interested in me.

It wasn’t long before I hunted down an upperclassman and asked him what being a Christian really meant. Everything he explained, I wanted. I wanted to trade my darkness for God’s light in my life. I wanted guidance from Someone much bigger than me. I realized as he spoke that everything I was longing for in my earthly father, Jesus was. So I gave my heart to Jesus. I told him, “I don’t understand all of this, but I understand enough to know that you are God and that I need you in my life.” I asked Him to simply teach me the rest as we went.

Jesus became the Father I longed for. He started filling gaps in my life that my earthly dad had left. He brought great men into my life to fill them. I had felt those gaps for so long, and my heavenly Father began to complete those parts that felt missing. Being His child was what I needed all along. Psalm 68:5–6 says, “Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families.” My soul began to settle in that. My angst was still there, but there were times when it left completely. Things were shifting inside and out, and I credit it all to Jesus.

Do you know this side of Jesus? Have you allowed Him to fill gaps in your life? When have you felt your soul settle as you trusted Him to care for you?