Each person has different experiences with their earthly father, but each person are yearning deep down for their father’s love, affection, and approval. In this video from his Not Forsaken Bible study, Pastor of Passion City Church, Louie Giglio, explains how God is the only perfect Father who can satisfy that need in each person.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
And news hit last night, my wife was reading a story to me. She said they decided who the new co-anchor’s gonna be on the late version of the Today Show and it’s gonna be Jenna Bush Hager. And I’m like, “Great.” My wife’s reading this to me sort of late in the night as we’re about to wind down and go to bed. I said, “Oh, that’s great news. Awesome. Kathy Lee Gifford moving on. Jenna Bush Hager is moving in.”
And she’s telling me this story and she’s telling me how hard she’s been working for it. How long she’s been in the process. And you know it’s a big deal if you finally land that spot, right?
And then she says, because we all know that she has a very famous father who was a president, and Jenna Bush Hager said, “And I broke down in tears when I got my father’s reply.” That’s where I got interested and sort of leaned in a little bit. And I said “Okay,” waiting, like, what was the reply from her father that caused her to have tears streaming down her face at thirty-something years old as she’s now getting this biggest moment in her life?
You know what her father’s three words were that caused her to weep in response? They were these words: “Very proud dad.”
Not a paragraph. Not a great job, now let me write you a big response. Three words from her dad in that moment gave her the response that we all want. Very. Proud. Dad.
That is woven into us in our birth and it is a part of our life all of our days.
I was reading two powerful quotes in Psychology Today and one of them is by Dr. Peggy Drexler and it’s phenomenal how she underscores the reality of this truth. That maybe you’re nine or nineteen or maybe you’re forty-nine and working in a high rise right now and got a house at the beach and all kinds of accomplishments or maybe you’re watching this Bible study behind bars and your story’s been a completely different story.
But in all of us is this same reality and Peggy Drexler underscores it in this way. I want to read you the whole paragraph of what she says.
In my research into the lives of some 75 high-achieving, clearly independent women, I knew that I would I find a powerful connection between them and the first men in their lives. What surprised me was how deep (and surprisingly traditional) the bond is, how powerful it remains throughout their lives, and how resilient it can be–even when a father has caused grievous harm. No matter how successful their careers, how happy their marriages, or how fulfilling their lives, women told me that their happiness passed through a filter of their fathers’ reactions.
And that’s exactly what we just saw. I got the gig. I’ve got the Today Show. I’ve got the accomplishment. But all that went through a filter of three words: “Very proud dad.” Yes, I got a lot of press. There’s a whole lot of news flying around. Everybody in America’s gonna read about it and then tell their husband right before they go to bed that night. It’s big news, but it’s all going through the filter, this filter that Dr. Drexler’s talking about, of their fathers’ reaction. She goes on to say,
Many told me that they tried to remove the filter and–much to their surprise–failed. We know,” she goes on to say, “that fathers play a key role in the development and choices of their daughters. But even for women whose fathers had been neglectful or abusive, I found a hunger for approval. They wanted a warm relationship with men who did not deserve any relationship at all.
And the same is true of us men. Even as we move through the stages of life and move through the seasons of life, something deep down inside of us wants our father to show up and to give us his affection and his approval and to say, “I’m proud of you. I love you. I’m so happy to be your dad.”
We see this same thing from Dr. Frank Pittman and he really brings it into the clearest and most powerful light. Listen to what he says also in a Psychology Today article. He says,
Life for most boys and for many grown men then is a frustrating search for the lost father who has not yet offered protection, provision, nurturing, modeling, or, especially, anointment.
Isn’t it interesting how he uses that word, “anointment”? And this is what that word means. That word “anointment” refers to being chosen, being blessed, or being approved. In other words, all of us are still looking for it. We’re still wanting it. We’re still wanting to live like we were made to live under the waterfall of a father’s blessing.
I don’t know about your father and I’ve told you a tiny bit about my dad, but here’s what I do know today. Whether you had the greatest father of all, the empowering father who told you that he loved you and really set you on a course to succeed in life, or whether you had the worst father of all, an abusive father, or an absent father, or a disinterested father, or that father that gave you the hug only if you earned it, or said “I love you” only if you jumped through the right hoops, or constantly set the bar so high that no one could measure up to his expectations. All of us in the very facets of our lives and the differences that we bring into this moment, we all have an earthly father. And all of those relationships are different. But whether yours was on earth the best or whether yours on earth was one of the worst, we all have this longing, this craving, this desire for the blessing of our father.
And the hope of this Bible study, this journey that we’re on, the hope and the truth of God’s Word and the relationship that we can have with Him, is that in our relationship with God all of us can live as loved sons and loved daughters under the waterfall of a perfect Father’s blessing.
