A good friend of mine, George La Du, founded the Identity Project and has been preaching on the Father’s love for 40+ years. George’s ministry deeply instills the truth that you are who the Father says you are (His masterpiece!).
Knowing who you are and who you belong to opens your heart to the Father’s love. The more you encounter Him, the more your love tank fills, the more the truth will move from your head (as information) to your heart ( as transformative revelation). This enables you to receive and experience God as He intended from the beginning. However, if God doesn’t fill your love tank, you will fill it with other things, which are not of God’s design.
George has this picture of The Andy Griffith Show hung on his wall. In the photograph, the character Opie looks up at his father with a smile, communicating he feels content, safe, loved, and delighted as they walk together. This is a picture of how we are supposed to feel in our walk with our Heavenly Father!
God wants to meet with us daily, moment by moment, and He has 1000 ways to fill your love tank. We become increasingly aware of His love as we practice cultivating a relationship throughout our day. God reveals Himself in salvation, provision, love, wisdom, creation, people, life’s little moments, dreams, visions, His voice, His presence, etc. The following exercises will help you allow God to fill your love tank.
How do you identify?
Pause for a moment and ask God, “Who do You say that I am?”
Now, take a few minutes to write down what you hear.
Pause for a moment and ask the Father, “What is one area You would like to do life with me? What would it look like?”
Continue to write down what you hear.
Pause and ask, “Holy Spirit, please reveal anything in my life that I love or focus on or rest my faith in over You?” What is the Holy Spirit showing you?
Continue to write down what you hear.
As you write, you begin to build history and steward the words of God over your life that will provide encouragement and wisdom down the road.
Throughout this practice, let the Holy Spirit lead you. The more we honor the promptings and leading of the Holy Spirit, the more open we become to experiencing Him. Be aware that God speaks with you in your own unique personal language as you have things that matter to you, different life experiences and unique needs. He knows the desires of your heart and everything about you. Walking and talking with God in the natural realm brings His presence and His Kingdom to earth as He works in and through you.
Your Father has good plans for your life and good works that He has prepared in advance for your life. You are a son or daughter. You are a friend of God. As George says, “What God did when He made you is really really good!”
See yourself as He sees you. See others as He sees them.
Hearing God’s Voice
From experience, the journey to discovering who we are in Christ starts when we simply go to Him and seek Him with all our hearts. That includes the broken parts of our hearts!
Keep in mind that God may speak to you as Father, Son or Holy Spirit. There are times in your life that different parts of the Godhead will speak to you as you journey with the Lord.
The Holy Spirit is my constant companion, my encourager, my comforter, my friend. It is the Holy Spirit who I experience in my day to day when I write and flow in creativity or while I work. I encounter Jesus the most often when I do inner healing. Typically when I journal, I hear the voice of the Father.
Experiencing God’s Love
We can experience the Trinity in the simple things of life. I recently had a weekend where I prepared a great dinner and good music on Saturday and Sunday night with the intent to set aside time to enjoy God. I was filled with gratitude for the blessings of the food and time with Him. My love language is food so it was easy for me to get into the zone. It was a time of great peace and joy, talking with and experiencing the Lord. His presence was powerful and so life-giving. Immanuel, God with us.
Jesus invites us to bring our burdens to Him so we can fully experience Him and life more abundantly. In times of suffering, my experience of the Trinity has been different. I have suffered with Jesus (entering into His suffering and He in mine) and without Jesus on my own.
Can you think of a time when you suffered by yourself and another time when you invited Jesus into your pain? Compare the experiences. From personal experience, I highly recommend inviting Jesus into your pain.
When we learn to go to Jesus in difficult times rather than false or unhealthy comforts and distractions, we are blessed with His comfort. It makes all the difference when we choose to trust in our good and perfect Heavenly Father, knowing He is sovereign and loves us more than we could ever imagine and is producing gold within us in the process. Immanuel, God with us!
Experiencing God’s love in times of joy and suffering ultimately solidifies our identity in Christ and makes the journey with God as beautiful as George’s photograph of Opie and Andy.
As I close out this blog, I want to challenge you to reassess how you view the Father and how you view yourself. Ask the Lord to reveal a new way you can receive from Him today. Be quiet, still, and take what He shows you to heart. Let Him fill your love tank and be made new in the process.
The Identity Project is helping Kingdom leaders unleash their God-given identity. The Identity Project course and events are a discipleship program in the Gospel of the Kingdom, that the King of kings taught. To learn more go to: https://kingdomliving.mylearnworlds.com/course/identity-project?site_template_id=619d37414f64f52cd2743533
