The Embraced Retreat

Many people have been hurt by their fathers or mothers. I am one of them.

My father left when I was four years old, leaving me deeply wounded. I

grew up fearful, insecure, finding it hard to trust people, feeling easily

rejected, that I didn’t belong, and that nobody would take care of me. I

found it hard to feel safe and loved by the Heavenly Father.

But I have found profound healing through encountering God’s Father

heart of love for me. That’s why I wrote a book called

Embraced: Experiencing God’s Father Heart of Love. And now I am offering a

weekend retreat to provide an opportunity for you to experience the

wonderful, healing love of our Heavenly Father.

The purpose of the Embraced Retreat is to experience the Father’s heart of

love for you. No matter what your background, this retreat is about feeling

loved by God.

It is an opportunity to personally apply the principles taught in the book

Embraced, to receive healing prayer for any wounds you have and to deal

with any obstacles keeping you from feeling deeply loved by the

Heavenly Father.

Embraced Retreat Information:

HERE

Experiencing God’s Father Heart of Love

An experience of God’s Father heart of love is available to you. We all can

discover His love, which brings about incredible joy, freedom, and healing

in our lives and will spill over to be a blessing to others.

Perhaps deep down you have a sense that there is much more to the love

of God than what you are currently experiencing. Perhaps you know how

empty it can be to go through lifeless motions of prayer, Bible reading,

worship, serving, etc. out of a dry sense of religious duty. You find

yourself crying out like a child for someone to notice you, spend time

with you, and tell you how important you are to them.

You carry this longing to know in your heart how much delight the Father

takes in you, and to see His smiling face looking upon you even now. You

long to hear Him say that you matter to Him. You desire a relationship

with the Father that is heart-to-heart, not just head-to-head.

God is reawakening this longing in His people so they might embark on a

renewed pursuit of His heart of love. He wants to breathe new life into

hearts that have become tired, defeated, cold, dry, and shut down. He

wants you to feel like a deeply loved child of the Father.

Thoughts on Identity, Part 1

It appears that many of us are still on a search to discover our true identity. I am getting a lot of positive feedback on a sentence in my book, Embraced, in chapter 12 on Identity. Here’s the sentence: “Learning your true identity has everything to do with who Christ is, rather than who you are.” Why is this striking a chord in many readers? I know why it impacts me. I have spent years finding my identity from my career, my role as a pastor, my title, my accomplishments, people’s affirmations and more. When this has gone well, I feel good about myself; when it’s gone badly, I feel terrible. We all long for a settled, secure identity not based on shifting circumstances and people’s unpredictable opinions of us. How to find that is the subject of my next instalment of Thoughts.

Thoughts On Identity, Part 2

Our true identity is ultimately found in our relationship with Christ – being “in Christ,” about whom the Father says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Even though the Father said this to Jesus at His baptism, He is still saying it today to us who are His sons and daughters. And we can hear these words from the Father because we are in Christ, and what is true of Jesus is also true of us. As we begin to believe and receive this truth from the Father, we start to live out of a secure and settled identity, based on who God says we are. “Father, we need You to keep telling us who we really are in Your eyes.”

Thoughts On Identity, Part 3

“Know who you are, like who you are, be who you are.” I read these words a long time ago and can’t take credit for them. But I can take a lot of wisdom from them, and so can you, because they echo what the Bible teaches in our search for identity. The Bible tells us who are are. According to the book of Ephesians, we who are in Christ are chosen, holy, blameless, adopted, redeemed, forgiven, marked and sealed by the Holy Spirit, seated in heavenly places, and created for good works, to mention only a few. What’s not to like about being a person like that? The challenge is actually being who we are, living like the person Christ has made us to be. Don’t let others define you, don’t let the lies you believe define you, let Jesus define you. “Jesus, help us to know who we really are in You, like who we are, and actually live like the people we are in You.”