The Beloved
I would have never imagined that in my 40’s I would lose both my parents. I clearly remember at my 40th birthday party in April of 2017, which my wife hosted with a lot of my friends, that I kept thinking mom was dying. Mom would pass away 7 weeks after I turned 40, June 8th 2017. Dad passed away tragically and suddenly in a logging accident in August of 2023.
Two parents have passed away in a matter of 6 years in my 40’s. To put language to this, it has felt like the scaffolding that has been put in place to support me has just been ripped away. I’m an orphan. The deep pain of lament has felt like too much at times.
Of course I’ve become my own man, husband, father, etc as I moved out of the house after High School. But, it doesn’t matter how old or mature you become, parents are parents, and you expect them to be there no matter what.
It’s also in my 40’s that Abba Father has been gracious enough with me to help me to develop a theology that the triune God is enough to fill all of the deep emotional longings we have. Many of these longings have or haven’t been filled by our parents in our family of origin.
We have four basic emotional needs; The need for affirmation and approval, the need to be in control, the need for safety and security, and the need to be separate (to be our own god). At any moment of any day my sinful false self feels the pull towards one, both, or sometimes all four.
The last few years I’ve been slowly studying the triune God of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As I’ve done this I began to make the connections to our core emotional needs. Here’s how it works;
God the Heavenly Father (Jesus refers to him as Abba) fills our need for affirmation and approval.
Jesus the Christ, God’s son, who he sent into the world to reconcile all things back to himself and in Hebrews 2 says that he has become like a brother and sister, breaks our need to try and control life and others.
The Holy Spirit fills our need for safety and security as he loves and comforts us like a mother does.
When we have all of these met we no longer draw attention to ourselves to be our own god, but give praise to the God who gives all things.
This is how this works on a deeper level;
Abba Father fills our need for affirmation and approval. This is something deeply personal and also a deep struggle of mine. I’ve always been wired for the Father’s approval, particularly as an adolescent growing up. This is my ministry and helping others can be so dangerous if we have unhealed family of origin issues. What I lacked in my family of origin, I found that ministry filled that void. My false self is a narcissist always longing for attention and affirmation and early on in ministry I found that doing something significant got a lot of attention and filled that void.
We can’t know the Heavenly Father’s affirmation and approval and experience his pure delight over us without the Holy Spirit opening the eyes of our hearts. This was the relationship that Jesus modeled in the gospel of John as the Holy Spirit constantly brought him into fellowship with the Father. Jesus was not looking for the affirmation and approval from the world, because he knew who he was as God’s son and what was in people. The Heavenly Father’s approval is all he needed. John says it like this in his gospel in 2:24-25; But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need human testimony about them, for he knew what was in them.” Looking for the affirmation and approval of others will constantly leave us empty, for I know what is in me as one!
Jesus Christ has come into the world to break our need to be in control. We try to control life because we’re afraid. Jesus is near to us in our fear and promises to never leave us nor forsake us, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
The Holy Spirit fills our need for safety and security like a mother would who loves and comforts. I’m not arguing that God is a mother, but that he loves like a mother would through the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
As we have all of these deep emotional wounds filled by the triune God, there’s not a desire to draw attention to ourselves, but to God.
Any time I look to others for only what the triune God can give me becomes idolatry. God wants to be the primary need filler. This doesn’t mean we don’t receive love and comfort from the community around us, it means that the primary “need meeter” is the triune God.
I believe this is the argument Paul us making in Philippians 4. “Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account. I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
Paul states that the only church that entered into the matter of giving and receiving was this the Philippian church. Paul gave to them and the Philippian church gave to Paul as he was in prison. They supported each other and the gifts they sent to each other were “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.” The key to all of this is the last sentence, “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
The question then is, how does Christ meet needs? Through him and through his people. This is where it gets really tricky for us. Anytime I look for others to fill that emotional need, rather than Christ, it becomes codependent. But, when I am deeply rooted in the love of Christ, I can give and receive gifts with his people and experience his love in community. When you look to others for only what God can provide, it’s sin.
The community of God is only to remind of your belovedness, not to fill your belovedness.
Once you stop longing for other people to fill those voids of your emotional wounds from the past and allow the triune God to, he brings you gifts from spiritual moms and dads. What does this mean?
One of my favorite people in the city is Ms Justina Dix. I have known Justina for many years and I have yet to meet someone who loves the way she does. Her hugs remind me so much of my mom. Justina has been an extreme blessing in my life and in many ways has loved me like the way a mother loves her child. But, if there’s unhealed emotional wounds from my past with my mom, it’s easy to want to have Justina fill them. As I’ve healed from past wounds and hurts (we all have them and I inflict emotional wounds on my children), I no longer look to people like Justina to fill an emotional void, but can receive the beautiful gift from Abba as Justina loves like a mother would.
No one is going to satisfy these deep emotional longings like Abba Father, Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit the comforter. Everything we need emotionally can be found in him.
Pastor Paul Tripp says it like this; “Here’s what happens to us all – we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough, to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint. You will have a bad day. You’ll lose your way. At some point, you’ll say or do things that you shouldn’t. Add to this the fact that the people around you aren’t typically interested in taking on the burden of being your personal messiah. They don’t want to live with the responsibility of having your identity in their hands. Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works.”
But, what does it mean to need people well? Not in a codependent way where you are depending on them and their reaction for a certain amount of peace in our lives? I believe it’s a good and holy longing for my parents to be still here on this earth. I would argue that God is the “gap filler” when it comes to meeting any emotional wounds or vacancy from our past that weren’t met in our family of origin.
The goal in Loving Freely is to be so embraced by the unconditional love of God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and have all of our core emotional needs met by him. It is because of this that we are able to develop an Island of Peace within our souls and be able to love others freely, because we are freely loved by God.
Jesus hears the words of affirmation and approval from the Heavenly Father when he begins his earthly ministry in Mark 1 with these words; “This is my beloved child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”
Think about this statement for a moment. Before Jesus entered into any form of service to anyone, he was declared the beloved child, who is loved, and the Father is well pleased with! It was this deep inner peace that Jesus held throughout his ministry, knowing that he was unconditionally loved by the Father. There was a place or reality that Jesus lived in all through his life here on earth.
This place is what the pastor and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman describes as an “Island of Peace” within our soul. In his book, Meditations of the Heart, Thurman says; “A beautiful and significant phrase, “Island of Peace within one’s own soul.” The individual lives his life in the midst of a wide variety of stresses and strains. Each one has to deal with the evil aspects of life, with injustices inflicted upon him and injustices which he wittingly or unwittingly inflicts upon others. We are all of us deeply involved in the throes of our own weaknesses and strengths, expressed often in the profoundest conflicts within our own souls. The only hope for surcease, the only possibility of stability for the person, is to establish an Island of Peace within one’s own soul. Well within the island is the Temple where God dwells—not the God of the creed, the church, the family, but the God of one’s heart.”
An Island of Peace. What a beautiful description of the inner peace that only Christ can offer to us who have repented our sins and have been given the Holy Spirit. In the gospel of Mark, Christ knew this Island of Peace in his soul, and thus was able to love others freely because of it. He knew that He was sent on a mission from God and that God’s voice in his life was all that mattered. Dr. Todd Hunter in Deep Peace says it like this, “Peace within is the overflow of being so loved by God that contentment is the natural state of our souls. From that place of provision, we are then free to love, forgive, and serve our neighbor.”
When we have all of these core emotional needs met by the triune God, we love others because we’re the beloved child of God, not to become the beloved child of God. This awareness changes everything! We can only love others freely when we freely receive the fact that we are God’s beloved child, whom He delights in!
The words in I John 4 captures this beautifully in v. 11, “Dear friends, since God so loves us, we also ought to love one another.” And in v. 19, “We love because he first loved us.” We love others as the beloved of God, because we have received the fact that we are God’s beloved. We cannot give away what we have not received ourselves.
This has only happened in my life when I’ve stopped longing for others to fill those voids that only the triune God can. The real journey into belovedness is about leaving our family of origin and dealing with those deep past emotional wounds and voids that were inflicted from the past.
When I’m fully living in the awareness and presence of the triune God, I can literally feel the Heavenly Father's eyes look on me with delight, sense that Christ is my brother sitting next to me with his arm around me feeling my pain, and and aware of the Holy Spirit that indwells me internally and provides that comfort that only it can.
This is the deep awareness that Jesus lived with, that he was a part of the triune God and was deeply loved by the Father and filled with the Spirit. And God invites us into that same triune relationship of love.
I pray regularly a modification of what the Desert Father’s call, “Breath Prayers”;
“Holy Spirit, may I know the Father’s affirmation and approval over me and experience the delight in his eyes over me.”
“Holy Spirit, remind me that I control nothing and that Christ is my brother and is present with me in all things.”
“Holy Spirit, may I know that I am safe with you and that you will not leave me as an orphan.”
“Holy Spirit, remind me that my life is not about me, but about the Father’s glory and honor.”