I lost my father when I was young, which led me down a dark path for 16 years. I fought and tried to be what I thought a man was, but it was a losing battle. I feel that because of my own story, my purpose in life is to help children and be there for those who don’t have people there for them. I want to be a guide or a father figure for a young man who is lost. This phrase “My heart hurts for my children,” is what God has put on my heart this past year and again this week. I have been focusing on that a lot lately.
I feel that when he says it to me I am taken back to when I was a young boy looking for someone or something to guide me. Someone to affirm me and show me how to do “manly” things.
But I have realized now he means all of his children. The people who I don’t think about and the people I tend to dismiss easily. The ones I judge and the ones who I feel judged by. The old man on the side of the road. The woman fighting to feed her kids. Just because they are not kids to me does not mean they aren’t children in his eyes. This was big to me because he keeps telling me that his heart hurts for the children. All of them. Everyone who has been where I once was. Alone, hopeless and afraid. Acting out of this belief system of being unloveable or unworthy of love. People just trying to make sense of the hand life gave them but falling short time and time again.
The good news is that God has pulled me out of that. He has changed my beliefs about myself and shown me who I am because of who he is and his love for me. And even after all of this I sometimes find myself judging others. And that’s where I repeatedly heard this phrase. Inside training camp. The worship music up. And someone I deemed below me walked in late and the judgements began to fly. Immediately I heard God say this to me and it took me back. As much as I didn’t want to be around that person he was drawing me closer to them. That’s when it all clicked again, I say again because I am constantly learning these lessons forgetting and learning again. This person who I was judging is just as valuable to God as anyone else. He shows no favoritism, he loves us all the same.
