This week has been run by David and Faith Dalley. They are a fantastic English couple who are from a church in Bath. They are also the parents of Sarah Dalley (for those of you who know her).
I have to say that this teaching stream is really summarised in the following:
God love you. He loves you because you are you, not because of anything that you have done. There is nothing you can ever do to make him love you more and certainly nothing you can do to make him love you less. His love is perfect and unceasing.
Right at the start David got us to pray a scary prayer. “God I give you permission to dig in my heart and root out anything that is stopping me from receiving your perfect love” Now this is a scary prayer for two reasons. Firstly we have all had imperfect parenting and so all have issues with the way we relate to people (and so consequently to God), Secondly because if you ask God to do something… he does it!
Much of the teaching has been a lot of testimony, David and Faith explaining what in their hearts God has changed and what the result of that change was.
We have all only ever had one set of parents and the way the behaved subconsciously shaped much of our basic impressions about what people are like and how we expect people to act. If your father was a workaholic and didn’t have much time for you, it can leave you with a feeling of low self worth “My dad doesn’t have time to spend with me, I must not be worth it”. If one of your parents left you (or just was never able to connect emotionally with you) it can leave you with a fear of abandonment, and you can in the back of your mind be always afraid that those around you will abandon you at some point as well. As we get into adult life we can understand and rationalised all of this, but when things happen to us as a child it forms thought processes that are not easily broken, and often you probably aren’t really aware of.
By asking God to dig in our hearts we were giving him permission to show is the things from our childhood that really hurt us. We went through teaching on forgiving the person who hurt us, ourselves and God. We looked at the concept of honouring our father and mother. We looked at the different sides of God. God made us in his image, male and female. So the protecting, fathering side of God was put in man and the nurturing side of God was put in woman.
All of these issues brought up a lot of painful memories for many people and it was a bit strange being in a room where almost every single person in the room is bawling their eyes out. But in the end everyone felt much better for it, as God dealt with issues. None of us are finished with, but we are getting there.
The last day was the most fun, no tears just pure fun. We were looking at being children before God. Jesus himself told us that we have to be like children to get a full revelation of God:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children Matt 11:25
Now there are certain characteristics that set children apart from adults:
- Children are very dependant
- Children are very trusting
- Children find it easy to receive
- Children are spontaneous
- Children love to be loved
- Children love to have fun
- Children are totally unreligious.
We spend years growing up and the God asks us to become like children with him again.
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