For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:4-6 NIV)

The other week, when Barry Adams spoke about our Divine Union on the Fatherheart.TV webcast, he talked about us abiding in the vine. This is a great picture of our union with Jesus, in the Father. The point which Barry was drawing out of this was that our remaining (or abiding) requires nothing other than to be totally dependent on the source of life. No striving or performance is necessary as all we do is rest in him. 

One time I did a study on the phrase "in Christ". I was amazed at how many times Paul mentions this throughout the course of his letters. It struck me how important it is for us to understand the reality of what he is talking about. As you read Ephesians 1 & 2 you see the incredible gift that is ours, through Christ; it is a promise of belonging and blessing, of rest and provision.

Those two words, "in Christ", speak volumes. Where Christ is, we are. He has returned to the bosom of the Father, to his true home and we too can discover that the bosom of the Father is our home. He is seated in the Heavenly realms and we are there, sat down at his side. The Amplified version says we 'have joint seating' with Christ, that means we're on the throne next to him. He lives in an intimacy of relationship with the Father and so do we. 

I would encourage you to read any of Paul's letters and you will see for yourself the amazing inheritance that is ours as we ponder what being 'in Christ' really means. It means that there is a Heavenly reality for us to step into, it is the way we are truly seen by the Father,. As we allow God to be a Father to us we find ourselves looking upward rather than being consumed by our earthly struggles. He is the perfect Father and he wants to be a Father to YOU. 

"One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." (Psalm 27:4 NIV)

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18 NIV)

It's amazing how many times the Bible says "do not fear". I guess it's because fear is something we are generally good at! If worry and anxiety are our daily concerns, then fear is the accumulation of those cares which ultimately can paralyse us and hold us in a prison. I believe that fear is one of the biggest weapons the enemy has to make us unfruitful and ineffective. Fear stops us stepping out in faith and entering our inheritance, into the wide open space our Father has prepared for us. 

Fear can often be our default response. The moment we let it take a hold of us something inside us closes down. 

I do not believe our Father wants us to live in fear. I believe he wants us to be free, to enjoy the glorious freedom of the sons of God and to discover that the life of a son or daughter is one of peace and rest. 

The opposite of love is fear and when we live outside of love it is often fear that controls or drives us. 

As we allow God to be a Father to us, so we begin to live in love. Love casts out all fear. Fear is to do punishment, guilt or shame, whereas love sets us free. 

Today, I encourage you to give Father your fears and as you do, you will find you are becoming more rooted and established in love. 

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." (1 John 3:1 NIV)

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? (Matthew 6:25-27 NIV)

Over the last week or so I've been thinking about what it means, practically, for God to be a Father to us. What difference can and will this revelation and relationship make in our everyday lives? 

It's all too easy to become weighed down by the burdens of life: our job, our family, financial pressures, our future or our health. Of course, these things are very real and important to us and so often they determine how we feel. However, they do not define who we are. We are sons and daughters of Almighty God, he just happens to be our Father. 

Anxiety, or worry, can be very debilitating. It can wear us out and can cause more stress than we are already under. 

When we let God be a Father to us we can come to him and give him the worries that we are carrying. He is always there for us, waiting and able to take our anxiety and to bring us back to the place of peace and rest. He understands our humanity and, just as any father would do, he wants to do all he can to alleviate our suffering. 

There are things in life that we were never meant to carry and today I encourage you to give them to him and to allow him to be a Father to YOU. 

"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7 NIV)

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27 NIV)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:16-18 NIV)

As we are planted in love we are also planted in the Father’s comfort. Comfort should become the mattress of our lives, the resting place of his love becoming the source and root of who we are. When comfort is the foundation of our hearts love will be dominant in these times of change. 
 
As we read in Hebrews a few weeks ago, it will be the things that are made which will be removed through the shaking. Man made structures or responses will not stand as they do not have a firm foundation. The foundation for our lives is the Father’s love and therefore anything not built on that will be shaken and if it has no roots it will be removed. The stronger and deeper our roots go into love the less likely things will be uprooted and shaken out of our lives. 
 
The kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of love. It is not a kingdom of fear. When we live in fear we deny the power of love working in our lives and therefore we have a root system which is not secure. Fear will always lead us to look at the negatives, the what-ifs and the maybes. As we live in love so fear is driven out; the two can not exist side by side. When love comes, fear goes. If we build our lives on fear it is like the house built on sand and when the storms come (as they will) there are no foundations to hold the building up. When we build in love and on love we are the like house built on rock. The storms may come and lash against us but we are held by foundations that go down into the strongest force in the universe – the Father’s love. 
 
The kingdom of love can not be shaken. When change comes we live in an unshakeable kingdom if we are rooted and grounded in love. Living in love will produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are the natural and automatic by products of a life lived in love. No law will rise up against these as they are not the product of a life lived satisfying the law but a life lived in love where the Father’s own spirit within us becomes our motivating force. 

The full article can be downloaded here: http://www.afathertoyou.com/articles

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. (Psalm 27:1,4-5 NIV)

In times of change it is the force of that change that rocks the foundation of our life. The Father may not cause the change but he uses it to let the chaff be blown away. He uses it to draw out the gold in our lives and let the wood, hay and stubble be consumed. He uses it to leave us more pure and holy than before the season started. He uses it to take us deeper into him. He uses it to ensure that our lives are able to bear abundant and lasting fruit. He strips more of us away in order that more of him may be revealed. 
 
A time of change is an opportunity to re-evaluate our core values. What are the things that matter? What are the things he has given us to do? 
 
All too often as time passes we add things to our core values, maybe good ideas, maybe a slight deviation from the good works he has given us to do, maybe a broader path rather than the narrow one he first gave us. A time of shaking is an opportunity for those things to fall away so once again we live in the purity of the revelation he has given to us. To centre ourselves on him. 

The full article can be downloaded here: http://www.afathertoyou.com/articles

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” (Luke 5:36-39 NIV)

Whenever there is a move of God the old or the established is always threatened and the wine skin needs to change. Normally we ask ourselves the question “what should the wineskin be like” and this invariably leads us to create a structure. Instead we should ask ourselves the question “what is the new wine”. I believe we are in a day of the Father pouring his love into his children’s hearts so we know who he is and who we are. This is the revelation we have been entrusted with. The new wine is his love poured into our hearts. 
 
I do not believe this is purely for a season. We have had many moves of the Spirit, even in our lifetimes, and each one has waned with the church falling back into denominationalism and settling back into a religious form of duty and service. We have been refreshed for a season but the life has drained away as we have not had a container in which to hold it. 
 
What we are experiencing now, as the Father is revealed, is a completion and fulfilment of the Trinity working together as one in the life of the church. As Father is revealed so we become sons and daughters and so the true church is built. The foundation of this has to be love; firstly us being filled with his love and secondly us letting that love flow to a broken, hurting and wounded world. 
 
He longs for purity and holiness. Our post-modern view of Christianity does not like these words as they are taken out of context and portrayed as legalism. Purity and holiness are not legalism but they are the heart response of someone who values relationship. They are the response of a heart so filled with love that there is no desire to walk in a way which is ultimately in the opposite direction to where Father is leading. When we respond to love there will be nothing in our hearts that wants to walk any other way than that the Father is leading us in. 

The full article can be downloaded here: http://www.afathertoyou.com/articles

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:26-29 NIV)

A time of change is often a season when things are shaken. This is not necessarily bad for us as it sorts out the wheat from the chaff, the God-made from the man-made, relationship from religion and the eternal from the temporary. 
 
John the Baptist describes Jesus as coming to gather the wheat into the barn and to burn the resultant chaff (Matthew 3:12). This is a separation of what is holy, real and genuine from what is pretence or false. It is the challenge of religion and the emergence of a family. John’s coming (and therefore that of Jesus) needs to be set in the context of Malachi 4 and Joel 2 which is the revelation of sons and daughters. It is the replacement of religion with relationship and the revelation of God’s eternal heart to show himself as Father. 
 
In this context change should not threaten us if we are living in the spirit of sonship. We are gathered into that safe place and held ‘in Christ’, we are at home in the Father.

The full article can be downloaded here: http://www.afathertoyou.com/articles

The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

"O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore." (Psalm 131 ESV)

Many people are not content. They constantly seek new passions or desires, possessions or hobbies, activities or busyness. These things may not be wrong in themselves, but they are not the things that bring ultimate satisfaction or contentment. There is a constant pressure to 'do' or to 'have'. This pressure is taken away when our heart is comforted and content. 

Being constantly comforted, even when we think we don't need to be, will cause a reservoir, or foundation of comfort to grow in our heart. Life becomes a lot easier when we are able to live out of this surplus rather than constantly trying to fill an empty hole. 

When we live from the overflow of comfort our heart is free. We become too free to fear, we are more confident to be ourselves, rather than trying to meet other people's expectations. We become more creative. We live free of condemnation, guilt or shame. 

We begin to live in the anointing that Isaiah describes in the first four verses of chapter 61. We are anointed simply because we are his sons and daughters: we will take good news to the poor, we will bind the broken hearted, we will set the captives free, we will comfort those who mourn and we will announce the year of the Lord's favour. 

This is our inheritance and I pray that, as you live a comforted life, you will discover the truth of this prayer:

"And I pray that he would pour out over you the unlimited riches of his glory and favor until supernatural strength floods your innermost being with his divine might and explosive power.
Then, by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life, providing you with a secure foundation that grows and grows.
Then, as your spiritual strength increases, you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement, beyond academic knowledge—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!
Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you." (Ephesians 3:16-20 TPT)

If you would like to go deeper there is a series of teaching on Comfort, together with an article which you can download at http://afathertoyou.com/conferences

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​The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

"For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord...."
"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." (Isaiah 51: 3&11 ESV)

Comfort was never meant to be purely a sticking plaster for past hurts. We are comforted so our heart becomes strong and rather than playing 'catch-up' we have the reserves and resources to live more fully from the heart. We are enabled to live in our true inheritance as sons and daughters. 

As we are comforted our heart is brought home. We see this no more clearly than in the story of the lost son in Luke 15. The son had prepared a speech about returning as a servant but the father would not have it - so far as he was concerned the son had never lost his place in the family, he belonged. When the Father comforts us he brings us home. 

Our homecoming is not to scoop us out of and away from disaster. It is not a rescue plan for those who feel like they're sinking. Our homecoming is the outworking of our inheritance as we discover the peace and rest of knowing we belong in the Father's heart. 

It will enable you to live with a free heart. 

If you would like to go deeper there is a series of teaching on Comfort, together with an article which you can download at http://afathertoyou.com/conferences

​The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 ESV)

Over the past few weeks I've laid a foundation of being comforted in our pain, for our past hurts and wounds but now I want to begin to look at how important comfort is in our daily lives. 

I see it a bit like the daily manna which the Israelites received during their forty years in the wilderness. Every day without fail (except for the Sabbath when they received a double portion on the day before) there was new manna.

However, the thing about this manna was it landed on the ground outside their tents. They had to get up, go outside and gather it in. There was daily provision but they had to do something in order to make it their own - they had to receive the free gift which was being given to them. We too are recipients of the daily flow of comfort into our heart, as we receive it so it will become a reservoir within us which will enable us to live from a free heart. 

I believe the apostle Paul learnt to receive comfort each and every day. It was the thing that enabled him to recognise his own weakness and dependency on the Father. It was the key to his contentedness and peace. 

For us too, it is the doorway to freedom. As we open our heart and allow him to comfort us daily, whether we feel we need it or not, the reservoir of love and comfort within will grow and we will live more like Jesus. 

If you would like to go deeper there is a series of teaching on Comfort, together with an article which you can download at http://afathertoyou.com/conferences

​
​The next Fatherheart 'A' School in the UK is in July at Cloverley Hall in Shropshire. This is an opportunity for you to experience Father's love and to know his comforting love filling your heart. All the details together with an online booking form are at http://fhmaschool.uk You are all very welcome.