Finding Father's heart

So you recognise you have an orphan heart - and know you need Father's love? What now?
1. Own the walls that have been built up to protect your heart. All of us have been hurt at some time by parents or authority figures. So we build walls to protect our vulnerable hearts. We adopt a persona - the joker - the tough one - the pleaser - the bookworm - the knowledgeable one - constantly busy - task orientated - mad about sport... Or we become unco-operative, questioning everything, resisting authority. We all have walls we hide behind. They are a natural defense mechanism. The trouble is they also shut our hearts off from the love of our Perfect Father - our Abba. We need to own this, admit it to him and ourselves.
2. Dismantle them with forgiveness and asking forgiveness. Once owned, we can then dismantle them by firstly forgiving those who wounded us - often unintentionally. They were themselves wounded and broken people. They could not give us the perfect, unconditional love we were created to function with. We need to forgive them - release them from debt - tear up the IOUs. But then we need also to recognise that we also sinned, against them, by shutting off our hearts. It helps pull down the walls if we write a letter to our parents, admitting the ways we shut off our hearts and withheld love and honour and asking their forgiveness. Perhaps we cannot send it - they have passed on - so reading it aloud will help us. But if they are still alive maybe one day it will be right to humble ourselves before them and speak about this. We can be assured the grace of our Father will help us do this, and it will soften the hearts of our parents towards us also.
3. Keep asking Father to wash and heal your heart. Only the love of Father God can wash and heal our deep wounds of rejection or offense that caused our closed hearts. Keep inviting him to do this wonderful work.
4. Become 'as a little child' - with humility, simplicity, and need. Jesus said a number of times that we are to become 'as little children'. You see the Father's love must come to our 'little child' heart. Our emotions never mature or grow up. The way we handle them does, but feelings feel the same as a child, adult or senior.
So our little child heart needs to be open to our Heavenly Daddy, our Abba, our Papa... for it is not the accomplished adult who sits on Daddy's knee, but the little child, who knows they need love and affection, comforting and encouraging. When we come empty-handed, trusting and dependant, THEN he can 'Father' us and comfort us and pour in his tender love.
It is astounding when this happens. We feel safe and secure, we feel very special to him, we know we are precious and a joy to him. Anything we experience on earth like this with parents, grandparents or others is just a 'taste' of what we can experience with the perfect love of our perfect Daddy. This is what he created us for. Make that journey towards his completely satisfying love. Get others to help you. It can happen in a brief time as we set our heart to pull down the walls. Do it today.