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In
October 1997, I responded to a call for pastors to come forward
and receive prayer at a conference that I was attending. The
young man who prayed for me simply said... "I see a picture
- You are a little baby and God is your Father and right now
He is re-attaching your umbillical cord to Himself."
While
I didn't see fireworks or feel anything dramatic, looking
back, that was the beginning of my quest to begin to find
out more about knowing God more intimately as my Father. Over
the next 9 months, I read every possible book and went to
every meeting that dealt with the Fatherheart of God. In June
1998, I attended a men's retreat in North Bay, Ontario where
the weekend's goal was to get to know God more intimately
as a Father.
Near
the end of the weekend, the speaker, Jack Winter, asked if
I had wanted to be prayed for to receive a deeper revelation
of the Father's love for me. As Jack prayed for me, I began
to feel all the pain & disappointment of a little boy
just wanting to be loved. In contrast to the emptiness, I
also felt the incredible warmth of God the Father wrapping
His arms around me. Wave upon wave of the love of God began
to touch the deepest places in my heart that had been so wounded
and discouraged as a child.
While I had always had a theological understanding of God
as my Father, this was the first time that I had such a powerful
encounter with God that impacted my body, soul & spirit.
After encountering God in such a powerful way, I began to
see the Father's love everywhere I looked in the Bible. It
was like the 'lights had been turned on' and I could see the
theme of the Fatherheart of God throughout the entire Bible.
I
can remember the day that I asked God to help me to better
comprehend His love in light of all of the scriptures that
I was now seeing throughout the Bible. In my heart, I immediately
heard a still small voice say... "If you put the scriptures
in the right order, they will form a love letter".
That was December 1998 and by January 1999 I had compiled
a series of paraphrased scriptures into a Powerpoint presentation
accompanied by Brian Doerksen's song 'Faithful Father' that
I played as a sermon illustration in my home church.
I was amazed at how the congregation began to respond to this
simple message of Father's love. Many of the people seemed
to be having an intimate, powerful encounter with their Heavenly
Father.
Everywhere
I played this simple presentation, the results were the same.
I began to see in a deeper way the incredible need that we
all have to be loved in a way that only God the Father can
love us. It was at that point that I felt that I needed to
get this message on the Internet.
By November 1999, we launched www.FathersLoveLetter.com
offering the Father's Love Letter as a free Flash video. In
January 2000, we almost shut down our Internet provider because
of the number of people watching the video at once. By September
2000, the demands of this new ministry were such that I had
to ask the church that I pastored to release my wife and I
into full time ministry to share the message of Father's love.
We have since added a narration version of the Father's Love
Letter and many other FLL resources. Father's Love Letter
has been now translated into 100+ languages and this message
of God's love is finding its way into many places around the
world.
In Father's love,
Barry
Adams
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