Does Your Image of a Father Impact Your Image of God? You Can Feel Loved When You Pray

Hi Friend, Does your relationship with your earthly father shape how you see God? For many of us, it does—and it can deeply affect how we pray, how we read Scripture, and how close we believe we can be to God.

In today’s episode of Getting Personal With God, I dive into why so many believers struggle to feel loved by God and how distorted father-images, childhood experiences, church culture, and unhealed identity wounds quietly shape our entire spiritual life.

Through personal stories, emotional honesty, and a powerful walk through Ephesians chapter 1, this episode reveals God’s true heart as a Father who chose you, wanted you, planned for you, and delights in you. He is not distant, harsh, or religious—He is full of joy, generosity, and overwhelming love.

You’ll explore:

• How your childhood experiences can distort your view of God
• Why we often feel guilty, unworthy, or afraid to pray
• How religious voices or past environments can twist how we “hear” Scripture
• What Ephesians 1 actually says about being chosen, adopted, valued, and empowered
• How God planned for you before the foundation of the world
• Why the Holy Spirit seals you as His beloved child
• How revelation—not pressure—creates intimacy with God

If you want deeper confidence in God’s love, healing from painful beliefs, clarity about your identity, and a fresh desire to pray again—this episode is for you.

Keywords: identity in Christ, God as Father, healing father wounds, understanding God’s love, Ephesians 1 explained, intimacy with God, spiritual healing, Christian women’s podcast, overcome shame before God, how to pray with confidence, religious trauma recovery, Christian spiritual growth, renewing your mind, hearing God’s voice, grace and adoption in Christ.

Mentioned in this episode:
✔ Ephesians 1 — your adoption, blessing, inheritance, and identity
✔ The Father’s love before the foundation of the world
✔ How false beliefs create insecurity and avoidance
✔ Prayer for revelation, wisdom, and intimacy with God
✔ 100 Prayers Releasing 100 Cares (book link in show notes)

If this episode encouraged you, please share it with a friend and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps others discover the show and grow in their relationship with God.

Special offer!

Prayer changes everything — especially when you’re seeking God for answers to anxiety, depression, relationships, finances, health, or life decisions. 100 Prayers Releasing 100 Cares shares real stories of answered prayer, biblical wisdom for hearing God’s voice, and practical faith tools rooted in Scripture to help you walk in freedom and bold trust in God. "100 Prayers Releasing 100 Cares" Click to order your copy today and begin praying with confidence!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Do you think your image of a father impacts your image of God? I do. Do you hear a weird religious voice when you read the Bible in your head? I did. So let's talk about that. Because I have found out, and you may or may not know, God is incredibly in love with you. And he's not religious or boring at all. So let's dive in and focus on the book of Ephesians. Do you love God but forget to pray? Or feel guilty instead of enjoying his presence? I understand. I know how unsatisfying time with God can feel if we believe he's distant or busy. I'm Lenora, mom, Jesus lover, and international trainer. If you're looking to feel closer with God without fear or pressure, have a greater ability to receive from him and desire more confidence to make an impact with your own life. Well, get some coffee and let's talk. If you're carrying stress and want support with prayer, I wrote a book to help you. 100 Prayers, Releasing 100 Cares. It's full of real stories, scripture, and 100 prayers for every part of life. A link to the book is in the show notes. Have you ever been watching a movie and you overreact? Well, you don't overreact, you just react differently than you planned to or expected. Yeah, certainly I've done that. Sometimes a line in a movie has really impacted me. Stories are powerful, but I remember one about a boy who was trying to find a way to please his father. The father was not good at communicating to his family, not good at feeling good about himself, much less the achievements or lack thereof of a particular son of his. Anyway, his son has this line that says, I just want to know the honest feelings about me from my father. And I found myself with tears just coming down my cheeks. And I'm I'm really fortunate to have a good relationship with my father. But that wasn't always the case. He wasn't raised in a generation where the majority of people talked a lot in their families or expressed excitement about their kids or had a lot of fun with them, those types of things. And so accidentally, if you grew up in something like that, it's really easy to think that you're the reason your father won't play with you, or your father doesn't spend time talking with you. He doesn't communicate what he feels about you or your value. Maybe he was someone who just expressed his frustration or with the intention of making you stronger or doing his version. Maybe the only version he knew of how to parent was to be super strict. Now we kids, when we're little and don't know anything different, it's like our parents are God to us. We honestly survive because our parents take care of us. So it makes sense that we often interpret any problem. It can't be the parent. We can't afford that. They have to be perfect or have to be competent. So it must be me. That's a safer risk. And because of those tendencies, we can easily decide my father doesn't talk to me because I'm not worth talking to, or my father criticizes me all the time because I'm always wrong. Or you grow up afraid you're always going to be in trouble, or you are always a constant disappointment. I'm really, I guess, talking to some of the things I've had to wrestle through in the midst of a pretty good family. We had a lot of things we did right, but there was some dysfunction in there. I remember seeing a t-shirt once about dysfunctional families, and there was a t-shirt, and it was the like the Conference of Functional Families. And there was like two families in a room with a thousand chairs. So most of us grew up with a mixed bag of who knows what in our families. But we all gain beliefs about ourselves because of that. And then by other people that continue to influence us, and then we gain beliefs about ourselves. And then often we spend the bulk of our lives trying to prove something or fight against these what I call painful lies, we believe about ourselves, to try to feel better, feel good, prove something. And if you mix that with growing up in church, who knows what you got? I got a mixed bag of God loves me and God's angry. So I don't know how you grow up. I don't know all the impressions you got. All of us learn by, in fact, scripture says this: precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little. And so we all grow up by learning one little thing or a bunch of little things, and we build on that. And I mean, you go from as an infant learning how to roll over to get your knees up underneath you to eventually be able to crawl, eventually be able to walk, and then eventually be able to run. All those things are a lot of teeny steps that build on each other to learn. Well, that's necessary, but often in our own assessment of God or assessment of ourselves, we get all kinds of stuff mixed in there, which makes us walk all kinds of weird ways emotionally, weird ways in relationships, etc. So I thought for today's episode, what I was gonna do is just talk a bit about Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians happens to be, at least for the last few years, one of my favorite books in the Bible. It just says so much. And you can read it in a lot of different translations. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about this first chapter because it really helped open my eyes up to God's opinion of me that was different from what I captured or what I experienced based on other adults' behavior when I was growing up, the various churches we went to and all the different styles and things they did and didn't do to help me get a solid foundation of being loved by God. So anyway, here we go, Ephesians chapter one. Now I'm gonna add my thoughts just as we go along the way. So take it or leave it, okay? But Paul, this man, was an apostle, and that just means a sent person, a sent one by Christ Jesus, and it was the will of God. God wanted him to go, and in this case, he was talking to the saints who are in Ephesus. Now we know religiously saints are some, only a dozen people are saints. The rest of us are I don't know what we are. But the Bible called anyone who believed in Jesus a saint. Okay, the saints who are in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God. Now, grace is a whole study of its own. It's just it's God's absolutely abundant, generous self giving his life and empowerment to you, and peace from God. Peace is more than uh like two countries not being at war. Peace in in a study is more about wholeness. I mean being whole. Your heart is whole, your mind is whole, you have peace inside, you can sleep well, you have joy, okay? So grace and peace from God our Father. We just say that God our Father. Maybe your church didn't say it that way. But personally, I listen to Bible apps where they'll read the scripture to me, but I don't always love the voices or the tones, because I just want somebody who sounds like a real person talking to me with words I can relate to today, which typically takes some word study or the amplified version or the passion version, etc. But grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse three blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It's so easy to read Bible verses and not at all pay attention to what they're saying. See, so many of these words can sound religious. Or I don't know how you hear the tone when you read the Bible. Or maybe is that like invisible voice of whatever you grew up with religiously? Is that how the Bible's talking to you? What I want you to see is just several verses. I'm just going to touch on a couple today. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And if you don't know this, everything started in the spiritual realm. So he's given us blessings where it counts, this at the source level. And then it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So I don't know about your earthly parents, but your heavenly father chose you in him before the foundation of the world. This place was made as your baby room. He chose you in him to be in his family before he made the world. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. To be holy is to be a people that are honest with each other, a people who would never betray each other, people who put other people before themselves. Those are holy people, people that do what they say and say what they do and blameless before him in love. They don't feel ashamed, they don't walk around feeling guilty. We weren't meant to walk around feeling shamed, walk around under guilt. But in love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. So often people want to know what's the will of God? What's the will of God? The will of God is for you to be adopted to himself, confirmed as a child of his through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. That's the purpose of what he wanted to do, okay, to the praise of his glorious grace, back to verse six, with which he's blessed us in the beloved. You belong to him, you're cherished, okay. In him, we have redemption through his blood. In Jesus Christ, we have redemption. We were bought back through the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our trespasses, of where we've crossed lines we shouldn't have crossed, where we have uh missed the mark, okay? But he paid for it, he bought us back so we could be forgiven from all of that, according to the riches of his generosity, his ability to pay for it, his desire to reconcile us to himself, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. He lavished it, he generously poured it all over us in wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him in heaven and things on earth. Again, it talks about his purpose was to unite us with him. He's called Father, and his plan has always been to adopt you, always has been to lavish his generous self all over you, to bless you with every spiritual blessing at the source level. And on to verse 11. In him we've obtained an inheritance. You ever get an inheritance from someone? In him, we've obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according, again, back to this, according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. And we already know his will is for us to be his beloved kids, so that we who were first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also who heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, the good news, the amazing news that has to be told of your salvation, of your rescue, of your complete rescue. Salvation means complete rescue in every way, and believe in him. In him, you also, when you heard of the word of truth, the gospel, the good news of your complete rescue, your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his character, of his glory, of his reflection. Verse 15. For this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I don't cease to give thanks for you, remembering you always in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. He wants us to know what God is really like, not what religion is like, not what somebody who doesn't understand their father can make up, but he wants us to have divine revelation of the knowledge of God, having the eyes of our hearts enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope to which he's called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. I hope you're getting a glimpse of the will of God, of the desire of God. From the beginning, God has wanted you as his child. Walking free from shame, from guilt, um, and being a person that is free from insecurities that provoke lies, insecurities that provoke all the dumb things we can chase in this world. But he wants you to know your value in him. He wants you to know you belong to him. He's paid a price for you. He wants you as his own. And then, like I just read, back to verses 20, 21, etc., that he's also got power at work for us. He wants you as his own, established, sealed with the Holy Spirit as a promise of your inheritance. And that he's rich in inheritance by having us as his kids. He paid the price of his own son to get us. And Jesus was seated far above all rule, authority, might, and power and dominion, not only in this age, but in the age to come, and put all things under his feet and gave him head over all things in the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Jesus has been given authority as the head of the church and as his body, we are to do what he does, say what he says, act under his authority, for his reflection, for the father's reflection to be known in the earth. And what's the first part of that? You knowing that your father has always wanted you. Your father thought of you before he made the baby room, before there was any problem or before any of us failed. God made us and planned for us to be his kids. He planned to take care of the problems, put us back in relationship, and we should have a revelation of what he's like, where we came from, so that we can walk like him, talk like him, behave like him, and bring salvation to the earth. It's all coming through Christ Jesus. But we're his body. So in getting personal with God, how about a conversation with him? When you have emotions and feelings coming up and behaviors that don't align with what you quote, should do, or a behavior that's constructive to your relationships versus destructive, and say, God, what am I believing? Where am I wrong about who I am? Where am I wrong about the beliefs in my life that would make me want to be destructive? What are the painful lies I believe? And God, I ask you to start giving me revelation of who you say I am in Jesus Christ. You know, when I'm doing this podcast, I do dive into the deep end really fast sometimes because I can be a real goofball or I can be super intense. It's just like a two-edged sword. So stick with me on this journey and let's just keep talking. Or I guess I'm the one talking. Sometimes I'll have interviews, but let's just keep on this journey of becoming convinced of what our father's really like. He loves listening to you. He wants to talk with you. He planned for you before he made the earth. He said it. I'm just repeating it. He planned to bless you before your life even started. He chose you, wants you as his own. His eyes are on you, his plans for you are good. That doesn't mean we don't fight battles. It means we need to know him, and he will teach us how to fight our battles and win them in Jesus' name. Well, join me next week as we keep talking about your value, your father's love for you, hope for your future, how to get untangled from anything that might be hindering you. Because God's plan for you is hope and a good future, and to grow up in him to be the mighty, amazing human beings created in his image after his likeness. One young friend of mine, who I've known for a good number of years now, had suggested always having prayer in the episode, and I love that. So, Father, give us revelation and the knowledge of you. Give us revelation. Open up the eyes of our understanding to the knowledge of you, to the hope, the good expectation of your calling, of the incredible riches you've given us, invested into us, and how much you treasure us and the power that's working in us, according to the power you use when you raise Christ from the dead. You are the source of life, and that life is working in us right now. And I thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Would you share this with someone else who may need to hear it? Also, please take 30 seconds and leave a quick review for the show on Apple Podcasts. And of course, subscribe if you haven't already. It really makes me happy to know this podcast is helping you. And remember, a link to get my book is in the show notes. Thank you for listening. I'll see you back next Monday for another episode. Until then, remember, be kind to you because it makes it a whole lot easier to be kind to anybody else.