Can you imagine Jesus telling you he has a secret sin, and no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get rid of it? That could have been him since he was truly human. However, that is not who He was. It seems to me the reason he didn’t become that person is that he spent so much time with the Father.

Staying busy has been one of my “greatest” accomplishments in life. Could it be the evil one wants to entice me to accomplish “good things” under my own power? Perhaps in that way he can keep me too busy and distracted to become who God created me to be. Instead, I want my life to reflect the power of God’s love in my every thought, word, and action.

The only way for my life to be a reflection of His love is to continually listen to Him. If I stay too busy doing first one project and then another in a seemingly endless assembly line of projects, then I’ll have great difficulty listening to Him.

Jesus wants me to talk with Him and walk with Him and learn from that everyday walk how to be like Him. If I want to figure out who I am and why I’m here, I must first figure out who He really is and let Him transform me to be more and more like Him.

Jesus not only spent time with the Father, but he also spent a lot of time with messy people. We’re all messy people, but as we say in Celebrate Recovery, God can take our mess and turn it into His message! We’re not allowing Him to do that when we don’t spend time in His presence. Only when you and I are as serious as Jesus about spending time with our “daddy” and attuning our lives to His will—only then will we receive the power from His precious Holy Spirit to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of loving messy people.

Jesus is genuine, humble, loving, and kind. He shows true love to all of us even as he tells us things that are sometimes hard to hear. We can do the same for others but only when we take the time to talk with Him, to walk with Him, to let Him transform us into looking and acting just as He does.

This week post a card on your bathroom mirror with three simple items that will help you on this journey:

1. Ask Jesus to give you a greater desire to become like Him.
   And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18
2. Spend as much morning, noon and/or evening time as you can reading/studying God’s Word, even if that’s only a few minutes each day.
   Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Psalm 119:97
3. Spend time praising God and praying for the needs of at least three people every day this week.
   For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. 1 Peter 3:12

When I was growing up, my three sisters used to tell me that because I was the baby of the family, I usually got what I wanted when I asked our parents for something, especially Daddy. So whenever they wanted something and were afraid Daddy would say no, they would send me to ask him.

Now, I don’t really remember that to be true, but I do remember that it was comforting to hear it. That made me feel special—to think that Daddy might have a hard time saying no to me. I believe my heavenly Daddy—Papa, as I like to think of Him (not only because I love William P. Young’s book The Shack but also because that’s what we called my sweet maternal grandfather)—loves me even more than Daddy did and doesn’t want to say no to my requests.

Unfortunately, I seldom felt that Daddy paid much attention to me, well, unless I did something he felt a need to punish me for. Oh, he was a good provider for his family, but I think I was a bit afraid of him. It seemed he had more important things to do than listen to me whining about something I wanted.

I’m afraid that has carried over into my relationship with Papa. I suppose I’ve always been a little afraid of Him, too. I’ve had a hard time believing that He loves me personally enough to listen attentively to what I say to Him, much less that He wants to give me “the desires of [my] heart.”

I take a great deal of comfort in Matthew 7:9-11 (MSG): “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?”

I love that: “Don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?” Do we truly believe God wants only good for us, or do we see Him through the lenses of our earthly parents who were anything but perfect?

We are definitely limited by our history, by how we viewed our parents and how they interacted with us. At some point in our lives we need to own the fact that, although our earthly parents are in some ways like Papa, their love for us is only a poor reflection of the perfect love Papa will always have for us. Papa is love (1 John 4:8)…pure, unadulterated love that we can only begin to understand and reflect to others in this life.

The best I know to do is to trust Jesus to continually intercede for me at Papa’s right hand (Romans 8:34). He knows what I’m going through because He’s been through all the same emotions, temptations, frustrations, and needs. Papa now knows exactly what it feels like to be human. I like to think He has even more compassion for us since Jesus became one of us.

Now I am delighted to go to Him with my requests because my heart truly believes He loves me. I understand that He wants to give me the desires of my heart because—only through his power—my heart is becoming more like His heart every day.