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What comes to mind when you think about your father? Is it joy, pain, or indifference? Whatever it is, it can reveal deeper wounds that still affect you today. In this journey of healing, Zach Garza invites you to explore topics like generational sin, emotional scars, and the transformative power of forgiveness through the lens of his own story of growing up without a father in the home. By confronting the past, you'll discover how to break free, embrace your true identity, and experience the unconditional love of God.
Chapter 13, cleaning your lenses. I know folks who are crazy about dogs. I've seen them treat their dogs like royalty, taking them to fancy dog hotels when they travel and feeding them food that is healthier than the food that I eat. You may be one of them. Every so often, I'll go over to someone's house, and their dog will run up to greet me.
Speaker 1:I try to ignore Fido, but some dogs are extremely persistent. The guest will ask what's wrong, and I have to tell them the truth. I'm not much of a dog person. Don't really care for them. They are met with amazement.
Speaker 1:How can you not like dogs? They're the best, they say. Well, that may be your experience, but my experience is different. When I was a child, I got bit by a dog. It wasn't anything major, but the pooch did enough damage to make me leery of dogs.
Speaker 1:A few months later, I agreed to dog sit for a neighbor who was going out of town for the weekend. Once again, no big deal. Feed the dog, let it out, take it on walks. Seems simple enough. That weekend, the dog threw up all over the house and pooped on the living room floor.
Speaker 1:I tried to take him on a walk, but he escaped the leash and ran away. I had to chase that dog through the neighborhood for an hour. It was not a pleasant experience. It was at that moment, running through the neighborhood like a crazy man with doggy teeth marks still fresh on my arm that I decided I'm not a dog guy. They're just not for me.
Speaker 1:Now you may have had the perfect dog, one who comforted you in times of sadness. You may be the family that has their dog sit in on their family pictures because they were one of the kids. Your dog may have even saved you from a burning building like Lassie. If that's the case, it's no surprise that you love dogs. You've had a wonderful experience with them.
Speaker 1:You may even be tempted to think all dogs are like my dog. They're great animals. But me, I think all dogs are like that dog that bit me and threw up everywhere. They are not the best animals. You might retort, not all dogs are bad.
Speaker 1:You just had a bad experience. I bet if you tried again, you'd find dogs are really pleasant. While that may be true, it may take me a while before I build up the courage to give dogs another chance. Your experiences influence how you see certain things. Good experiences usually lead to good perspectives, while bad experiences lead to bad perspectives.
Speaker 1:For a long time, my experiences led to seeing myself, my dad, and my god wrongly. Those feelings seemed so real to me, and they negatively influenced my perspective for a long time and kept me in a place of unforgiveness, shame, and bitterness. Put simply, the lenses through which I saw the world were dirty and needed to be cleaned. How I saw my dad. For a kid who doesn't have a father figure around, donuts with dad has to be one of the most embarrassing moments of your childhood.
Speaker 1:While everyone is parading around the school cafeteria showing off their father, you are in the corner by yourself or sitting awkwardly with someone who has come to take the place of your father. While your granddad or youth pastor had good intentions, nothing can make up for the fact that other kids have the one thing you most desperately want, a father. Events like Donuts With Dad pop up from time to time. Whether it's seeing your friend's dad cheer them on at a sporting event or hearing about a father child camp out, events that leave you feeling left out and alone can wreak havoc on your identity. They can make someone feel less than, embarrassed, and ashamed.
Speaker 1:Don't even get me started on how Father's Day can crush the soul. That's why I hated my dad for such a long time. Sure, he left us and made life for me and my mom more difficult, but he also embarrassed me and made me feel different from the rest of the kids. He left me alone to be ridiculed by my friends. His absence ensured that every major moment of my life would be incomplete because there would always be something not quite right.
Speaker 1:I was angry. I was bitter. I was set on making him pay for what he did to me and my mom. I was able to stuff that anger down in my heart for a long time, for decades actually, never giving it a second thought as to how that might be negatively impacting me in my heart. My dad was a selfish jerk who left me.
Speaker 1:He screwed us over. He was never to be trusted or spoken of again. The experiences I focused on were nothing but negative. Therefore, my view of him was negative. From my perspective, I had no father.
Speaker 1:He was dead to me. How I saw God. How could God do this to me? Couldn't he have stopped it? If God really is good, then why am I experiencing so much hurt?
Speaker 1:These are the thoughts that went through my mind, thoughts that led to feelings of confusion and anger. While I could never articulate these feelings, deep down, they were gnawing at me daily. I could never take these thoughts to God. They would be disrespectful. The big guy in the sky would probably smite me for asking such a thing anyways.
Speaker 1:Besides, he was probably too busy for me. Like a ruler who did whatever he pleased for no good reason, there was God on his throne just doing whatever he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it. If I'm being honest, it was probably all my fault to begin with. I didn't pray enough or act good enough. All the things that are happening to me are punishment for my sins.
Speaker 1:I get it. If I were God, I probably would punish myself too. How I saw self. I hate the word orphan, and I really don't like to use it, but it really is the best word to describe how I felt. Orphanhood was the template for my life.
Speaker 1:This perspective colored everything I did, said, and thought. Before praying into this, I want to make it clear. Having parents is not an automatic exemption from an orphan spirit. As you'll see, you can have two parents in the home and still be dominated by orphan related thinking. When I think of an orphan, I picture a child living in fear, unsure of who is going to love them or take care of them, and seeing no one to provide for their everyday needs.
Speaker 1:Their minds are focused on survival, and they do whatever they have to do to get what they need. While I am thankful I had clothes on my back and a roof over my head and food to eat, I saw myself as an emotional orphan. Love was not provided for a myriad of reasons. Attention had to be fought for, and I was constantly searching for people to give me what my heart needed. The father wound changes your identity and how you see yourself.
Speaker 1:It makes you doubt yourself, the goodness of God, and the motives of others. You no longer feel safe or secure, and you are always on the lookout for someone to hurt you. It is hard for you to trust people and to develop intimate relationships that reveal your true self. You feel like you do not have a home, where it is safe to be loved and to love. You self protect.
Speaker 1:You hide. You try to be as self reliant as possible, and ultimately, you feel you have no other choice. Your survival depends on it. When Adam and Eve were separated from God, that was the beginning of sin, a heart condition that plagues every human when they enter this world. Because of sin, we are left seeing ourselves as orphans.
Speaker 1:Like the two children in the story of the prodigal son, we either run away from the father in rebellion like the younger son, or we try to earn the love of the father through performance or religion like the older son. Either way, we as humans choose to go our own way apart from God instead of running toward the presence of the good father. I have experienced a lot of shame in my life due to the hand that I was dealt. Just the other day, I was at a father son event with my two boys when the leader said, okay, fathers. Let's go around the circle and talk about the most important thing your father taught you as a kid.
Speaker 1:I immediately had to confront the shame I felt rising up in my heart. The spirit of an orphan sees God through a skewed perspective and feels like it must strive harder than anyone else to earn God's love. The spirit of an orphan can also cause reactions that do not match the experience. For instance, I would overreact or underreact to most things. I'd scream and shout over a little issue or become completely numb when a major event happened in my life.
Speaker 1:I pulled over and almost fought a guy because he cut me off in traffic, but I didn't shed a tear when my beloved grandmother passed away. The spirit of an orphan is easily swayed by circumstances. What is happening around you is what dictates your emotions if you feel like an orphan. For me, I couldn't have a good day if my wife was sad, and I couldn't find joy in the midst of a hard season. The spirit of an orphan is often overly critical of others, especially those in authority.
Speaker 1:I would criticize others and make fun of them to build myself up and to make myself look better. I had a doctorate in sarcasm. I could dish it out with the best of them, but would become angry and defensive if people made fun of me. The spirit of an orphan doesn't trust anyone. They are lone wolves who often see everybody as the enemy.
Speaker 1:I consistently believe that people were out to get me, and no one would ever want to help someone like me. The spirit of an orphan caused me to suppress my emotions. The fear of truly being known caused me to close myself off from intimacy with others, replacing it with superficial relationships that focused on making fun of others, sports, or finding girls to hang out with. The spirit of an orphan has to earn its keep, perform their way into having a spot at the table. I worked as hard as I could to prove to people that I belonged so I could earn their conditional love.
Speaker 1:Receiving anything is difficult, but especially that which I didn't earn. Whether it be help, advice, or financial support, feeling needy just reinforces the lie that I'm not good enough, and it's only a matter of time before others leave me because I'm too much of a nuisance. When you have the spirit of an orphan, sometimes you cannot receive the things that you so desperately desire. Even if someone were to say, I love you, Zach, the lies of the enemy would convince me that he or she wasn't being honest. Even if a friend said, hey, man.
Speaker 1:If you ever wanna talk, I'm here for you because I care about you. The enemy's lies persuade me not to open up out of fear I would be seen as weak or the other person would tell my secrets. Even when I experience the kindness of God the father, I am always terrified that he's going to pull the rug out from under me while saying, just kidding. You're on your own now. It's like an orphan who has been adopted into the perfect family but can't relax or be happy because they are saying to themselves, this is good now, but surely this will end.
Speaker 1:This family can't be this good. I better be thinking about what I'm going to do just in case I get kicked out of here. The lies of the enemy to the spirit of an orphan are bondage and cause exhaustion. I felt like I had no rest and no place to call home. I felt weary and tired from always having to protect and care for myself.
Speaker 1:I didn't feel comfortable with others or like I had a true place to be myself. I had to fight to protect what was mine and fight to get what was mine. Fear was a constant companion. I couldn't receive the peace and truth God had for me. Simply put, I felt alone.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what it truly meant to be a son. I never experienced life as a son who was accepted as he was and loved unconditionally. One of the things you hear said to a child when their parents split up is, it's not your fault. While in most cases, the separation has little to do with the actions of a child, The enemy can use the separation as an invitation to lay the foundation of lies. The lies sound a little bit like this.
Speaker 1:If you were a better kid, your dad would have stuck around. Your father doesn't love you. If he did, he wouldn't have left. You're not worth it. If you were, your dad would still be here.
Speaker 1:When you speak these lies out loud, they seem absurd. Any logical adult knows these statements are not true. But for children who have just had their lives turned upside down, these thoughts do not sound crazy. In fact, they start to make a lot of sense. If I had a summary statement about my perspective during that time, it might sound a little something like this.
Speaker 1:I am forgotten by God. I am scared and hiding. God messed up when he made me. I do just enough to get by, and I think only about myself. I am a chameleon, only acting with integrity and respect if it will benefit me.
Speaker 1:I don't feel loved. I don't forgive because they'll just hurt me again. I am a disappointment to my heavenly father. I try to be good to impress Jesus and earn his love. The Holy Spirit wants nothing to do with a guy like me.
Speaker 1:I know these sound crazy, but that is legitimately how I viewed myself until the Lord changed my perspective. These lies don't stay in childhood either. They can permeate throughout decades. I know men in their forties and fifties whose identities are still influenced by events that happened when they were a child. Honestly speaking, I still deal with a lot of these lies, and I'm a grown man.
Speaker 1:How you see determines who you will be. What you believe about God determines what you will receive from God. If you believe he is stingy, cold, and distant, you will not position yourself to receive his loving kindness. Similarly, if you believe that you are not worth pouring into, you will remove your capacity to receive any good thing. As humans, we're suckers for first impressions.
Speaker 1:The early impressions that a person or place make on us can be very difficult to upend. Research shows that we form an impression of someone within the first seven seconds of meeting them. Here's the crazy thing. Harvard did a study that showed that it takes eight subsequent encounters with someone in order to reverse the initial impression we had of them. If we do this on a day to day basis with people we meet, how much more are children susceptible to early impressions?
Speaker 1:Cleaning your lenses, so to speak, and reversing these mental templates is hard work but worthy work, and oftentimes, I have to clean my lenses multiple times a day. Adopt God's vision of others, yourself, and him. This new perspective might be jarring at first. That's okay. You've had bad vision for a long time, and now you're seeing the world crisp and clear with a new prescription.
Speaker 1:Your actions follow your perspective. Jesus said, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. Matthew six twenty two twenty three. Healing the father wound is as much about cleaning your vision as it is removing your pain.
Speaker 1:Tell me, can you point to a time in your life when you experienced a radical shift in perspective on something? What were the short and long term consequences of this? We've talked a lot about how you see your father, yourself, and God. Did this chapter reveal anything new about your perspective? Do you feel your view of your dad, yourself, and of God are all in top shape?
Speaker 1:Why or why not? Do any of the symptoms of the orphan spirit show up in your life? If so, when was a time that you experienced feeling like an orphan?