Annette, my wife of 45 years and I started out as missionaries in Argentina in 1974 in the Argentine revival. We have three children ages, 28, 42, and 43 and we continue as pastors and church planters in Andorra. I am a native Californian and Annette is a native South African.

For many it is difficult to experience and receive the Father’s love because they came from broken homes and although they know about it from a theological point of view, they can’t receive it. To know and to be able to receive are two different things.

We all remember the familiar story of Leah (Genesis 29:15-25) who was unloved by her husband Jacob because Rachel was the pretty one and Leah was the ugly duckling, unloved by her Father also. Neither was Jacob loved by his father but he preferred Esau. I would like to concentrate on a thought of how our past conditions close us to receiving from the Lord. If we can’t receive love, we can’t receive answers from God because deep down we are rejecting ourselves. If we can´t receive God’s love, neither can we truly express love to others. “He who does not love , does not know God, for God is love.” (1 Jn. 4:8). It is one thing to know about the Lord or receive him as our Savior but quite another to know him intimately. To know Him intimately we must be healed from the past wounds.

Elijah didn’t feel loved so he ran and hid from the Lord. Moses didn’t believe God could deliver him until he met God in the burning bush. Abraham didn’t believe God would answer him so he messed up his life. Hagar felt rejected so she ran away. Leah felt unloved by her father and husband so she looked to please a man by having children but that didn’t work either. These all finally experienced the love of God the Father in a deep intimate way and received his blessing but only after years of feeling rejected by God the Father. Here is the great truth…Only when they got their eyes off of man could they finally look only to God and then they were able to receive.

These are the effects of not being able to receive the love of God: Instability in one’s walk, a lack of identity and insecurity, moodiness, fear, not knowing your calling, impulsiveness, loneliness, people pleaser, sadness, and depression. The inability to receive answers from prayer is the result of a personality being affected by an unhealed wound in the past making us think we aren’t going to receive. This is described in the unstable man who cannot receive from God in James 1:8

We can begin to receive from God if we can identify our attitudes which are blocking his love. After being hurt and trashed by so many people who we have reached out in love to help, are we fearful of trying to love anymore? Do we just know God as Lord and Savior or have we been broken and humbled so that we know his character? Since we know that all things work together for good, we know that when our children reject the Lord, when our husband grows cold to us, when we experience the death of a loved one, because we know God’s character, we know that he is always planning our best and we immediately trust that this is in his plans. That enables us to receive his love and blessings, his healing and victory! Are we vulnerable, willing to be hurt and rejected as Jesus? You can be hurt so many times that you close yourself into a fortress so no one can hurt you ever again. But then you are lonely and can no longer receive. If we don’t know God’s loving character we center our lives around ourselves and our needs and then God becomes silent and doesn’t answer us until we break out of ourself and reach out to love our brother. Are we responsive to God when he looks for us? Elijah said that he communed with God on his bed at night whenever God came looking for him. God called Moses to go up on a mountain and talk to him. Gideon put out a fleece to hear from God. How can we receive if we aren’t responsive to his voice when he wants us to stop the world and get off and go listen to him? Being too busy to be consistently responsive to God and his wooing can bring a total block to receiving from the Lord.

We can take definite steps to open our hearts to receive the love of the Father and his answers! We can create a positive environment of dependence on him for everything. We can ask the Lord for inner healing from feeling that we are the ugly duckling or that God has passed us by. We can seek Him daily, make ourselves available again during a weekly period of listening to his voice. We can trust even though we know we will be rejected and trashed again by those we reach out to. We can ask God to teach us as men, not only as women, to learn how to feel deeply and cry. Men are so caught up in trying to be strong and not show emotion that they are like robots unable to show compassion and cry with those who cry. Finally we need to affirm to ourselves that whether or not we understand why we don’t receive all that God has for us, that we are going to receive it at the right moment. We must turn our focus only upon God and off people because he and only he can give to us what we need! “Lord, I am so sorry for putting my eyes upon men, please set me free and from this day on I will only look to you because you desire to be the only love of my life. Amén.”