{"id":7795,"date":"2013-01-22T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T05:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/?p=7795"},"modified":"2013-01-22T00:01:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T05:01:30","slug":"crazy-love-chapter-3-in-love-with-the-one-i-fear-pgs-56-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/2013\/01\/22\/crazy-love-chapter-3-in-love-with-the-one-i-fear-pgs-56-57\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Love \u2013 Chapter 3: “In Love with the One I Fear” – Pgs 56-57"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quoting Frances Chan, page 56:\u00a0 \u201cIf I could choose one word to describe my feelings about God in those first years of being a Christian, it would be fear.\u00a0 Basically, any verses that described His overwhelming greatness or His wrath were easy for me to relate to because I feared my own father.<\/b>\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>However, Chan stated on page 55 that his relationship with God took a major turn when he became a father himself.\u00a0 The words he now uses are reverent intimacy<\/b><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Personally, I am so grateful I never experienced the fear of my father. \u00a0I knew my daddy loved me, even when he disciplined me, and I have never doubted God\u2019s love for me. However, there came a time in my life that I experienced what Christian counselor and psychologist, Robert McGee, refers to as blocked development, which began to affect my relationship with God.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In his book, You and Your Parents<\/span><\/i>, McGee points out that a child goes through 4 stages of emotional development, each stage serving as a foundation for the next.<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Bonding<\/strong> (birth \u2013 2)\u00a0 The need to be loved:\u00a0 <\/b>Its purpose is to convey feelings of love, value, worth, closeness, and trust. <\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Separateness<\/strong> (2-11)\u00a0 The need to set personal boundaries:\u00a0 This is what I feel, I \u00a0don\u2019t feel that way; I believe this, I don\u2019t believe that.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Adolescence<\/strong> (11-18)\u00a0 The need to develop adult behavior and identity: What am I good at doing and not good at doing.\u00a0 What are good and\u00a0unwise choices.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Maturity<\/strong> (19 & older)\u00a0 The need to continue growing in adult behavior and identity: Learn how little we really know, and how much more we have to learn.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    McGhee says that based on the type of parental modeling a child encounters starting at birth, the child could become blocked and not progress to the next stage. \u00a0When that happens, the child’s emotional, relational, as we as hi spiritual, development remains at whatever stage he became blocked in.<\/p>\n

    Hang with me while I give a personal example that bears this teaching out. As I said, I never doubted how much my dad loved me as a child.\u00a0 Certainly, I had bonded with my dad and it transferred over to knowing God loved me unconditionally.<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, once I reached the next stage called a separateness, that\u2019s when problems started, although I didn\u2019t know this as a child.\u00a0 In both my parents\u2019 efforts to shield and protect me from \u201clife,\u201d they were unable to find a balance between advising and guiding while at the same time giving me some freedom to begin forming my own thoughts and beliefs.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Added to that was my own personality type, which could be described as laid back, don\u2019t rock the boat, desires peace and harmony at all cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The result of these two scenarios combined were: \u00a0I became a cripple at making decisions on my own and had no confidence in myself.\u00a0 In short, I lost my identity and became a puppet on a string in my adult life trying to please everyone with whom I interacted.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I began to sense the emotional strain this was having on me, but did not realize that it had actually affected my relationship with God until He began to lead me down a totally new path in my life—a path that would require a major transition.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Fear gripped me<\/b>.\u00a0 I was afraid of trusting my own heart.\u00a0 I was afraid of making a \u00a0decision…something I had never done as a child nor as a grown woman.\u00a0 Up until this time, I had allowed others to think, feel, and make decisions for me.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    However, after months of prayer in trying to make a decision to follow the path I felt God was leading me down, these Scriptures literally leaped off the pages of the Bible to me:\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n