The Father's Heart

YOUR PATH: Home » Books by Terry Modica » 30 Days to the Father’s Heart

The book “The Father’s Heart“ reveals the wonderfulness of God. Heal your heart and become fully your true self!

The Father’s Heart:

A do-it-yourself guide to heal your father wounds through the love of Father God

What is it that you’re seeking from God? Do you know that, if it’s good and God doesn’t have a better plan, you already have what you seek? It often takes time for it to be revealed and understood, but God has already granted it.

Most of us don’t have the level of faith that makes waiting for the answers to our prayers a joyful, peaceful time. That’s because we don’t fully trust God.

When you’ve cried over unanswered prayers, who did you blame? For most of my life, I blamed myself. God could not possibly be at fault. He was perfect. He was all-good. He loved me unconditionally. So I worked hard at my spiritual growth. I wanted to have faith that was at least the size of a tiny mustard seed. Apparently, according to Jesus, only a little bit of faith is enough to move mountains. “Nothing would be impossible for you,” he said (see Matthew 17:20).

Is it my fault?

During my young adult years, after a major conversion experience in which I recommitted myself to Christ, people told me about miracles they received. However, when I prayed for miracles, nothing happened. “It must be me,” I thought. “Something’s wrong with my faith.” I was so sure of this that when others came together to pray for anything amazing, I left the room afraid that my lack of faith would prevent them from receiving what they asked from God.

Determined to find my way into the mustard-size faith that can move mountains, I immersed myself in scripture studies, prayer groups, parish events, and anything else that seemed faith-building. Many good fruits came from this daily effort, including a few answered prayers, but not enough. Faith had to be better than this!

Deep down, when we try and try but fail to have the kind of faith that gets results from our prayer requests, we don’t really blame ourselves. We blame God. He is, after, all, way more powerful than we are. He can make miracles happen despite our less-than-mustard-seed faith.

This raises terrible questions, such as: Has God abandoned me? Is he ignoring me? Does he care about others more than he cares about me? We ask because we feel abandoned, ignored, and uncared for, and we don’t want to believe that God would do that to us.

This leads to many tears. One day as I cried because I felt ignored by God, an image of a cardboard box came to mind. It wasn’t a very big box — about the size of a microwave oven. I wondered what might be in it.

“You’ve put Me in a box,” I heard in my own inner voice, but I knew it was not my voice. “You’ve been limiting Me. You see me as less than I Am. Open the box and let Me out.”

Gladly! I visualized the lid of the box open up and imagined God escaping from it and expanding larger and larger until he filled the universe.

What is God the Father really like?

This began a life-long quest to unpack who God really is and what he is really like. God as a loving, doting, perfect Father who desires more than I do for my prayers to be answered. God as the infinite, unlimited Father. God as the Father who solves my problems and lifts me up above them.

In the parishes where I’ve worked in adult faith formation and through Good News Ministries, the Catholic faith-building ministry that my husband, Ralph, and I founded in 1995, I’ve made it my goal to help people meet the real Father. Everywhere, I see the need for spiritual healing that comes from perceiving God as less than he is.

We limit the size of our faith by projecting onto God the imperfections we’ve witnessed in the humans around us. In each person’s heart are tears for Abba that come from instinctively expecting human parents, clergy, and other authority figures to be as good as the Divine Father. But because no one — not even the best of parents — can be God for us, we yearn to be fathered by him, and at the same time we have a hard time seeing him as more than what we have witnessed.

Furthermore, fatherhood has been severely undermined in society, diluting people’s understanding of the True God. The world today desperately needs to be converted to Christ, but our power as Christians to change the world for Christ is weakened by our own distrust in God the Father.

How to find what you’re seeking from Abba

I’ wrote the book The Father’s Heart to help you experience the wonderfulness of the True Father so that your faith can be set free to reach its full potential and also so you can be effective in helping others come to the Faith. It’s based on my own journey of faith, healing, and discovery and my heart-felt desire for you to live fully in God the Father’s immense love and deep, compassionate caring. It will be an inspirational guide to healing that will enable you to experience God the Father as he truly is, using scriptures, true life stories, and theological reflection. In 30 short chapters, we’ll identify and overcome the most common misconceptions that interfere with faith in God.