My Love Is Bigger: Coming Home to the Father's Heart

By Angela Woodward

God is speaking heart-to-heart with His children all over the world right now. He wants us to know that we belong with Him. He wants all His kids to comprehend and experience just how big His love truly is. In My Love Is Bigger, Angela Woodward shares eight Biblical keys for unlocking the heart to receive the gift of God's healing and affirming love. His endless and unconditional love for us overcomes all obstacles, heals every wound, and enables us to live a life of belonging and freedom as sons and daughters of a loving Father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9780990721758

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minister

THE STORY BEHIND MY LOVE IS BIGGER

In the summer of 2004, my soon-to-be husband and I went with a group on a Missions trip to Kenya, Africa. For those of you who have been to Africa, or live there, you know it is a wildly beautiful country with a colorful terrain. But I thought the most beautiful part was the people — specifically, the children. On the last leg of our journey, we drove through the Rift Valley, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, to the town of Nakuru. There we visited a Christian orphanage, run by a married couple who began giving lunch and a bible lesson to street kids, and then they felt God was asking them to do more. Now they have an orphanage and school for kids of all ages.

I had never been to an orphanage. I was nervous because I imagined kids who were suffering and desperately needing love, and I wondered what I could possibly offer them. How surprised I was!

Our first day there, the children led the worship. I will never forget the tears rolling down their faces as they raised their arms and their voices to worship God. I had never seen children worship God like this. They preached, and they sang, and they wept, and they prayed, and they had joy! Joy in the midst of suffering? A garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair? I had never witnessed such a real display of God’s love overcoming suffering.

And as I looked to God in that overwhelming moment, I heard His still, small voice say to my heart, They know who their Daddy is.

What I experienced in Africa is what Paul calls The Spirit of Sonship.

Romans 8:15–17 says, The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if, indeed, we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.¹

God as my real Father was something I had no understanding of. I read about sonship in Romans, but I had no understanding of what it meant or what it was. In all my years in great churches and in Christian university, I never heard it preached or taught. I am not saying no one was preaching or teaching this, but I never heard it. I had come to know Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but I did not know the Father. I realize now that this is the experience of many people. People are hungry to know they belong, to know the Father and to understand what it means to be His sons and daughters.

The reality of our sonship is extremely important for us to understand because it answers the Why? of Christianity! Why did Jesus come? Why did He die? Why was He resurrected, and what did it accomplish? Was it just to save me from my sin? But why? The answer is such a good one: to restore God’s children to the glory He originally planned for us. To bring us home to our Father. We can’t stop at the sin, or at the cross, or even at the resurrection! What happened after the resurrection was the pinnacle of it all. The comforter came, the Holy Spirit, guaranteeing our inheritance as sons and daughters. Hebrews 12:2b says, For the joy set before Him he endured the cross. We were Jesus’ joy. The Father getting His children back was the vision and the promise that kept Jesus obedient to the cross.

Orphan girl

For years I operated out of a very painful relational void. It was a hunger for more love that was insatiable. I was unsettled on the inside, even as I grew in intimacy with Jesus. Church had been another place where I felt I had to work to belong, and I could not find true rest. I had unmet needs from broken and imperfect relationships, and I was living with a great void I could not identify. What I could not see then was that I was an orphan, on the inside, and it affected me in every way. I lacked confidence and felt stunted and powerless to take flight and become who I knew I was made to be. I was not receiving what I needed from people. Something was missing, and my love-hunger continued.

Like so many others, I came from a broken home. There was love in my home, but there was also addiction and disease. I was an only child, born with a hunger for relationship and belonging. I remember looking for someone to have a deeper connection with from an early age. I looked to my parents, teachers, coaches, relatives, friends’ parents, and so on. Our home was a lonely and stressful place. I very much wanted to belong somewhere and feel a part of a family.

As I grew older, I began to grow angry and even more desperate. I chose rebellion in response to my pain. I abused drugs and alcohol, chasing relief from the pain I felt and the experience of something bigger than me. I gave my heart and soul away to any guy who would offer me any semblance of love. I was so hungry for real love.

I became pregnant at the age of 16 and chose abortion. The abortion only multiplied my pain and desperation. It totally wrecked me. By the time I graduated from high school, I was completely broken inside.

As I look back today, I see how God tried to help my family. I see how He intervened in my life and whispered His love to me. He was always there.

But it took me until the age of 21 to fully see and receive Jesus and give my life over to Him. It was then that He began to heal my heart and restore my life. He forgave me and washed away the heaviness and despair. He gave me my smile back. The year I turned 22, I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. He became real to me, and the flame of His love in my heart grew even brighter. Experiencing the tangible presence of God in and around me was like drinking water for the first time. I had been so thirsty for something real, for a love and a God I could feel and touch that would satisfy and comfort me.

Wound by wound, Jesus began to heal me. He began to change my heart and transform my mind. I became addicted to Him. All my desperation was safe with Him; it wasn’t too much for Him. His love was more than enough, and I could meet with Him anytime and anywhere. His words filled my empty heart with promise and hope.

The difficulty was, even as I grew in my knowledge and relationship with Jesus, I still wasn’t proud of my life, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I needed a family — to be parented and to belong. I was distracted by my unmet needs and held down by leftover mental baggage from sin. I spent years numbing, hating, hiding, and regretting the orphan inside me. There was no rest for her. Something was missing.

Then one day a few years ago, I cried out to Jesus for more, and He met me in my relational desperation. He opened my heart to receive more of His love. That day, curled up like a