One of my earlier pastors used to share this in some of his sermons. \u201cWhat goes deepest to your heart goes widest to the world.\u201d<\/em> I used to dwell on this and try to fully understand it. But as I was serving for several decades in prisons teaching the word of God and now the Abiding<\/em> Fathers material, God clearly showed me what the pastor meant. The many stories of brokenness by these inmates relating how their fathers had been absent in so many ways, some very abusive, started impacting my heart for these men and countless others sharing the same stories.<\/p>\n The pastor would say that whatever has blessed you deeply in your past, or has broken your heart deeply in the past, drives you to minister to others by God\u2019s grace and in his power. God starts breaking your heart for what breaks his heart. Once that happens, there\u2019s no turning back. You put your hand to the plow handle and move out. God has shown me mainly through the prison ministry for five decades the devastation of the absentee father. It has led me to believe that the number one issue in America today, and now I\u2019m finding throughout the world, is the absentee father. Physically, emotionally and spiritually!<\/p>\n So, what is the passion God has placed in your heart? It usually comes through his word. Let it sink in deeply, so he can take it widely.\u00a0Fifty years ago, this verse dug deep into my mind and heart. \u201cI was in prison and you visited me\u201d<\/strong><\/em>. Jesus went on to say, \u201cAssuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me\u201d.<\/strong><\/em> (Mt. 25) Today, a small fatherhood ministry is being taken to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" God’s heart One of my earlier pastors used to share this in some of his sermons. \u201cWhat goes deepest to your heart goes widest to the world.\u201d I used to dwell on this and try to fully understand it. But as I was serving for several decades in prisons teaching the word of God and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,67],"tags":[143,55,288,136,102],"class_list":["post-7548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abiding","category-role","tag-absent-father","tag-brokenness","tag-passion","tag-serving","tag-weekly-devotional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Your heart<\/h3>\n