The foreword of this new edition is written by Pete Greig...
This is a life-changing message. Literally.
The first time The Father Heart of God changed my life, I was a teenager struggling to make sense of faith and life and pretty much everything in between. Somehow Floyd McClung described the wounds in my heart and the love in the Father’s heart in ways I’d never heard before. But it was his diagnosis of ‘The Saul Syndrome’ in chapter eight that provoked me to pray one of the most dangerous prayers of my life.
Challenged to the core, I wrote out my own covenant with God, just like the one described here in chapter eight, with a shaking hand. Next, I climbed the hill behind my house, knelt down beside a bench, and solemnly signed that piece of paper. I was inviting God to do whatever it took, no matter how long it took, to heal my heart, refine my character and release me into my fullest destiny.
I guess God heard that prayer because almost immediately everything went wrong! Suddenly I found myself in a very dark place, and this propelled me to the other side of the world. In Hong Kong, amongst addicts and scary gangsters and even scarier missionaries, the Father began healing my inner world, setting me on the path I’ve sought to follow ever since.
I warn you: don’t pray these prayers lightly!
Having been impacted by Floyd McClung’s message in my teens, it happened again in my late twenties. The 24-7 Prayer movement was mysteriously spreading around the world. People I’d never met were contacting me from countries I’d never heard of asking for help with things I’d never done. I was completely out of my depth.
And so, having read a few of Floyd’s books over intervening years, I gathered up my courage and wrote to the great man with the funny name requesting a little fatherly counsel. Would he, I wondered, be willing to have coffee with me, if I flew out from London to see him in Kansas City? He said it sounded like a very expensive coffee, particularly as he was imminently coming to England. Perhaps we should meet there instead?
It was to be one of the most dramatic meetings of my life. (I describe what happened in Dirty Glory, if you want to find out more.) As a result, Floyd became a trusted mentor to me and a champion to the 24-7 Prayer movement. Sammy and I even relocated with our two tiny sons to spend a year with him in Kansas City. Somehow, the man whose message about the Father Heart of God had changed me in my teens, had now become a father in God to me in my early thirties.
Of course, my story about the way this book impacted my life is just one of many. Since it was first published way back in 1985, The Father Heart of God has never been out of print, selling more than a million copies and having been translated into thirty-two languages. Countless lives have been challenged, healed and changed by the simple message of this timeless classic.
Sadly, Floyd died in 2021 and I had the privilege of sharing a few words at his memorial service. Married for fifty-four years to Sally, he was truly a global statesman in the body of Christ. Floyd McClung led the international mission agency Youth With a Mission (YWAM) for eight years, wrote eighteen books, travelled to 190 countries, spoke on more than 100 university campuses, and mobilised more than 400 workers in forty-two nations to plant churches through his organisation, All Nations. At a time when so many leaders are failing so spectacularly, it did my heart good to celebrate the life of a hero who ran the race faithfully and fruitfully, right to the very end.
Looking back, I realise that in many ways the message of this book became the message of Floyd’s whole life: that the Father loves us and heals us with relentless and unconditional love, and that He sends us out to love and heal the world in just the same way.
There’s something I wrote out in my journal more than thirty years ago when I first read this book, which has travelled with me ever since. Perhaps it’s an appropriate note on which to conclude this foreword, introducing you with a mixture of trepidation and excitement to a message that might just be about to change your life the way it has certainly changed mine:
God is constantly thinking an uninterrupted stream of loving thoughts towards you as if nobody else in the world exists. You say, ‘How does he do that? How can he be personally involved with billions of individuals at the same time?’ I don’t know, but I do know it’s no problem for the creator of the world. Who knows how he does it? Just enjoy it!
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