Love & Beauty Sermon, Pt. 2- The Joy of My Father

By Abigail Barrett

“When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the LORD will take me up.” -Psalm 27:10

Today, I want to share with you my testimony of how God revealed His love to me in hopes that it will inspire you to seek revelation of God’s love towards you. My story begins with some fun facts.

Fun Fact #1: My name is Abigail, which in Hebrew means “joy of my father.”

Fun Fact #2: I have never met my biological father.

It’s kinda ironic if you ask me. I had not heard his voice until I was 22; I had not seen his face until I was 25; and I have yet to meet him in person. So, the question that plagued my mind and heart for the majority of my childhood and adolescence was “How can I be the joy of a Father I never had?”

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an overthinker. So, many times I would ponder in my heart, “Is my name a random coincidence?” That couldn’t be the case because my mom told me the story of how she got my name a thousand times. One day while in her room trying to pick out a name for me, she heard a voice say to her “What is your grandmother’s name?” She didn’t know so she asked her mother. It turns out that her grandmother’s (my great-grandmother’s) name was Abigail. So you see, by divinely inspiring my mother, God had intentionally given me my name.

Since I ruled out the possibility of an accident or a coincidence, I figured that God was playing some cruel practical joke on me. He was all-knowing and all-powerful. He knew that I would be fatherless and He allowed it. And to make matters worse, He made sure that I was named “joy of my father.” Though a sadist God sounded like a logical explanation for my circumstance, it did not sound like the God that I heard of from my family and friends.

So, instead of believing that my name was an arbitrary choice or a practical joke, I chose to be shallowly consoled by the words regularly echoed in my hearing:

“God is your Heavenly Father.”

These words were often given to me by those who observed my fatherlessness. The motives behind these words varied: pity, encouragement, deflection, you name it. But the one common motive was to fix my brokenness, to bind the gaping wound left in my heart before I was even born. And I can’t lie, sometimes these words worked.

But, sometimes these words weren’t enough to shield me from the heart break of seeing other girls picked up from school by their fathers. They weren’t enough to cheer me up when I had the Fathers’ Day Blues. They weren’t enough to prevent me from waking up teary-eyed from dreams of father-daughter dances. The words themselves did very little to help me.

It was divine revelation that I needed to deliver me from my pain.

✨Stay tuned for Part 3✨