At first, this surprised me, and I wondered why. I was wondering what we do as God’s children that cause us to react this way. What causes others to have these obstacles and how can we change these situations.

I like to call it the “My Daddy” Syndrome. A term totally made up by myself, but I am sure it has been published in some psychology magazine somewhere. Not really!

The “My Daddy” Syndrome is very common among small children and sometimes into adulthood. We may have even said this or heard this from our own children.

It begins in childhood. For little girl’s it the moment when they stand in front of their daddy and twirl around in their new dress and say, “Daddy, what do you think?” They want to hear three little words. “You, Look Beautiful!” He is her daddy.

Little boys go outside, get out the wrench, and tear the training wheels off of their bikes and attempt to drive down the street with no hands. Turning to look at Daddy they want to hear, “You can do it, son!” He is his daddy.

Although we have all gone through this and gotten mixed answers, as believers, we often lay this same mentality down in our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

We do something we think is astounding and we turn to God and say, “What did you think?” We want a great big pat on the back. We want our measure of success to be according to the measure of our skills or accomplishments or in comparison to the person next to us.

We want God to notice the great big job we did and we want to know that He thinks we are amazing.

Then, we start to look around at God’s other children, our brothers and sisters in Christ. We notice the things they are accomplishing for Him and sometimes our great thing begins to look not so great or big OR grand.

We get possessive over our Daddy and we want Him to be just ours. 

We become like the little girl twirling in her new Sunday dress and the little boy who has just climbed another mountain and we want our worship to mean more, to look better, and to sound better.

We look at each other with “My Daddy” eyes. (You know what those are.)

In the process, we forget to take the time to celebrate and encourage our brothers and sisters thinking it somehow diminishes anything we may have done.

We forget our goals and purposes are to further Christ’s Kingdom for His Glory and not our own. We forget it is Christ’s grace, mercy, and His righteousness that was bestowed on us that has made us who we are. God loves us because HE IS LOVE! 

And, Yes, Your Daddy Notices You!

May I encourage you after you leave here today to consider what your worship is, why you worship and who it is for. Are you wasting any time having “My Daddy” Syndrome?

1 Corinthians 1:28-31 (NIV) God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Let’s not waste time with “My Daddy” and boast in “Our Daddy” who has nullified our sins on the cross to make us right in His sight.

Take a step in the direction of growth. I would like to challenge you to find someone that has encouraged your walk with Christ in any way big or small. Praise God for them. Take the time and find some way to encourage them to continue serving Him and then continue on boasting in the Lord!

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