Our Guest Leif Hetland

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Leif Hetland and I am so enjoying this.  I just plain enjoy it when I find out how we can have intimacy with God and from this intimacy of just loving God with all of our heart, spirit, soul, strength, and loving our neighbor as our self, all these wonderful things that we wanted to do will be done, but not striving, not burning out.  You told me some statistics; in fact you addressed the Christian psychiatrists of America, which is part of the national organization, the Psychiatrists Association of America, and you read some amazing statistics.  Would you read them?

LEIF:  I will definitely do that, yes.  It was just yesterday actually that I returned from Atlanta where there were 22 thousand psychiatrists from around the world.  They say it is the biggest event.  But then I had the joy to be the only non-medical professional to the Christian Psychiatrists Association.  And I was trying to think, what am I going to speak about?  And then I felt in my heart that there is that root issue, and I had read some statistics between everything from the crime to suicide, and all these problems in America that the government of the USA had come up with a word, and the word was “Father Hunger.”  Just listen to this Sid, that people that are coming from fatherless homes, they are 5 times more likely to commit suicide, they are 32 times more likely to run away from home, 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorder, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to become drug abusers, 9 times more likely to end up in state operations, or state institutions, also with mental disorder, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.  This is just one out of 40 pages of statistics that just tells us that we are living in a generation where there is a “Father Hunger” out there.  People are looking for something.

SID:  And you know here is the amazing thing.  People are looking for something, but the truth is God has a Father’s heart, and He is looking for us.  Somehow we have to come together.

LEIF:  We do.  And I think that there is a big problem like I struggled with, to be honest with you.  I didn’t have any problem even as a child to trust in Jesus.  Even actually, all of the Muslims that I know have no problem with Jesus.  The problem is to be able to know God as a Father.  I didn’t realize that Jesus…

SID:  To Islam He is not known as a God of love.

LEIF:  No, He is not.

SID:  And in Christianity, although He is known as a God of love, I don’t think most Christians have ever experienced or felt His love.  And you know what?  I had a father that loved me.  But he couldn’t emotionally express his love.  So what does a kid conclude?  He doesn’t love me, because I never felt his love.

LEIF:  Yeah, and I think that what is happening, and that’s what happened in my life, and I believe with all of the people, I would say almost all people that are watching, and that is that there is this love deficit in our life.  We are all looking for security.  Every single one of the 6.3 billion people in this world, every single American, we want to be secure.  We want to receive love and to give love.  We were created for it.  Everyone wants to be loved.  We want to be valued.  We want to understand that I am valuable and affirmed.  And we want to understand that there is a purpose and destiny that I have in this world.  Among 6.3 billion people, there is only one person like me.  But when we either had an absentee father, an authoritative father, or an abusive father, or perhaps like 25 million children in America have, a father that is not there.  Then there is a Father Hunger in your life, and pain is going to be there.  And pain always seeks pleasure.  So then you are going to fill that with something else.  And that is what the government of America has recognized.  They are filling it with crime, they are filling it with drugs, and the result is all of these physical illnesses, and all these statistics just proves us, that what people are looking for is actually a God of love.  And we know that Jesus is the way, way to where?  Way to the Father of love.  He is the truth, truth about what?  The Father of love; He is the light…

SID:  Wait.  The rubber hits the road, as we like to say when we say how is this playing out in your family?  Not in the world, not in the half a million Muslims that have come to the Lord.  In your family, how is this love playing out?

LEIF:  I can be honest with you it was very difficult for a while.  It started actually I was driving home from a conference and I will not mention the names of these people but, a lot of the people you see on television, everything, I had been speaking in a conference with these people and felt very good, and then suddenly God reminded me and He says, “Leif, your wife.”  And I know for some people who are listening don’t remember the story, but He says your wife has always; she has always been Rachel to you.  But she has felt like Leah.  And I want you to repent to her.  So when I came home I was weeping instead of being glad for this incredible opportunity.  And I said, “Will you forgive me?”  And then I had an opportunity to go to Europe and meet with a lot of great leaders, and for six months I had been looking forward to this and I even was going to be able to speak in this conference.  And the first thing I said when I was going to speak, because the love of God started to speak to me, and I can tell you this would not have been me four years ago, I said, I will ask your forgiveness all of you who are in this conference.  I am supposed to speak about a God of love, while I have a wife at home that needs me more than you need me.  I was actually here to get to know you, to be able to see some of your books I have been reading, I was here actually to see what I could get out of you, and how that was going to benefit me, instead of being with my wife.  Could you pray for me?  And that is all I could share in this well known conference.  And I wept, went on an airplane, flew home, came home and I saw my wife, and my children.  She said, “What are you doing here?  I mean you have been looking forward to this for six months.  Why are you home?”  And I said because you are my Rachel.  You are the number one in my life.  Not ministry and you come before all of these things.  And that changed my marriage, and it has also changed my children.  And it also related to me moving from Georgia to the state of Alabama because I did know that we needed to restart as a family where they know that their daddy is a lover and they have the first place in daddy’s life.  No matter if I travel all over the world, there is four beautiful children and a wife and a picture of them that is always the first thing that I see every morning that I wake up.

SID:  Leif, next week I would like Leif to teach on how to enter into this realm.  But right now I will tell you something.  You either had a good family and had a father that showered you and smothered you with love and acceptance; or you had an imperfect father, or no father and most people are in those two latter categories. God wants you to know that He can fill every void, every hurt, every deficiency, every void of love, and give you the love, I mean, He’s not angry with you, He loves you.  Come on back next week and start talking to God and make Jesus your Messiah and Lord.  It’s not just words.