During the Fatherheart Ministries ‘A’ School week I had the deepest spiritual experiences of my life.

An ‘A’ School is not about learning anything. It is about experiencing something that is so deeply needed the mind cannot understand it, only the heart can receive it. For this orphan who has never really received love, and who has lived a lifetime managing for themselves, never really trusting Father – I need an A School to remove me from my paradigm and gently guide me into the places in my heart that are most terrified, traumatised, ashamed and lost – because that is where the love is to come.

My two themes were comfort and receive. Comfort love is a deeply required corrective in our culture and there is an historic lack of it. One cannot do anything to get this love from Father. There is no understanding of the mind, there is no effort of will, there is no process to follow, insight to deduce – there is only receive. This is very hard for orphans who have had to work it all out and shift for themselves to be OK. Father graced me with the gift of receive mode this time. I had a few days of tears and a kind of emptying. Very distressing and painful grief. I just felt utterly undone.

But this place then freed me to receive comfort particularly in the ministry times. It was about Father coming to me to put his loving arms around me. For the first time that I can remember, I felt deeply loved and safe. Exquisite joy leavened with tears of sorrow and release. How my pain can be with such joy is a glorious mystery which I don’t want to understand – I just want to have it.

At my first ‘A’ School last year, I wondered that people were returning to do their second and third and more ‘A’ School. My “head only” Christianity thought: once you have ticked off the ‘A’ School, surely it is then onwards and upwards through B, C, D and so on to become a Black Belt in Father Heart! Why repeat?

Well, now I know. It is not up, but down I must go.

So, I will come to more ‘A’ Schools. But this is not an endorsement of ‘A’ Schools – it is a hunger for Father’s love.

Thank you for serving me. Looking forward to more.

– Dan Burns (Australia)