FamilyLife Today®

Rick Altizer: I want a woman who is in pain and she can't put a name on what it is. I want that woman to find healing and hope in this film. I want her to know that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you infinitely and beyond anything you can even imagine or conceive in your mind.

And He's perfect and He loves you perfectly and you have value and worth in Him.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

We've got a movie producer, director, recording artist that has dozens of albums and he's sold dozens—I think you've sold a lot more. Rick Altizer is in the studio.

Rick Altizer: Thank you. It's a pleasure and it's so awesome to be here.

Ann Wilson: You are a talented guy. You've done a lot of different things. You're quite an artist and creative.

Rick Altizer: Praise God.

Dave Wilson: Oh no, he's getting his guitar out, Rick. Come on!

Rick Altizer: I've never done this before.

Dave Wilson: Come on, what are we doing here? I've always grabbed the guitar... so you learned something with Johnny Cash?

Rick Altizer: I don't have a pick.

Dave Wilson: Dave always has a pick in his pocket.

Rick Altizer: Oh, hey!

Dave Wilson: I have a pick in every pant in my house. This is Tin Nashville.

Alright, I was thinking you're so talented, you could probably write a verse, maybe a chorus about the book your wife's reading right now, *How to Speak Life to Your Husband When All You Want to Do Is Yell at Him*. Give us a line she's learning or you're learning. Rick's written dozens of jingles.

Rick Altizer: My little helper, my little helper. She's my helper in the car. She's my little helper, my little helper. She's got lots of advice to get me going far.

Dave Wilson: There we go, I knew he could do it! Don't put it away.

Ann Wilson: He's written hundreds of jingles.

Dave Wilson: I know, I know. That's impressive. But we're not here to talk about your musical career. Welcome to FamilyLife Today, Rick.

Rick Altizer: I'm ruining your show.

Dave Wilson: No you're not.

Ann Wilson: No you're not. You are not. How much are you loving this, Dave?

Dave Wilson: It's awesome. I just wish I had another guitar. My little helper! That's pretty good.

Rick Altizer: My little helper, my wife is awesome. And she loves what you're doing, your book, and how it's helping her to realize if she's just constantly giving me all this advice and suggestions, you just feel beat down.

And so she has been telling me all these amazing compliments and building me up. Any praise I get, it doesn't mean anything from other people in comparison to her. I can get all this praise and adoration and whatever, but if my wife criticizes, it just cuts and destroys. So it's been great. Thank you. We love your book.

Ann Wilson: And again the book is called *How to Speak Life to Your Husband When All You Want to Do Is Yell at Him*.

Dave Wilson: But we're not here to talk about that. I feel like what we're going to talk about today is an extension of your heart. And actually, I think God's heart.

Ann Wilson: Me too. So tell us what we're talking about.

Rick Altizer: Talking about a film called *He Calls Me Daughter*. It's a film made for women who have a father wound. Many women who perhaps go to church, they're maybe on the ministry, the worship team, or maybe they're part of the women's ministry group. There's something inside them that hurts. They don't know what it is.

And they go to the women's conferences and they get all the books and they do all the things. Nothing does it for them and they just figure there must just be something wrong with me. They see all these other women connecting with God and having this strong emotional relationship with Him and they're just on the outside and they don't know what it is. And when that woman sees this film, her life is going to change.

This isn't going to be life-changing for everyone, but there's going to be thousands of women who see this film and their lives will change because they're going to realize, "I am a spiritual orphan. I have a father wound." And my father wound is impacting how I'm relating to God because so often we will project onto God traits of our earthly father.

So for instance, if our father was distant—maybe he was physically present but distant—we'll struggle believing God's there for us. We'll transfer that to God. And so this is going to be a wake-up moment for so many women seeing, "I didn't know I had this father wound and how impactful it was on my life."

Ann Wilson: I think it's more than just women who have a father wound.

Rick Altizer: Oh yes.

Ann Wilson: Because I automatically want to send it to my sons who are fathers, to help them to remember and to realize your role is really a big one. You might feel like it's not with your daughters, but you're having a huge influence on them.

Dave Wilson: It's obviously a term we've heard, although I'm old enough to remember where that was never a term anybody ever talked about. But I remember the first time somebody used those two words, "father wound." I was probably in my 20s or 30s and immediately I'm like, "I got it. I don't even know what it is, but I've got that." So define it. What would be a father wound?

Rick Altizer: A father wound is where you're going to have a lack. You're lacking, whether it be in self-identity, self-esteem, physical presence of a father, protection, safety. You didn't have this. What you naturally need from a Heavenly Father, our earthly fathers are modeling our Heavenly Father. And so when our earthly fathers don't model that well, then you're left with that wound. You're left with you're lacking because so much of our identity comes from our father.

And I did a film with the Kendrick brothers called *Show Me the Father*, which was mostly focused for men. As we were making that film, I was telling Stephen Kendrick we've got to do this for women, we've got to do this for women. And so God has opened the doors for this film to be made.

To realize I have this wound—even if your father was present, physically present, you might say, "I don't have a father wound," but he was emotionally distant. You're going to have a tendency to over-function in that case because everything is about doing. I'm a human doing at that point.

So I get my validation, I get my worth from my dad when I do. And so I'll say my love language is acts of service, but actually I've been trained if I want Daddy to give me what I need, I've got to do. So that's why acts of service are so big for them because there's this wound.

And so then they'll come to God and now they're going to put that on God. "I've got to get to work. I've got to perform. This is how I earn my God. I have to do this to get my Father's attention." To get my daddy to love me, to get my daddy's attention, I need to... so we do that in so many ways. My father didn't tell the truth. You'd ask him what the football score was and he'd just tell you something that wasn't true.

So believing God, trusting God was a struggle for me. It was a challenge to work through. I can trust God; He's not like my earthly father. So that's what the film is very strongly focused on. It's a Christ message, a gospel-based message as you saw.

And our earthly fathers aren't like our perfect Heavenly Father. You're loved perfectly when you're in Christ. You're loved by a perfect Father. So that was where the heart of the film is. And so the hope and the intention is that women and men all across America will be touched by it. It's going to be going into prisons; Prison Fellowship Ministries is involved. So women in prison are going to see it. So be praying for it. It'll be in theaters March 17th and 18th, for a couple days only.

Dave Wilson: And as you started the journey to produce this film, was there anything that surprised you? Because you interviewed a lot of women. You have a lot of stories of women. Did it go somewhere you didn't expect or is it exactly what you thought?

Rick Altizer: Absolutely. We had a story in the film and the film wasn't—it just wasn't right. It wasn't there. We had a story that ended up kind of blowing up. The story blew up, which means this married couple started having difficulties to the point that they weren't going to be able to be in the film anymore.

A closed door. Well God tends to work more in my life with the closed door than He does the open door. For me, more often than not, the closed door is direction. And so I think a younger me would have gotten anxious about that. "Oh no, a closed door!" But I was going to go, "Okay God, You're doing something here."

And so we met Rochelle Star from Scarlet Hope in Louisville. A friend said, "I know someone." And all of a sudden it's the amazing story of the film and God just brought what we needed. So many times when we have these closed doors in our life, we can get anxious. We struggle trusting and believing in God, especially if we have a father wound.

That's a tough one for us to believe that God's there for us and that He's trustworthy. That's a hard one. We can talk about it and I can believe God's good for you, but for me, I tend to operate in self-sufficiency because I'm not so sure I really do believe that.

Ann Wilson: Dave, what do you think your struggles with God are or have been in the past?

Dave Wilson: Mine was directly connected to my father who left. So when people would say God is present, He's there, He cares, He'll never leave—that was the catch. I literally had to dive into Scripture over and over for years to go, "Okay, that is true about God. It wasn't true about my dad." He would say he'd show up and then didn't show up.

And again, I didn't even know until early 30s that I'm projecting on God my belief about my earthly father and that's not who my Heavenly Father is. But that was a wound that I had. And I look back on my life and I'm like, "Oh, so that's why I excelled in everything I did." The whole time trying to get—not that it was bad, I'm glad I accomplished things in sports and music.

My dad was a drummer. He put himself through flight school playing the drums. I got a love for music from my dad. I never saw him play drums anywhere, but I think a lot of us, there's a driving motivation underneath everything and sometimes it's connected to "I'm trying to be seen by a dad who never saw me." And there is a God that does.

Ann Wilson: And mine was performance. My dad very seldom really saw me as I'm the youngest. I had two brothers, sports was his thing, but I think I was always like, "Do you see me? Do you see me now? Do you see me now? Not hear me now."

All of it. I wanted his approval and his affection and his love and his admiration. When I did give my life to Jesus, I was on that same track. I need to perform, I need to do it better, I need for God to love me.

And it takes a while to understand who God is and how He's such a good Father and He's always with me. He always sees me. I don't have to perform for Him. It's crazy. I'm wondering what just take a guess percentage of us have a father wound.

Rick Altizer: I don't know.

Ann Wilson: You think it's a lot?

Rick Altizer: I do. Because no father's perfect. Even a good father is going to mess up. My kids have father wounds and I was a perfect dad. So many times we—I call them functional orphans. I'm functioning. You could be pastoring a church. You could be hosting a radio show and be functioning, but at the core, I don't believe God is my father.

And they came to Jesus in John Chapter 6 and they said, "Show us the works of the Father that we must be doing." "Can I have the list? Can I have the five ways to be a good husband? Can I have the three ways to encourage my spouse? The four ways to know my spiritual gift? What are the works that we must be doing?" And Jesus responds, "The work," singular, "of the Father is to believe the one He sent."

Believing that God is who He says He is, that I am who God says I am. That's the work. That's the work of God in me. It comes from outside of me. You didn't have this given to you, this father that gave you identity. That didn't come, but God gives it to you outside. It comes outside of you from God through His Son Jesus.

So this is our work is believing God is sovereign. Here's all I got, right? This is all I got. I don't know why things happen. I don't know where, why, when. I don't know. But God has clearly revealed who He is. He's sovereign, so He knew this was going to happen. He doesn't learn anything. He's sovereign.

He's good in His nature. He can't do anything evil. It's not possible for Him to be evil because He is good. He's all good. And we can trust Him. That's all I got. Now I can get my head around God's sovereign, good. I can believe He's good for you, like I said, but for me, maybe I'll operate in some self-sufficiency just to make sure.

But that's the tough one. I can trust God. That's where God has to work in us. That's part of our sanctifying work. You can trust Him. He's a loving, perfect Father. That's all I got. God's sovereign, He's good, and we can trust Him.

Ann Wilson: I think as listeners, are you resonating with any of that? Do you believe God is good and you can trust Him? Because if you can't, that can take you on a journey, don't you think?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, I think the greatest journey of my life was coming to that discovery. I told you when we were walking in here, I think one of the themes of my preaching for 40 years has come down to—there's all kinds of themes in your teaching Scripture—but I think it comes down to two beliefs: What do I believe about God? That's our theology. And what do I believe about me? Myself? That's identity.

If I believe, "Yes, Scripture says God's presence, God's sovereign, God cares," but I don't believe it, I'm going to make decisions every day to try and get God to be present, to be sovereign. But if I believe that, there's a security.

That then if I believe I'm loved by Him, I am a son that He cares about, that He thinks about, that He designed, I walk in a room, as one of my mentors would say, and I own it. And not in an arrogant way. I own it like I don't need to prove anything to anybody here.

I can be who I'm loved by, the King of the universe who's with me. So I walk in a room and I'm not trying to be flashy or say, "Hey, do you know what I did last week? I did this, this, this," trying to win approval. I've got the approval. So I walk in security and I know my identity. The father wound was a part of my reality, but it's been healed by the Father. And so that's a different reality. And I think most people I run into are still wrestling through who am I, who is He, and they're trying to be a human doing.

Rick Altizer: The issue of belief, of unbelief. This is our struggle when I'm not connected to the vine. Every time I've crashed and burned in my marriage, every time, 100% of the time, it's because I haven't been connected.

Perhaps maybe you're in a marriage, maybe you have a father wound and so learning how to feel validated or feel worth... maybe you're looking to a spouse to do that in you. And guess what? That's the role of Jesus. That's what He's there for and that's the Holy Spirit who does that.

So when I'm putting that onto my wife or my husband, I'm making them an idol. It's idolatry. I'm idol worshipping. I'm saying, "I need you to be Jesus. I need you to validate me. I need you to give me my worth." And then when they don't do it, because my wife is an awesome wife but she's not Jesus, well then we burn our idols down. "You didn't respect me! You didn't love me! You didn't give me what I need!"

I'm looking to you to give me something that only Christ can because getting back to our issue, what I'm saying there is I don't believe Jesus can give me what I need. "I need my wife to respect me. I need my husband to clean up his socks. I need my husband to go help with the dish," or whatever we say I need.

And if it isn't Jesus, it's unbelief. We're saying Jesus, You're not enough. We don't want to say that because we're also so self-righteous, right? We also have that. But that's our struggle is the unbelief. It underlines everything.

And so with this film, believing that there is a perfect Father who loves you, who gives you your identity. *He Calls Me Daughter*, it comes from outside of you. So many women are confused and they're hurt and broken and many, many, many times this is coming from a father wound. Maybe people don't want to talk about it. Maybe that's why there's never been a film like this because they don't want to talk about this.

Dave Wilson: It may be something they don't want to talk about, but we have to. Because it drives every day of our lives, every minute I think in some sense is a drive for that affirmation from our father and maybe we never got it but we can get it. Did you find anything unique with the women you interviewed? Is it uniquely different for women than it is for men? And how did you determine the women that you would interview?

Rick Altizer: I'm just telling you, this is my eighth film and I've never been on a project where God was so involved. Just from the beginning to right here. The fact that I'm actually sitting in this studio even talking to you.

Ann Wilson: I was going to say, this studio is in your film!

Rick Altizer: It is! With a guest that we had on, Shea Stephens is in the film. And that's how we kind of connected here. We saw it at the—there's a Fatherhood Commission in Rome, Georgia, and we watched it for the first time with a group of like 175 ministry leaders who focus on fatherhood ministries.

And I watched it and I've never had this sense like this, but as I was watching this film, I'm going, "I didn't make this film." And I know you've probably given sermons or done things like that—that wasn't me. There's no way I could do this. And I'm watching it going, "I didn't do any of that." This is God, this is to His glory. So that's all I got on that.

Ann Wilson: I cried so many times watching this because it pulls at the heartstrings of the longings of a woman's heart, of the lack that we often feel, of feeling alone, of feeling like we have to do everything ourselves. Our distrust and our lack of trust in a good God.

And so it just pulls at so many things. But the thing that really gets you is when as you watch the film progress and you see the progression and you hear the gospel. It just sinks deep into the heart and then you see the transformation. That's when I start to cry when I see the transformation of understanding this is how loved and beloved you are by the Father. That can't help but pull at your heartstrings and there's transformation that takes place.

Rick Altizer: Yeah. I mean, even Chonda Pierce, who's this comedian, I've never seen her do anything but make me laugh. And there's this story behind it.

Ann Wilson: How did you guys connect?

Rick Altizer: I was doing some work with her. I had a business partner and we were helping her with marketing of her DVDs and things. And she told me, "I want to make a movie." And I'd never made a movie before. I said we could do a demo tape. Remember back in the day you used to do cassette tape, three songs?

Dave Wilson: You probably made a lot of those.

Rick Altizer: I did. Why don't we do five minutes and send it off and see what happens? And so I went on the road with her for three days and got 16 minutes and they said, "Rick, can you make this film?" "Uh, sure!"

And so it was called *Laughing in the Dark* and it was the number five movie in America the night it came out. And then we did another one called *Enough*. That was the number two movie in America. And then from that, Russ Taff wanted me to do a film for him on he's sharing about his alcoholism and called *I Still Believe*. And then Stephen Kendrick saw that. So I had done three films with Chonda. So that's why when we started this, I knew that her father had just died and she'd never talked about her story with her dad because he was still alive. And so this is the first time she's sharing about the story with her dad. It's in this film.

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Dave Wilson: What is—I think I know—but what's your hope? What do you hope happens?

Rick Altizer: I want a woman who is in pain and she can't put a name on what it is. I want that woman to find healing and hope in this film. That's who I'm making this film for.

I want her to know that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you infinitely and beyond anything you can even imagine or conceive in your mind. And He's not like your earthly dad. And He's perfect and He loves you perfectly and you have value and worth in Him.

And that you don't have to do the work. Christ already did it on the cross. It's done. You don't have to work to earn this love. It comes from outside of you. It's not anything you do or earn; it's all grace. It's all outside of you.

I want that woman to see this film and for her life to change. Download our free curriculum we're giving away, our six-week curriculum, and to go find counseling and to go deal with this father wound that then she's finding healing in her marriage, with her kids, with her own life. That's what I want. It's for that woman to be healed.

Ann Wilson: That's beautiful. And I believe that really can happen as women watch this, as dads watch it, as women take their daughters, granddaughters to the film. That's going to happen. Let me ask you this: do you think fathers should go with their daughters to this movie?

Rick Altizer: Absolutely. We showed it at the Fatherhood Commission and more men were crying than the women.

Dave Wilson: I could see that.

Rick Altizer: They were just saying, "This tore me up" because of the power a father has. The gospel is powerful! The gospel is life-changing! This is not a "Jesus Lite" film. They have these they call them "faith adjacent."

There's nothing adjacent about our faith in this film. Jesus is front and center. And the gospel is the power for salvation. That's how it happens. So when you're faced with the gospel changing someone's life and you see that it's real, that this is for you... I'm excited to see what ministries come out of this.

But we're just focusing the film on one thing: women who have a father wound and giving them the gospel to know that they're loved and cared for by a perfect Heavenly Father. May God bless it.

Ann Wilson: I agree. And then tomorrow we're going to bring in Rochelle Star, who's in the film, who actually has a huge part in it because she has a ministry that you're not going to want to miss hearing about what this is. So come back tomorrow.

Dave Wilson: Again the movie is called *He Calls Me Daughter*. It launches in theaters March 17th and 18th, two days. You can go see it. You can get all the information you want at HeCallsMeDaughter.org or go to our FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the link in the show notes and we'll send you all the info as well.

Okay real quick, you gotta join us on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise, February 13th to the 20th in 2027. You don't want to miss it.

Ann Wilson: There's a sale going on right now through March 17th. This is the time to sign up. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the banner and we'll see you on the boat.

FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.