FATHER

Faithful Forever

Dads we have a unique role to play not just in our children’s lifetimes but into eternity. 

One of the things I grew up with was an unfaithful father. He wasn’t unfaithful to my mother but he was unfaithful to his children. 

He never left us but he wasn’t present as a dad growing up I didn’t really get how bad that was, it was just normal for us, but it led to the relationship being really short in the grand scheme of things. I left the house shortly after high school and I never looked back. I was 27 when my dad died and I saw very little him in those 9 years. 

As a father of four I don’t want that kind of relationship with my kids. I want them to not want the relationship to end when it’s not forced on them. I want them to enjoy our relationship and to cherish it. 

I never did learn how to be a good father from mine in fact the first time someone told me that God was my father I had a pretty negative reaction, there may have been a swear word in my reply in fact, but I did eventually learn about the faithfulness of a father from my forever father in heaven and now I get the chance to share with my kids that they have a forever father who is faithful to them too. 

We have so little time to share the nature of God as father with our children and I often feel like I am misrepresenting him but one thing I can do and that any father can do to represent fatherhood well is to be faithful. Not just in your marriage but in your fathering in pointing your kids to their father in heaven. He’s the one who will pick up all the slack that we leave and fill in all the gaps we create. 

My encouragement to myself and my fellow fathers who read this is to say, that no matter what level of faithfulness your earthly father was at your forever father in heaven wants to teach you that no matter the gaps and slack that you have left your kids with as their earthly father your forever father and theirs is faithful and will take care of them and teach them where you left off. 

Raise your children in the way they should go… because we only get a short amount of time gentlemen so let’s do it right, perfection won’t happen with us but let’s point them to the one who is. 

And Action...

Dads need to act. Passivity isn’t in our makeup because our fatherhood DNA is comes from our forever father in heaven. 

The call to act when it comes to fathering, isn’t just a call to movement, it's a call  to create a place where our children can learn and grow. I’ve learned a ton of what my role as a father is from seeing out fathers in action and learning from them I hope to teach and my kids and others too, how to grow by learning and growing. 

One of the things that I have done to take action is for the last three years I have been writing prayer journals weekly for my whole family. It’s given me a way to speak into their lives when I am no longer influencing them directly but it’s also given me the opportunity to tie my heart to them in the now and learn where I need to lean in. At this point I haven’t given them to the kids but when I do I hope it will help them see the road signs to our Heavenly Father by how I saw them then and in their future. 

Another action that I’ve just started is practicing the presence of God with my kids. Teaching them to seek God and to hear from him so they will know how to hear his still small voice and be able to distinguish it from their own thoughts. 

Like anything, learning to hear their forever fathers voice takes practice and my role as their dad is to act on their behalf teaching, encouraging and modeling. 

If you’re a father ask yourself what action you need to take to help your kids learn and grow in this next season? There are many roles that we as dads must take in our kids' lives pick one to work on this week and don’t be afraid to fail because being a man of action does not mean being perfect. 

Teach me Teacher 

Dad’s we make the best teachers when they are vessels of our father in heaven. We dad’s carry a great burden of responsibility to be great teachers but we must become great students. 

The best teachers I’ve ever met were the best students not just once upon a time but continuously, and they have taught me to be too. 

In fact they continue to teach me my best teachers learn from a variety of places but always they strive to learn. 

My favorite teacher is Jesus. He was also a great student. Jesus always said he only ever did what he saw his father do. This is our mission dads to do only what we see our Heavenly Father doing in this way we can teach our children and model for other men how to become their best selves. 

How committed am I to learning as a father about being a better father directly affects how I father my children. I can’t teach without learning and I can’t learn without being open to the teacher instructing me. 

Dads we are always being taught and we are always teaching but who are we learning from and what are we teaching our kids? If you can’t answer that definitively then there’s a good chance you're not being intentional enough. 

Look no further for where God want to grow you. 

Hurt & Healed

Dads we have two roads we can walk down the choice of what road we walk down isn’t dictated by where we started in life but where we let God direct us. 

Fathers can set their children apart and make them ready to prosper by teaching them to live in God's healing and wholeness or they can set their children adrift by teaching them to fail when they live out of their brokenness and pain and hurt. 

A statement I heard a long time ago that has stuck with me is this. 

“Hurt people, Hurt people. 

 Healed people, Heal people.”

What kind of kids we are raising depends not on where you started out but where you decide to be today. Hurt or Healed is a road that we can choose to walk down and we all will walk down one of them. 

The healed road isn’t the easy road it’s painful and hard because we get to challenge the past and seek out our forever Fathers present blessings and decide to embrace his future of life for us. 

The hurt road is even harder though not always at the moment but eventually and for longer because in the end it only leads to destruction and loneliness. 

I started my life on the hurt road and I was headed to destruction and then I met people who were walking the healed road to life and they helped me to change lanes then exit the hurt road altogether and I’m inviting you now. 

If you're reading this then you have been invited to leave the hurt road to destruction to the healed road to life.

Be healed so that you can be a healer. Let the hurt stay where you drop it and become whole, be a hero for your family. 

Elevate and Encourage 

 

As dads our role is to elevate and encourage our kids. That means more than just getting them to an adult age in life with all their fingers and toes attached. 

Raising kids means raising them personally, elevating them individually, giving them strong shoulders to stand on, our shoulders in fact and that means we need to stand strong and be standing on strong shoulders ourselves.

Elevating means we support, we hold up, and raise up our kids. 

Think about the actual mechanical contraption that takes people from floor to floor. We get to pick our kids up and take them to the next level again and again without criticizing them for the speed at which they are moving. I personally have never had an elevator tell me I should be going to the fifth floor when I stop on the third even if it is true, it just fights gravity for me to help me reach the next level. My God given father figures who have taught me, and teach me to this day, do not rag on me about stopping short either. They do however encourage me to go further and that is just as important. 

Encouragement is a big deal. I have been challenged lots in my time as a father to stop

being a critic and to be my kids champion. 

Fight for them not beat on their self image when they mess up. Now maybe you, like me, didn’t get that from the start of your life but you can change. Refer to the hurt and healed section for my thoughts on that.

Encouragement does not mean excusing my kids from their bad choices. I can call someone out and encourage them; it just means I have to think more about them then myself. 

(Just between you and me that’s a true challenge for me). 

Being an encouraging father is partly about making failure a stop on the road not the end of the road. We all fail and when we do we need to be encouraged to get up and keep going and not to stop and wallow in self pity. 

So today ask yourself who holds you up, whose elevating you and who pulls you up by encouraging you. 

Then ask if you are being that way as a father.

Roles to play

As dads we are role models for our kids. This means the role we play as fathers should be worth duplicating. 

God doesn’t have a cookie cutter so no two people are exact but we are made in his image so we are similar but unique. 

Some big theological terms I learned years ago are incommunicable and communicable attributes. Things about God that are not in people and things that are in us. 

All knowing, all present are attributes that are not passed on. Being able to love, extend forgiveness those things were passed on from Gods to us. The list is large, this is just a few.  

What are we as fathers passing on to our kids? 

I know my kids have a mix of my humor and my sensitivity. Some got more of one which makes a booming mixture when someone does something “funny” and someone else’s feelings get hurt. Add to the mix my wife’s personality and let’s just say dinner isn’t boring at our house. 

There are lots of things I don’t want my kids to duplicate from me on a daily basis like a bad attitude or mis-management of anger. There are things I want my kids to model after too like my smile and love of reading and music. So I need to show them the things I want passed on and limit as much as possible what is on display that I don’t want duplicated. 

Being a good role model is not something that just happens, it takes work, it takes having a healthy model to base ourselves off of, but who?

I was told by my first mentor that leadership is caught more than it’s taught. That's the same with fathering it’s caught by us by those we associate with. Being a good role model as a father means being around those who will teach us and being around our kids enough for them to pick up who we are. 

Our forever father in heaven  shows up faithfully, takes action, teaches, lives from a place of healing, raises up with encouragement and shows his kids how to do the same. 

That is a role worth duplicating. Will I duplicate it in my life, will you duplicate it in your life? That is the question we need to answer everyday.