A Father's Long Shadow Part 2

One reason for us. Jesus mentions fortresses, headwalls and guards. It's high time someone and start protecting virgins against those who would like nothing more than to corrupt them for life, mothers are you ready for a real challenge. If so stay with church in Chicago this with Dr. Sir was clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line, loser, morality, and modern entertainment media sinks to deeper lows. Every passing day. This makes the dads job more crucial than ever day you described it so well, but it brings happiness to my heart all last night when we were asleep. People were awake thinking of new ways to seduce teenagers and of course we know that the primary way today is through technology.

And you're absolutely right that the role of the father is very very critical. You know God worked mightily in my life. Even when I was very young. I felt a call to the ministry. Born on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. There was something within me that told me that was not my future and I sometimes tell my story with one intention and that is to give God glory, and to show how he led me even when I was unaware of it. And in this interview, which I gave recently to pastor Philip Miller.

I talked about the past, but I also talk about the present. The changes in our culture and what I see happening in the future and that's why the interview is called the past the present in the future and today's the last day that we are making this resource available to you for a gift of any amount.

It can be yours. Go to RTW offer.com that's RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 and thanks in advance for helping us as we continue to get the gospel around the world. The Bible says regarding God, the Lord, you are my refuge and my fortress and that's what children today's world of refuge and the fortress so you protect them from the enemies of the family namely drugs and morality pornography crimes sexual predators you talk to them about these things and you discuss them. Let them express their opinions, even if their opinion is different from yours here them out here them out but stand in for them, a father in this church very good father talk to me the other day about movies that are being shown in the school that show marriage as diverse two men to women that also is a marriage that also is a quote family how old you think his daughter is supposed to look at these movies six years old and there's a father who standing in for his daughter keeping tabs on what she sees in school and discussing it with the principle involved in her life involved so you're the protector be the mentor in humility and patience in servant love be a mentor you have to know a lot about the Bible.

That's what I'm not talking about though. The more you know the better but but it's the modeling of it. My parents could've taught us faith and I'm sure they did, but to me the greatest lesson of faith was when Hale consumed every blade of wheat on our farm and they got on their knees and the old farmhouse and thanked God for his mercies and for all that he meant to them in the midst of their devastation. Children don't forget that you say will there's something in my life. There's a reason why I can't be a mentor. I have unconquered sin in my life.

If that's the case with you, my dear father would you join a small group would you go for help.

Would you seek God.

Would you do whatever needs to be done to get rid of what it is that stands in the way of you entering into your child's world. That's the way we can fulfill this admonition, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Father today. Turn your heart to your needy crying children at great personal cost. It was Seneca who said years ago. Seneca said no man can consider himself a success if his children are a failure. That's the first part of verse six. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, but now I want to speak about the second part of this verse and the heart of the children to their fathers, namely children reconciled to fathers all of us have had fathers we've all had imperfect fathers and we had better make peace with them.

No matter how imperfect or even abusive. They have been before I give you a list of the kinds of fathers with whom you need to make peace want to say that there are also some good fathers out there. My father, if you were to test him by many of today's standards regarding what fathers should do. He would come up short in some respects, but he was a very good father. He prayed for us, he took care of our needs.

We knew that we were love there were rules in the home. We knew where the lines were to be drawn and expected obedience. But he was a good father. Hi, thank God for my father when he was 100 years old. I was visiting up in Canada. My wife gave me a suggestion by the way, the Lord often leads me through my wife. I hope that's okay with you waited she gave me this suggestion.

She said you know your dad is 100 years old. She said, remember, in the Old Testament when fathers would give a blessing to their sons. She said you're going to be home for a day. Why don't you go to him and say dad give me a blessing just like they did in the Old Testament so that evening as my father was sitting in the rocking chair reading his Bible. I knelt beside him and I told him I said dad, you know, in the Old Testament they gave fathers gave sons a blessing. I said would you do that for me and I want you to know that he took my head in both of his hands and lifted up her prayer to God that made heaven shake. It was absolutely awesome when I was finished I was crying. He was crying. We embraced. I braced my mother and you know when the call comes.

That was three years ago. He still living when the call come that dad has died. I can tell you that in my heart.

No regrets, no loose ends that have to be made up nothing that I wish I would've told him but it was too late. No, he can die in peace, and I can die in peace that I and my father have indeed been reconciled on every issue. Not that we needed reconciliation. The weight is generally spoken of, but we died we die knowing that all is well between us. Some of you have a father like that.

Don't wait until he becomes 100 because there's a good chance he won't live that long. Well, let me now list some of the fathers that some of you may have to be at peace with the Bible says that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the generation to come up until what is it the fourth generation. It says it's up to you my friend to break the curse of a negative impact that your father may have had some of you need to be reconciled to a workaholic father you don't understand why he was a workaholic and the answer is probably because he received very little affirmation from his father so he needed to prove himself and in order to prove himself so that others would say look at what so-and-so is accomplished.

He works himself to death.

And then there's an added benefit. If he works a lot he can get to stay out of the home and not deal with all of those emotional issues that he does not want to touch in his own life and so you're resentful and you're angry you have to be resolved, to be reconciled to a father like that. First of all, you have the workaholic father the silent father.

He does at from men.

This amount of damage not to your body but to your soul the emotionless father. The passive father, the one it doesn't matter what goes on in the home. Somebody can be misusing his child at school and he will not intervene. He will not run interference. He will not be involved. All that he does is sit there inviting others to try to figure out what's going on in his heart. Listen to the words of a brother written to another brother about their dad. It's about a passive father dear Jim, as for your concerns about dad. That's a big issue and I'm not sure I know where to start. I can tell you that I've spent a long time in therapy dealing with it and just now I'm getting to some kind of closure on it all. It has affected me a great deal. I know for sure this that dad is not going to change. I had a hard time accepting that. And I've spent my entire life setting myself up to receive some little acknowledgment or blessing from him, only to be disappointed. Each time, somewhere along the way I stopped trying. I will always miss him, though there will always be a hollow place inside of me were love and acceptance from him, should have been. That is something though that I cannot change a life lived with the passive, uninvolved, emotionless father, there's the alcoholic father won't say much about him.

The next message in this series.

By the way is on abuse in the home.

You need to hear it.

The tyrannical father controls everybody through anger, through criticism, in capable of complements no matter what you do.

If he does eke out a complement. It is always with a warning or always with something negative, something that you didn't do no matter how far you kick the ball. He always changes the goalpost so that you will miss you get an a and he can't figure out why it isn't an A+. Never, never satisfied the tyrannical father, but I run my home and there are certain rules of this home and if you're going to be in this home. You're going to obey global blood law and then the absent father may be absent because of immorality absent because he ran off shirking his responsibility. So now the daughter mistrusts men throws herself at men always comes up short on relationships filled with jealousy filled with intense insecurity because she cannot trust the boy has gender insecurity wonders who he really is growing up without a dad and so those are the kinds of fathers that some of you need to be reconciled with or you will perpetuate the curse. By the way, having listed all of these, it is often been said you know that a girl marries someone who is like her father, which explains why the mother of the bride always cries at weddings.

How do you make peace with your father. Whether he's dead or alive with his cooperation, or without his cooperation.

Let me urge you to listen carefully so that you might be free first face the pain and tell the truth face the pain and tell the truth see what happens is in the life of the child, and God has put this in the life of a child he views his parents as those who cannot do wrong ex-wife you're an abused child, you probably think it was your fault because mom and dad are always right, and even as an adult, it's easy to look back and to say you know my my home wasn't really an abusive home or my home wasn't a dysfunctional home because you don't want to admit that your parents were what they were well it's time you did to simply say mom and dad failed. My dad was thus and so speak the truth, the whole truth. But of course nothing but the truth but speak it. Face reality.

Secondly, after you have done that grieve the loss, grieve the loss when parents lose a child. Of course, we expect them to grieve. There would be something wrong with them if they didn't grieve they weep and they never really get over it. Now you've not lost a child. But you have lost your child would net something to cry about the opportunities that were lost. The what if's of life. What if I'd had a dad that would've been different.

What if dad had been there. So what you need to do is to grieve over that which you have lost and in the process of grieving to understand that God meets us in the midst of that grief beyond us to be real. Feel free to grieve. God gave us tear ducts, not a product of evolution. They are there so that we can weep and some of you today ought to weep. You may be weeping in this message and that's perfectly fine if you can't weep in church and be accepted in love. Where can you go to cry your eyes out.

Third you choose to lay down the bitterness to accept the fact that reality is reality and if your data still living and he still just as hardhearted as ever. He's not going to change. Don't hold onto childhood fantasies. He probably will not. We hope that he will but don't count on it and what you do is you choose to to bring all of that grief and all of that emptiness that you have felt in all that sense of betrayal and you laid at the cross and you say Jesus you have forgiven me so much I now choose to let you down, and to forgive, to take the poison and to spell it out. Finally, and this is most important and you now become acquainted with your father in heaven who is a father to the fatherless.

The Bible says God is there. You know to meet us and he becomes the nurturing the father. In fact, in Isaiah.

It even says in chapter 66 that the father says I will nurture you like a mother with tenderness like a mother nurtures her child. We sometimes when we think of God the father. We think of the harsh side of God the judge mental aspects but I invite you to become acquainted with the tender heartedness of God. The compassion of God, the love of God, the, the overreaching pity of God. I say that because I just read this past week.

Psalm 103 words is like a father pity of his children, so the Lord pities those that fear him, for he remembers our frame remembers that we are dust your father in heaven cares and he can reach out to you and even the vacuum that is in your life because of a not so good relationship with your dad.

Even that vacuum can be filled with the love of Christ and God. In the process may give you a surrogate father, someone who steps in gives you a hug once in a while somebody who becomes to you what you never had that all happens within God's family. I urge you today at whatever level you are at either as a Christian or a seeker.

I I urge you today to come to the father member that story that Jesus told about the prodigal son. He ran and was in the far country will remember and when he came back, his father saw him when he was yet a great way off, God sees you today. No matter where the state of your heart may be. Whether you're close to God or open to God. He sees where you are at and then the prodigal came who had dishonored his father and had misused his father's wealth and had shamed the father and the father says bring hither the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it for this my son was dead and is alive and is loss and is found.

That's the way our heavenly father welcomes us when we come home to him. The robe represents honor the ring of authority in the shoes son ship and the father says welcome home where you belong. It is much more important that you have a father in heaven, whom you can call father then that you had a father on earth.

Despite all of the pain of fatherlessness. There is nothing as terrible as entering into eternity without a father, our father who art in heaven, was sung to us. He's there for you and for me. Let us pray. So what are you, what do you have to tell God right now. What's on your mind.

Are you prepared to make peace with your father, father's are you prepared to connect with your children. The message has been altogether too hurried, but I pray that the Holy Spirit made do in your heart, what needs to be done and if you need to talk to God you talk to them right now because he is listening father is waiting. Lord we ask in Jesus name. The work that you have begun in many hearts shall be completed and grant all who have listened to this message the grace to step to the plate and to say today I'm going to live differently as a father but also for those who say that as children in Jesus name, amen.

This is pastor of course. I'm so glad that I have a father in heaven but I'm also glad that I had a good father on earth, a godly man man who prayed a man who led his family and a man who made sure that we were provided for out of that farm in Canada. I told my story to pastor Philip Miller in an interview entitled the past, the present and the future, but I need to emphasize that I gave this interview to give glory to God to show how he led me even when I was unaware of it.

In making ordinary decisions. Only in retrospect do I see the hands of God, but also I talked about the present to the changes that I've seen in the culture during the last 50 years, and even the future. This is the last day that we are making this resource available to you that I think will give you some insight as well as some inspiration and some encouragement for a gift of any amount. It can be yours.

Here's what you do go to RTW offer.com. By the way, this interview can be either on a CD or DVD go to RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. When you connect with us. Thanks in advance for helping us as we continue to get the gospel of Jesus Christ to more than 20 countries of the world. Go to RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 ask for the interview past the present and the future you can write to is running to win 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614 running to win comes from the Moody Church in Chicago next time we look at domestic abuse. The destructive secret motives. All too many families on the road to failure.

Don't miss our next program for Dr. Erwin looked certain this is Dave McAllister running to win his monster by the teacher