Pastor's Corner
What does it mean to be a father?
How can the ones who are supposed to be strong also be gentle and show weakness? What if how you love was the most important thing? What does it mean to be a good provider? If I’m providing a stable income and a roof over our heads why does it feel like it’s never enough?
Fatherhood feels full of contradictions.
We want fathers to look like tribe chiefs, the boss, superman in cotton duck work-pants. But then we need them to be good daddies to little girls and show boys how to admit mistakes and be a shelter to their family and community.
Can little shepherd boys become warriors and stay tender?
Can warrior princes become shepherds with a father’s heart?
If we take cues from our creator reflecting identity, fatherhood must have something to do with entering an unoccupied sphere in dark formless space and co-creating something good, never leaving or forsaking.
But somewhere along the way many of us reduced fatherhood to provision. A paycheck. A roof. Stability.
Those things matter, but a family can get shelter, money, and food from their mother or grandparents or even the government.
Dad’s value and core purpose is not merely to provide shelter, it’s to be a shelter.
Fathers as Shelter
For a long time I thought being a provider meant working hard and sacrificing to give out whatever you bring home, like a pack of jelly beans in my pocket quickly goes ten ways when I walk in the door.
But God has taught even the birds to plan and strategize and look ahead for the needs of their offspring. A provider needs to look beyond what we need now to what we need tomorrow.
The Latin root word for provide means to see before or ahead. Jireh in the Hebrew means provide or actually to see. So you could say that God sees or God will look into it.
As a father when we look ahead that is challenging in a good way but can also be discouraging. If we’re barely making it right now what will happen if I take a pay cut or we have an unexpected expense?
This is where the heavenly Father comes in and doesn’t let us off the hook. I recognize He is the provider and I am entrusted to steward what He provides.
He has enough. Am I managing it well?
Fear is costly and never turns a profit.
Partnering with God looks like caring well for those in front of us today, daily bread, while also planning to leave something for our children’s children.
Scripture says to leave an inheritance for your children’s children. Since I don’t have anything of real value from either grandfather, I can tell you they left me traces of their character. Stories of the hard unpopular choices they made to care for people.
They built me through passed on parts of themselves that transfer generation to generation even stronger than DNA.
A father provides by seeing what a son will need to become and making regular deposits that accrue value over time.
The more responsibility a man has the more value his character has.
You can completely turn around your family line and the traits and history you inherited in just one generation.
What do daughters need from fathers besides protection?
Delight.
What do sons need from fathers besides instruction?
Transparency.
How does a father admit weakness without making his family feel unsafe?
He seeks the support he needs but doesn’t lean on his family like a crutch.
Presence during frustration or failure requires letting go of expectations and control. It requires taking shelter in the Most High.
Some man before us hid in a garden and men have had a hiding tendency ever since.
Living without the love of your father isn’t really living.
Strength and Surrender
How can the ones expected to be strong also remain gentle?
By understanding that strength under control, submission, is power.
God is the ultimate power and ultimately surrendered His position to reveal that love conquers all.
Lucifer lost it and challenged God and has been trying to use his strength to control and manipulate ever since and therefore has no power.
It’s because we are designed to be like the model, the new Adam. Understanding plus faith will lead us to our knees, to take up our crosses, and rise victoriously.
Presence during frustration or failure requires letting go of expectations and control. It requires taking shelter in the Most High.
The kind of strength that creates peace in a home instead of fear is strength that remains consistent, where everyone isn’t riding dad’s emotional highs and lows.
Strength should challenge, lift up, and protect.
Maybe that kind of strength only comes through surrender.
Why does tenderness sometimes feel dangerous to men?
We’ve been wounded. Men in authority have not always expressed genuine care and concern in our times of need.
We’ve been hurt when we’re vulnerable so rather than be hurt again we learned to defensively lash out like a wounded creature acting vicious to protect a tender wound.
What kind of man can hold authority without becoming hard?
A man who holds his hands open.
What happens when a man confuses being needed with being loved?
Being needed is subjective to what the man wants to be needed for or thinks he has to offer.
Being loved is being appreciated and when you’re not fulfilling your calling it’s being called up, yes even by your children, to be the person God designed you to be, a man sheltered under the Most High so he can help provide warmth, protection, and meaning to his family.
What does surrender look like for a husband, not just a preacher or leader?
Husband surrender looks like letting your wife point out your wounded spots and even if it seems harsh submitting to someone who knows you better than most.
Sons Before Kings
At the core of many grown men is still the unresolved question:
Do I have what it takes to conquer the mountain?
Boys often learn strength before surrender because strength is put to the test constantly and affirmed.
It’s natural to be proud of a little boy throwing a rock across the pond and carrying a load that looks heavy.
Until the rock goes through a window and he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
In the beginning God was present.
Maybe our presence is a better offering than meat on the table. Both are needed, but living without the love of your father isn’t really living.
Can little shepherd boys become warriors without losing tenderness?
Yes. I’ve seen this in Obi on a regular basis. He doesn’t have to learn to be a strong boy, it’s like it’s built in and he’s receiving constant feedback from his environment.
But to be tender takes intentional forward-looking input.
Can warrior princes become shepherds with a father’s heart?
Being raised by an earthly father doesn’t limit you to being his spitting image.
In fact it’s not possible because your heavenly Father knew you before He knit you together, think DNA helix winding together, in your mother’s womb.
He has had good plans for you, irrefutable identity-defining plans.
Since I don’t have anything of real value from either grandfather, I can tell you they left me traces of their character, stories of the hard unpopular choices they made to care for people.
They built me through passed on parts of themselves that transfer generation to generation even stronger than DNA.
Which means many fathers are still trying to answer questions that began long before them.
The Father Story
In the beginning God was present. Humanity’s first relationship was Father and child.
Babies are more secure when they hear their father’s voice in the womb, and I cannot help but wonder if Adam first knew the Father’s voice the same way, before fear and striving entered the story.
For being the womb-place of mankind the garden was short lived.
Once born we can never go back. We enter into a world of knowledge and choices.
The story of salvation is a Father-framed story.
Creator and Father tries to connect and protect, but the misuse of free will changes the tone to defender and rescuer.
Seeker. “Where are you?”
Coverer. Garments.
Protector. Cain.
Rescuer. Noah.
Covenant Father. Abraham.
Deliverer. Moses.
Shepherd. David.
Finally self-sacrificing Father in Christ.
It’s like what we are called to be God models to us and then through us.
Even with Cain we can see that he understood he should be the keeper of others but was twisted into a taker.
God rescues Noah and Noah becomes an instrument to rescue his family and humanity.
Moses is delivered from being a fugitive to become a deliverer.
David is shepherded by God and then shepherds a nation through his legacy.
Then a true-man surrenders his will and the Father makes the greatest sacrifice.
Maybe fathers are not called to become symbols after all.
Maybe being a father means becoming a shelter.
