My dream is to be a father. It’s not the dream I had when I was a little boy. That dream was to be an ornithologist. Together with my mom we’d saved and raised thousands of birds, starting with a pair of weavers that came down from our back garden’s willow tree. The dream died when I realised that I had no real interest in studying the growth cycle of the frog or dissecting a seed. I dropped the subject in my teens and only in my 20’s did I discover a love for biology in the form of human anatomy and physiology.
What I know now was that my dream wasn’t working with birds but the caring, the saving, the restoring, the watching of things grow. Being a father!
For years I’ve felt a longing to share what God has done in my heart and whenever I do, it just comes out wrong. I’ve decided to now journey where my head and my heart connect with my hands and my speech. The heart has finally over taken pride, the fear of failure and being downright wrong to communicate the life that I live.
So do we need fathers? Why did the Paul the apostle say that the Corinthians had many teachers but they needed fathers? Why did Jesus say that He came to reveal the Father? Why did he not say I have come to teach you a better way to live? I believe it is that teachers can teach you what they know and fathers reproduce who they are. Fathers help give birth to something. Teaching on its own is only behaviour modification. We need to become something by birth (not by training and our efforts) and then be taught who we are. Then we simply live out who we are rather than trying to become something.
Jesus said that no man can enter the kingdom unless he goes through a birth process. God’s entire plan
before the world began was not that we would be conformed, moulded and shaped by life and circumstances but that we should have a quality of life born on the inside of us. When something is ‘born’ it then simply ‘is’ and does not need to ‘become’. That’s the wonder of being a father. We get to participate in a life where our children are born in our image and likeness, and it’s without any effort.
Myles Munroe says that ‘Fathers are difficult to find because fathering has more to do with care than with charisma. It has more to do with responsibility than with performance. It has more to do with leadership,
accountability and love than with fame, exposure and glory. Fathering requires a commitment to nurturing and developing others rather than using and benefiting from others.’
Biological fathers and/or those that reveal the nature of fathering is why I write. I want to learn more about who I am as father and I want share that so that others can experience the life that sharing will reproduce. I truly believe as we unpack and discover who a father is, we’ll find ourselves living as both fathers and sons, reproducing both fathers and sons.
What I know now was that my dream wasn’t working with birds but the caring, the saving, the restoring, the watching of things grow. Being a father!
For years I’ve felt a longing to share what God has done in my heart and whenever I do, it just comes out wrong. I’ve decided to now journey where my head and my heart connect with my hands and my speech. The heart has finally over taken pride, the fear of failure and being downright wrong to communicate the life that I live.
So do we need fathers? Why did the Paul the apostle say that the Corinthians had many teachers but they needed fathers? Why did Jesus say that He came to reveal the Father? Why did he not say I have come to teach you a better way to live? I believe it is that teachers can teach you what they know and fathers reproduce who they are. Fathers help give birth to something. Teaching on its own is only behaviour modification. We need to become something by birth (not by training and our efforts) and then be taught who we are. Then we simply live out who we are rather than trying to become something.
Jesus said that no man can enter the kingdom unless he goes through a birth process. God’s entire plan
before the world began was not that we would be conformed, moulded and shaped by life and circumstances but that we should have a quality of life born on the inside of us. When something is ‘born’ it then simply ‘is’ and does not need to ‘become’. That’s the wonder of being a father. We get to participate in a life where our children are born in our image and likeness, and it’s without any effort.
Myles Munroe says that ‘Fathers are difficult to find because fathering has more to do with care than with charisma. It has more to do with responsibility than with performance. It has more to do with leadership,
accountability and love than with fame, exposure and glory. Fathering requires a commitment to nurturing and developing others rather than using and benefiting from others.’
Biological fathers and/or those that reveal the nature of fathering is why I write. I want to learn more about who I am as father and I want share that so that others can experience the life that sharing will reproduce. I truly believe as we unpack and discover who a father is, we’ll find ourselves living as both fathers and sons, reproducing both fathers and sons.
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