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- Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Listen carefully and you will hear it....the heart-cry for fathers. Your own heart may be longing for a spiritual father or a mentor. Your children might be missing the loving protection and consistent presence of a dad. You may be burdened by the epidemic of fatherlessness in our generation and your heart aches because of the painful suffering it has produced. What's the answer to these cries of the heart? "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you..." Deuteronomy 5:16. Honor your father: when lived out, it is a command that can change the trajectory of generations. It's a command that comes with a promise: honor our fathers (and mothers) and things will go well for us! Honor Your Father: Reset My Family Legacy tackles challenging topics like: - How to honor "imperfect fathers" - Restoring sexual integrity - How spiritual fathers (and mothers) can reset a family legacy... in spite of others' failures - Becoming a father who is worthy of honor - Bringing honor to your children's mother Including 80 different exercises designed to help you honor your heavenly Father, pray for your family's legacy, develop a tribute to your Father, and pass on a generational blessing to your children, this resource will equip you to honor your father and reset your family legacy!
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BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Racine, Wisconsin, USA
www.broadstreetpublishing.com
HONOR YOUR Father
My Family Legacy
Copyright © 2016 Great Commandment Network
ISBN–13: 978-1-4245-5125-5 (hardcover)
ISBN–13: 978-1-4245-5126-2 (e-book)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Permissions for all contributors’ content are covered by the original copyrights from which they were published. See the “About the Authors and Their Resources” page at the back of this book to contact the authors, learn more about their resources, or for any questions about their content. All Scripture quotations within each contributor’s excerpt are included exactly as in their original publication, and all credits apply that are covered under those respective articles.
Except in contributors’ articles, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, NLT, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scriptures marked NASB taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Cover by Chris Garborg at www.garborgdesign.com
Interior by Kimberly Sagmiller at www.fudgecreative.com
Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Printed in China
16 17 18 19 20 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Reset
SECTION 1
Preface: Honoring Your Heavenly Father
1:
The Father Figure
Josh McDowell
2:
A Heavenly Father We Can Relate To
Mark Williams
3:
Honoring the Real God to Honor Your Father
Jade Lee
4:
Reconciling the Lamb with the Lion
Sammy Rodriguez
SECTION 2
Preface: The Promised Blessing of Honoring Your Father
5:
Jesus Resets Families
Nick Hall
6:
Training Children to Honor Their Fathers
Barbara Doyle
7:
Honor as the Priority
Todd Stawser
8:
My Tribute
Mitch Temple
SECTION 3
Preface: Preface: Honoring Imperfect Fathers
9:
The Good Dad
Jim Daly
10:
If You Missed Your Father’s Blessing
John Trent & Gary Smalley
11:
Is It Difficult for Your Children to Honor You?
Roland Warren
12:
Divorced and Still a Much-Loved Dad
Tammy Daughtry
SECTION 4
Preface: The Call to Honor
13:
Fathers Sharing Covenant Love
John K. Vining
14:
Remembering Dad
Dennis Gallaher
15:
Biblical Patterns for Spiritual Fathers and Mothers
Billy Wilson
16:
From Obey to Honor
Brian Doyle
SECTION 5
Preface: Being a Father Worthy of Honor
17:
Are You Worthy of Honor?
Dennis Rainey
18:
Loving Your Children’s Mother
Carey Casey
19:
Sexual Integrity: Finding Your Path
Tony Dungy
20:
The Culture-Wise Family
Ted Baehr & Pat Boone
APPENDIX:
About the Authors and Their Resources
About the Great Commandment Network
A Spirit-Empowered Faith
A Spirit-Empowered Disciple
Preface
Listen carefully and you will hear it…
The heart cry for fathers.
What is your heart longing for?
Your heart may long for a spiritual father or mentor. As a son or daughter, you may want to deepen or heal your relationship with your dad. As a father or mother, you may hope for improved family closeness. Or you may be a concerned individual who is burdened by the epidemic of fatherlessness in our generation.
The heart cry for fathers makes it clear: fatherlessness is one of the greatest social evils of a generation. The intensity of the heart cry helps determine our response: we must raise awareness that “dads matter” and that every child needs an intentional father or father figure.
The role of father was created by God and is irreplaceable. Since the glory of children is their fathers (Proverbs 17:6), and God commands his church to care for the fatherless (James 1:27), every child needs a loving and active father in his or her life.
Fathers are responsible before God to lead their families and spiritually train their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Since fatherhood on earth is a representation of the eternal fatherhood of God, each father is called by God to be a faithful provider (Matthew 7:11; 1 Timothy 5:8), a strong protector (Matthew 2:13–14; Luke 11:21), a loving leader (Ephesians 6:1–4), a respectable authority (Hebrews 12:4–11), a truthful teacher (Deuteronomy 6:7; Proverbs 4:1–4), a living example (John 5:19–23; 1 Corinthians 11:1), and a compassionate friend (Psalm 103:13; John 15:15) to his children.
Let’s face it. In an imperfect world with imperfect people, our family legacy may look different than the description above. In an imperfect world with imperfect people, how will our families thrive? How will our relationships flourish if our family legacy needs a reset? The good news is that our heavenly Father tells us where to start. The place to begin a reset of a family legacy has been carefully wrapped in a command from our Lord. Listen to His command and then be sure you hear the promise:
“Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12 NIV)
The Fatherhood CoMission is committed to championing the role of fathers and desires to see the Lord turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Malachi 4:6). May dads be strengthened to live out the greatest of callings—father! May families see their legacy reset as they honor God and His Word!
Mitch Temple
Executive Director, The Fatherhood CoMission
www.honoryourfathertoday.com
Introduction
Honor Your Father is designed to bring a fresh experience to fathers, families, and those who care about future generations. The goal of this resource is to empower fathers and families with a relational faith—a faith that transforms both a relationship with God and with other people.
In order to fully illustrate what a relational faith includes, we have defined forty different Spirit-empowered outcomes (see Appendix). Honor Your Father is written with a focus on five of these outcomes:
1. A Spirit-empowered faith experiences God as He really is, through deepened intimacy with Him.
2. A Spirit-empowered faith ministers His life and love to our nearest ones at home and to our extended family, and it includes faithful engagement in His body, the church.
3. A Spirit-empowered faith lives abundantly in “the present,” as His Word brings healing to hurt, anger, fear, guilt, and condemnation, which are hindrances to abundant life.
4. A Spirit-empowered faith bears witness to a confident peace and expectant hope in God’s lordship in all things.
5. A Spirit-empowered faith yields to the Spirit’s protective cautions and transforming power to bring life change.
By highlighting and focusing on these outcomes, Honor Your Father hopes to serve the much-needed vision of a twenty-first-century spiritual awakening.
In response to the spiritual wake-up call on September 11, 2001, the Awakening America Alliance has been faithfully urging Christ’s followers to gather for Cry Out America prayer gatherings across the nation, to engage in an annual rhythm of prayer, and to take action around twenty indicators of awakening (see www.awakeningamerica.us for more information). These indicators of awakening include:
• covenant marriage
• next gen discipleship
• care for children
This resource is designed to support this vision of spiritual awakening beginning with the closest of relationships—our family.
The Honor Your Father resource is a useful tool for any individual who wants to reset their family’s legacy and begin a personal spiritual awakening within their marriage and family. Honor Your Father is also an important tool for pastors and church leaders who want to strengthen the families of their congregation and usher in a spiritual awakening in a community. What might change in a church and a community if small groups gathered together to celebrate fathers? What impact might there be if an entire sermon series helped a congregation learn how to reset their family legacy? Imagine what could be different if thousands of churches, with millions of fathers and families, took seriously the biblical admonition to honor fathers and live as fathers worthy of honor!
RESET YOUR FAMILY LEGACY
When your computer or mobile device freezes, you know to hit the reset button. A reset restores the system to its original design. Hitting reset gives it a fresh start. So what happens when it’s something in your life that feels frozen? Do you ever wish you could start over? Everyone feels that at times. And Jesus is the reset. Jesus restores you to your original design. He gives you a fresh start. That’s what we hope this resource does for your family legacy. May it be a fresh start in your relationship with Jesus!
The Honor Your Father resource is intended to serve the Reset Movement. Reset is a work of anyone and everyone who wants to see Jesus bring hope to this generation and to this nation. Reset began as a prayer and dream of a young leader from North Dakota named Nick Hall, to see this generation unite around Jesus. The vision was never about one person or organization but a partnership around Jesus—and Jesus calls everyone.
Reset is not an organization. Reset is a prayer and a movement of people sharing the message of the hope Jesus brings when we pray it. The vision is not to facilitate a passive audience, but to catalyze an army of individuals who are actively praying to Jesus to reset their lives, their communities, and their cities—and actively seeking to live a life reset by Jesus. While there are organizations involved, the fuel of this movement is you.
The Reset Movement has identified four ways to start your reset. These four ingredients are the inspiration for the calls to action we have inserted into each of the writings by the authors in this resource.
LEARN to Encounter Jesus
PRAY and Experience Scripture
SHARE with Others in Community
LOVE Others in Community
The message of Reset is that Jesus can and will reset your life. And that same message and invitation is shared at Reset events. The events are a place to connect in person with others who are praying and living reset lives, hear stories of what Jesus is doing, and celebrate Jesus with hundreds and thousands of others who are praying for a reset. Go to www.resetmovement.com for more information.
Finally, The Great Commandment Network is thrilled to serve each contributor and ministry partner through this resource. Our resource development and training team serves various partners as they develop Spirit-empowered disciples who walk intimately with God’s Son, God’s Word, and God’s people. May Jesus richly bless the unity, commitment, and faith that Honor Your Father represents.
Terri Snead
Executive Editor, Great Commandment Network
SECTION 1
SECTION 1
PREFACE: HONORING YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER
What does the Lord your God require of you?
He requires only that you fear the Lord
your God, and live in a way that pleases him,
and love him and serve him with all your heart
and soul. And you must always obey the
Lord’s commands and decrees that
I am giving you today for your own good.
(Deuteronomy 10:12–13)
A SPIRIT-EMPOWERED FAITH
experiences God as He really is through deepened intimacy with Him. Let these authors encourage your Spirit-empowered faith:
• The Father Figure—Josh McDowell
• A Heavenly Father We Can Relate To—Mark Williams
• Honoring the Real God to Honor Your Father—Jade Lee
• Reconciling the Lamb with the Lion—Sammy Rodriguez
1
THE FATHER FIGURE
From The Father Connectionby Josh McDowell
JESUS, RESET MY FAMILY LEGACY
Jesus, remind me often of the kind of Father
that You are to me. I want to have fresh,
frequent experiences of Your love for me so
that I can share that love with others.
PREFACE
The nature and character of our Father in heaven reveals that a godly father is one who comforts and supports his children in life’s trials and difficulties. The Bible says, “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:17–18 NIV).
Our Model Father is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. He responds to our crises and calamities, not with impatience and indignation but with comfort and support. He knows that it helps immensely in times of difficulty to have someone on whom we can rely and someone in whom we can find strength (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).
God’s comfort extends to “all our troubles.” He comforts and supports us when we suffer persecution for His name’s sake and when we suffer the consequences of our own foolish behavior. He comforts us when we deserve it least, when we’re slogging through a mess of our own making. He supports us when we are weak, and He comforts us when we fall.
Our Father is comforting and supporting even when He must discipline us. The psalmist David wrote, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). The shepherd’s staff was used as an instrument of comfort and support, lifting newborns, drawing lambs closer, and guiding sheep through dangerous or difficult routes. The rod, on the other hand, was an instrument of defense and discipline. It was used to deter or subdue attackers and for correcting wayward or recalcitrant members of the flock. Both instruments, however—the staff and the rod—were sources of comfort to the psalmist because both were wielded by a compassionate and supportive Shepherd.
PRAY and Experience Scripture
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. (Psalm 107:1 NIV)
Reflect for a moment on one of the rods of correction the Shepherd uses in our lives: the Ten Commandments. What was God’s motive when He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the children of Israel and eventually to us? Why did He give commandments such as “Honor your father and mother”?
God undoubtedly gave the Ten Commandments in order to provide testimony of His character, to portray righteous living, and to clarify sin’s darkness, but we must look deeper in order to see the Father’s heart. Our heavenly Father also gave the Ten Commandments because He knew how deeply sin would hurt us. Like a loving parent would warn a child not to touch a hot stove, God’s heart of love is what motivated Him to establish rules and commandments (Deuteronomy 10:13). Out of a desire for our protection, God intended the commandments to be like “stop signs” for our behavior because He knows that when we violate them, we experience hurt. Remember some of the commands from Scripture and hear them from a Father who doesn’t want us to experience hurt. Exodus 20:13–15 (NIV) reminds us:
• You shall not murder.
• You shall not commit adultery.
• You shall not steal.
How do you feel toward your heavenly Father as you reflect on His compassionate, protective motive?
As I consider the loving motive behind God’s gift of His commandments, I feel…
I’m filled with thanks because of God’s heart for my good and His desire to protect me, because of how He…
Plan to share your responses with your prayer partner or a small group.
God’s commands are clear. His motive is love. But how does the Father respond when we choose to ignore His commands? Romans 5:8 tells us: “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Even when we sin, the Father’s heart is compassionate, still loving. God isn’t moved with vengeance or retribution when we disobey His commands. Instead, His heart grieves when our sinful choices cause us pain.
That’s the kind of father we should want to be. By the supernatural presence and power of God’s Holy Spirit living in us and working through us, we can reflect our Father’s nature, comforting and supporting our children in all their troubles.
It is easy, of course, to comfort your daughter when she comes home from school disappointed because she got a B on a test instead of an A. It is easy to support your son when he had a less-than-stellar game on the soccer field. It’s easy to comfort a child who’s just fallen off a bike. But it’s not so easy to offer comfort and support when they wreck the car because of a silly stunt or when they fail a test because they haven’t studied. Those kinds of struggles—the ones they bring upon themselves—make it more difficult to respond in a godly way. But it is precisely at those times that our children most need to feel our comfort and support.
We can learn how to show the image of our Father by comforting and supporting our children, learning new ways to conform to His likeness. Here are ways to do that:
ACCEPT YOUR LIMITATIONS
One of the keys to becoming fathers who comfort and support their children is understanding and accepting our limitations. We can’t prevent our kids from skinning their knees, but we can be there to pick them up and kiss their hurts. We can’t stop our kids from making mistakes, but we can be there to help them correct their mistakes. We can’t fix everything that goes wrong in their lives, but we can cheer them on when they succeed and lift them up when they fail.
