weekly sermon

        6-22-08

Our Father

This weeks message will be a bit different than our normal messages. I purposely waited a week before doing a tribute to fathers. It is just expected that everyone do a sermon about fathers on Fathers Day. I waited the week so that it would have time to set in everyone's mind on how they act or felt about their fathers. Let me tell my story.

Forty six years ago my mother and dad gave birth to a son. That son turned out to be me, of course. From the time I can remember till about twenty years ago I really hated my dad. In all respect as far as fathers go, he was a decent one. He worked hard all day every day to provide for his wife and two children. The problem I had was he drank an awful lot and could be very abusive. My dad would drink every other day to the point of being very intoxicated. When my dad drank he was a very funny person, but only towards other adults. He was very old school to the point of, children should be seen not heard type. Usually my dad was not at home when he drank, nor was he home of course when he worked, so we very seldom seen our dad. As time went by, things would become worse. The day after a drunk, which as I stated was every other day, he would come home after work expecting children to be in their rooms or gone, and supper to be on the table for him. If he was not working he was off some place having drinks with friends, or finding other women to spend time with. As it can be seen, my dad had many activities that prevented him from spending time at home with his family where we thought he belonged. He was also very involved in dirt track racing and had his own car that he built with friends and had a driver for that car. This kept my dad away on the weekends. If my dad was home at the same time we were, it was not usually a pretty picture. It seemed that we, my sister and I, stayed in trouble with him much of the time, for things that we had no clue we were doing wrong.

I have painted a very grim picture of my dad here but, he was, as I stated a decent man who provided for his family the best he knew how. His mother passed away when he was a very young baby, and his dad was very very old at the time of my dad's birth. This left my dad to be raised by his other siblings, who were much older than he was, older as in forty years older. There were sixteen children in his family and he was the youngest of the sixteen. My dad basically had no clue what love was or how to show love in any way.

My mother stood by him, no matter his faults, and eventually he started coming around to the type of father that most of the other children would have. By the time that he came around to being that type of dad, me and my sister were grown and on our own.

Me and my dad finally started seeing more and more of each other, and things began to become better and better between us. We even joined an organization that helps others and became leaders in this organization. This organization is for men and makes better men out of men by showing them ways of thinking about others that turn them into better men. This type of thinking about others would also bring the men closer together in the organization. The year that I was to be the head of the organization, I stood and told this same story to more than a few hundred folks, but had to add the ending to the story.

As time progressed, I looked back on my life and seen as an adult now, that the life I had as a child growing up with my dad, was not as bad as I had once believed. True, there was no affection from him, but there was a life that turned me from a child of no knowledge or respect, to a man that turned out, if I may say so myself, very decent, loving, and hard working. Me and my dad have grown so close in the past twenty years that we have became the very best of friends. He brags to folks all the time on how much respect he has for me and what it is that I do, and I in turn believe him to be one of the greatest men I have ever known.

As you can see from this story, there was a child born, that grew into adolescence hating his father. That same child eventually became a man who really fell in love with his father. The love between a child and their parent can only be described as agape love. A love that is beyond a shadow of a doubt the truest form of love, a love where one would literally give their life for the other. I was very happy to find this type of love with my father.

This story, I hope, will show that no matter how far you are away from your father, you can eventually find peace in getting to know them. This is stated in a sense in Deuteronomy 10:15, "Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, [even] you above all people, as [it is] this day." It states here in this passage of scripture that the Lord put a delight in the fathers and chose his seed to love. It shows that no matter what we think, our fathers have love in their hearts for us as their seed, even us above all people that our fathers may come in contact with.

This not only holds true in our earthly dads, but also in our Heavenly father. No matter how far away we are from our father in Heaven, He loves us as His seed and not only would He, but He has already given His life for us.

Bring your life to Him, show Him that you love Him also, ask Him to be the father that you have always dreamed He could and would be. All you have to do is say a simple prayer with me.

Say this simple prayer with me, Dear Lord, take over my life and forgive me of my sins, and give me the gift of everlasting life. Amen.

If you have said this simple prayer, then we believe that you have received salvation. We would love to rejoice with you, so please drop us a note, in our link, to let us know and confess Jesus before man, so that we may send you a few things that we hope will help you in your new Christian walk.
 

With Love in Christ,

Pastor Stone