The Heart is the Best Part of Dad
080615 The Heart is the best part of Dad!
Tim Franklin
Introduction:
· Happy Fathers Day! I want to talk to you today about the best part of a dad.
o The best part of a dad is his heart.
o Out of the heart spring all the issues of life. Pro. 4:23
o Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Mt. 12:34
o Fervent love comes from a pure heart. 1 Peter 1:22. The heart is the best part of the dad. Sad to say though, there are a multitude of scriptures that deal with a wounded heart, broken heart, depressed heart, evil heart, hard heart, etc.
§ What kind of heart do you have?
§ How have life’s wounds affected your heart.
· God wants us to prepare a generation but if your hearts are wounded we are instantly limited in how successful we will be able to do that. Our own wounds limit our effectiveness in mentoring and blessing our sons and daughters.
· In the movie Seabiscuit , a conversation takes place between the owner Charles Howard and the trainer Tom Smith. Seabiscuit was a training horse that was never allowed to win. He was never allowed to be what he was created to be. Smith tells Howard, “He’s so beat up it is hard to tell what he’s like. I cant help feeling they got him so screwed up running in a circle that he’s forgotten what he was born to do. He just needs to learn how to be a horse again. …Every horse is good for something—you don’t just throw a whole life away because he’s banged up a little.” We not here to throw you away dad but to offer you a challenge and a chance to be you again!
o There’s probably not a man sitting in here today who is not a little or a lot banged up from life.
o Most dads go through a process/seasons of struggle because we ourselves were never lead by our father’s into a place of successful fathering or successful overcoming.
o As I have said before, babies do not come with instruction books and fathers are not born mature. That is a volatile mixture.
o If a father’s heart is not healed from life’s wounds then he only serves to pass those wounds on to the next generation. Listen to the depth of the problem, fr. The National Fatherhood Initiative:
§ In the US 24 million children live without their biological father.
§ 82% of girls pregnant out of wedlock are from homes with no father
§ In the yr. 2000 1.35 million births occurred out of wedlock.
§ 40% of children in ‘father absent’ homes have not seen their father in over a year. 50% of them have never set foot in their fathers ‘home.’
§ Children in homes without fathers on average will be two to three time more likely to be poor, use drugs, experience educational, health, emotional, and behavioral problems, to be victims of abuse and engage in criminal behavior.
· Most fathers struggle because:
o They were never given or never received their own father’s approval so they spend the rest of their lives looking for a father’s approval rather than living from a father’s approval.
o Because they were never accurately given a rite of passage and they live with the question ‘am I really a man?’ Manhood is not clearly defined in America therefore many fathers live trying to define it from the lies they have believed while trying find approval, acceptance and affirmation.
o They have been wounded, rejected, or abandoned at some point in life and never recovered from it. Sometimes those wounds were intentional and sometimes they were unintentional.
o Lets dive into the best part of a dad—his heart!
· Mal 4:5-6 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord .And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." NKJV That is good news, God is going to send us help. Will you receive it today?
· It is the father’s heart that will turn the heart of a generation.
1. A Father’s Wounds
a. Every man has been wounded somewhere in life. I am yet to meet a man who can honestly say he has no or has not had any wounds. Life is full battles and from our birth the devil begins to plot our demise and destruction.
i. Harsh word from and criticism from a parent.
ii. Rejection from a friend, spouse, family member.
iii. Disappointments come in a myriad of beautiful boxes.
iv. High schools first love and first broken heart by being rejected.
v. Teased by bigger and stronger students
vi. Peer pressure that causes you to do things you later regret—drug use, alcohol abuse, loss of virginity etc.
vii. Disappointments in college
viii. Failed marriage
ix. Loss of a child
x. Death of a parent
xi. Abuse from a boss
xii. These wounds happen all through life and they happen to the heart of a man. The problem is that most men are not taught how to get the heart healed. So they limp through life hurting.
1. When this occurs, we often do the worst thing, we run from God instead of to him.
2. We let the hurt or wound fester and it continues to become worse for us and those we love the most and who love us the most.
b. Symptoms of a wounded heart—they cause us to:
i. Withdraw
1. We medicate with alcohol, prescription drugs,
2. Behind blaring TVs, into the internet, newspapers
3. Golf, fishing, garage, etc
4. This is called becoming calloused so that you don’t feel future pain.
ii. Anger lash out like vicious dogs
1. Become abusive with our words
2. Become abusive with actions
iii. Criticize
1. We hurt those closes to us because our fathers never gave us the approval that we needed.
2. We act out what was demonstrated to us and upon us. We hated it then and now we hate ourselves when we do it to our children.
iv. Reject-even the precious children that God has given us.
c. A wounded heart is a heart that is filled with pain. This pain can come at different levels but in the end it is still pain. And the natural tendency to run from pain, medicate pain, or deny the pain. Here is where the battle lies for us in this sanctuary today: we have responsibility to the next generation so we have to choose to pour into them while at the same time getting ourselves healed from out pain. Ie. I found myself there in July of 2000 while on the Appalachian trail.
d. If a man cannot find his identity and get his heart healed he will settle for all the symptoms above and take on this false identity that God never intended him to have.
i. When he does this he has just determined to force his sons and daughters into the same distorted sense of identity he grew up with.
ii. If our own self image is faulty, then we will push our children into that same false image of what we think they should look or act like.
iii. And do not think for a moment that these people look like nervous wrecks coming out of pyche wards. These people can live in nice homes, drive polished cars and have all the appearance of success. Yet they are continually wounding those around them.
e. Most men are taught to suck it up, shake it off and go on. Play through the pain. That’s a fathers wounds. The next thing that happens is…
2. A Father’s Scars--Memories
a. Description of scars—here is what the scars look like
i. betrayal
ii. abandonment
iii. Rejection
iv. Unrelenting pressures of responsibilities
v. Fear
vi. In denial these men limp through life, always in pain, always limited, tormented by their inabilities.
b. Scars produce men
i. Who have a hard time saying, “I love you.” They fear rejection.
ii. Who think that showing to much affection is a sign of weakness
iii. Who are indecisive because life is to risky.
iv. Who are angry, discouraged, raging individuals
v. Who are fearful of becoming something other than they already are. They refuse to change because to lose that old identity would make them a person they would not know.
vi. Who still hear the voices of that ranting mother or haunting father declaring them to be weak, useless, and no good.
c. We have three options
i. Blame others for our pain and refuse to grow up/mature
ii. Ignore the pain and hope it gets better and therefore withdraw
iii. Find a way to get it healed.
3. A Father’s Healing
a. A man must face the demons that plague him before he can successfully serve the next generation.
b. The process of healing
i. Acknowledge you have pain—you can see it in the symptoms
ii. Locate the cause—dare to look inside and see where the pain first came
1. This is not to play the blame game
2. It is take note of why you react to life challenges the way you do. Once you know the source of you anger, withdrawal, etc. you can deal with them easier.
3. Identify the areas where you were wounded and list the symptoms.
iii. Remember where the wounds come from. You look back so you can better understand those who hurt you, forgive them and begin ministering to the next generation.
1. Remember that those who raised you did the best they could.
2. If you look closely you will see that they were wounded people too.
3. The whole reason we look inside and we look back is to understand why we think and do certain things.
iv. Look ahead--Begin treatment Heb 12:2 who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, NKJV
1. What was that joy? The joy came from the fact that his sacrifice was making a way for all humanity to get to the Father.
2. What is our joy? The joy is the fact that our sacrifice will make a way for our children and our children’s children to reach their destiny
3. This is where are hearts begin to turn toward our children, the next generation.
4. When the fathers heart turns toward his children then the second part of that verse begins to happen—the children’s hearts begin to turn.
a. Don’t think you children have to be there either in order for that passage to be fulfilled.
b. You child may be miles away but your turning to them opens something up in the spirit that will enable them to turn as well.
v. Look to God
1. He is the deliverer
2. Share your failures with a friend- James 5:16 Confess your trespassesto one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. NKJV
3. You must forgive the offender, forgive yourself
4. You must repent. Make a commitment to turn away from old patterns of anger, withdrawal, etc.
Conclusion:
· When our hearts are filled with security and trust in a dad who loves us, we stop living four our father’s approval, and begin to live from his approval. Out of our assurance of his unending love and commitment, we’re enabled to become the person we were created to be and, in the process, bring pleasure to our dad.
· Dad’s lets get honest today. Lets give our children the best part of us—our heart.
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