Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

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Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2007

Grace Church of Burlington June 17, 2007 “You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.”  Robert Frost                                                                                                                                     Most of us know the high cost that there can be for a child growing up in a fatherless home. 63% of youth suicides, 90% of all homeless and runaway children, 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders, 71% of all high school dropouts and 85% of all youths in prisons grew up in fatherless homes.  But because there are not hard numbers and statistics we don’t know the amount of men who suffer throughout adulthood because of some type of issue with their father. It’s been labeled as “father hunger”, an unconscious longing for affirmation and limits from male authority figures.  The most common words used by those who suffer from it describe their relationships with their fathers are “absence,” “sadness” and “I don’t know him.”    While I’ve found adult women will grieve over a wayward child, many men are grieving over the lack of a relationship with their father. They go through life wounded because of a weak relationship with Dad.    Most children learn very quickly what would make their fathers angry but they don’t usually know the deep desires and dreams of their hearts, much less their loneliness and hurt. They don’t know their fathers’ vulnerable side.  That vacuum creates an emptiness particularly in the hearts of sons. For far too many, Dad is an unnameable mystery, which only calls forth fear, doubt and sometimes endless rebellion.    A Catholic priest told of a nun who worked in a men's prison. One day a prisoner asked her to buy him a Mother's Day card for his mother. She did and the word traveled like wildfire around the prison. Deluged with requests, she called Hallmark Cards, who obliged with huge boxes of Mother's Day cards as a donation. The warden arranged for each inmate to draw a number, and they lined up through the cell blocks to get their cards.  Weeks later, the nun was looking ahead on her calendar, and decided to call Hallmark again and ask for as many Father's Day cards, in order to avoid another rush. As Father's Day approached, the warden announced free cards were again available at the chapel. To the nun's surprise, not a single prisoner ever asked her for a Father's Day card.    The father-wound is most often a wound of absence--emotional as well as physical. As such, it's harder to recognize than others. You can kill a living organism in two ways. With a plant, for example, you can cut it down, smash it, or beat it up. Or, you can just leave it alone and not water it. Life requires input. Abandonment kills. One 32-year-old magazine editor, whose father had died two years earlier, put it this way: “I'm still waiting for my father to talk to me about sex and success, money and marriage, religion and raising kids. The shame of it is, I don't know a man my age who doesn't feel like he's navigating his life without a map.”    A real man is a man who's real. He walks in the truth, even when it costs him his image of being in control. He doesn't want to hide his wound; he wants to heal it. He wants to face and overcome his inadequacies, so he can fulfill his calling as a husband, father, worker, and citizen. He's willing to confess, "I don't need a beer, my boss' approval, a sexual encounter, a gun, a race to hate, or a million dollars. I need a father!" Until a man faces this deadly wound, he'll never seek healing. To break this crippling generational cycle of shame and destruction, at least three steps are necessary.    1) A man must forgive his father for wounding him. Often this happens as the man dares to see the awful brokenness in his dad which fueled the wounding. A boy cries from his father's wound; dad hurts you, and you cry. But a real man cries for his father's wounds, feeling his dad's pain instead of stuffing it and acting out inappropriately.    2) A man must realize that in his Heavenly Father he has all the father he will ever need. God is everything that we could ever desire in a Dad. It’s as we dig into His Word, draw near to Him and let Him fill all of the empty places in our souls that we will have true healing. Only Jesus can heal the father-wound, because only He can overcome our sin-nature and restore the relationship with the true and present Father of us all (John 14:6-14) and only the dignity of sonship can overcome the shame of abandonment (Rom. 8:14-16, Ps. 27:10). We don’t need a support group; we need the Father, Abba Father. And He’s willing and longing to heal our deepest wounds.    3) A man must realize that a major part of the healing process is to father his own children and mentor others as God has fathered him. That’s what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 1 when he told us to comfort others as we ourselves have been comforted by God. In our  self-absorbed world we are taught that we need to look out for number one, to make sure that we take care of ourselves. But God’s Word tells us the truth. The only way to grow, the only way to heal is to give and care for others. It’s to stop just thinking of ourselves and what we feel we have suffered. It’s selfless giving and ministry and as we do, our own healing and growth is multiplied. Men, I’m not sure what your relationship with your biological father was like but I do know what your relationship with your Heavenly Father can be like. He wants to be to you all the Father that you will ever need. That woundedness can be healed but you must trust Him and let Him.