In honor of all who are fathers, I want to read this interesting observation about the words we use for fatherhood.
“If he’s wealthy and prominent and you stand in awe of him, call him, “Father.” If he sits in his shirt sleeves and suspenders at a ball game and picnic, call him, “Pop.” If he wheels the baby carriage and carries bundles meekly, call him “Papa” If he belongs to a literacy circle and writes cultured papers, call him “Papa.” If, however, he makes a pal of you when you are good and is too wise to let you pull the wool over his loving eyes when you are not: if moreover, you’re quite sure no other fellow you know has quite so fine a father, you may call him “Dad." (Source: Great Dads Seminar).
This episode examines seven ways dads and granddads can fill the love tanks of their children.
Have you ever thought about the love-bond that Jesus experienced with his heavenly father? Jesus was so aware of his father’s love that he said, “I abide in my father’s love" (John 15:10). The Greek word for abide was MENO, meaning, "I live in his love,” “I am always connected to his love,” “I constantly experience his love.” Or, in our day he might have said, “my love tank is constantly filled by" my heavenly father. That is what the Greek word, MENO means. On the night before Jesus died, his intimacy with the Father is laid bare. In his John 17 prayer, he speaks of their mutual delight in exalting the other. Later in agony in the Garden of Eden he cries out to the Father with the intimate name, Abba, a word for father framed from the lips of infants. What if we could fill the love tanks of our children and grandchildren the way Jesus’ father did? The truth is that we can pour that kind of love and care into them because that love is AGAPE love—and that is the love that the Holy Spirit has been poured out to enable us to give to others. The fruit of the spirit is love….
In the Great Dad’s seminar, the author, Bob Hamrin, cites a study of thousands of teens who were asked what single question they would most like their parents to answer. Questions like, “how did you know you were the right ones for each other” come to mind or “did you wait for sex until marriage?” But of all the questions that teens might have liked to ask their parents, there was one that over 50% said they would choose: Do you love me? Hamrin goes on to cite another detailed study that showed that “the single most influential factor of adolescent behavior is the person’s perception of being loved. Teens who perceive their parents as loving them are less prone to nearly every adolescent problem: promiscuity, peer pressure, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, academic problems.”
Every father and grandfather reading this blog loves his child. There is no doubt about that. But the question is, how certain is he that the way he is expressing his love to his child is being perceived by him or her. Former NFL player Dan Huff had a dad who both loved his kids and knew how to pour that love into their live tank. Looking back on his life, Huff said,
“When I got to the point one time of saying, ‘I’m going to rebel, I’m out of here, I can’t deal with my folks! They don’t know what they’re talking about” I remember thinking very significantly, ‘I can’t rebel against them—they love me too much!’ And I hated them for that! Now this may sound odd, but at that point I couldn’t rebel. I wasn’t an angel, but I couldn’t turn my back on that kind of love. I wanted to, and that’s what made me angry. If there had been any flaws in the way that they loved me or any hypocrisy on their part, any dishonesty or patronizing from them, then I think I would have found my hole and escaped through it. But I couldn’t find that hole. Let me close with one statement that says it all. My dad was the best man in his three sons’ weddings.”
THE COST OF FILLING THEIR LOVE TANK
Our children’s and grandchildren’s love tanks cannot be replenished without the sacrifice of our greatest treasure—our time. Here is, a perspective on making this sacrifice of time for fathers and grandfathers: Its source is unknown, but whoever it was understood life and how children are wired.
- A child cherishes a father’s presence above all else.
- You have a very short time in which to be the major influence in your children’s lives. (Probably only 2/7ths of your life).
- Little time = little influence.
- You can’t buy back lost time. (God’s grace can repair damage but the damage still happens)
- The world, deadlines, contracts and so forth will always be there—your children won’t. (I remember where I was sitting when it suddenly dawned on me that one day the church I was planting, Shady Grove, would replace me as its pastor—but nobody can replace me as the father to my children (and nowadays as one of two grandfathers).
- You can almost never spend too much time with your family. (How many men on their death beds say, "I wish I spend LESS time with my family?")
- The thief in American homes today is too much screen time.
- Whatever intimacy parents and teens enjoy is almost always cultivated before the age of twelve—rarely after it. (After a Great Dads seminar, a father repented of making his business success his god, sold his business, and began to devote more time to his family. But subsequently, he wrote Great Dad’s a sad letter, saying, “Please tell young dads my story. I have been trying very hard now to build back my relationship with my kids. But they are all teenagers and so engaged with their friends, that I am finding it nearly impossible. I waited too long to get this right.”)
- Out of quantity time come the quality moments.
- If you make time with children when they are young, there will be opportunities and even requests from them for time with you, when they are older.
7 WAYS TO FILL YOUR CHILD OR GRANDCHILD’S LOVE TANK
1. Give them individual attention. No relationship can grow apart from one-on-one conversation. That is why Christians have quiet times, and couples have date nights. That is almost certainly why David could write the Psalms—he was alone shepherding the flock of his father day and night—with just the Lord (and the sheep) to talk to! Other than investing time in my walk with God and weekly date nights with my wife (we did have 4 kids born to us in 3.5 years), the investment of hours I most value at this stage of my life looking back—was my weekly “dates” on Monday, my day off, with each of my kids. We often did things together too—to give my wonderful wife, who homeschooled them for several years, a break. But my relationship with each one grew through those breakfasts at McDonalds, biking, rollerblading, racquetball, throwing the frisbee or tossing the football, studying character qualities, or reading a special book chosen just for them.
2. Discover and celebrate each child’s uniqueness. The first of our tribe of five were twins, so I learned very early how much each child wants to be seen as his or her unique self. As a part of my parenting plan, I kept a page in my Day-Timer on each of my kids with their favorites (color, candy bar, etc.), spiritual gifts, strengths, heart passions, love language. Below that was a series of questions for helping each grow spiritually: 1) Goals: relationship with God, 2) Goals: character, 3) Goals: skills, 4) My present focus in helping him/her. (This page is part of the FOCUS Notebook that we sell in our online bookstore). Kids hate it when they are compared to each other by their parents. Moreover, the more we discover and celebrate each child’s uniqueness, the more we reinforce a biblical truth that is imperative for helping them develop a strong self-image. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:10). We have taken our kids through spiritual gifts inventories, the Myers Briggs personality test, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman and the Youth Exploratory Survey to help match our kids’ interests to a vocation. These inventories not only help a child or grandchild discover more of the unique and special person God created each one to be, but also helps celebrate their uniqueness.
3. Get into your child’s world. Feeling understood is one of the most powerful forces I know of to turn the heart of a follower towards his or her leader. We do that by going into our child or grandchild’s world. On one occasion, my son, Tim, had been sick awhile and had a library book from his middle school library checked out that needed to be returned. When I dropped it off at Rosa Parks MS library, the resource teacher said something that caught my attention. She remarked, “Do you know how rare it is to see a child’s father inside the school building?” Of course, making it to our kids’ games lets them know they are important—but just stopping by their world of sports practice, play practice, or where they work gets us into their world. The same is true of asking about their day, really listening to what they said, and remembering to ask the next day about how their test went. The cost of Jesus coming into our world to identify with us and accomplish our redemption is unfathomable. An eternal being, God the Son, imprisoned himself in a physical body, forever. His compassion for us knows no end because he came into our world (Hebrews 4:15). That makes us want to draw near to him (vs 16), especially when we are hurting. The same principle holds true for dads. Two of my most precious moments as a dad were walking silently with my son after the loss that ended his four-year high school football career, tears streaming down his face, the last player to walk from the field to the bus. The other was standing beside my daughter, holding her hand, her husband on the other side, as they lowered the body of her 21-year-old stepson into the ground. Moments like those are part of living. But being there at that moment for our loved ones to lean upon is the result of investing all along in our one-on-one relationship.
4. Look for practical ways to serve them. When Paul commands, in Galatians 5:13, Be servants to one another in love, he tells us that being served is being loved. Pitching in to help our kids with their chores makes them feel loved. I remember staying up very late with a daughter who was finishing her paper, so I could proofread it for her. I remember asking myself, “Am I enabling her to not managing her time well by helping to bail her out?” Perhaps I was. But we all find ourselves in the situation of having to stay up late to finish projects. And I am going to err on the side of expressing my love by helping her until I am convinced that I am re-enforcing bad behavior patterns. Dads and granddads provide practical help for our loved ones all the time; that is why so many guys have pickup trucks! But I wanted to remind you that serving in that way does pour love into their love tanks.
5. Giving them thoughtful gifts. As Jesus pointed out in his sermon on the mount, fathers love to give good gifts to their children. This can be overdone, but it sends the message 1) that you are thinking about them, 2) that you want to sacrifice some of your resources for them, 3) that your love for them means wanting them to enjoy the blessings of life. One morning, I was going over the five love languages with our kids. Trying to explain that based on how differently we are wired we may all answer differently, I asked, “which of these do you think would make you feel most loved—hugs, words of encouragement, quality time together, help with a hard project, or receiving a gift?” My son, Brian, shot up his hand and asked, “how big is the gift.” Getting Nintendo’s N64 would make Brian feel VERY loved.
6. Devoting yourself to praying for them. James reminds us, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (5:16). Our child or grandchild may live far away or for numerous reasons, we may be limited in our ability to build a close relationship with him or her. But we can still pour love into his life. Love is, by definition, “sacrificing whatever is necessary to enable another to thrive.” Our lives consist of the number of hours and minutes we have from the time we are born until we die. When I invest the hours of my life entrusted to me in praying for my kids’ and grandkids’ spiritual battles, I am giving a portion of that time for their benefit, to empower them to win some spiritual battles they will lose otherwise. "Greater love has no one than this," said Jesus, "that he lay down his life for his friend." The sacrifice of our time in prayer is a great measure of our sacrificial love for our children and grandchildren. I also believve there is a secondary benefit of such devotion to prayer for them. It turns our heart towards them, which I believe they sense. Wherever you invest your time-treasure, your heart follows.
7. Never forgeting how much they want and need your affirmation. Jesus lived for his father’s approval. He said things like, My food is to do the will of him who sent me (Jn 4:34), I always do the things that are PLEASING to my Father (Jn 8:29), Father, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do (Jn 17:4) and not my will but your will be done (Luke 22:42). And Jesus had heard the words he most wanted to hear, spoken audibly by the Father from heaven on three separate occasions, This is my beloved Son with whom I am WELL PLEASED (Matt 3:17, 12:18, 17:5). We need to often fill our child’s love tank with words of praise. This is true for every child or grandchild, but especially two categories of kids, 1) those whose love language is words of affirmation, 2) those who are second born kids and/or second born gender. Those who are second born have a natural deficit of confidence—they grew up NEVER being able to do ANYTHING as well as their older brother or sister. Children and grandchildren not only need praise from us; they are programed by God to be highly motivated to want our approval, which puts dads in a place of enormous responsibility to motivate them in the right direction.
Author, Keith Leenhouts, tells a moving story about the way our hearts are shaped to want the approval of a father. It is about football coach Lou Little at Georgetown University and a player he coached, named Jerry. Jerry wasn’t very skilled. He practiced all the time, getting in the game only occasionally. But in four years, this dedicated, loyal young man never missed a practice. The coach, deeply impressed with Jerry’s loyalty and dedication to the team, also marveled at his evident devotion to his father. Several times the coach had seen Jerry and his visiting father on the campus talking, visiting with one another, walking arm in arm around campus. But the coach had never met the father or talked with Jerry about him.
During Jerry’s senior year, and a few nights before the most important game of the season—a traditional rivalry like Army/Navy, Michigan/Ohio State, the coach heard a knock on his door. Opening the door, he saw Jerry, his face full of sadness. “Coach, my father just died,” Jerry murmured. “Is it okay if I miss practice a few days and go home?” The coach said he was very sorry to hear the news and of course it was alright for him to go home. As Jerry murmured a thank you and turned to leave, the coach added, “please don’t feel you have to return for the game this Saturday. You are certainly excused from that too.” The youth nodded and left.
But on Friday night, just hours before the big game, Jerry again stood in the coach’s doorway. Jerry said, “Coach I have a request of you. May I please start the game tomorrow?” The coach tried to dissuade the youth but finally consented. That night the coach tossed and turned. Why in the world had he said, “yes” to the youth? The opposing team was favored by 21 points. He needed his best players in the entire game. Suppose the opening kickoff came to Jerry and he fumbled. Obviously, he could not let the kid play. But…he had promised.
So, as the bands played and the crowds roared, Jerry stood at the goal line awaiting the opening kickoff. The coach thought to himself, “the ball probably won’t go to him anyway.” Then the coach would run few plays and take Jerry out of the game. That way, he wouldn’t have to worry about the crucial fumble, and he would have kept his promise.
“Oh no,” the coach thought, as he watched the ball float end over end right into Jerry’s arms. But instead of fumbling, Jerry, hugged the ball tightly, dodged three tacklers and ran to mid-field before being tackled. The coach had never seen Jerry run with such agility and power…and perhaps sensing something great, he had the quarterback call a running play for Jerry. He responded by breaking tackles for a 20-yard gain. A few plays later, Jerry carried the ball over the goal line. The opponents were stunned. Who in the world was this kid, anyway? He wasn’t in their scouting report, for up to that point, he had played a total of 3 minutes all season. Well, the coach left Jerry in on offense and defense (some guys played both ways back then) and Jerry did it all…tackling, intercepting, knocking down passes, blocking, and running. At the half the underdogs led by 14. The second half started. Jerry continued to inspire his team, and when the final whistle blew his team had won. In the locker room the coach sought Jerry out and found him sitting quietly, head in hands in a far corner. The coach asked, putting his arm around the boy, “Son, what happened out there? You’re not that fast. You’re not that quick. You’re not that talented?” Jerry looked at the coach and said softly, “You see coach, my father was blind. This was the first game he ever saw me play.”
Dads have such a motivational role in the lives of their kids!
Special Fathers’ Day Note: More and more organizations are declaring June National Fatherhood Month. What would happen around our nation and the world if every Christian business owner had a sign in his window celebrating National Fatherhood Month that said, “Every kid needs a great dad,” or worker had such a plaque on his desk. I believe most businesses would love to celebrate FATHERHOOD in June a lot more than they enjoy being pushed into celebrating Gay Pride.
For Further Prayerful Thought.
- What stands out to you about Jesus’ relationship with his heavenly father?
- Looking back at your relationship with your father, which of his actions made you feel most loved and close to him?
- Of the seven ways to fill a child’s love tank as father or grandfather, which ones stood out to you the most?
- Moving forward as a granddad, dad, or future dad, which of the seven do you most want to not forget?
