The Warrior

For the past 3 weeks, Life Church has been studying a series called The Warrior. This series mainly focuses on men, but also touches women as well. This past weekend, Craig spoke on The Wounded Warrior and the relationship between a father and his son. It was very interesting to me as I listened to Craig preach and reference verses from the bible. I've never really looked at our relationship with our human father, and how it relates to our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Two things that really hit me...

(God) will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers...Malachi 4:6

The Warrior who is starved for his/her father's approval is sentenced to a prison of performance.

Brett and I have had many conversations lately about the loss I felt after I quit my job. Now I realize it was because I put my worth in what I do, instead of who I am. But the interesting thing about the topic on Sunday is we had just had a talk with the kids Thursday evening about this very subject.

With Pierce on Brett's lap and Sierra on mine, Brett asked Sierra, why she thinks we (her parents) love her? She responded with, "because I'm smart." Pierce raised his hand and said, "because I am your son and she is your daughter." I've had the feeling for a long time that Sierra puts a lot of her worth in what she does. This explains why the first thing she always tells us is how good she does in math, how smart she is, and her very competitive nature. We have been concerned about that so we decided to have a family meeting and discuss it. Bingo...she said just what we were thinking. We explained to the kids that no matter what they do, we will never love them any less. If they do something bad, or make a bad grade in school, we will be disappointed, and there may even be consequences, but we won't love them any less. But on the other hand, if they do well in school, finish first in rocket math, we won't love them any more than we already do. They can not earn our love through the things they do. He told them what is important is their character. How they treat each other, and how they treat other people. We related it to our Heavenly Father...and how he loves us no matter what we do. He is disappointed when we do bad, but he still loves us. They were both very talkative, asking questions (especially Pierce :), but also I think very enlightened. I actually think a lot of pressure was lifted from Sierra. The next morning as we were driving to school she told me she thought it was really neat what daddy said to her last night.

Funny thing was, this was the exact sermon Craig preached Sunday at church. It was a little eerie that some of the things he said were almost word-for-word what Brett said to the kids Thursday evening.

From our talk notes:
* I believe in you.
* I am proud of you.
* No matter what, I'll ALWAYS love you.

And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Matthew 3:17

And last - The Warrior's Richest Compliment or Most Painful Insult
* You are just like your Father.

We discussed this after church and Brett feels very blessed to have a humanly father that was/is a great role model. That relationship has prepared him to be a father, and also has prepared him for his relationship with his Heavenly Father.

As for our four children...I can honestly say I'm not sure they could have a better role model than Brett. He has a good heart and wants only the best for them. Is he perfect? No. And he would be the first to tell you that. Does he care enough to sit his children down and have this conversation? Absolutely! It was one of those great teaching moments that you will never forget. And you can only hope they won't either.

KB