Things Fathers Do

By Paul Manwaring

This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9 NIV). Fathers do things. The Father so loved us that He did something about it—He sent His Son. God has a plan to reveal Himself to the world through fathers and mothers. It is our greatest privilege to follow the example of a perfect Father, in turn, revealing Him to our sons and daughters and leaving a legacy that continues to grow for generations to come. It is time for us to step into our roles as mothers and fathers, demonstrating to the world the things fathers do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781916061217

Book preview

1. REVEAL THE FATHER

You are going to be a father. These words are often said at the very start of the journey of fatherhood. The next nine months are filled with appointments, announcements, and celebrations, a nursery to prepare, and in the midst of all of this activity and excitement, great personal change is also about to take place. A woman becomes a mother, a man becomes a father—no application required, no qualification needed. With the arrival of children comes changes in roles and responsibilities, identity shifts, and a whole new set of emotions and experiences. This almost-universal change carries with it the opportunity to paint a picture of fatherhood: not just a picture of who you want to be as a father, but also the image of the Heavenly Father you hope to imitate.

There are many paths that lead to the opportunity of fatherhood. Some choose marriage, and then eventually have natural children. Others are launched into being fathers and mothers through adoption, fostering, and loss or divorce that results in new marriages and blended families coming together. Many of these situations don’t come with a period of preparation and meditation on what it might mean to be a parent. In our culture, there is also an ever-increasing opportunity to become a spiritual parent. The traditional family is certainly not the only venue in which fathers are needed.

Whether you are a first-time parent, a spiritual father or mother, or you have been a parent for many years, fatherhood is in equal parts our greatest opportunity and our greatest challenge. The opportunity it presents us, both as fathers and mothers, is that of revealing to the world the greatest father of all: our Father in heaven.

So I kneel humbly in awe before the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect Father of every father and child in heaven and on the earth. (Ephesians 3:14-15 TPT)

It is this perfect Father who we are privileged to share with the world. We reveal the Father in the things that we say and in the way that we do things—a process which actually begins at birth. At the first sight of a newborn baby, we usually comment on how much he or she looks like the mother or father. As a society, we are not at all surprised by the way offspring— ourselves included—carry similar physical attributes to their fathers and mothers, siblings, or even grandparents. Habits, passions, and behaviors can also be passed on—sometimes without the generations ever meeting—a truth that is celebrated as the way things should be. My two sons are a wonderful example. Neither of them met their paternal or maternal grandfathers, and yet both of them reveal characteristics of these two men. Their love for music, photography, sport, and good food and coffee is evidence of this generational tie. I wish they could have met. My eldest son, in particular, has taken his grandfather’s love and talent for music to another level, one of the greatest encouragements of my life.

We grow up aware that we remind people of our ancestors. Now, imagine the spiritual equivalent. We were designed at creation in the image of God and commissioned just after to reproduce; to go forth and multiply. We were made to reproduce a design that does not merely multiply in a random way but actually replicates through DNA. We not only take on the character, habits, and looks of our parents but also of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in whose image we were created. What if, from the moment of our birth, people leaned over our crib and began the comments, Look at the way he smiles, that’s just like the Father? What if, as we grew up, everyone who met us saw and declared that we display the Father’s nature, power, and attributes (Romans 1:20)? If people were constantly reminding us of the similarity between us and our Heavenly Father, imagine what effect that would have on our lives. We may actually believe it ourselves.

It should, therefore, be no surprise that our assignment is to reveal the Father. Genesis 1:26 reads, Let Us make man in Our image (NKJV). Our assignment was set at creation: growing up to manifest the looks, behavior, and attributes of the Father. We were made in His image and assigned to reproduce that image. We should embrace this from birth, aspiring to this task before we have endured negative advice and examples from which we will need to recover.

On first hearing it, the assignment to reveal the Father might seem too lofty a goal. We are not God, but we are to be God-like, not in ruling over people, but in being imitators of Him (Galatians 5:1). An historically false perception that God is controlling contributes to a resistance to our assignment, as well as a fear of being prideful and arrogant. I remember the first time I stood with a microphone and said that our assignment, like Christ’s, is to declare that, If you have seen me, then you have seen the Father (John 14:9). Is it legal? I could hear myself asking. And it is, because the truth in scripture is there for all to see.

My friend Leif Hetland shares this profound truth: when Adam was created, the first face he saw was the Father, the first breath he felt was the Father’s, and the first voice he heard was his Father’s. As the human race began, so it was meant to continue. Yet, we are more familiar with the physical than we are the spiritual counterpart. The first Adam lost the intimacy of that first contact with the Father, and we have continued to stray from it. The second Adam, Jesus, made that relationship possible again. All of us, through Jesus, are given the privilege of being born again, and that leads us to our great assignment. Being born again enables us to see the face of the Father, hear the voice of the Father, and feel the breath of the Father, so that we can reveal who the Father is.

Several years ago, my son called me from England during his summer holiday. He was very excited because he had been involved in some deliverance ministry and had led a praise party which turned into an opportunity to spiritually re-dig the wells of revival of an historic denomination. The story was immensely encouraging, but it was what he said at the end which changed me. As he finished telling me about his experience, he said, When I did that, I felt like you, Dad. My son did something he was proud of and he felt like me. It must be every dad’s dream to hear those words. I realized that day that we have a Heavenly Father who is also waiting for His kids to say those very words. When I laid hands on the sick (saw breakthrough, fed the poor), I felt like you, Dad.

When it comes to things fathers do, everything we do has the potential to model the essential role of the Father in another’s life. The responsibility for that starts with our natural children as we become the tutor who will imprint fatherhood on the soft clay of a child’s life and psyche. As fathers, we are constantly tutoring our children in the ways a father looks and behaves. The power of this role is very real. The question is, will we use that power well or not? We are to model the Heavenly Father to our children so that when they see us, they also see Him.

The more that our experiences reveal the Father to us, the more we will be able to reveal the Father to those around us.

The healthier our experience of fatherhood, the healthier we become. This is the sequence in which we are all divinely involved:

•We are made in the image of God

•We are restored in relationship with