I do not want to preach in this letter. I am just going to speak truth from one man that has more life experience and context, to you, my sons. You are good men. You are all men that make me proud. I love you all and I pray for you all daily.
You were raised to be the men that you are. This was not accidental, nor was it easy. It was extremely hard work, that was done with no instruction manual, nor any indicators as to how it was really going where it counted. I could not see whether or not the lessons were taking root in your minds and souls. There were no road sign to warn of the twists and turns.
As hard as that journey was for you, I promise you that it was harder for us. You may not believe me now, but you will when you have your own sons. Nothing was more important or intense than raising you. I would trade nothing for that experience, it was the highlight and important journey of my life.
That is how much you mean, how important you are. Not how much you meant or how important you were. Those things of importance do not change or lessen over time. You change, but what makes you my most important journey will never change.
Over time, I lost the ability to be your balance or judge of right and wrong. During that period, as you grew into your manhood, I watched and I helped. You chose correctly most of the time, and knew it when you did not choose correctly. I remain amazed and proud of how you came into yourself, how you took that role gracefully.
As it stands, I am very proud of you. You have exceeded any expectation I could have had for you, and are working to the limits of what I dreamt for you. This much I know, and I am honored to be privy to it, you are beyond my imaginings. I do not fear for the future because of you.
I do offer counsel. Life is a fickle expedition. There are no guarantees and there are no shortcuts. Everything comes at a price, everything. So, now I want to help you with something that I have no control over. You are grown, self responsible and self accountable. At this point, I am just a friend, someone I hope you trust to be interested in your best interests.
At no time have I deluded myself that I am your father. I may be Dad, but I am not your father. Your father is my father, and father of every other person on the planet. The Lord in Heaven is your Father, and trusted me to be your parent. Why He had any trust in my abilities is a mystery to me, but I am so thankful for His gifts, so thankful for you.
You were raised to know the Lord, to know His house, and His ways. If you thought it was easy to do that, you are wrong. You were not always happy to be in the Lord's house, nor did you understand His ways or His rules. To this day, you question Him, you wonder about Him, and you struggle with Him.
What you do not know, is that we all do. None of us are beyond that point. Our Father is altogether mysterious, inscrutable and counter-intuitive. There is nothing within our Father, that is easy on our souls. For, our souls reflect a brokenness of the world that does not exist within our Father, and it is most visible when we look deeply within ourselves. In those moments, we stand at greatest contrast with our Father, and our wounds and weaknesses are most visible.
However, it is also those moments that the Father desires our attention most. Through His grace, we are magnified and made victorious. Through His love, we are comforted and made whole. Through His strength, we are made powerful and steadfast. Through His Word, we are informed and broadened.
We, as men, are not meant to be insensitive and unfeeling. We are built to know and honor and praise the Father. We are meant to be loving, caring and encouraging to those around us, and in particular to our families. We are meant to be a reflection of the Father in that regard.
We are to lead, to demonstrate and to exemplify the love of the Father to our family. We are to ensure that they are coming to know and grow in the Lord. We are to be a full half of a relationship, a vessel that contains and justifies faith, trust and respect. We were made to be that way, and it is our natural state, as we build a relationship with our Father and our partner.
So, bring your family to the Lord's House. Show them the way in the Word, and in the world. If you are unsure of your future, if you have fears of what will come, if you have doubts and worries, there is no other answer than the Lord. If your family does not see you in that kind of relationship with the Father, they do not see in you the things to build a relationship.
If you cannot understand why things feel out of control, why there are trust issues in your relationships, why your career is not progressing, why your finances are strained, and you cannot remember the last time you entered the Lord's House, you have lost the foundation of your raising. As a child, when things were most centered, when things were most comfortable, you lived under my wings, sheltered in my care. Now, you are beyond that, but not beyond your Father. He can, and will, provide those sheltering wings for your life.
You once trusted me without question. You did not even consider that I would not provide for you. You did not feel fear in my presence. You did not have doubt in your security, or your place of priority. Yet, as an adult, you feel those things missing. You have forgotten that throughout your childhood, I taught you that the Father was the source of all good. You have forgotten that you and I are equally children in the eyes of the Lord.
You think that you cannot get the sense of comfort and love in your life again. You only know that it is expected from you by your partner, and you do not know how you can provide what you do not feel. You have forgotten the Word, you have forgotten the comfort of the Lord, and you have forgotten His promises.
His Word will answer your questions and still your fears. His comfort will give you peace and confidence to be the father/husband/brother that you were created to be. His promise is that He will fill your life with love and blessing, if you just seek Him with all your heart, mind and soul.
You do not think you have time for the Lord, because you have forgotten He created time. You do not think that the Lord exists, like you learned as a child, because you have heard lies from the disenchanted and have taken them to heart. You do not seek the Lord, because you are afraid of what He will see when you find him.
All that I can tell you is that I have been through the same. I have even been mad, angry, furious at the Father. I have felt cheated by the Father. I have felt superior to those who believed in the Father. I have scoffed at those who needed the Father.
Then, the Father gave me you, and I realized that nothing that precious, nothing that beautiful, nothing that unlimited, nothing that wonderful, could have come from me. You were my proof of the existence of the Father, because I knew the limits of my own existence. Because of you, I was convicted and confirmed in my faith. I needed the Father, for I was not capable of being the parent you deserved without the Father.
I pray every day that it will not require the Father to give you a child, before you come back to Him. And, it is not enough simply to pray, or claim you believe. You now have a family, you have partners that look to you for guidance and leadership. These are the most precious women in the world to me, after my wife. I would lay my life down without hesitation for any of them. But, they are looking to you to lead them, to strengthen them in faith, to provide for them the covering and conviction that comes only from a man of God.
You have to lead them to the house of the Lord. You have to lead them in prayer. You have to lead them in worship. You have to lead them in faith. You are not more than them, but your part, as designed by the Father, is to lead. Never, ever, will you find more confidence, than when you show it to your wife. Never, ever, will you find more love, than when you show your love of the Lord to your wife. Never, ever, will you find more comfort, than when you comfort your wife.
You cannot know the full extent of what it means to be a man, until you are a man, as decreed by the Lord. When you forsake all others, for the sake of your wife, agree to cherish and honor her, work to provide for her, love her and lead her, you begin to understand the true purpose you have been created to fulfill. And, sons, if you are living with her, she is your wife. You were raised to know that living with a woman, is a pledge to be her husband, regardless of the license and paperwork.
The Lord will bless you, fulfill you and increase you, if you are true to Him, and true to your wife. It does not require more than to trust in the Lord, and trust in her. That does not mean there will not be struggles and difficulties. But, if you live in the trust of the Lord, and the trust of your wife, the struggles and difficulties are challenges surmounted together and the beginning of limitless blessings.
I am not relaying this, expecting that tomorrow, you will be beside me as I attend worship with my wife and partner in love of the Lord. But, I know that the Lord has already planted Himself in your soul. I am only telling you that I know you are feeling the stress and confusion that accompanies coming into manhood. I know that you feel obligations, feel responsibilities, feel requirements. I know that you are not sure how it will work out, what you are going to do about it. And, I know that the Lord is using those things, and those concerns to speak to you.
He is not demanding of you, nor am I. He does not want your false praise or faked love, nor do I. He wants to reach into your life, change you, strengthen you and comfort you, so that you can do those things to your family. Without Him in your life, it is not really a full life. And, until you have experienced a full life, you do not know how incredibly lacking your life is.
You are good men, I love you all. I know that you are dedicated, hard working, concerned, and loving. I know that you are doing the absolute best that you can by these young women I love. But, I also know that you cannot do right by these women, until you are right with the Father and a man of God. That does not mean perfect, or sinless, or never doubting, or always correct. That does not mean in control, overbearing or prideful.
But, God is found everywhere, loves all, and is best worshipped among other believers. To paraphrase the Word, test me in this. Take those beautiful young women you love to church, encourage them in faith, pray with them passionately, stengthen each others faith, study the Word together, and seek the plan that the Lord has for you together. Try that, and tell me if it does not immediately improve your life, your outlook and your sense of ease.
The Lord's peace comes from living for the Lord, in the Lord's design, with trust in the Lord. Doing that with your wife is so powerful that it cannot be explained in words. I cannot tell you exactly how it changes you, because it is tied up in the mystery of the Lord, and infused with His power. I can tell you, honestly, and with all the sincerity I possess, that nothing has ever made me feel more of a man, or more complete, than in sharing in a true relationship with the Lord, with a woman I love.
It has magnified and grown both of us. It has given us courage, healing, peace, discernment, depth, knowledge, faith, perseverance, certainty, and hope. It is the most precious thing that a human will know on this planet before the coming of Jesus. I do not know what the experience is like for a woman, but what she has shared with me tells me it is just as important and precious to her as it is to me.
If you want to be the man you should be, and encourage your wife to be all the woman that she can be, it is not a complicated process. You have only to ask her to go with you, to seek the Lord, and to build a life of faith and obedience together. You then get the experience that is what life is all about, the growth of a true relationship, under the guidance of the Lord.
You are loved, by me and the Lord. Nothing will ever change that, nothing will ever lessen that. Getting comfortable with the idea that the Lord could love you, despite what you know yourself to be, is hard. I am not sure I am completely through that. Getting comfortable with the idea that God created all this, and it is not some accident that is proof of the laws of large random numbers or from comets, is hard. I am sure that we owe all we are to God, nothing as incredible as you could be a random generation of accidental circumstances.
Take your role as a son of God, as a leader in your family, try. Test me in this, and see if your life, and the life of your wife, is not completely changed, and for the better within 6 months. Regardless, I will still love you. And regardless, God will always love you beyond your imagining. But, it has weighed heavily on me. And I have seen the struggle, doubt and stress that impacts your lives so severely. There is peace and rest to be found.
I pray every night for each one of you, and I ask that you do the same for me. Before long, I will rely on you all, more than I care to think about. That is the way of this world. I don't want you to struggle and strive, as I did for so long. See what looks back at you in the mirror, and tell me you cannot see God there, as you are made in his image.
I love each one of you, and I ask that you do the same for me. Nothing is as strengthening and healing as showing love to someone else. Take on your role as the leaders of your family, trust in the comfort of the Lord, and enjoy the blessings that come from a life lived in the Lord. It is the key to success and to peace and to love. Nothing else you have done or will do, will bring you peace and love that lasts.
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