Good Morning Peeps! How are you doing this Thursday morning, good I hope? Are you having a good work week so far, I sure hope so? Have a good and very Blessed day today! - May God Bless You and Yours In 2018 and Beyond!!! - “Are YOU 100% sure, that you are Saved and headed to Heaven when you die? Are you sure YOUR name IS written in the Heavenly “Book of Life?” Is there absolutely not a shadow of a doubt in your mind, that your Salvation is already secured and you’re just waiting on the good Lord to call you home to be with Him? If the answer is “No, Not Sure, I Think So, Maybe, or Probably, then you need to get busy right now working on fixing that. You need to be totally sure where your Soul will spend eternity!” And AMEN goes right here….
***Remember, if you haven’t purchased it already, my newly published book of Devotionals “The Third Eye Perspective” is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Xulon Press in Paperback, Hardback, also on EBook. Thank you!
#SalvationOnlyComesThruJesusChrist
“This is the day that the Lord has made! I will rejoice and be glad in it!”
The Third Eye Perspective:
By Carlos C. Brown
Thought For Today – “I Have A Father Who Can…”
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ, how many of you by a show of virtual hands raised, grew up with a strong fatherly presence in your life? Now let me make it clear, that this is not a “lets bash my babydeddy, or child’s biological donor, etc…” devotional. I am not going in that direction in anyway form or fashion. My question is just what I asked, “how many of my loyal followers grew up with a strong fatherly presence?” Hmmmmm, I see quite a few hands up over on the right side, as well as a good number of hands in the middle and on the left side too, and a whole bunch up in the balcony levels! The reason I asked that question, was to make a point that when a young child doesn’t have a strong fatherly presence growing up, it will effect that child for the rest of their lives, in one way or another. I received this message while I was listening to Kurt Franklin’s gospel XM satellite radio station, it is called “I Have A Father Who Can.” The more I listened to that song, the more it kept “tugging” at me as if to say, “Hey you need to do something with this song title in a devotional.” With that being said, it is with this train of thought or line of thinking, that it was placed on my heart this morning to talk about, “I Have A Father Who Can.” And AMEN goes right here! In this song it speaks about impossible things that man cannot do, like “make a world and hold it in my hands, or make the lightening flash across the land, or take a piece of clay and mold it into a man, BUT I have a father, I have a father who can.” I want to focus on God’s ability take a missing much needed positive influence (such as a Fatherly one) of a young child, and supplant that much needed positive influence later on in an adults person’s life. I myself was not granted the privilege of growing up with my biological father, he was killed in an accident while working on his off day at his job, when I was only a year and a half old. To say that it affected or impacted me negatively, would be the biggest understatement ever. There are so many moments that I feel I was cheated out of, that most other boys and even girls too have gotten to experience. In my case, me breaking my first horse, scoring my first basket, or touchdown, teaching me how to hunt, fish, and especially how to be a good and godly man like he was. I look back over all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, and I could accredit at least 75-80% of them to the fact that his absence directly affected some of my early decision making ability. The other 20-25% was just being young and naïve like all other people.
I know a lot of people who like myself, did not have the pleasure and privilege of growing up with their fathers either. It is strange how it effects people in different ways. For me, it made me so envious of those who did, that it drove me to strive to be the best father I could be for my son Dawson. Despite how much it looks like I aced that challenge up to this point, I actually feel like a failure to an extent in a lot of ways. I say that, because Dawson makes me look way better as a father than I feel I really am. I think it is just safe to say, that God blessed his mother and I with a child who tries really hard to be a very good child, with very little input or effort from either of us parents. Yes, I did try my best to shape and mold him into what he has turned out to be so far, but most of it is just a personal desire of his to do right on his own. I look at other people I know personally, who was robbed of that same privilege of having grown up with their fathers in their lives, and the negative impact it has had on their lives is astronomical. They struggle pretty hard to set positive examples for their children, and they seem to expect them to magically wake up one day and have life all figured out by themselves. A lot of the young and even older men are trainwrecks waiting to happen, in that they were never taught the things that only a father or father figure could teach them. The most important thing being simply, “how to be a man real man.” There are men (young and old) who think it is okay to live at home with their parents way after the time when they should be out on their own. There are also some who won’t (not can’t but won’t) keep a job, even if their lives depended on it. Ironically, a young girl and even an older woman will experience a totally different negative effect if they were not raised by a strong fatherly influence in the early adolescence years of their lives. They will seek everything they feel they are missing from their biological fathers much needed influence, in a number of men that will come and go in their lives, only to either never realize, or realize it too late, that what they were searching for in those men, could only be found in Christ Jesus. I know for me, it took me way into my late twenties to realize, that although I did have some good and very positive father figure type of role models (my Grandfather, Uncles, and even some older male cousins) in my life growing up, it is still not quite the same as the real deal. That is not a knock on them in anyway, I thank God for these men everyday! However, the longing I still feel even to this day, of wishing I would have had more time with my biological father hasn’t faded nor has it ever left me. Anyone who has grown up without their biological father in their lives will probably never admit it, but it left a huge void in their lives and heart. A void that a lot of, maybe most will search the rest of their natural lives searching for “something” or “someone” to fill that empty space or feeling.
There are certain mistakes that I made and had to learn from, that I feel could have been prevented, had I had my biological father around long enough to teach me about. Things that I still struggle with as I get older, that I feel could have been resolved early on had I had him around to point me in the right direction. When I found out I was going to be a father myself, it was a very intimidating feeling. Like most men, when it happens unexpectedly, there is that fear that you are not ready, not prepared, nor qualified to be a father in the first place. And then there’s that feeling that I can only associate with the Country son by Brad Paisley, “If he’s anything like me.” LOL! YIKES! My son Dawson will tell you, I am always encouraging him to be BETTER than me and not try to be “like” me. In some ways, he already has accomplished that feat, while in others he has a long way to go. Besides the positive influences that I was blessed with from my Grandfather, Uncles, and Cousins I spoke of earlier, I knew I had to find something more in the form of a positive influence to help me accomplish raising my son right. And I can remember it like it happened yesterday, I was sitting in Church one Sunday, and the Pastor started doing his alter call (the point in the services where the doors of the Church are opened for anyone who might want to be saved, or have their relationship with God renewed, or simply be Prayed over) and he said the following words, “God is a mother for the motherless, a father for the fatherless, a friend for the friendless, a Savior for the lost, and a bright Light for those wandering around in darkness.” Don’t ask me why, but those words stuck with me and I took that as a nudging from God to come to Him for guidance on this new journey of fatherhood, and to embrace it. Now, I want to clearly state, that there are some POWERFULLY positive influential step-fathers raising children that they did not biologically father. It takes a very special type of man to be willing to raise another man’s child/children! I don’t want that fact to get lost in the translation of my message. I salute any man who is either raising another man’s children, or involved with a woman he’s planning to marry at some point who has children, that he now considers to be his own. I personally would and have welcomed that challenge of being a father figure to someone else’s kids. I feel like every kid I have had the pleasure of coaching over the years recently in a way, are like my own kids. I treated them that way, and I always will. The point of this message today, is to encourage anyone who might be feeling like they are struggling with empty holes in their heart, or who might be feeling lost, inadequate for one reason or another, or are just downright having a hard time finding a happy place in their lives as parents or an individual. God is the only one who can fill that void in your heart, NOTHING else can! Trust in the Lord, turn it over to the Lord, take it to the Lord, or whatever you have to do to get the issue you are dealing with in HIS hands! Can I leave you with a question to ponder today if I may?
“Did you know that you have a Heavenly Father who can do ANYTHING He sets His mind to do except FAIL?”
“Today, choose to “Ride or Die” with Jesus Christ! Afterall, isn’t that exactly what He did for us on the Cross?”
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