A son looks to dad and says, “I want to be like my dad.” If any of you are dads, you know that. You just see that natural admiration. They follow you around, the want to emulate your actions and activities. They’re out braggin’ in the backyard, ‘my dad can beat up your dad.’ ’My dad can run faster than your dad.’
They think of you as the super-human. If a dad builds on that, and blesses his son, then his son goes out in life steadied. His son has weight, rather than weightlessness in his soul. His son has advantages other sons don’t have. On the other hand, if dad squanders that, and loses that advantage, one day – because the son will try not to recognize that in some of his formative years – there comes a day when the son wakes up and realizes he hasn’t been blessed, he’s been wounded and he begins to hurt.
The Absent Father Wound
Yesterday, we defined a wound generally. We said it was “an unresolved issue whose lack of closure adversely impacts in some way the quality of a man’s life now.” We unpacked some of those wounds in a general way. What I want to do now is give you the definition of the Absent Father Wound. and it’s this: It’s an ongoing emotional, social or spiritual deficit that’s ordinarily met in a healthy relationship with dad that now must be overcome by other means.
It’s an emotional deficit. That is, there was not a heart connection with dad. It was a social deficit. There was not companionship with dad. There was a spiritual deficit. There was no substantive connection of direction from dad.
Three words (or phrases) in remembering Dad
My question for us today is: How do you remember your father?
If I asked you to give me three words – or maybe 3 phrases that kind of summed up your relationship with your dad, what would it be? What would come to your mind? What would be the first things to rise to the surface? Would they be good memories, or no memories? Would they be wonderful, kind of warm feelings, or would they be hard feelings? You know, it seems like when you ask that question, there’s this great divide that takes place.
Guys fall on either one side or the other. There are some guys that, in asking that question, ‘how do you remember your dad?’ The first thing that came to your mind was that warm hug, or that instruction dad gave you; and you have great, great memories of dad. So a lot of things that we’ll talk about today on the Absent Father Wound, you won’t be able to relate to, but it will help you relate to other men who didn’t have a dad. If you’ve had those warm memories, then one of the things I would encourage you to do today is at some point, you ought to honor your dad by writing him a tribute. Maybe it’s for Birthday or Fathers’ Day or maybe it’s at Christmas, or maybe it’s at a special anniversary of some kind. It would be wonderful to sit down and just craft out a document, in writing, between you and your dad of what he really has meant to your life, and then present it to him. Have it framed, or something like that, and give it to him. It will be an incredible gift that he’ll never forget from you.
On the other hand there are some of us that would find that exercise extremely difficult. We may still need to do it, but it would be difficult, because we fall on the other side.
What came to the surface for us were things that we missed, that we wanted, but never received. You’re going to sum up your relationship with your dad in 3 words or phrases.
How do you remember your dad? Did you know it’s important to go there? It’s a starting place for manhood – it is in remembering dad.
Results of the Absent Father Wound
Well, if you look back into your life and what you discover is a wound, we need to talk about the effects of the Absent Father Wound. I want to give you four things in men that indicate they have the wound.
1️⃣ Anger and pain. Boys that grew up to be men without dad feel anger and they’re not sure why. They feel pain. Did you know the Bible speaks clearly to that? It shows the connection between a man’s anger and his dad. Two verses in particular point this out.
Ephesians 6:4. It says to dads: “And dads, do not provoke your children to anger, (Isn’t that interesting?) but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Now it’s talking about giving them life direction; filling up their soul with substance, but it makes an interesting corollary there. It says if you don’t do that, then what you are filling the soul of that child with is anger. Their life will be frustrated by their incompetence and their sense of inadequacy - their inability to deal with life in a way that makes them successful. So you can give them instruction, or you can give them anger. It’s your choice.
Colossians 3:21. It says: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.”
In other words, ‘fathers, don’t wear your children out, that they may lose heart.’ That’s what happens to a child growing up in a fatherless home. They lose heart with life. They don’t feel like they’re any good. They don’t feel like they’re really going anywhere. And so they turn in on themselves, and that makes them mad. Or that takes the spirit out of them; one or the other. Anger or pain.
Without a dad, a son’s life has a vacuum in it and part of what fills that vacuum is rage. It’s the kind of rage that he doesn’t fully understand, but he goes out into life with it. He wants to blame somebody for it, but he’s not sure who to blame and he hurts a lot of people. That comes from the Absent Father Wound.
2️⃣Extreme behaviors, specifically addictions or obsessions. Anger is one way a son expresses that pain, but addictions is a way you suppress the pain. You numb out, so when you have this big hole in your heart, you don’t know what to do with it; that should have been filled by a parent who loved you and cared for you, then it’s easy to fall subject to things like drugs and alcohol. Also pornography and sex – because all those are ways of numbing a pain that a man doesn’t understand.
That’s
why it’s so important in the First Step of Manhood to Look Back, because
sometimes we find ourselves locked into behaviors and addictions we don’t
understand. If we could find the root – if we could go back and finally
unlock the last door – what would be there would be the fact that we grew up alone.
Part of the hurt – and the frustration
that begins to mount through the years because of that, becomes so
painful that rather than getting mad at everybody, we decided another
alternative was just to numb out.
So we partied, but part of the partying was to numb out the pain. Or we
took drugs; or we got on the internet and lived in a dream world – a dream world of pornography
where we can engage in a pleasurable
way someone else, but without commitments – without any investment. It’s a
narcotic to feel good for the moment.
Sometimes we fall into “obsessive behaviors” because of an unhealthy relationship with dad. It’s a way of resolving the pain - but it really doesn’t. We are driven to win dad’s approval even after we’ve left home or we are going to show dad that ‘I’m good enough; so he will notice me.’ So we become the workaholic or we become achievement-crazy. We become the wild man. Do some thing to get dad to notice me - to make dad proud of me - to make dad love me. Those are obsessive behaviors. We’re not really in contact with why we’re driven, but way back at the root, there is a desire to be noticed and affirmed - an affirmation we never received. So participate in extreme behaviors or obsessions.
3️⃣An inner sense of lostness – or incompleteness. Maybe we’re not involved in those kind of extreme expressions, but inside, we just feel weightless, lost; there’s something missing. There’s a missing piece and we feel it. That’s how a lot of men feel and they don’t know why.
4️⃣Homosexuality. Dr. Elizabeth Moberly of Oxford University. In her study on homosexuality she concluded that homosexuality, for the most part, in her words – and I quote:
“It is a fracture of the relationship with the parent of the same sex. Homosexuality then becomes at an adult level a vain, eroticized attempt to recover from that fracture.”
It creates this fissure -- this psychic fissure -- that you want to recover from, but can’t. Or at least, it’s incredibly difficult, but that’s part of the Absent Father Wound.
What Every Son Needs
So what is it that every son wants and needs from his father?
1️⃣ Time together – just time together – experiences that build lifelong positive memories, because that’s like putting weight into a son’s soul that steadies him for life. He can’t drift when he’s steadied because of these positive, life-long memories. When you look back over your life, it’s memories that are the markers of life, and give weight to life. It’s not necessarily taking them to play for a basketball team, or football team – I mean it’s great to have them involved in sports – but what I’m talking about is going out on a Sunday afternoon and playing football with him. and in that experience there’s something that’s just pure joy that takes place.
It’s going out – just taking a walk together; joking, Hiking a mountain together, or taking a special trip together. ‘Just me and Dad.’ That’s what he’s thinking. ‘Just me and Dad.’ And it’s fun! You can build all kinds of imagination into that, but what you’re really building is lifelong memories with a father that you want and desperately need to connect with. And that’s what a son wants from you, dad. He doesn’t just want things – he wants you -- time together with you, because ultimately good fathering is these wonderful memories together.
2️⃣ Life skills. Proverbs 22:6. says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” It’s speaking of training up a child in the way he should go. That’s adequacy. When he is old, he will not depart from it. You know why he won’t depart from it? Because it will make sense! He’ll win in life. He won’t be standing around when the hood’s up, looking at the motor, wondering what it is. He’ll know where the oil stick is and he’ll know how to measure the oil. He’ll know how to check his tires; he’ll know how to tie his tie. We won’t be standing there with the guys in the dorm saying, “could you help me tie my tie?” and everybody laughing at him.
He’ll know how to write out a check and keep up with his account. He’ll know how to set his own alarm and get up for himself. He’ll know how to keep his room clean. He’ll know what to do when he and his date walk up to the door. He’ll know what they need to do when they gather around the dinner table when she goes to sit down. He’ll know how to share his heart. He won’t feel like a fool in life, because you’ve trained him up in the way he should go.
That verse also speaks to the issue of being sensitive to your child’s bent. It says, “train up a child according to his bent,” because every child has a certain bent. So the parent recognizes what that bent is. He doesn’t try to make an artist an athlete. He honors his ability to be an artist. Or the son whose really good at science and he never was. He honors that and says, “let me help you craft a path that will help you maximize that gifting that you have.” That’s life skills. And every son wants that from his dad, so when he looks back, he can say, “you know, my dad helped me get here, and that feels good.”
3️⃣Dad’s direction with solid ‘why’ answers. Not just life skills, but he wants from dad a philosophy about what life is all about. He wants to interact with dad over that, and that’s what Deuteronomy encourages dads to do with their sons.
Deuteronomy 6 says: “And these words which I am commanding [God is saying I am commanding] you today. You take these words and they shall be on your heart [Dad] and you shall teach them to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by they way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
You’re talking to your son about life and what’s really important about life. A lot of dads – they’ll be around their son – you know we’ve got some new fathering going on here in the 21st Century, and it’s good stuff in the sense that dad’s more involved with his son’s life. A lot of times it’s being around his son, attending his games, or helping him with his homework. But this verse is going beyond that to the higher things of life, and that is ‘what is life about? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a man with a woman? What happens to you when you die?’
That’s the kind of things dad needs to be talking to his son about when they lie down and when they rise up, and when they walk through the day. I’m pointing this out because it’s adding weight to the son’s life.
4️⃣Dad’s convictions through modeling. Dads, Please note: You will leave in your son what you’ve lived out in your home.
It’s not just what you say; it’s what you do. It’s the way you react and the son sees that and that builds conviction – a certain security about life.
Here’s the way Paul says it in 1st Thessalonians. He uses this statement of fathering to talk about spiritual fathering, but he says it this way: You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved towards you believers. That is, ‘you saw our convictions.’ Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. (Hopefully, a father would show his own children.)
What a father implores and exhorts his own children with is his convictions. The child sees those convictions and hears those words and it makes sense. When you take convictions and modeling and words together -- how you’re living and what you’re saying -- and you put those together; you know what you call that? Integrity. Integration. It’s easy to follow that and want to be like that, because you see the success of that. That’s what every child needs.
5️⃣ Dad’s heart. Every son needs to be loved by dad and affirmed by dad and blessed by dad. In fact, if you’re a dad today, there are three things you’d better be sure your son leaves home with. And if you’re a son today, and you haven’t heard these words - we’ll talk about this tomorrow - Every son needs to hear these three things from his dad:
(a)
I love you,
(b)
I’m proud of you,
(c)
And you’re good at [something]
That’s the
blessing. “Son, I love you.” He hears those words from your lips and those
of us who grew up and
didn’t hear that – we long to hear that.
There’s nothing that gives more weight to a son than to have his dad
put his arm around him, look at him and say, ‘son, I’m so proud of you!’ And every son loves to hear his dad say ‘you’re good at something.’ Some of us have incredible memories where
dad just reached over and grabbed our legs, and said, ‘you are an unbelievable footballers!’ Or, ‘you are one of the smartest guys I know.’
There’s nothing that motivates like that, Every son needs that.
You know what’s interesting? You can look in the Bible; you look at Jesus Christ, and you think, ‘here’s Jesus Christ. He didn’t need anything.’ Oh, yeah? He did. He was a man, too. Did you know over and over again, at critical moments in Jesus’ life, heaven opened up and God, His Father, did those three things for Him.
Matthew 17:5; Here’s a critical moment in Jesus’ life, and the heavens open up and these words are spoken: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Listen to Him. Now what do you see in that? You see, “This is My beloved Son.” ‘Son, I love You!’ Here it is, a critical
moment in Jesus’ ministry and heaven opened up and the Father said, “I love
You.” And He says, ‘in whom I am well-pleased.’ “I’m proud of You!” And then He tells the disciples around Jesus,
“Listen to Him!” (because He’s really good!)
I want you to know every son needs that kind of a blessing from dad. If a son doesn’t get time with his dad, or some life skills or some direction, some convictions or some heart, then it leaves this huge vacuum and void and wound in his life.
Every one of us wants that. We were created for that – to be blessed by
dad. When we don’t have that,
it leaves a wound. Why does a man need to hear
his father say ‘I love you’ Because
the glory of sons is their fathers.
Why is it that at the end of the day, a man comes home and opens the door to his house and his young 3-year-old comes running, screaming, yelling with joy on his face, and jumps into his daddy’s arms? Because the glory of sons is their fathers.
Why is it that there’s a
40-year-old man sitting in a hotel room and he’s angry and he weeps,
and he has a hole in
his heart? Because the glory
of sons is their dads. That’s why.
For many of us,
remembering dad can be emotional
whitewater, and let me tell
you guys, It can be emotional whitewater, but you know
what? It’s good to go there and learn,
and heal. We’re just cracking that open here today. It’s good to go there, however it’s
not necessarily good to stay there. That’s
why I wanted to bring you there today and start your journey of looking back at
the root.
Now, what we’re going to do Tomorrow is move on from here. We’re going to take all of what I’ve said today and we’re going to wrap it up. For those of us who have a wound, we’re going to talk about how to heal that wound and how to break free from it.
