Hugs for Dad: Stories, Sayings, and Scriptures to Encourage and Inspire (Hugs Series)

Dad, your children are watching you! They see and hear what you tell them and what you model to them through your life. Don t hide me from them. Tell them of all of the praiseworthy things I ve done throughout history and in your life. Tell them of my power and my wonders. Teach them to put their trust in me and not to forget my commandments. In turn, they will teach and model them to their children. You are making history!

Love,

Your 100% Faithful Heavenly Father

Psalm 78:3 8

Inspirational Message

There s something in a man that makes him want to be a history-maker a hero. Most men grow up with grand ideas of accomplishing great things. They hold visions of rescuing lives threatened by fire, winning major battles in a war, influencing the laws of the land through public office, defending the underdog in a court case, or finding a cure for cancer. They have a hungry ambition to be a hero who shapes the future.

Well, Dad, that s just what you are. Your heroics may not be recorded in a best-selling novel, a classic movie, or on the cover of a magazine, but your actions are recorded frequently in the hearts and minds of your children. They record your simple, but heroic, deeds every day.

They have pictures in their minds of you smiling in a way that communicated how proud you were of them. They remember the times you wiped tears from their red and swollen faces and offered words of comfort. They recall how attentively you listened to them share their pain over failed romances or disappointing failures. They review pictures of scrimmages in the driveway, dates for dinner, visits to school, unexpected gifts, and loving hugs. They remember your praying posture beside their bed and the life-changing instructions that came from your lips.

You are a history-maker and a future-shaper of the most important kind. You live on the front pages of the hearts of those you love the most.

The best things you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.

Sydney Harris

Jump

One day I was playing in our backyard with a paint can lid. It was before the days of Frisbees perhaps the inventor of the frisbee got his idea from watching the creative genius of a child who, like me, had discovered the amazing flying propensities of a paint can lid. I was sailing it into the wind, and as its momentum slowed, the wind would take it higher and higher and then it would begin its downward and backward glide, and I would try to catch it. Eventually it landed and lodged on the roof of the chicken coop. I fretted and worried most of the afternoon trying to dislodge it. We had no ladder, and I finally gave up.

When my father came home, I met him in the drive-way. Before he was out of the car, I began pleading with him to help me retrieve my toy. He put his lunch pail down on the front porch, and we walked around the house together. He assured me that it was no problem and that we could get it back.

He hoisted me up on his shoulders then grabbed my feet and boosted me up onto the roof of the chicken coop. He told me to walk very carefully because the coop was old and decaying. I retrieved my toy and returned to the edge of the coop. I felt very powerful looking down at my father. He smiled up at me and then held out his arms and said,

"Jump."

I close my eyes and I can see him now, forty-five years later, as plainly as I can see the lake and the trees from where I sit just now. He was so tall, so strong, so confident with his big, handsome, grinning face, that it is easier for me to imagine that day than the day he died.

I jumped with no hesitation. I jumped, and he caught me easily and hugged me and then swung me to the ground.

He sent me to get his lunch pail, and in a moment we were in the house and the incident was forgotten no, it wasn t forgotten, was it? He would be amazed that I remember it I m sure that within a very short time, he forgot it. He wasn t trying consciously to be a good father. He didn t come home that day with a plan to create a lasting memory for his son. It wasn t planned at all.

My point to you parents is that most parenting cannot be planned except in your own personal walk with God and in prayer. Many great opportunities for lasting impressions are either lost or become negatives because you can t fake what you are when the unexpected comes.

If my father had generally been selfishly unconcerned with his children s cares, there would have been no time or cause for him to turn this unexpected moment into a great triumph he would have acted according to his nature, told me he was much too tired to fool with me, reprimanded me for my carelessness, and gone into the house leaving me to my own devices and the moment would have been lost.

The opportunities come unexpectedly, unplanned for and most of the time we react according to our nature. We serve our children best by seeking to constantly become more closely molded into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not become good parents by trying to practice a parenting philosophy that is contrary to our natures. We become good parents good neighbors, good husbands, and good friends by becoming good,

by turning our lives toward God.