Dad's Guide to Raising a Son of Character (Ebook Shorts) , livre ebook

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43 pages

English

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Rick Johnson shows dads how to guide their sons into healthy, authentic manhood that honors God and respects others.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781441241191
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0086€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2006 by Rick I. Johnson
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Excerpted from Better Dads, Stronger Sons , published 2006
Ebook short created 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4119-1
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
To Frank and Kelsey.
Without you, none of this would have happened. I love you guys, and I’m proud to be your dad.
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Dedication 5
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction: The Redemption of a Man 8
1. Authentic Manhood 11
2. Mistakes All Dads Make 17
3. Making a Noble Man 30
Notes 51
About the Author 53
Other Books by the Author 54
Back Ads 55
Back Cover 56
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Brian Smith, the best writer I know personally, for all his help with this book. I’ve also been blessed to have one of the most patient and gracious editors a writer could have, Dr. Vicki Crumpton. Thanks, Vicki, for your encouragement and unending patience with me as I stumbled along the rocky and very narrow path of authorship.
I’d also like to thank Steve Ziegler, Monte Edwards, and Tim Hart for their contributions to this book and for being good men.
Of course, Terry, Linda, Bill, and Brian, you all deserve a big “thanks.” Without such a top-notch writer’s group, how would I have ever ended up here? And thanks to George and Riley for being my constant companions during the days and nights of writing.
As always, Suzanne, you deserve most of the credit for any and all of my accomplishments.
Introduction
The Redemption of a Man
God does work in mysterious ways.
I was raised in an alcoholic home. I can distinctly remember lying in bed at night as a little boy, my little brothers and sisters huddled around me in fear, my pillow tightly pulled over my ears, desperately crying to God to make the fighting, screaming, and hitting in the next room stop. I prayed fervently, with all my heart and soul. But God didn’t answer those prayers then.
I grew up to be an abuser of drugs, alcohol, and any other substance that would deaden the pain I felt in my soul but didn’t acknowledge. I slept with a multitude of women, never realizing that what I was really looking for was love, not sex.
I met my wife and married her when I was twenty-five. She unwittingly followed my masculine leadership into depths of degradation and despair. Finally, with the birth of my son when I was thirty, I recognized my foolishness and stopped taking drugs the first step on the road to recovery. Years of counseling followed as I attempted to lead a “normal” life and be a good husband and father despite my lack of a positive role model growing up. By then I had substituted work and achievement (society’s legal narcotics) for the numbing effect of drugs.
At forty, I had what the world said should have made me happy and satisfied. I owned a relatively successful business. I was married to a beautiful wife with two great kids, owned a nice house and new cars, and had money to burn. We weren’t rich, but compared to most people we were living a pretty good life. I was what the world considers a success.
Yet I was miserable. The more I accomplished, the less gratifying my success was. I stubbornly adopted a “me against the world” attitude; I was going to win no matter the cost. I believed that I controlled my destiny and that all I needed to do was work harder and smarter to achieve my dreams and goals.
How could I have everything the world offers and still be so dissatisfied?
I finally decided to take inventory of my life and see if I could fix whatever was wrong with me. After all, that’s how I had taken care of every other dilemma I had faced before. Since I had no men in my life whom I respected at the time, I decided to look at the lives of admirable men throughout history to determine what they had that I didn’t.
As I researched the lives of brilliant men such as Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, John Adams (and nearly all the other founding fathers of our country), Abraham Lincoln, and many others throughout the ages, the one common thread I discovered among them was that they were all Christians. I was shocked. I had grown up in a family that considered religion in general to be a crutch for weak people and Christians in particular to be a bunch of hypocrites.
In reaction to that revelation, I set out to prove to myself that Christianity was a false concept. I believed that the Bible was written by uneducated, superstitious savages and that the basis for believing in a mythical Jesus was one of unenlightened ignorance. I was a scoffer of the highest magnitude. In fact, I despised people who could so easily be led around like docile cows with rings in their noses.
After a year of research and study, I finally had to admit that I could not disprove Christianity. As illogical as I believed the concept to be, something about it spoke to me deep in my gut. In time I became convinced that Jesus Christ not only existed but was actually the Son of God who had come to earth as a man to die for our sins and rise again in order to provide eternal life for all who chose to believe and accept his gift.
So I believed. I took the gift. The decision was not one based on emotion or one that someone talked me into but one based on logic and my own research.
I soon realized that God had blessed me with a number of personal gifts or traits that I had been using only for self-gratification and that I needed to start using to serve him. I spent the next year trying different types of service everything from ushering at church to picketing abortion clinics hoping to figure out how God wanted me to serve him.
I was particularly concerned about the culture around me. How could our culture be so far off base from all the truths that I had recently learned to be self-evident? Our country seemed to be decaying at an accelerated pace. But I didn’t know how one man could possibly make a difference in this troubled world. The task seemed overwhelming. At the same time, I was also deeply concerned about the kind of father I was. I kept searching for answers: How can a man become a good father when he has been raised without one or with a very poor role model? No one seemed to have the answers to the questions that plagued my soul.
I started a ministry called Better Dads with a mission to inspire and equip men to be more involved in the lives of their children. Shortly thereafter, a counselor with one of the school districts approached me and said, “We have a lot of single mothers raising sons in our district, and they have questions about boys. Could you put a program together for them?” That program immediately became popular, and I began giving presentations to groups of women across the Northwest.
And so that is how, at the age of forty-eight, I find myself attempting to pass on what God has shown me in hopes that other men will benefit and find hope from my experiences and failures. I am not a perfect father, as my kids would readily attest were I to give them access to these pages. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m a particularly good father. Compared to some men I know, I’m still ashamed at my lack of fathering skills. But perhaps that’s the point. We will never be perfect fathers, none of us. But we mustn’t let that stop us from becoming lifelong learners, continually striving to be the fathers God designed us to be.
Come with me while I share some of the things I’ve learned along the bumpy road to authentic manhood and godly fathering. A father’s job never ends, and your son is counting on you.
1 Authentic Manhood
A man is created for challenges. He is equipped to overcome, to run the gauntlet, to stand firm as a well-anchored corner post. Men are the benchmark in life, society, and family. It is part of the masculine responsibility to demonstrate strength and stability, to protect and provide for those within their sphere of influence. This is the hallmark of manhood.
Preston Gillham, Things Only Men Know
Ask men on the street, “What is a man?” and you’ll get a flurry of answers, few very definitive and few the same. That’s because most of us were never raised with a clear vision of what a man is or exactly what a man does. We were never shown our destiny.
As I look back on my life, especially the past five years, I can clearly see God’s work in my life to fulfill the plan he established for me before time began. My journey toward becoming the man and the father God wanted me to be was long and arduous. One thing I’ve learned is that before we can become godly fathers , we must seek to become godly men . So before we discuss God’s plan for you as a father, we might find it helpful to first determine exactly what a man is.
What Is a Man?
The world would have us believe that a man is one who finishes school, then puts his head down with his nose to the grindstone and works hard the rest of his life in order to achieve some level of mone