I wrote last week before Fathers Day about the problem with fatherlessness and the struggles that many kids today face when their dads checkout emotionally or simply walk out completely.  It’s a cycle that is too common today.  It’s a problem of the heart.  There are many of us that may have experienced this or even lost their dad like I did and left in a state of loss, not knowing where they can turn too.  For many, their life turns to complete self-reliance and thinking they have to trudge through life on their own and figure things out on their own.

The fact is that we were never meant to go through life alone and in fact we are never alone.  You see the main mission of a dad is to raise up their children so that they learn to live a life with a heart for God.  Dads are meant to raise kids up part of the way and teach them to lean to the real Father.  But what happens when this does not happen?  Kids grow with a life fixed on the world, distant from the father and chasing after things of this world.

As I’ve shared before, when I lost my dad, I was lost.  I didn’t have a heart for God to where I learned to let Him guide my heart and Father me.  I learned this in the years that followed his death. When I did learn this, it completely changed my life and my heart.  I realized that my real Father has always been there.  He was looking to pull me out of that pit whirlwind of bitterness, self-reliance, and world driven.  I was so worried about what I thought I was supposed to do and not on who I am as God’s son allowing Him to take control of my life.  When I figured it out though, just as the prodigal son, the Father was their with open arms ready to bring me back in.

We are his children.  His sons and daughters.  In his book Fathered by God, John Eldredge says, “When a man gives his life to Jesus Christ, when he turns as the prodigal son turned for home and is reconciled to the Father, many remarkable things take place. At the core of them is a coming into true sonship.”  I can testify this to be so true.  Coming into sonship and now asking God to Father me everyday has changed my life so dramatically.  I realized that it is not about me, but about Him, the real hero.  The Father has a place for me and all of us in His story, his larger story.  I learned to stop living in my small story and live for the larger, epic story of God.

The Father is always there for us.  He has always been there.  He waits for us to realize this though.  While his desire is for all of us to turn to Him, He gave us the will to freely choose.  We can choose everyday to live for Him.  We don’t have to live by what this world says we should do.  We don’t have to go through life trying to figure things out on our own, fatherless.  Our Father is there to guide, so walk with us, to counsel us, to heal us through His son Jesus Christ, and to armor us for the spiritual warfare we face everyday.   We don’t have to go alone.  Seek the heart of God and he will restore yours to Him.