One of the books that I’ll probably never get around to writing, one of the men’s retreats that I’ll likely never have an opportunity of doing, would be based on these two premises:

You’ll never be a man until you understand your father’s heart;
You’ll never be a godly man until you know your Father’s heart.

That’s what I would write about and talk about, though, because I’m convinced that both statements are absolutely true. It took me the better part of 40 years to figure out the first one; it’s taken more than 30 years to realize the last one.

Until you, the son, look into your earthly father’s heart, seeing all that is there and all that is not there, you will never be a man; you will remain your father’s boy. Looking into your father’s heart means seeing all that your father was and is, and understanding how he came to be that way. It is knowing just as clearly who your father wasn’t, and why he wasn’t. It’s knowing who your father might have been and who he never could have been.

It means examining how the man that was your father affected you, for better and for worse. How his drives, passions, views, and values impacted you and molded you, one way or the other. It’s finding your father in you, and then deciding what to retain and what to discard. It means growing up and becoming your father’s equal in every way.

. . . loving father, loving son

It is a two-edged blade: loving father should depict who your father is and what he does; loving father should also be what you do. Implied in this is that your father should love you as his son and that you, as his son, love him.

You need to believe that your father loved you – all of us do: a yearning for your father’s love is something I believe God has instilled in all of us, a deep belief that we are loved deeply by our father. You believed it; if you had a good father, you hopefully still believe it.

Some fathers are loving, some are not. But we all need to believe when we are boys that our father loves us. And if he does not or did not, then you believe the reason for that is either something you did, failed to do, or something lacking in you. Worse, you may conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with you (which there is, of course, but it doesn’t have to do with your father’s responsibility to love you).

A father’s love fills your heart as a boy. It gives you a sense of safety, strength, confidence, and hope. It makes you know that you are valuable, and that you are valuable to the most important male in your life. It instructs you on how to treat others. A father gives you knowledge and models wisdom. Later, what he has done makes you feel good and positive about being a man. Responsibilities and duty rest lightly on your shoulders. They feel good and right.

Not all fathers are loving, though, and you may have grown up without a solid foundation for the structure of your life. You may now waste time trying to get blood from a turnip, seeking for the right thing in the wrong place. Or you have detached from him and rejected him, trying to relegate him to the landfill of your past hurts. The fact is that not all fathers have the capacity to love: some fail because their own fathers did not love them, others because of willful sin that is reflected is selfishness, immaturity, and self-absorption.

This does not absolve you, as a son, from loving him. But to love him you must understand him first.


You must be able to take a step back from him in and gain some perspective, seeing him as another human being – not as your father – but as a fellow male trying to make sense of and survive in life. If he were not your father, would you like him? Why? Why not? What are his strengths? Weaknesses?

The hardest part, however, is this: how much of your father has found its way into you? What have you unintentionally emulated or absorbed uncritically? After answering these and a hundred other questions just like them, then you have to decide what to do about what you have realized. You are probably more like your father than you know, for both better and worse.

. . . loving Father, loving son

Fathers are charged with developing a relationship that is preparatory for the most important relationship in life: your saving (eternally and temporally) relationship with God. It is a cliche – but very true – that your father has a significant impact on your initial perceptions of the heart of God. If your father was warm and loving, then you will expect God to be warm and loving. If distant and detached, then so will God seem to be with you. Indulgent? Demanding? Helpful when you are struggling? Patient? Angry? Passive? The list goes on and on.

Your father, like all fathers, failed to correctly reflect the image of the One true God to you. Your father is a sinner just as you are a sinner. Your task is thus to discover what is true about your father and your Father, and what is false about your father and your Father.

The long process of discovering this involves at least three things: the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and other men.

The Holy Spirit is the sin qua non of this process. Without Him you are left to yourself and will be just as deceived now as when you were a boy; with Him, you will begin to see the heart of your Father in truth.

The Bible is the perfect revelation of God that is available to us now. The disciples had a different form of special revelation: Jesus Christ in the flesh. They got to know Him firsthand by walking, talking, sleeping, working, laughing, and crying with Him for almost four years. As good as that sounds, you have it better now: you have the Holy Spirit within and the Bible without. An inerrant Teacher with an inerrant curriculum.

Other men – older, more mature men – are almost as critical. You simply do not have enough clarity to see the heart of God without distortion: you will likely wind up with a false image of God that is less than who He truly is. Look for attributes, attitudes and behaviors in other men that reflect what the Bible tells you about your Father. Do this even if you had a godly father. As you are doing this, however, remember that they have feet of clay just as your father did or does. And just as you have feet of clay.

An older man, rather than a friend your own age, will protect you from the ignorance and foolishness of Rehoboam. Wisdom is not always found in older men, but it is almost never found in young men. Go with the odds.

To be a loving son is to do two things: it is to love the Father and it is to love those whom the Father loves. He loves all people – they are His children, especially His chosen ones. To be a loving son is to love others, Christians and non-Christians alike. To be a loving son is to love the Father for who He is, not who we might imagine or hope Him to be. As John tells us, you know that you truly love God because you love others; you know that you love others because you love God and keep His commandments.

Becoming a man can be achieved in a lifetime; it takes the rest of your life to hone the art. Becoming a godly man cannot be achieved in a lifetime; because of this, the time to get started is now.


2 Cor 1:13