Daddy, come dance with me!!

She says to her dad "turn the radio up, that's my favorite song." The 9 year old little girl then gets out of the parked car, walks out into the grass, looks back at her dad, with an infectious grin, says "daddy, come dance with me." While the dad is certainly touched by her request, he's too "adult" to do such a silly thing. Everyone's watching and he doesn't like to dance. So he sits and watches her twirl as if he is holding her and leading her around the dance floor. Then, one day soon she is gone. Taken from the father suddenly in an accident. His heart is broken for his chance to dance with her is no longer.

The son prepares to run late one afternoon as he has grown accustomed to do. He turns to his dad and says "daddy, come run with me." The dad doesn't like to run. He feels too old and out of shape. The father wishes his son would do with him the things he wants to do. The father expects the relationship to be on his terms. The son drifts away from his father, nobody seems to care anymore about the other.

Dealing with the physical loss of his daughter and the emotional loss of his son, the father seeks God for what he should be as a father. After all, to the world he seemed to be doing a good job, but he knew in his heart he was not the man or father God wanted him to be.

The lessons he learned and the message to us:
For the daughter: daddy, win your little girl's heart so that one day she will desire to give her love to the man who God chose to love her as Christ loves the church.
For the son: daddy, release in your son the man God designed him to be so that he one day knows how to be God's man for his family.

I saw the movie "Courageous" last night. While I do not want to spoil the plot for you, the point is timeless, but very timely for a lost and dying world. God created fathers to stand in the gap of spiritual warfare for the family and to point his children one day to the Heavenly Father.

We are in a time when life's struggles "beats" down the dad. Wives lose respect for their husband and husbands begin to resent their wife. In the midst of the hurt they cause each other, the children lose. I have seen fathers, who confess to be a Christian, self-righteously turn their children against their mother because the wife destroyed the man's ego. This is so sad. Josh McDowell once said, "the greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother."

While God can heal and transform and restore the lives of those whose fathers have failed them, life works best for all children-to-adult transitions when Daddy stands courageously against all odds for his family.

Dads, dance with your daughters, run with your sons. Invade their world, embrace who they are> After all, isn't that the Grace we received to live out and pass on???

me and my daughter :-)