Just Say “Thank You”

Several years ago, I went to a small concert with a couple of friends. I had been to many concerts in my life but never one like this. It was called a house show. Maybe you’ve heard of those or have even been to a few yourself, but I hadn’t.

Apparently, what makes a concert a house show is when it takes place in a small setting with a very limited number of people. That was definitely the case here. There were maybe eighty people at this show.

Another interesting thing about this concert was where it happened. It was in a bar on a street well known for its reputation of hosting very raucous parties. It was the first time I’d ever set foot in a bar, but I didn’t mind so much. In fact, I thought it seemed like a pretty good idea. Why not get together and listen to a guy sing songs about God’s incredible love in a place where that kind of thing probably wasn’t happening all too often?

Occasionally throughout the show someone would shout the name of one of the artist’s songs. While not unusual at a concert, fans offering up requests I mean, this guy’s reply was different.

Each time someone made their request the singer would stop singing or halt the song he was about to begin. He would find the person in the small crowd, his gaze quickly searching out the one making the request. He would look them in the eye and without fail say, “Thank you.”

Wait a second? “That’s not how that’s supposed to work.” I thought the first time this happened. I was used to two reactions to this scenario. Artists kind of ignoring requests completely or the request becoming lost in the noise of the moment. Occasionally, they make vague suggestions about why they won’t be doing the song. I mean I get it. They probably have a well-rehearsed plan.

Not this guy. He stopped what he was doing. He acknowledged the moment and the person. And he offered his sincere thanks. It was his way of showing appreciation to the person who was a big enough fan of his life’s work to request specific pieces of that work. Every time someone asked him to play this song or that song, instead of playing the song he made it a personal moment between two friends.

This artist wasn’t doing it business as usual. He wasn’t hiding behind the big smoke and lights, even though those things can be incredibly fun for someone in his position. He was there. He was present. He was with all of us. And when a request was made it wasn’t an interruption, an annoyance, or a detour. It was an opportunity. It was a chance to show the true nature of his art. It was a moment for intentional beautiful human connection.

I’m no artist, but I know how I usually respond to interruptions. They drive me nuts. There’s a lot of opportunity for interruptions at the King Casa.

I have four little kids in my house. They are awesome kids. So, I guess in some small way I am an artist because they are certainly masterpieces. But let’s be honest, my wife gets most of the credit for that. Still, I live a life full of wonder, miracles, and joy. Not because every moment is some kind of story book wonder, but because the rhythm and cadence of my days are filled with the joy of fatherhood’s many adventures.

What I’m trying to get better at is stopping to acknowledge each request. To look my kids in the eye. To say thank you. And to mean it.

There are three little boys and a baby girl in Arkansas who think I rock. They think life is my stage. Every day the spotlight shines bright on my life. How I respond makes the loudest of proclamations.

When I don’t stop to say thanks it's usually because I don’t think I have time to dabble in whatever they have concocted. But like one guy said and a million more have repeated “The days are long, but the years are short.” In other words, the truth is I don’t have time not to respond.

These early years are magic. They are wondrous. They are opportunities for intentional miracles. If I will only stop to say, “Thank you.”

I need Ethan, Jon, Matty, and Anna to know how thankful Daddy really is for them. For their interest and joy. I need them to know their interruption is the most artful part of my day.

Do you see the pattern? I. NEED. THEM.

We need some holy interruptions to snap us out of our plan. Wake us up to the moment. And point us toward the opportunity of a lifetime. The request may only come once. Or may only come for a season.

My house is my show. I don’t want to be the most important. I don’t want to be the boss. I don’t want to be the “lord.” I don’t even want to be the king no matter what my birth certificate says. I want to be famous. But I want to be famous for the way I love my family. I want to be known for the full-throttled way I lean into interruptions that matter. I want to be famous for thank you.

Tomorrow I will blink and then suddenly it will seem like many years have passed. My last little one will be walking out my front door to step into her own adventure. She’ll do it in the way she chooses.

I want all of them to choose well. I want them to know their value, their strength, and just how much Daddy loves them. I want them all to know I am and always will be thankful. It’s on me to help them learn to live their best life smack dab in the middle of outrageous love.

I have always liked using the language of fatherhood to talk about God. It’s an easy concept for me to gravitate toward because my dad is amazing. I know that’s not the case for everyone. These days it’s not even the case for most kids being born. I am one of the lucky, no—not lucky—BLESSED, ones. I want my kids to be one of the blessed ones. But I’m the one ultimately deciding that.

Another singer named Chris I really admire has a popular song talking about the good, good father we have in God. I really like that. He is good. He is our father.

I’ve known a lot of folks over the years who made talking to God a big chore. They peppered it with big words and theatrical stuff. But Jesus talked about prayer with his friends once. He said we just need to show up and be open and honest. We can just talk plainly to God.

Our prayers don’t need a stage. They don’t need lights and smoke. They don’t need the big show or the grand gestures. They just need a son or a daughter and a dad. They just need an expression of thanks.

There are probably a lot of reasons why we are intimidated when it comes to prayer. For some of you just the thought of speaking out your inner stuff to a great big God is too lofty to get your head around. Some don’t even believe in God at all. For others, God doesn’t seem like a very good dad—because yours was such a lousy example.

Real prayer isn’t complicated. Leave the complicated stuff to the fakers. Ignore their show. It’s smoke and mirrors. They love the spotlight.

Instead, learn how to open your heart to a good good father. He is your biggest fan. He is good.

That can be a hard truth to accept. Often it might seem like God would have too much on his plate for my request. But, what I see as an interruption, God sees as the most artful part of his day. Why? Because he’s still working on me.

I am learning to let my needs have their moment. This happens when I just say it out loud. It’s not fancy. “God, I need you to help me with …” or “God, I am feeling bummed about …” and also a good dose of “God, thank you so much for …”

God leans forward when we make our request known. He’s not annoyed at the interruption. Why? Because he can literally do all the things—at the same time. We just have to say them.

God’s not annoyed at you. He welcomes the interaction. As I student of God’s love I am learning how to say them more. I’m covering them all in a big dose of “Thank you.” These days I know the words are echoed in the love of a good father and the life he is helping me learn to live.

The Miracle of the Moment: When Faith Flexes

Late one night in March my son Ethan was born. It was an incredible day. The culmination of months of prayer, joy, nervousness, faith, and preparation. Jamie and I didn’t know how to be parents. Four kids and nine years later I often wonder if we still don’t. But it didn’t really matter at Saint Mary’s hospital in the infant delivery ward the day our Ethan arrived.

Like many first-time parents we were waiting expectantly for the day to come when we would be able to hold our little prince in our arms. Our friends and family celebrated the onset of our parenthood with gifts and parties. It was a season of incredible joy as everyone in our lives gathered around us. A heightened sense of anticipation descended on our circle of friends, close loved ones, and faith family. Ethan’s due date came and went with no small amount of nervousness on our part.

Jamie’s doctor departed for a family cruise and we were introduced to some new guy. He was not the kind lady we had spent the last nine months learning to trust. He seemed capable, sure, and kind, and all the kinds of things you hope for if the situation arises when you need another doctor to perform the baby-delivering equivalent of pinch-hitting.

A week passed. Jamie and Baby Ethan were perfectly fine according to all tests, but I was getting super nervous. Still, this was nothing compared to my dad. Finally, the substitute baby doctor guy announced early the next week he would need to step in and help the process along. Allowing nature to delay much longer would begin to cause opportunities for major complications. We trusted this guy because we trusted who invited him into our lives.

So, on a Monday morning we showed up at the hospital with all our bags packed to begin the process. Boy was it a process. All day tests were running, conversations were had, and doctors seen. It was a day of waiting, praying, and trusting. Like never before, and rarely since, Jamie and I both felt the muscles of our faith flex as if to say, “don’t be afraid.”

We shared the news of what was happening, first with our loved ones, and then the world at large across social media. The love poured in. It was as if dozens and maybe even hundreds of people were lending us their faith because each one knew this was new territory for us. With every passing moment we drew closer to the miracle we had prayed and waited for. As all those moments crept by, we could feel the reassurance of love.

It was like this incredible substance was propping us up. It was a palpable gathering of the unseen activated on our behalf. What one writer in the Bible described as faith via the evidence of things not seen. We couldn’t see it, but we could feel it. The ramifications were evident as our souls were encouraged.

The long day stretched longer. Someone, I think my mother, brought my favorite hamburger and a chocolate shake. I wasn’t hungry. How could I be hungry awaiting such a monumental miracle? But I ate the entire thing and remained not hungry as I drank down all forty liquid ounces of the superb chocolate shakey goodness.

The long day stretched, and yawned, and winked into night as a sliver of the moon rose above our small town as if to say it was almost time. Just like another man in the Bible described the arrival of a baby in a barn—it was the fullness of time, our time, and my son took his first beautiful breath on this earth.

I cried. My wife cried. It was faith made manifest. It was trust personified. It was the full range of the miraculous in motion and thrust upon our family with all the majesty of the moment. Faith was flexing big right before my eyes with the full force of the love God has for all of us.

Ethan was a promise given. A promise born. It wasn’t just a baby born that day, but it was a mother and father, a grandmother and grandfather, an uncle and cousins. A ripple of life echoed across everyone meaning anything to us and we were all changed. We were all made to mean a little more. We were all together in this and it was lovely beyond imagination.

Faith is a muscle we flex across a myriad of moments, but it is also a miracle that resounds with the finality of lightning. It is both ethereal and ever present. It is surmounting and inescapable in its subjugation of the right now and its dance across our unknown.

We can know, and we can hope, and we can see, and we can trust. Even when we don’t feel it, especially when we don’t feel it. Even when it seems elusive and illusive. When our faith seems deeply inadequate, we can borrow some from a friend.

There have been plenty of times when my faith was not enough. I had to look beyond my own hiccups and draw deeply from the reservoirs of a friend. My mentor, pastor, and close friend Mark is a continuing source of this for me.

Mark likes to joke that he is Iron Man because he has a mechanical heart valve. I’ve never done it, because I don’t make a habit of putting my ear to grown men’s chests, but his wife says she can hear it ticking away at home in the silence of the night. Every flicker of Mark’s heart is a faith moment as he trusts in what he can’t see. He’s lived a full life of putting Jesus at the center, loving people well, and leading and serving with great integrity. He is without a doubt one of the greatest men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Mark had been my family’s pastor for a while. He loved us through some big changes in our life. He led us through even more changes. And he helped launch us into our dream of becoming pastors of our own new, growing, and healthy church family. All of it came with a lot of bumps, talks, prayers, conversations, and confidence. His faith muscle is even bigger than his biceps (which are gigantic). I know when my faith is flickering I can borrow some from him.

There was a guy like this in the Bible who met Jesus one day. He needed help. He needed a miracle. Jesus asked him if he believed and he said, “Yes! But help me with my unbelief.”

This guy’s story demonstrates what way too many people are being silent about in their own faith journey. We’ve spent years communicating (intentionally or otherwise) you can’t experience both faith and doubt at the same time. I’m not buying it. The faith in our life flexes so much more when there’s uncertainty to face down first.

Ethan’s first breaths weren’t the normal baby breaths doctors expect to be greeted by. There was something much different about them. Something alarming to the people who know what to look for.

So, after a moment of celebration and wonder the well-meaning doctor pulled our son from my wife’s arms and whisked him away to another room. Suddenly, here at the end of an already long and emotional day we found the depth of raw emotions butting up against our years of working faith. We prayed. People we love prayed. Friends, family, and our church prayed. Heaven was on the receiving end of a barrage of people flexing together. The culminating trust of so many echoed big along those hallowed corridors.

Part of me wonders if those who went home before us jumped in to lend their faith as they heard the echoes pass them by. It might sound like wonky theology, but I can just imagine Grandma and Grandpa King picking up the clarion call as they mustered their faith from their remarkable perspective. Jamie said it best from the midst of her confused and longing heart, “I want my Ethan.” Love wants what love wants. It wasn’t just a cry of desperation. It was a statement of faith echoing across eternity as it was repeated in the mouths of praying loved ones.

Ethan’s birth was the culmination of something hard to articulate in a few paragraphs. The sudden alarm for his well-being was something altogether different. As the combined prayers of the many continued in petition of our Heavenly Father the strange breathing normalized. Ethan was returned to mommy’s embrace.

Just like that God showed me how good the experience of our faith at work can be. He didn’t show it to me once. He didn’t even show it to me twice. He showed me twice in the same day.

Faith flexed the moment Ethan was born. It was the bright miracle of a new life entering this world for all to see. It was the holy awe of what it feels like to love a living creation of your own soul. Faith also made itself known as the alarming moments of misunderstanding fell away before complete trust in our amazing Father.

Faith is practiced. It is work. It is art. It is a muscle we hone, and it is also a miracle. The miracle of faith isn’t only a progression of movement between moments, it is also a sublime experience of the miraculous in the moment.

There will be plenty of moments throughout our lives when we must lean deeply into faith in the private spaces of our day-to-day decisions. There will also be those penultimate circumstances when a loved one, friend, neighbor, or son needs us and our faith.

Our faith is a beautiful thing when it stands on its own—trusting Jesus like the guy in the story I mentioned. Our faith is a glorious thing when it stands together as it did for us the night Ethan was born. Those are amazing moments of holding, helping, and hoping within a community of people all believing and trusting for the same thing. Such a myriad of personalities coming together and bombarding heaven with a joining of faith catches the attention of heaven in an entirely different way.

Faith is the substance of our hope. It is the evidence of what we don’t see. It is the everyday stuff, the working it out stuff, and it is the miracle happening just when we need it most.

How We Chose Homeschool Curriculum

Photo by Giuseppe Lombardo

Parents, you are trying to make a hard choice right now. Life has been full of hard choices for the last few months. And now this one involves the most important people in the world—your kids. 

Last week Jamie and I shared our reasons for why we decided to homeschool our oldest two this year. That blog was everywhere. People all over the U.S. and in many other countries checked it out. Many reached out in some way.

We’re here to help. Because, even though we are teachers, when it comes to our kids we are students too. So we’ve been learning. We’ve been figuring out what will work for our family. And by we I really mean my amazing wife. I’m convinced Jamie is the smartest woman on earth. You guys can argue about the #2 spot all you want. #1 is taken.

We promised we’d be back with more to say via this platform that makes saying it and sharing it so easy. So here we go.

This is the curriculum we chose. And why we chose it. Our boys will be in third grade and kindergarten this year. So, our choices might not be much help to you. But I hope something here will help move you a little further down the trail as you sort this out for your own family.

We tried to keep this short. We’ll answer as many questions as possible. If you find this helpful please consider sharing it with someone who might need some help right now. And give yourself grace. We’re all students here.

We wanted a curriculum that satisfied four simple criteria.

1. It had to mostly align with Arkansas educational standards. Why? We believe in the public school system. We intend to return our boys to a public classroom in the future. So, we want to keep them “on track”. 

2. It had to be inexpensive because Daddy is a tightwad, and isn’t made out of Benjamins

3. The material had to be flexible. Have you ever tried to teach a five year old to read while changing a diaper, doing marriage counseling via text, answering an email about communication theory, and helping a distraught Boomer solve their problems in the middle of another Zoom Conference? We haven’t either, but we’re pretty sure we’re about to.

4. There was no compromise here for us. The bulk of the material had to be facilitated without a computer. We don’t want our children staring at a device all day. Period.

Here is the curriculum we landed on based on our four requirements. (Links to each are embedded in the subject title.)

1. SCIENCE: “Mystery Doug”
We paid $69 for one year of access. This curriculum also has free lessons to try. We tried it out with the boys and they loved it. Mystery Doug’s content aligns wonderfully with the recommended national science standards and schedule for each grade. As a bonus, it does have a computer based lesson component—so we are able to use it as an incentive for screen time that also doubles as school work.

2. SOCIAL STUDIES: Teachers Pay Teacher
We purchased a 3rd grade level download for $18.50. We will need to supplement some to meet Kindergarten standards. 

3. LANGUAGE ARTS: The Good and The Beautiful
Levels 1-5 are available to download for free. The “K Primer” is less than $35. Level K and Level 3 physical copies around $60 each. This curriculum is integrated to include multiple subjects. An added bonus for our family is the inclusion of Biblical references. We like the Bible. We are also using the Handwriting books from The Good and the Beautiful.

CAUTION: “Levels” aren’t really aligned to “Grades”. There are assessments to determine the correct level for your child. An advanced student might be on the same level as a grade. Whereas a traditional student might be one level below. Don’t let this psyche you out. It’s just a different metric for describing the desired development.

4. MATH: Math Mammoth and Jamie King
At the King Casa Academy Mrs. Principal Teacher Mom’s got this one covered. We are using Math Mammoth for most of Ethan’s 3rd grade material. Jamie is piecing together her own curriculum for Kindergarten. Why? Because she has approximately thirteen (I might be exaggerating) math and education degrees. There are plenty of good options available for someone feeling they need extra support in this area.

Now you know exactly what we chose and why we chose it. One the whole, there is a lot of good curriculum out there. Find the one that will help you accomplish what you’re aiming for with your kid.

We hope this helps you. As long as you have questions we’ll keep trying to lend a helpful voice. In the meantime share what you’re learning in the comments. How are you teaching your kids during this unique time?

Why We Decided to Homeschool This Year

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EDIT: So many of you have texted or messaged us about this. Thank you for the encouragement. I hope our words have been helpful. We have so much more to say about how we are going to approach homeschool. We will share what we’re learning as we learn it. This includes resources and application. If you’re curious and need help leave a comment with your email address. We’ll follow up with you or you can wait for the next post. God bless all of you.

Update: We wrote up how we chose our curriculum and what it is. You can now find that here.
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This was hard to write. This was also a hard decision to make. Jamie and I almost didn’t make it.  After finally reaching the decision we talked about not writing this. Then I wrote it anyway.

It was hard because we are teachers too. We don’t want to sound like we think we‘re better than those specifically trained to teach our kids. It‘s hard because we grew up with teachers, administrators, and coaches. We have so much admiration, respect, and, yes—love—for them. Educators are the most hardworking and underpaid people in America. If you disagree with that last sentence you’re just flat wrong.

Yet, we still decided to homeschool this year.

To be completely honest, I have never liked the idea of homeschool. Maybe it’s because my dad is a retired teacher. I've been getting up and going to school since 1985. Maybe I haven’t liked it because I’ve known some pretty weird homeschool people. Sure, I’ve known some awesome ones too. But I almost always judged homeschoolers. It’s sad but true.

I know you’re going to think I’m an absolute jerk here, but in the past I thought homeschool was equal parts being bad at algebra and making your own butter. I thought it was what scared ultra-conservatives did to protect their children from the scary indoctrination of woke left wing common core zombies. I had this mental picture of homeschool as a place where everyone had homemade haircuts, shirts, and learning impediments. I thought homeschool was a social and academic bubble for those who can’t handle reality. I know. I know. I’m a jerk.

So, why did we decide to homeschool this year? The reasons are as simple as they are complicated, but I’ll try to explain.

Photo by Agatha Tailor

This is not going to be a typical school year. Before you spout your favorite version of the momentary national bias, stop. I’ve read it. I’ve heard the arguments. I’m not here to argue. I’m presenting our decision making process for how to educate our children. That’s it. 

Jamie and I believe the upcoming school year is going to be a mess. Like an actual train wreck. You remember how you felt halfway through April when you were ready to pull the last hair out of your head. AMI had you so stressed out you developed an involuntary twitch. No? Just me huh.

As parents it’s our sacred obligation to spare our children from situations when we deem it appropriate. Our two school-aged boys will be spared the mess this trip around the sun.

I know our local school district is going to work extremely hard to do their absolute best. They are amazing people. Every one of them. We adore the faculty at our elementary school. The principal is an educational rockstar of the highest order. The mess I think is coming won’t be their fault. I know they would work themselves to the bone to do right by the kids. They love them.

Still, I don’t believe the nature of our educational support systems will be enough. Financially they’ll be stretched like never before. Emotionally and psychologically the load will be more than many, or maybe any, of them have ever endured. And that’s before a kid even gets Covid-19.  

We didn’t make this choice out of fear. We aren’t homeschooling because we don’t trust the teachers. In fact, we are worried about them more than ever before. 

It’s hard to explain to someone who has never been blessed with the burden of a classroom, but we’ve been demanding the impossible from teachers for years. This year is already going off the rails. We are asking educators to now deal with the increased emotional and psychological stress of trying to keep kids safe and healthy. They will be forced to adhere to new guidelines every 72 hours. They may be required to teach full time in the classroom, full time online, and take care of students who are in and out of the classroom. Teachers, we are praying for you. I hope this isn’t the year you walk away from the profession.

We don’t trust the system is capable of carrying out the primary function for which it exists under the present conditions. The education of our children in an emotionally, psychologically and physiologically consistent manner is its primary function.

I don’t see it happening this year. But, man, I hope I’m wrong. I hope it for your kids. Mine will be learning in their PJs around the kitchen table. The morning is for math. Afternoons are for writing, PE, and making butter.

I know homeschool isn’t an option for many people. I’m not here to cast a bad light on anyone sending their kids back in a few weeks. In fact, I’m a giant hypocrite because I’ll be right back in my own classroom teaching university students how not to suck at giving speeches. 

I wish I felt differently about the whole thing. I want my third grader to play basketball with his buddies on the playground and make jokes with his pal Charlie about Dog Man. I also want my kindergartener to get the absolute best start possible in an emotionally stable and consistently healthy environment. 

So this year the King Casa Academy is open for business. In fact, we started about three weeks ago and have the haircuts to prove it. We might be crazy but we aren’t crazy. Yet.

WALKING WITH GRANDPA

  

Today my parents came to visit us. It was a really good day. We didn't do anything too out of the ordinary but it still stands to serve as a day that will mark a special place in my memories.

One of the best moments of the day came after lunch. The fellas in the family; my oldest son Ethan, my brother Brian, my father, and myself all went for a stroll outside—in the woods. It was great. Perhaps the best part of the whole affair was the simplicity of it. We just went outside, for a walk, together.

At one point I looked up to see my dad, who has never been an overly affectionate man, holding my three-year-old son's hand. It was touching. Why? Because it was a perfect picture of rare and raw masculinity at work.

My dad is a man's man. He loves the outdoors. He would rather be outdoors than anywhere else you can imagine. He likes all of the kinds of things that the men of his generation enjoy about the outdoors, but mostly he just enjoys experiencing God's creation.

Back to the walk in the woods...

This picture perfect masculine moment came when my dad, a hard working outdoorsman of the rarest kind, used his strength in a way that offered my son protection. It was the simplest of gestures. But it carried so much meaning for me. It was more than my dad holding my son's hand.

It was a multigenerational extension of strength, identity, and initiation—all wrapped up in the protecting hand of a grandfather. Something that is becoming rare in our society today.

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We are no longer at a crossroads in our civilization. No, the crossroads has long since passed, and may indeed no longer even be visible from our rear view mirrors. We missed the turning point. Men stopped being men. Fathers stopped being fathers. A generation grew up with dad's in their homes that were not dad's in any other capacity that mattered—and having lived that way they have believed that fatherhood is optional. My sons' world is a world where the numbers of kids who know their dads is fewer than it has ever been, and the number who know their grandpas is fewer still.

I will be there for my boys. As much as I can be. My dad has always been there for me—and will be a grandpa to my sons. But what will the continuing repercussions be for a society that finds itself lacking grandpas who want to hold their grandsons' hands?

What will the implications be for boys, of all ages, who don't have someone to model strength for them? To tell them who they are? And give them a loving push into manhood?

The answer is all around us. It's in our prisons. It's in our broken sense of honor, justice, and morality. It's found in the depravity that permeates our culture like a dirty poisonous fog. It's death.

Without the guiding embrace of a man, on some level, a boy cannot become a man—and a man cannot truly live.

God walked with Adam in the Garden. He showed him strength, purpose, and identity. He showed him fatherhood. And ever since the Fall we've been fighting to get it back.

Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Father's Day

Last year for Father's Day I was in Ecuador. We were in this tiny little cinder block church with one fading loud speaker. It was my first time to experience an international worship service. It was a great experience. In the year since, I've become a father myself, and Father's Day means so much more. The following is a blog I wrote and shared last year while in Ecuador. It is a small excerpt from the book "Jesus Among Other Gods" by Ravi Zacharias. While reading it I felt that it was a great piece to share in light of Fathers' Day. The excerpt is followed by some of my own personal thoughts.

"A few years ago, a former Olympic athlete came to visit me. He was looking for some direction in his life. He was a strong and solidly built man. It was a privilege to be around him--just in the hopes that muscles were contagious!

He told me of the time he was representing his country at the Olympics. It was a story of dreams that had struggled against a potential nightmare. From the age of twelve, the Olympics had been all he labored for. He had put every penny he earned and every purchase he made into someday becoming a gold medalist in the event he loved. He was totally focused. This is what he wanted. But he had a very turbulent relationship with his father, who had no interest in this dream of his, and, therefore, he had funded every penny himself.

When he was only seventeen, he filmed the world champion in the event for which he was training and broke down his every stride, frame by frame, to study his technique. He then had himself filmed in the same distance and matched it, stride for stride. By precisely piecing together where he was losing the precious seconds to the world champion, he determined to bridge the gap. Through sheer willpower, discipline, and courage, his goal was within reach.

He made the cut for his country's team, and life was suddenly like being atop a floating cloud. He won every heat and was emerging as the surprise and potential winner when the finals came. Was this a dream or was it real? No, it was real, he reminded himself.

He was at the starting point for the finals, and his nation was watching. Millions were cheering for him, and hearts were racing, expecting this 'country-boy-makes-it-big' story to hit the headlines the next day. In fact, I remember watching the event. The gun was about to go off, signaling the start. This was the moment he had waited for most of his life. But the mind with all it's tenacity and resoluteness is also a storehouse of unuttered yearnings.

'From out of nowhere,' he said, 'an unexpected thought suddenly flooded my mind--I WONDER IF MY FATHER IS WATCHING ME.'

That unanticipated thought momentarily overcame him and may have added a fraction of a second to his first two strides, robbing him of the gold. With great credit, he still won the bronze. The third fastest in the world is no mean accomplishment. Yet, to him, the victory on the track lost it's luster when measured against the deeper yearnings of his life--the approval of the ones you love. Little did this Olympian know how my heart was beating as he shared this story with me. I understood him well.

Young dreams may be wild ones, but they are never corrected by ridiculing them. They must be steered by a loving voice that has earned the right to be heard, not one enforced by means of power. This is a very difficult lesson for parents to learn. And, as cultures lose their restraining power, there will be greater need for mutual love and respect between parents and children if a relationship of trust is to be built, rather than banking on authority because of position."

This Father's Day I am overjoyed by the reality of fatherhood. It is better than I could have ever imagined. Also, I'm grateful for an earthly father that never squashed my dreams. I never once had to wonder if he was watching because he was always there to cheer me on in my accomplishments or correct me with great grace and patience through my many-many failures.

I'm also infinitely thankful for a Heavenly Father who has shaped me in my peculiar uniqueness, equipped me for big dreams, measured the distance of my faults by the rule of His mercy, and guided my every step by the light of His Word.

"The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God." - Romans 8:16 NASB

3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16 The first time I memorized those words I was the lead in my church's Christmas play, and I was just a little kid. It was a fun play. I was really young, but I enjoyed my role. I never forgot those words, but it was only during my teenage years (when the infamous wrestler Steve Austin coined his trademark Austin 3:16) that I realized how well known this verse was. And then a couple of years ago Tim Tebow put the reference in his face paint during the NCAA National Football Championship game. Google reported 92 million searches for John 3:16 during and immeditely following the game.

My point is that this is an incredibly familiar passage. One that has made its way into our culture in a variety of ways over the years. For me, it's a verse that I have read, quoted, written, and heard probably thousands of time in my thirty-plus years, but it wasn't until recently that I actually understood it at all. I mean, people have been telling me for years what it is supposed to mean. I have even told others what it is supposed to mean. I've blogged about it, preached about it, designed t-shirts utilizing it, and broadcast it--but; even though I've been a Christian for over half of my life, it's never really been much more than some evangelical mantra we like to bandy about as we proselytize those around us. It is so much more than that.

I had a good family life growing up, and consider that actuality an incredible blessing knowing that to be more the exception than the rule these days. Because of my home life, grasping the notion of being a son of God, like the Bible teaches, was never much of a stretch for me. It was an easy part of the faith for me to comprehend, believe, and communicate. It's only within the last month, and to a lesser extent the previous nine, that I began to be able understand the Gospel from a Father's perspective.

And that brings me back to John 3:16. This verse we've probably all heard so much. As familiar as it is, it is incredibly challenging, confusing, and wonderful. God loved you and I so much that He gave away His only son. I can tell you right now, I could never do that. It doesn't matter who we are talking about: my best friend, my wife, my mom, brother, students, anyone...everyone. If given a choice to save them and yet condemn my child there is no real choice. My child gets first priority every time.

But God, being infinitely sovereign and immeasurably wise, contrived a means by which He could give up His own son to excruciating torture, so that He might open the way to redemption and restoration for all of His sons...and not only did the one die to save the rest, but the firstborn of all creation rose again through the power of the Father.

I'm going to do the best I can in this life to be the best father that I can be, but only God the Father can give and save at the same time. Incredible.