The Most Powerful Man in the World |
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Though it happened many years ago, I remember the moment as if were yesterday. My ten-year old son, Luke, snuggled up to me after dinner as I was reading in my chair, and he said, with big eyes and a sweet face, “Dad…can I ask you a question?”
I knew he was after something. Cookies maybe. Or permission to run down to a friend’s house. “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?” “Dad…can I have a chain saw?”
The things these boys come up with. It cracks me up. He was dead serious, by the way.
You understand. We all — as men — pretty much want the same thing. We want power. We want to have an impact. We want to leave our mark on the world. A boy with a chain saw is a powerful thing. Just imagine all he could do. In a short time there wouldn’t be a tree left standing in the entire neighborhood. Which, of course, is why I did not give him one. A ten-year old with a chain saw is more powerful than he ought to be. But I understand the desire. It’s essential to the masculine nature.
Boys who play baseball don’t want to strike out. They want to hit that ball hard. They want to knock it over the fence. My boys love to wrestle with me, but they don’t simply want to wrestle — they want to pin me. They want to be on top. This is true of every man. This is what’s behind men and their fascination with fast cars, or power tools, or politics. It’s about power. A man may take it in the wrong direction sometimes, but the bottom line is
- a man needs to know he’s having an impact.
Or think of it this way: What’s your worst fear as a man? Isn’t it some version of failure? To royally blow it? To really screw things up? Lose your job. Drive your company into bankruptcy. Wind up pushing a shopping cart down the street. If you’re a doctor, you fear misdiagnosing a patient’s fatal disease. If you’re an attorney, you fear losing the big case. Because all those things in some way prove that you don’t have what it takes. |
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Not so for a woman. A woman’s worst fear is abandonment. Most women survive a career setback that would send men into a tailspin. Failure doesn’t seem to matter as much because a woman fears that she won’t be loved. It shouts to the world, “She wasn’t worth pursuing; she wasn’t worth fighting for.” But
- for men, the dog at our heals is failure.
We need to know that our lives mattered. That when the time came, we had what was needed. We came through. There was something powerful about our lives.
So let me say this as clearly as I can: You, Dad, are the most powerful man in the world… at least in their world. Your children are looking for you to answer the deepest questions of their lives. How you handle their hearts will shape them for the rest of their lives. Never forget that no one is as powerful as you are in the lives of your sons and daughters.
Please note I am not saying Mom is unimportant. Not at all. Mother teaches us unconditional love, and she teaches us about mercy. She is a comforter. When boys or girls want to do something adventurous, they don’t ask Mom; they ask Dad. But when they skin their knees or cut their fingers, when they get their feelings hurt, who do they run to? Mom, of course. Even wounded soldiers on the battlefield are known to cry out for their mothers in their last moments. Mother is love and tenderness and mercy. She is a picture of the heart of God.
But identity — especially gender identity — is bestowed by the father. A boy learns if he is a man, if he has what it takes from his dad. A girl learns if she is worth pursuing, if she is lovely, from her dad. That’s just the way God set this whole thing up. This power he has given to you. Excerpted with permission from You Have What it Takes: What Every Father Needs to Know by John Eldredge, copyright John Eldredge. * |
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Dads, you are powerful! You are important! Never forget the great role you play in the lives of your children. We are so grateful for you! Happy Father’s Day! |
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Encourage your children to be who God designed them to be |
You Have What It Takes: What Every Father Needs to Know |
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In You Have What It Takes, Eldredge gives fathers a look inside both themselves and their sons and daughters, encouraging them to give their children permission to be who God designed them to be. Every boy wants to be a hero. He wants to be powerful, dangerous. He wants to know… Do I have what it takes?
Every girl wants to believe that she is captivating, worth fighting for. She wants to know... Am I lovely?
Only you, Dad, can help your children find the answer to those questions. That makes you the most powerful man in your child's life. And as you will learn in this inspiring book, You Have What It Takes.
LEARN MORE ►
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In Get Your Life Back, New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge provides a practical, simple, and refreshing guide to taking your life back. By practicing a few wonderfully simple practices—or what John calls “graces”—you can begin to recover your soul, disentangle from the tragedies of this broken world, and discover the restorative power of beauty. |
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In an age when fathers are more important than ever, how do you embark on your journey to manhood and know how to steer clear of the dangers along the way? In Fathered by God, New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge reminds us that there's a path to masculinity and, best of all, there's a loving Father ready to help us follow it. | |
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New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge gives readers who are drained from the madness of modern life the tools they need to follow Jesus' path of supernatural resilience so they can recover their joy, strengthen their hearts, and thrive through the storm. |
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| Epic: The Story God Is Telling |
This dramatic retelling of the gospel illuminates the unique role we can play in the amazing story God is telling. Sure, good things happen, sometimes beautiful things. But tragic things happen too. What does it mean? We find ourselves in the middle of a story that is sometimes wonderful, sometimes awful, usually a confusing mixture of both, and we haven’t a clue how to make sense of it all. No wonder we keep losing heart. We need to know the rest of the story.
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