BE THE DAD PODCAST

When you have a speaker at one of the Fathers Forum events, you assume that person is an expert. You expect that the person has gone through training to become knowledgeable. But I have fallen many times as a father. I have gotten back up by the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to be a father worthy of the calling we have.

I became a dad in August of 1983. I had no idea, as a 26-year-old, what was going to happen to me over the next 36 years. Right before this event my phone rang and it was my 36-year-old son with his 5-year-old son FaceTiming me.

My son and I had a difficult time when he was in high school. We had some friction, but he named his son after me, which was an indicator that our relationship was solid. There was no lingering woundedness from our past.

I am no expert, but I am going to share my own experiences and life lessons that I have learned about being a dad.

First, as Christian men, we need to live a life of abiding in Christ. We all need prayer, confession, Bible study, and accountable relationships. Men tend to be secret keepers. We tend to not be honest about the pain in our lives. Men need to be willing to provide safe places for other men to share their feelings.

Part of being a good dad is dealing with the broken relationships in our family of origin. We may have had tough relationships with our family, and these relationships inform the way we parent. They create examples – positive or negative – for the kind of family we want to have. If you have broken relationships, you need to resolve those so you can improve as a parent.

Number two is to love our wives deeply and sacrificially. You may think life is going to be this routine of “I will go to work and she will take care of the kids”, but you need to stand united with your wife to parent and mentor your kids. Most importantly, we need to love our wife in a way that she feels loved. I’ve mentored young husbands before who can’t understand the way they’re loving their wife might not make her feel loved. I encourage all husbands to ask their wives what they can do to make her feel and experience love. The trick here is to make sure you follow through with what she requests. If you ask the question, be prepared for a hard answer, but make sure you are prepared to deliver.

Third is to choose not to pursue esteem for yourself and for your children. When you have stress in your life, you have an idol that is being challenged. That idol is usually what gives you self-esteem. We want to have the perfect life, perfect kids, a great job, the best car. As we try to practice the Christian life, we must understand that God’s best is not always what society perceives as the most successful. If we spend all our time trying to secure esteem for ourselves, we can’t commit time to understanding the unique needs of our children.

Fourth, express unconditional approval for each child. You never quit being a parent, no matter the age of your children. Your role may change, your advice may change, but their need for you will never change. Above everything, my biggest job is to express that my children are loved and approved by me and by our Heavenl

Growing up was hard for me. My parents were both alcoholics and I never knew which version of them I would see when I got home from school each day. My two older sisters, Gail and Melinda, have been God’s great mercy for me. We all had to deal with the trauma of our alcoholic parents growing up, but they have always protected me and loved me throughout our lives. (more…)

Just a little about myself – I am the mom of three kids, ages 13, 20 and 25. I was married to my best friend for 26 years meeting at Baylor and who, over time, God knitted us into soul mates. And this morning I want share a bit about my husband, Tod,and the legacy of faith that is growing out to others since he headed into the presence of Jesus almost two years ago.

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Hi. I’m Joe Foster and I’m still here by God’s grace, 100 percent. So, I want to share some information about a study that was done on what makes a successful life, and the study took 75 years. A book was published on this study called “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study”. Psychiatrists, if you can believe this, followed Harvard University students who were students of Harvard University in the late 1930’s. They basically followed these guys their entire lives to find out what makes a successful life. Would you like to know what the conclusion of the study was? (more…)

I am the father of two kids. Anna and I have been married for 11 years, and we have kids ages 10 and 8: a 10-year-old boy named Alex and an 8-year-old girl named Natalie. What I thought I’d do is talk a little bit about my faith journey and how I got to where I am in life, and spiritually in particular, and then talk about a few lessons that may be applicable. (more…)

There are times in my life when my wife looks at me and says, “If you’re going to post all this Abiding Fathers stuff on your social media, you need to start acting like one.”

And I’m like, “Okay, I guess I better start listening.”

We have two children. My son has autism. My daughter is the child with the autistic sibling. So I tend to focus my life on his needs and I tend to focus on his well-being and she’s got a life too. Being a better father means not to just push her needs aside but know that she’s just as needy as he is, but in a different way. (more…)

Jill and I have been married 33 years. We have a son that’s 30 and a daughter that’s 27. I’m going to get into that a little in a moment. Some people have been asking, “What do you mean, ‘identity in crisis’?” People are familiar with “identity crisis” but I’m focusing on the “in crisis.” It’s kind of a hard topic for me to do in 20 minutes, because I’ve been working on it for 50 years. (more…)

I titled this “Being a dad is a marathon”. It’s the greatest race. I should probably parenthetically suggest that I’m on mile 14. I’ve got a long way to go. Dads are vital to kids’ development, as we all know, and the absence of dads is what’s scarring society. (more…)

Here’s a summary of a podcast from a recent Fathers Forum event in Dallas where Brad Clark, a local businessman and ministry leader spoke to a group of Abiding Fathers’ followers.

Brad values community and talking about what God has been teaching him and his friends and where they have struggles. How are you taking what God is teaching you to help others? (more…)

This is part 6 of the ‘Offender Series’.

Welcome to the Be The Dad Podcast. We’re going to listen and learn from incarcerated men, many who have felt the effects of having an absentee father. These men have been taught about the importance of the role of a father, through reading the book From Faith to Faith, which is an acronym meaning from fathers absent in the home to fathers abiding in the home.

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