The Father Wound

"And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." — Malachi 4:6

Brother, almost every man I have walked with through this material eventually has to face the same conversation. It is the conversation about his father.

For some of you, your father was absent. He worked all the time. He left when you were six. He was at every game and never said a kind word. You learned what a man was supposed to be by watching him not be it.

For some of you, your father was present but cold. You knew he loved you in some abstract way but you cannot remember a time he said it. Affection was awkward. Approval was conditional. You spent your boyhood trying to earn what should have been given.

For some of you, your father raged. You learned to read his face from the driveway. You walked on glass at home. You decided early that you would not be like him — and you have spent your adult life either becoming him or running from him, sometimes both.

For some of you, your father wounded you in deeper ways still. The Spirit knows what He showed you when I started this list.

Here is the link to pornography that few churches are willing to talk about openly: the man who did not receive his father's blessing as a boy spends his adult life hunting for it from women. And pornography offers an infinite, on-demand, shame-free counterfeit of that hunt. "Look at me. Smile at me. Be pleased with me. Do not turn away from me." That is what your soul has been asking for since you were eleven. The screen has been answering with a lie.

Three things to do, slowly, over months — not in one sitting:

1. Name what you did and did not receive from your earthly father. Write it. Read it to the Holy Spirit. Read it eventually to your team. Specifics. Not "he was distant." "He never told me he was proud of me. The only time he hugged me was at my wedding."

2. Forgive him. Not because he deserves it. Not because he asked. Because unforgiveness is a chain that holds you to the man who hurt you, and Jesus has already paid the bill. Forgiving your father does not excuse what he did. It releases you from carrying him.

3. Receive the Father. This is the part many of us miss. Once the earthly father is grieved and forgiven, there is a gap. The gap is meant to be filled by the Father who actually is — the one Jesus came to reveal. "I will not leave you as orphans." He is not the man you grew up with. He is not distant, not raging, not absent, not conditional. He is the Father you have always needed. Let Him in.

This is months of work, brother. Some of it requires a Christian counselor; please get one. But you will not walk in full freedom from sexual sin while a father wound still bleeds underneath. The healing is connected. He is willing.