Let’s dive right into our Father’s Day message here, and it’s entitled Healing the Father Wound. I hope and pray this is helpful for some of you, and perhaps all of you. And I’m not just talking to dads this morning, I’m going to apply this to all of us.
Isn’t it interesting that if you have a physical injury, if you come in here with a cast on your arm, or maybe on crutches, or with a walking boot like Ryan Kovach has on this morning. He just got back from two weeks in Missouri on National Guard duty. And you’re going to get a lot of attention, or you should, from the body of Christ.
Hopefully we care about each other enough to say, hey, how are you doing? What happened? How can I pray for you? Physical injuries get a lot of attention. But the reality is that sometimes pain on the inside doesn’t get much attention. And those internal hurts in our lives, whether it’s emotional pain, or whatever kind of pain from our past, we don’t go around talking about it.
And so, this morning we’re going to talk about healing the father wound. And we’ll explain what that is. And this is going to be one of these messages where it’s going to take 15 or 20 minutes to kind of set the table, define the problem.
And then we’re going to get to what I believe is the solution, which is the scripture. So, some of you that are like, why isn’t he opening his Bible yet? This will take just a little bit of time to develop this whole concept of a father wound. Have you ever noticed that you’re watching sports, and I’m a big sports fan, and you’re watching that big football game, and someone’s made a great play, a touchdown, or a pick six, and they’re on the bench, and the TV camera focuses in a closeup of that football player, and he waves his hand, and what does he say? Hi mom, Hi mom. I’ve never seen a football player or athlete in that occasion say, hi dad. It’s hi mom.
Isn’t it interesting, and I researched this, according to the card companies, there are 45 million fewer Father’s Day cards purchased than Mother’s Day. 45 million fewer Father’s Day cards than Mother’s Day. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Something’s going on.
And so, this morning, we want to really ask three questions. What is the father wound? Why do we have a father wound? And then most importantly, and we’ll get there, how do we heal the father wound? So, this might be one of these messages that might stir up a few emotions in some of us. Maybe you were one that looked at that video and all those characteristics of a good father, and maybe if you’re transparent and honest, like, well, that’s nice, but that wasn’t my experience.
1. what is the father’s wound?
That’s life in a fallen world, isn’t it? So, what is the father’s wound? And I’m just going to have to do some quick reading here. The father wound is an unresolved trauma between father and child that occurs when a person’s father is absent or abusive. It is important to recognize that both a physical or emotional absence can cause a father wound.
Likewise, if your father was abusive, manipulative, or emotionally unavailable, that can also lead to a father wound. So you may have a father wound if your father was overprotective, controlling, highly critical of you, you can never please your father, verbally, physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive, abandoned by leaving you when you were a child, one who neglected your physical or emotional needs, 60, 70 years ago, a good dad was like, hey, I put a roof over your head and gave you three square meals a day, what else do you want? A lot more, there’s a lot more to fathering than that. Suffered, your father suffered from substance abuse, your father left the family as a result of a divorce or separation, he passed away when you were a child, all these things lead to a father wound.
2. why do we have a father wound?
And so, in the book by John Eldredge, Wild at Heart, John says, I’ve never met a man, or probably a woman, he’s wrote this book, Geared Toward Men, that does not have some sort of father wound. Some are much deeper than others, so why do we have a father wound? You may have had the best father in the world, but there’s one characteristic, there’s no perfect human fathers. I had a great father, dad was a pastor, did ministry for 60 years, and I’ll ask this question, and ask if anybody else has had this experience, and I’ve told this story many times.
25 years ago, Moody Pastors Conference, my dad and I are attending it on the campus of Moody Bible Institute, and it was four days where 1,500 pastors come from all over and experience great preaching, and fellowship, and encouragement. And so, one day we’re there, and my dad wants to take me out to lunch, we go out to lunch, we’re having lunch in downtown Chicago, and lunch is about winding up, and he stops, he says, hey, I’ve got a question I want to ask you, like, oh, okay. Is, how do you think I did as your father? I want you to give me some feedback on whether or not I was a good father, or some things that I didn’t do very well.
And I have to tell you, I was like, kind of blindsided and blown away, like, my dad is asking me to give him a grade on fathering? And so, I spoke some words of appreciation and affirmation, and then I honestly gave him a couple of things that I thought maybe could’ve been handled a little better. Can I just ask a question? Has anybody else ever had that experience? Yeah, highly, I had a great father, but there’s no perfect fathers. Let me read the quote from John Eldredge.
Every man, woman, carries a wound. I’ve never met a man without one. No matter how good your life may have seemed to you, you live in a broken world full of broken people.
Your mother and father, no matter how wonderful, couldn’t have been perfect. She is the daughter of Eve; he is the son of Adam. There is no journey through this life without the wound.
And then John talks about his wound. Growing up in a family with an alcoholic dad. He says, the message delivered in my wound was simply this.
You’re on your own, John. There was no one in your corner, no one to show you the way, and above all, no one to tell you if you are or are not a man. He goes on to say, even after God’s dramatic rescue of me at the age of 19, when I became a Christian, the wound remained.
As my good friend Brent said, becoming a Christian doesn’t necessarily fix things. My arrows were still lodged deep and refused to allow some angry wounds to heal inside. And so, John Eldredge wrote the book Wild at Heart to help men and perhaps women would benefit from reading the book to heal from what is called the father wound.
John goes on to say there’s two basic options with the woundedness that many men live with. Number one, men either overcompensate for their wound and become very driven, hard charging, fiercely independent, and sometimes very angry underneath the surface, or they shrink back and become very passive. And so, this morning, we want to just spend about 15 minutes and think about, well, what do we do with that?
3. how do we heal the father wound?
And so, we’re going to look to Scripture and think about how do we heal the father wound? Obviously, Scripture addresses this, Psalm 27:10. The psalmist writes, though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will rescue me. We heard it this morning, didn’t we? It was a kid saying up there, he is a good, good father. And some of us that maybe did not grow up with a good father have a hard time relating to that.
The goodness of God and the love of God in our life. Psalm 68, five and six, a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.
And so, the generic answer is that God can become our father. In fact, he is the only perfect father. Matthew 5:48, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
And so, there is a perfect father who exists. So how do we heal this father wound? And I’m just going to walk us through a few steps here and hopefully backed by Scripture that will help encourage us this morning. And this is a process and maybe you’re just going to take step one this morning or step one and two and continue to work through this in your life.
A.
acknowledge the wound
But let’s think about the first point here. It’s going to be A, B, C, D, E, five points. Number one, acknowledge the wound.
Acknowledge, acknowledge the wound that we all grew up in an imperfect world. I was on a website and thinking about the father wound and it listed 17 symptoms of the father wound. Not going to reach all 17, but what does this look like? You feel all alone in the world.
Kind of feel like an orphan. You feel underappreciated, you work, work, work, but it feels like nobody notices your efforts and nobody cares about what you do. You need constant affirmation.
You feel rejected like you really don’t belong anywhere. You feel distant from God. You feel like you have to work for or earn love and acceptance.
You spend a lot of time in introspection, looking inside, rather than focusing on God. Well, there’s no perfect fathers and the first thing we need to acknowledge that and that some of us might carry a wound or some baggage from our physical or father. Secondly, here’s what we need to do and this is a natural step.
b.
Become part of God’s forever family
Become part of God’s forever family. So that’s the first step of understanding who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and then how to receive the gospel. That’s what we’re going to talk to some of your kids and grandkids about on Wednesday.
I found that many people know the gospel, they understand the gospel, they just need someone to lead them to know how to receive the gospel. And so, it’s becoming part of God’s forever family. Galatians chapter four, verses four through seven.
Paul writes, but when the time set had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. So, you are no longer a slave, but God’s child.
And since you are his child, God has made you an heir. And so, it’s the gospel, becoming an adopted child of God into God’s family, so that we can approach the throne of God, and we can call him, Abba, you’re my father. I can call you Daddy.
2nd Corinthians 5:21, he who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in him we might become, what? The righteousness of God. The gift of salvation is a wonderful gift that Jesus paid it all, and we simply need to repent of our sin and put our trust in him and him alone. So, Brendan Manning says, the deepest desire of our hearts is for a union with God.
God has created us for a relationship with him. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes; God has put eternity in our hearts. C.S. Lewis says, as a car is made to run on gasoline, God designed us to run on himself.
He is the fuel our souls were designed to burn, the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. And so, when you receive Jesus as your savior, when you’re trusting in him and him alone for forgiveness of sin, you are adopted into God’s family.
We sing that little chorus, I’m so glad I’m part of the family of God. And it’s a universal worldwide family, but also a local church family where we can encourage one another and meet each other’s needs and pray for one another. So, Matthew 7, Jesus talking about the Sermon on the Mount, here’s what he says, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened unto you.
Verse nine, which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? So, we have this good father, James 1:17, every good and perfect gift comes from the father above. And so, acknowledge the wound, become part of God’s forever family through grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.
c.
Choose to forgive
Here’s a third step, letter C, A-B-C, choose to forgive, choose to forgive. And this is where it gets a little difficult. Someone has said everybody believes in forgiveness, thinks it’s a great idea until you have to forgive someone. Especially someone that may have hurt you deeply.
But it’s choosing to forgive. One of the first verses I remember memorizing as a young boy growing up in the church is Ephesians chapter four, verse 31, 32. And you’re saying, if you memorized it, why are you turning to it? Because that was a long time ago.
Ephesians 4:32, be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you. Be kind to one another, be compassionate to one another, and forgive one another just as God has forgiven you.
Now I’ve struggled with this for years, this matter of forgiveness and looking at scripture and like, am I just supposed to like, blanket forgive everyone? Even if they don’t ask for an apology. And so, there’s two sides and you can read Christian books and they’ll say, yes, you just need to forgive everybody. As I look at Ephesians 4:32, it says, forgive one another just as God in Christ’s sake has forgiven you.
How does God forgive you? You have to ask him. The only way to salvation is that we come and we have to ask God for forgiveness of our sins. And then God forgives us.
And so, I believe that forgiveness is a godly response to an apology. Now that raises the question, well, what happens if the person that hurt me is gone or has died or, as Dr. Chapman says, there’s a group of people who will never ask forgiveness, category of people. They’ve done studies.
90% of them are men, by the way. Never ask for forgiveness. So, what do you do if someone never asks for forgiveness? Well, I like to use the term release.
That you turn them over, release them to God. And it’s kind of a form of forgiveness and it’ll just help us, I think, as we make our way through life. And I want to turn to 2nd Timothy chapter four.
Here’s the Apostle Paul, says, Alexander the metal worker did me a great deal of harm. So, he’s calling out this guy. He’s like, this guy hurt me.
This guy really did me wrong. What does he say? The Lord will repay him for what he’s done. I’m going to turn him over to God.
God will repay him. And then he gives a warning. You should be on your guard against him because he strongly opposed our message.
But we have to choose to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling. An act of the will.
Dr. Neil Anderson says, don’t wait until you feel like forgiving. You will never get there. Feelings take time to heal, usually after the choice to forgive is made.
d.
Delight in god’s overwhelming love
Sometimes forgiveness is a process. It takes some time, but we need to choose to forgive. Number four, ABCD, delight in God’s overwhelming love.
So now you’re part of God’s forever family and you need to get to know this perfect, good, good father that the Bible talks about. And we need to embrace that love, understand that love and delight in that love. So let me read Zephaniah 3:17. I’m glad I found that because earlier it took me about five minutes to find Zephaniah.
I found it right off the bat this time. Here’s what Zephaniah says. The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you. In his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but he will rejoice over you with singing. God the good, good father who loves us immeasurably more than we can ask or think delights in you.
He rejoices over you with singing like a mother who’s singing a lullaby to her precious child. God wants to sing over you. We need to delight in God’s overwhelming love.
And so, Cory Asbury wrote the song Reckless Love. Let me read some of the lyrics here. Before I spoke a word, you were singing over me.
You have been so, so good to me. Before I took a breath, you breathed your life in me. You have been so, so good to me.
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. It chases me down, fights till I’m found, leaves the 99. I couldn’t earn it; I don’t deserve it.
Still, you give yourself away. Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Have you experienced that? Have you just delighted in how much God loves you? And that was Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians.
He says, I want you to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. I want you to know the greatness of his love, how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And what’s Romans 8 say? That mountaintop chapter in the New Testament.
What shall separate us from the love of God? Paul asked that question. And then he goes on to write these great words. Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels, demons, present, future, any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And so, all scripture, especially in the New Testament, reminds us how much God loves us. And if we’re going to overcome the pain inside and especially from that father wound, we’re going to have to get to know our father, God the Father, really, really well.
We’re going to get to just understand his love for us. Dr. David Jeremiah’s book, God Loves You, says God’s love is uncaused, it’s unending, it’s unlimited, it’s unchanging, it’s unconditional. Unconditional love.
e.
encourage one another
All right, here’s the E, healing the father wound, acknowledge the wound, become part of God’s forever family, choose to forgive, delight in understanding God’s overwhelming love, and then E is to encourage one another. Maybe that’s not quite the right word, but I had to go with the E in the alphabet. Encourage one another.
That’s what 1st Thessalonians 4:18 tells us to do. Encourage one another. I don’t know if you’ve ever studied the one another phrases that are in the New Testament, there’s 12 of them.
Lays out our responsibility as part of the body of Christ. We’re to encourage one another, we’re to pray for one another, we’re to love one another, we’re to bear each other’s burdens, on and on it goes. Eight, there’s 12 of them, and one of the things that God wants us to do is to encourage one another.
And so, part of the healing of the father’s wound is to get with a group of, I’ll just use the phrase band of brothers, or band of sisters, you can be together with, maybe someone that’s a little further along in your spiritual walk, this is mentoring, this is discipleship, get involved in a group of others, and encourage one another in our walk, in our healing, and in our daily lives. David Smith, 1983, wrote a book entitled The Friendless American Male. Ladies, you’re pretty good at developing friendships and relationships, guys, we’re not that good at it.
When was the last time another guy called you up and said, hey, let’s go out for a cup of coffee? Doesn’t happen very often. They say women’s relationships are face-to-face, men build relationships shoulder-to-shoulder. We work on projects together, and that’s kind of how you get to know one another sometimes.
And so, healing the father wound, Eldridge says, our sin is that stubborn part inside that wants, above all else, to be independent. There’s a part of us fiercely committed to live in a way where we do not have to depend on anyone. And culture comes along with figures like John Wayne and James Bond, and the one thing they have in common is that they are loners, they don’t need anyone.
So, we come to believe deep in our hearts that needing anyone is some sort of weakness when the Bible says just the opposite. We desperately need one another, especially in the culture in which we. So, what do we do with all this? What are some action steps? Like I said, this is a process.
Number one, maybe this is the first step, maybe you’ve never thought about this father wound, but acknowledge the wound, that we’re all raised by an imperfect parent. Number two, become part of God’s forever family. If there’s somebody here that’s never received the gift of eternal life, that needs to be your first step.
Adopt it into God’s family. And would love to share with you the easy steps of how that can happen, become part of God’s family. Maybe some of us later today or later this week need to just think about choosing to forgive and writing down those hurts and offenses and then giving it to God, making that choice to forgive or to release.
Maybe some of us need to read some scripture and verses and be reminded of how much God loves us. And if there’s any doubt about how much God loves us, we simply need to look at the cross, don’t we? He gave his most precious possession to take our place and to die for our sins. Then maybe some of us need to find a band of brothers or a band of sisters, just a small group where we can pray for one another, encourage one another and journey through life together.
And so probably in the next month or so, we’re going to offer, at least for men, an opportunity to do that, trying to figure that out when a good meeting time might be. But we’re going to share that and that might be a great step for some of us. Healing the father’s wound.
God’s the perfect father and he loves us immeasurably more than we can ask or even imagine.