Men's Fraternity Week 8

Men’s Fraternity
Week #8 Father Wound

Very Important Note: If you have had a great dad, stop and thank God for his investment in your life and then look around for other men that need a hand up! That’s what men do. Men inspire and encourage others along on the journey to authentic manhood! None of us get a pass on this one.

1 Corinthians 16:13
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.

• We have all been shaped to some extent by the father/son relationship

Proverbs 1:8a
Hear, my son, your father’s instruction…

• Sons want to take pride in their fathers and brag about them.

Proverbs 17:6
Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers.

[glory – a reason for boasting]

• A father can either build on that advantage or waste it.

WOUND: any unresolved issue where lack of closure adversely impacts and shapes the direction and dynamics of a man’s life in the present.

[Pastor Brian shared a statistic with us: 33% of children today are growing up without a father, many do not even know who their father is.]

The Father Wound: An ongoing emotional, social or spiritual deficit that’s caused by the lack of a healthy relationship with dad and now must be overcome by other means.

1. Causes of the father wound:

• Lack of heart connection
• Lack of companionship
• Lack of direction

2. Common responses to the father wound:

• Anger and pain

Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Colossians 3:21
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

[We talked for a minute about what it means to provoke someone and came up with this: pushing someone’s buttons to cause a reaction or placing unnaturally high expectations on them.]

• Bottle up the feelings.
• Inner sense of lossness or incompleteness.

[Pastor Brian shared this story from the July 28, 2003 issue of Sports Illustrated about well-known football player Jeremy Shockey:

For years the two brothers waited. Their father's absence sat in the house like some godawful heirloom, a piece of Shockey family history everyone had learned to avoid. It wasn't even that hard to pull off: Avert your eyes long enough, ignore a big, ugly fact day after day, and soon you can act as if it never existed. The brothers didn't ask about their father, and their mother didn't bring him up. She had left her husband when Jeremy was three and James was four. They lived in a patch of Oklahoma beloved by oilmen and ranchers and few others. They kept on.

The boys waited. They took to pounding each other as brothers often do, with Jeremy always the worse for it. She wondered if the boys hated each other; they were best friends, of course. The father was a no one. He never phoned and never visited, so that's what she called him: an absolute no one. When the boys were old enough, she told them, Apparently he doesn't want anything to do with you. They didn't cry. They absorbed the truth like little men.

Still, they waited. But it wasn't because the boys—teenagers now and still growing-nursed every abandoned kid's fantasy: tears, a hug, Christmas mornings together. No. It was all about that moment of impact: Who's going to get to the door first? That's what they wondered. When he came back, which one would swing open the door and take the first measure of his dark hair and too-strange, too-familiar features? Who would be the lucky one? Which brother would have the honor of smashing his father's face?

Jeremy Shockey dreams of mayhem. He sees himself making catches no one has ever made—behind the back, one-handed, with defenders draped all over him. He envisions himself running over people and maiming them, he says, "hitting them until their bones crush." This comes as no surprise. Anyone who saw the New York Giants' rookie tight end barrel through the NFL last season could feel the joy he took from inflicting punishment.

"People pay money to watch people get hurt," Shockey says. "They're looking to win, but you ask nine out of 10 people and they'll say, 'I'd rather see Jeremy Shockey run over somebody and break his arm or leg than see him catch a touchdown.' They pay all that hard money for their seats? I'm going to give them what they want." He'll enjoy it too. "That's what excites me," he says.]

3. What every son needs from his father:

• Time together [building positive moments]
• Life skills
• Life direction
• Deep life convictions. [Why we make the choices we make]

Great Quote by Tierce Green: ”You will leave in your son what you lived out in your home!”

• His Dad’s heart

Matthew 17:5
He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

[God set the example with His own Son, expressing pleasure and pride in him.]

Group Questions
1. How do you feel about your relationship with your dad? What are three words or phrases that sum up your relationship with him?

2. This session talked about the father wound expressing itself in three ways: (1) anger and pain, (2) the bottling up of feelings, and (3) a sense of relational or informational incompleteness. Elaborate on how any of these three things describe you.

[Personal note: This was a difficult session for me as I have some pretty mixed up feelings about my father and many of the bullet points we have discussed over the last couple of weeks hit pretty close to home. I found myself wanting to speak up during group discussion but was ultimately unable to do so. One of the men at my table did share, however, and it was yet another reminder to me that no matter how bad you think your situation is there is always someone who has it worse than you. I’m glad that he, at least, had the courage to share a little of his story. I’m realizing more and more that my feelings toward my dad will have to be worked out eventually if I’m ever to live the life God wants for me. If you’re reading this right now I hope you’ll pray for me in this area and for the member of our group who shared.]