As I begin today and consider what I am seeing and how I am perceiving it. As I begin today and consider what I am hearing and how I am interpreting it. As I begin today and reflect on the inputs in hope of receiving understanding in my heart. As I look to God for wisdom and praying rather than allowing anxiety and fear to reign. As I pause and reflect on God’s Word and His promises, His plans, and His purpose to help me get through today. I turn to today’s devotional.
It’s always so interesting to get to read one of the devotionals from Manhood Journey and how they speak to men and especially dads.
As I consider the reality of the importance of being the dad God created me to be for my wife’s sake, my kids’ sake, and this world’s sake, living life as Jesus purposed to the full, more abundantly, and without regrets comes to mind. God created us for relationships! God created us to be in a relationship with Him, God created us to be in a relationship with our wives, God created us to be in a relationship with our kids, and God created us to be in a relationship with others! So let’s be the dads who choose to live connected lives so that by being connected with God we can allow God’s love, plan, and purpose to flow into us and through us into the lives of our wives, our kids, and our world!
So with my usual search for the word “dad” and scrolling through a couple of pages, today’s devotional is going to be “Becoming A Connected Father” from Manhood Journey!
Scripture from Today’s Devotional:
‘ Counsel in the heart of man is like water in a deep well, but a man of understanding draws it out. [Prov. 18:4.]’
Proverbs 20:5
‘ A [self-confident] fool has no delight in understanding but only in revealing his personal opinions and himself.’
Proverbs 18:2
God’s Word never returns void! God’s Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path! Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and He will take care of the rest! Let’s put first things first!
Let’s be the dads who dig deep to understand! Let’s be the dads who look to pull up the wisdom from the deep waters in order to understand! Let’s be the dads who realize that those deep concepts need to be taken up, no matter how much more effort it requires to bring up, in order to be understood, otherwise they will remain harder to access, more difficult to see! Let’s be the dads who check our hearts to understand our motives! Let’s be the dads who choose to make our hearts conform to God’s standards and plans! Let’s be the dads who invite the Holy Spirit to help us search our hearts and dig deeper, in order to pull out the understanding we need and remove whatever is contrary to God’s standards and plans! Let’s be the dads who grab hold of what Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 2:11-13 when he says: “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” Let’s be the dads who receive God’s warnings from Proverbs 20 “about alcohol, infuriating those in authority, quarreling, and laziness.” Let’s be the dads who also receive the commendation of Solomon found in God’s Word to “an understanding mind, faithfulness, integrity, and righteous conduct“!
Let’s be the dads who are humble rather than prideful! Let’s be the dads who delight in finding understanding! Let’s be the dads who aren’t self-confident fools that brag about personal opinions and ourselves! Let’s be the dads who are more interested in godly wisdom than foolishness! Let’s be the dads who are rooted in the pursuit of God and His truth (Proverbs 1:7)! Let’s be the dads who are humble rather than arrogant and look to other opinions and allow others to help us in receiving understanding! Let’s be the dads who seek understanding rather than just saying what is on our minds! Let’s be the dads who listen with the intent to understand! Let’s be the dads who aren’t stuck with arrogance and closed-mindedness! Let’s be the dads who know and realize that unwise speech, or failure to be open-minded and diligent, can lead to serious consequences!
Today’s devotional has been provided by UNCOMMEN.
Reading through today’s devotional, here are some takeaways for me: (check out the devotional on your own too to see if you pick up other nuggets, and please share your findings in the comments)
This reading plan is a summary of many of the things taught in the full digital course called The Connected Father filled with videos, podcasts and downloadable tips and tools.
Becoming a Connected Father
Manhood Journey is a ministry who helps dads become disciple makers. We do this through various tools: blogs, eBooks, Field Guides, Bible studies, digital courses and live events.
For more information, please visit https://www.manhoodjourney.org/connectedfather.
Takeaways from Today’s Devotionals:
“Day 4: Communication Strategy 1 “
- Communication Strategy 1: Ask Questions
- Let’s be the dads who look for ways to be creative when we ask our kids questions!
- Today’s Devotional tries to help with these questions covering the following items:
- Improving communications with our children and how it can often be improved by us developing just one key skill
- “Finding common ground – how to develop a strong bond with our kids on topics they find interesting”
- “Getting our kids to lean in and listen to us”
- “I don’t think that our kids will not communicate with us. I think we’ve accidentally trained them not to. There are some contributing factors to this:”
- “How we talk “to” them all the time (are you a “monologue-er”?)”
- “How well we listen (or not)”
- “How we talk to their moms (Uh-oh!)”
- Today’s devotional wants us to focus on what is causing the disconnect in our conversation!
- Let’s be the dads who realize the piece of the disconnect we can control!
- Let’s be the dads who aren’t being held back or disconnected because of our habits or behaviors, as “the vast majority of dads I know who say their kids won’t open up to them are usually either the “no-talking” dad or the “field-general” dad – they either say nothing at all most of the time, or they just bark out orders“!
- Let’s be the dads who realize that “a large percentage of your communication disconnects are within your control“!
- Let’s be the dads who reflect on the fact that the reason our kids might not be talking to us could be us rather than them!
- Let’s be the dads who realize it is fixable and choose to fix it!
- Today’s Devotional speaks to “Communication strategies” and will continue over today and tomorrow:
- Today’s Devotional kicks off with the first strategy:
- Let’s be the dads who are focusing on “becoming a great asker of questions of your kids“!
- Today’s devotional points us to the “53 Compelling Questions” PDF resource as part of the full digital course.”
- Today’s devotional calls out a belief that “the NUMBER ONE reason dads struggle to connect with their kids is because dads stink at asking great questions.”
- Let’s be the dads who consider the things that drive this:
- “Pride – we tend to talk more than we listen, and we think our stories, words and opinions are the most interesting ones in the world“
- “Expectations – we think it’s our job to constantly be in “instructor mode”“
- “Fear – many dads have told me they’re afraid their son or daughter might ask a question they don’t know how to answer“
- “Hurry – we just want the fastest route to the solution, and sometimes that’s a direct order, instead of taking the time to let them learn“
- Let’s be the dads who consider the things that drive this:
- Let’s be the dads who ask questions as part of how we instruct and educate our kids!
- Let’s be the dads who ask questions to better know our kids!
- Let’s be the dads who ask our kids questions “about their day, what they like, what they’re afraid of, why they think the way they do“!
- Let’s be the dads who are asking our kids questions because we know it is liquid gold so we can learn “how our kids think, what they love, and even what they’re afraid of“!
- Let’s be the dads who are focused on connecting with our kids by getting interested and being involved in what they love!
- Let’s be the dads who are bonded together by being involved and interested in what they are!
- Today’s devotional points to the reality that drawing closer to God as it helps us draw closer to our wives and our kids!
- Let’s be the dads who draw closer to our kids by finding shared passions!
- Let’s be the dads who realize the importance of great questions to help us identify what’s on our kids’ minds and hearts!
- Today’s devotional closes with the following:
- Today’s devotional closes with the following challenge:
