Your Noble Duty, Divine Purpose, and Call to Glory: Show Us the Father

Imagine that you and your family are dwelling in a war-torn land, amidst continual gunfire, the sporadic explosion of bombs, and military violence.
Your wife and children are constantly in harm’s way.
Your neighborhood is a battleground and is overshadowed by the looming darkness of impending death and the threat of starvation, while you as the father are frantically attempting to find ways to protect and feed your family.

Yet on the horizon, within the scope of human vision, exists the ‘‘glorious city,’’ whose light never fades, where peace always reigns and lush fruit is always on the vine.
You have one goal: to get your family there—alive.

There is, however, one obstacle: between you and the celestial city is an impassable, bramble-infested, thorn-thicketed forest.
The deadly forest’s breadth is too wide and too high to circumvent.
The only way to the glorious city is to cut a path directly through the forest—which would demand a man of his life.

After making the decision to escape, you and your family flee and finally arrive at the outer edge of the immense sea of bramble, and you—knowing that your family must cut through this forest—turn to your wife and graciously voice those virtuous, noble, and heroic words that every woman desires to hear:

‘‘Honey, you go first.’’

It’s not exactly the ideal script for an Academy Award-winning motion picture—because it wouldn’t win any awards.
The story would never sell because no one would want to buy it.

We long for more.

You and I, we fathers, are called to cut a path though the thicket of this world, this vale of tears, with the purpose of leading our families to the Fatherland where there exists bliss, ecstasy, joy, and eternal peace.
We long to be the hero, but in order to do so, we must set the pace of self-giving love.

The man who believes that his identity exists in adventure, battles, and beauties may be on to something.
However, these things merely hint at a deeper, more profound masculine essence—man’s true identity.

True manhood isn’t achieved by wandering in the wilderness, conquering kingdoms, and winning the woman.

The battle is not so much outside of us as it is inside each of us.
We don’t have to go out in search of it.
No, the battle has found us; it is on the doorstep of our souls.

God has already established the battleground, the path, and the adventure—and it is your vocation.
If you are a husband, if you are a father, then this is your divinely ordained path to personal greatness.
Our vocation as husbands and fathers, though seeming to be common, mundane, and unexciting, is the very path that God has marked for you and me, in order that we may achieve our personal end, our glorious destiny.

The human father has been targeted and is being hunted by the evil one and his minions, but often he does not realize that he is being hunted, or why he is being hunted, because he does not comprehend his noble, powerful, divinely ordained identity.

The enemy presses his insidious will upon the human father, relentlessly pursuing him, working tirelessly to submerge him under the tide of temptations, with the purpose of drowning his desire to discover his true identity and purpose.

Why?

Because the evil one knows that the human father has the power to change this fallen world, to lead his family from the shadowy jaws of death to the land of eternal light and bliss.

The enemy knows that if the human father assumes his divinely ordained charitable authority, the micro church of the family will be restored and revitalized, and these micro churches of the family will revive the universal Church, and the renewed Church will eventually convert the world.

This is the epic battle of our time, and you and I are at the center of this confrontation between good and evil.
The key to winning the battle is the human father—you and I.

You are not the problem; indeed, you are the solution.

The longing for the Father is the deepest and most profound desire of the human heart.

The apostle Philip, on the night before Jesus’ ultimate act of sacrificial love, pleaded with his Lord, ‘‘[S]how us the Father, and we shall be satisfied’’ (John 14:8).
Indeed, it is the vision of the Father that satisfies the human person’s craving for validation, affirmation, and love.
Jesus’ response to Philip is pivotal: ‘‘Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me’’ (John 14:10–11).

Because of your baptism, Christ lives in you, and therefore you are capable of imaging the eternal Father to your children.
Furthermore, because the Son of the Father became the son of a human father, all fathers have been made capable of imaging the eternal Father to their children.

Philip’s heartfelt desire is also the deepest longing of our children’s hungry souls: ‘‘Show us the Father.’’
This is our noble duty, our divine purpose, our call to glory—to show our children the Father.
And this holy endeavor can only be accomplished by fulfilling the words of Christ, ‘‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me.’’

It is now time for us to enter this battle, fully armed, with the bold commitment to sacrifice ourselves for our wives, children, and the future of humanity by becoming a father on earth like the Father in heaven.