21/21 | Like A Punch In The Face

Here is a link to the messages from chaNges on March 1, 2015, March 8, 2015, and March 15, 2015 if you want to play along.

chaNges | weeks 1, 2 & 3 

Also, please use the comments to post your own experience with the 21 Day Change-Awareness Exercise (21DCAE).  Please know that I will do my best to pray over post and prayer request as we do this together.  Good luck.

It was Thursday morning at about 6AM.  Everything was quiet.  The first indications that the sun was about to arrive colored the horizon.  All three boys, Kim and I were all asleep.  That's when it happened.  The (notice no ownership) 2-year-old got up and with all the force he could muster . . . punched me in the face--talk about being startled awake.  I jumped up on my knees and was entirely prepared to lift and throw the intruder across the room.  As an early riser, being sound asleep at 6 was unusual, so all the more startling to be woken by a punch in the face.

After it happened and I had a few minutes to process what happened, I realized how analogous getting punched in the face was to being a good dad.  Stay with me here.  Our true metal is revealed in our worst moments and getting punched in the face was a revealing worst-kind of moment.  I sacrificed the bed to the 2-year-old and relegated myself to the couch.  My peacemaker goals were met by taking my very unpeaceful self out of the situation. 

For three weeks I have been tuning in to what God is teaching me through his word, through prayer, through fasting, and through meditation about His call on my life to be "daddy" to my boys.  I have experienced very real breakthroughs and have been more aware than ever of the effect I have on my boys.  God has implanted a very simple Truth in my heart as a dad: how do I bring peace?  How do I bring peace to the household?  How do I bring peace in my marriage?  How do I bring peace to my boys?  How do I bring peace?

Lord, thank you for a greater awareness of the change you are working in my life.  Continue to mold me into a peacemaker.  Help me to be known as a son of You.  Amen.