Dude, You Are Making Daddy Look Really Bad!

This past weekend was a rough one over at our house. We were getting things ready for a great Memorial Day weekend when a fog of sickness rolled into our place.

Usually with three kids any sickness that occurs bounces around like a ping pong ball between all three of them and you spend a few days following the "contaminated" one around with a vomit bowel, Lysol, and medicine.

 

Fevers, meltdowns, whimpers and everything that goes with sick kids will usually happen.

 

This time everyone got it at once. It was as if someone ordered a round of "Puny-ness" for all my friends!

 

On Sunday, my youngest son, Blake was having some major meltdowns and it seemed like the only way to help him was to just hold him close.

I honestly believe that the one thing that made these meltdowns so bad was the shirt that he was wearing.

 

The shirt?

 

Yep!

 

Across the front, emblazoned in LARGE letters  was the phrase:

 

"TOUGH LIKE DADDY"

 

Now normally this would be a shirt that I would love to see him wear, but not on this day and especially not like this.

This is the kind of shirt that makes a dad smile when they shake off a tumble to the floor or a "head encounter" with the corner of the coffee table.

But in a day like this?

I found myself telling him, "Dude, you are making Daddy look really bad! Change your shirt, or change your disposition."

It reflected on Daddy.

I know he was not feeling well, but the thought of what I had told him stuck with me when I read a very familiar passage.

"The LORD is my shepherd;..." ~Psalms 23:1

I was reading Psalms 23 and quite honestly it caused me to do a bit of soul searching.

We know this Psalm mainly from funerals and the occasional message in church, but it is more than just a “Funeral Psalm”. This was a testimony from a man who had been a literal shepherd and despite all of the frustrating qualities that he had found in sheep he cared for, he found many similarities between a sheep’s characteristics and his own. This is actually the testimony of anyone who claims Christ as the Savior and Lord of their life.

The term, "Christian" is a very loosely thrown around term and in some cases it can be worn like a status symbol. It means, "Little Christ" and this was a derogatory remark that people threw on the disciples of Christ because their actions, words and way of life reminded people of the Christ. This was not something people called themselves because they did not feel worthy to carry His title.

 

The name of this blog is, “The Man and the Wall” not “Sheep and their ways” so I will not go into massive amounts of detail on the similarities of sheep and the spiritual walk of the believer but I will state the most obvious one as I see it displayed in the twenty third Psalm and verse one.

“The Lord is my Shepherd…”

The Sovereign God of the universe is the one who cares for me and directs me.

This is an identity claimed bond between the sheep and their shepherd. Like a family tie. The actions, behaviors, and words of one indirectly or directly reflects upon the other.

I read this and meditated on it and instantly the mental image of a fourteen month old in the middle of a massive meltdown wearing a shirt proclaiming “I’m as tough as Daddy” came crashing through the door of my mind.

Let me ask you the question that I had to confront myself with when I read this passage.

“How do you represent that statement with the words and actions that are projected to those that God has placed in your life at home as well as out and about?”

We all claim God as our shepherd but really that is more than just putting on the title “Christian” or telling people “I’m like Daddy in the way that I ________?”

A sheep that is spiritually sick and malnourished does not speak well of the shepherd. A sheep that is constantly choosing to find things to complain about and ways to rip into other sheep does not represent the shepherd very well.

Does your Shepherd (Daddy) really provide for you that poorly? Is your Shepherd (Daddy) really that dense when it comes to the purpose of your life? I think that now more than ever it is important for us to ask this question of ourselves.

We love to proclaim, “Greater is He that is you than He that is in the world” when things are going our way, but that statement is true when God’s purpose in our lives crosses over the boundary of what we consider to be fair. God’s purpose, not His fairness determines the circumstances of our life. Just in case I wrote that too fast, let me re-write that statement:

“GOD’S PURPOSE, NOT HIS FAIRNESS DETERMINES THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR LIFE”

If we were operating on God’s fairness, then Jesus would have never gone to the cross and we would all be in hell at this very moment. That would be fair, because it surely wasn’t fairness that hung Jesus on the cross. It was God’s purpose for Jesus to be the Lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the world, and it is His purpose that dictates the circumstances in your life and in mine.

His resurrection meant that we have life! His Holy Spirit that is within the believer is the powerful testimony that the “Words we wear on our shirt that describe our similarities to Daddy” are in fact correct.

 

Paul put it this way, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” and this is more than a suggestion. That is the very key to our actions, words, and attitudes being now able to match what is written on the shirt!

I want to represent Daddy well because I now operate on a power that is not my own. It is as it has always been before I even realized it, about Him and not about me.

We can truly say and live the words:

I AM LOVE LIKE MY DADDY

I AM LONG SUFFERING LIKE MY DADDY

I AM JOY LIKE MY DADDY

I AM PEACE LIKE MY DADDY

I AM GENTLENESS LIKE MY DADDY

I AM GOODNESS LIKE MY DADDY

I AM FAITH LIKE MY DADDY

I AM MEEKNESS LIKE MY DADDY

I AM TEMPERANCE LIKE MY DADDY

Let’s take it a bit further shall we, because if God’s Holy Spirit indwells us we can truly reflectively wear the shirt that says:
I AM FORGIVING LIKE MY DADDY

I AM PATIENCE LIKE MY DADDY

You can go down the list on this and to doubt the ability that God says you now can be these things is arrogance and unbelief. It is in a sense saying to God, “I know that you say that it is now possible through you to live this way, but my circumstance is somehow greater than your ability in me to do this.”

This morning, before you go out Christian, what does your shirt say? Is it a true reflection of Daddy? It can only be a true reflection through the life surrendered to Him!


Climbing with you,
~Dan