How to love to read books.
How to come as soon as I was called.
How to swing a hammer and use a circular saw.
How to camp and tent and love adventure.
How to appreciate good food and graciously eat whatever I was given.
How to receive correction and discipline.
How to milk goats and get eggs from a chicken's laying box.
How to run, hike, and climb.
How to skip a rock.
How to drive a car.
How to endure thirst, heat, cold, and pain, and keep going.
How to be a diligent worker, with a good attitude.
How to bait a hook (was with me when I caught my first trout).
How to hunt and clean a deer (you shoot it, you clean it).
How to build a tree stand or shelter off the land.
How to sing with all my heart.
How to observe, identify, and love animals: domestic, lifestock, and wildlife.
How to leave a campsite, or anywhere cleaner/better than I found it.
How a man is to love and give himself for his wife and children.
He taught me to love water, forests, and mountains.
He taught me to value my family's heritage.
He taught me to love my family, my neighbours, and strangers.
He taught me to be a man of honour and duty.
He taught me to honour my elders.
He taught me to stand up for the weak and the vulnerable.
He taught me never to hit a girl.
He taught me to delight in worshipping God with a local church.
He taught me to know, fear, love, and serve the true and living Triune God.
He taught me to search the Scripture, and reckon them to be true.
I cannot tell you all the things my dad taught me, but I can tell the most important thing he ever taught me.
From before I was born, He would talk to me, and preach the Gospel to me in the womb. And when I was 3 1/2 years old, and came to him greatly troubled, telling him that I was a sinner, on my way to Hell, he showed me the way of salvation.
He reached out and got his Bible, and opened it to John 3:16, the same verse his dad turned to, when Dad went to him at age 4.
He declared what Jesus Christ, the Son of God had done on my behalf, laying down his life shedding his blood on the cross, taking my punishment, and rose the third day so that I could be saved. At the young age, I bowed my heart, believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and was turned from death unto life!
SO SO SO grateful for my father!
And I pray that the heavenly Father will make me into the "Da" that my children need, the kind of Dad and I had growing up.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteYes. I like this.
Play School in Chepauk