12 Books to Celebrate Dad

He’s the wrestle champion, BBQ extraordinaire, advice giver, spiritual leader, firm foundation, trend setter, bread winner, shoulder to cry on. Yes sir, I am talking about Dad! It’s June and time to celebrate the fathers in our life. Below are 12 books that highlight dads and the special place they hold in the family, and in their children’s hearts.

A few ideas for sharing this particular stack of books:

  •  place these in a book basket and encourage your older, literate children to read them to your younger children
  •  have this special stack set aside for dad to read aloud
  • snuggle in close with your children and read them aloud yourself

In my own community, there are several families who will endure this day as they remember the man no longer here. A dear friend of mine wrote a post several years ago about her own family’s experience with Father’s Day soon after the death of her husband. If this sounds like someone you know, please pass this post along. Also, read it for yourself to see how you can help a family during this holiday. While these book suggestions below may not meet the needs of a family in such a situation, I may have one recommendation. Why not grab a copy and read aloud a stack of books, or a book, that your children’s father loved reading to them? Or maybe you could read a portion of his favorite book. I think this would be a nice way to remember the man and honor his memory even while acknowledging the huge loss.

For the dads still present with us today, we can’t wait to celebrate you! Here are 12 books to get started:

Danny’s dad takes him on illegal excursions (pheasant poaching), but this is a fun father/son story that you and your children won’t forget!

 

What books would you add to this list? Happy Father’s Day!

 

 

 

 

Purchase my book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale, on Amazon.

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My Children’s Dad

Happy Father's Day

He’s the kind of man you want on your team, in your court, and beside you in battle.

He’s loyal, fun, and intentional.

He lives to please his Father.

He takes time to stoop low and teach, play on the floor, and read God’s Word.

He encourages dreams.

He works hard until the job is done then looks for ways to complete the same job better the next time around.

He makes pancakes almost every Thursday night and plays hide-and-seek like he gets paid for it.

For all of these reasons and more I am so grateful that when I married a great man, I also married a wonderful father.

Happy Father’s Day, Ron! And Happy Father’s Day to all the readers of This Temporary Home that have the honor and responsibility of being called Dad.

If you would join me in praying for Ron and his mission team this week as they are on mission in a communist country then I would be very grateful.

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That’s My Dad

That's My Dad Post

You may know him as the one who daily reenacted the Incredible Hulk or the Tickle Monster; the provider; the disciplinarian; the hard worker; the strong, safe arms; or the voice that sang you to sleep at night, but to everyone else he is your dad.  For those of us who grew up with a good, godly daddy we are truly blessed.

While celebrating “the man” this Father’s Day I would like moms and dads to take time to remember what character of a man the Father wants today’s dads to reflect.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3)

What are you doing, my son?  What are you doing, son of my womb?  What are you doing, son of my vows?  Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.

Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.  Open your mouth, judge righteously; defend the rights of the poor and needy. (Proverbs 31:2-5, 8-9)

From these brief scriptures, we can learn a few characteristics of the godly man dad’s should portray:

  • He delights in God’s word.
  • He meditates (memorizes and reflects) on God’s word.
  • He teaches his children the ways of the Lord throughout everyday interactions (See Deuteronomy 6:4-9).
  • He keeps good, honorable company.
  • His work is prosperous.
  • He is temperate with, or abstains from, alcohol consumption.
  • He defends the cause of the poor, orphaned, and the needy.

Dad’s, your job description was never 9 to 5 exclusive. Rather, it has always extended to the 24/7 time frame.  Children learn much more from parents than what we say; they watch what we do, how we do it, and who we give the credit to for jobs well done.

How we live out what we say is the biggest lesson our children will learn.

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.  — Clarence Budington Kelland

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week. — Mario Cuomo

One night a father overheard his son pray, “Dear God, make me the kind of man my Daddy is.” Later that night the father prayed, “Dear God, make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.” –Unknown

Fathers, this yearly holiday is an opportunity to rediscover The Father and His Word. In order to prepare this generation of little boys to become the men of whom future generations boast, “That’s my dad.”

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. — Unknown

An edited re -post.

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Cup-Bearers for the King

My mom and dad paid for over 16 years of dance lessons. They started because I was initially clumsy and couldn’t alternate my feet when walking upstairs at the age of two.  My love for dance continued and for this reason I like to watch So You Think You Can Dance on a fairly regular basis during the season.

Wednesday night I tuned into the last 20 or so minutes of the show and was disheartened. There on the screen was a beautiful young woman. However, her audition costume was one resembling what a bride should wear in the marriage bed the first night of married life. I think you know what I mean.

In an interview with the contestant she told how as a young girl she was shy and withdrawn. Her parents put her in dance. Now,  20 years later, she is auditioning in front of an audience of millions, scantly clad and performing a burlesque jazz number.

I have to ask, Is this the result her parents were hoping to gain when they put their precious preschooler in dance?

I am of the thought the more skin revealed, the more sexual behaviors portrayed, the more loudly the heart cries, “See me? Am I enough? Can you tell me I am enough and I am beautiful? Can you tell me I am worth dying for and fighting for? Do you notice me?”

Let me just say that I did not watch this young woman’s dance. I fast forwarded through her performance. Although I am a woman myself I wanted to uphold these words:

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.  ~Luke 11:34

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways. ~ Psalm 119:37

You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. ~ Matthew 5:27-29

Please know that I was not tempted by this beautiful young woman. However, I know that the dance she was doing was not meant for my eyes nor the eyes of anyone but her husband.

Now back to those questions from earlier especially as they relate to Father’s Day. Dad’s are meant to present the cup of Living Water to their children. They are to be the cup-bearers of their Father telling God’s little girls and boys whose they are and that for which they should hunger and thirst.

A guest pastor on Sunday, Dr. Charles Lowery, put it this way, “We should be telling our children, ‘You are God’s little boy. You are God’s little girl.'” In this way we are imparting the knowledge of whose they are and portraying the practices of how they should act.

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In being a cup-bearer of the Living Water of Christ Jesus parents are filling that void in children’s hearts that say, “Am I enough? What is my purpose? Is there more to this life than my own fleeting pleasures? Isn’t it all about me?”

I am so thankful for a father and a mother who trained me in the way that I should go at an early age. I remember in particular one evening where I was sitting inches from the television screen pointing to a long line of beautiful majorettes and saying, “I want to look like her, and her, and her, and her.” Then shaking my head and adding, “Not like her.”

My dad pulled me aside and told me that it doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside; it is what is on the inside that counts. He continued that we shouldn’t make fun of people because of their size or looks. These words combined with my mother’s constant, “Pretty is as pretty does,” resonated in my young heart… although I only truly understood what my mom was communicating when I was a mother myself.

To those dad’s, like the one my children have, who present the cup of Living Water to God’s children they have been entrusted with, Happy Father’s Day. Continue to do well God’s good and faithful servants. Press on and press in and look out for the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

To those fathers who have misplaced or replaced the Living Water in their life, I offer the words of your Father in Heaven of Isaiah 55.

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. ~Isaiah 55:1

Father’s, as soldiers of the Living God and cup-bearers for the King, once you drink the cup the Lord extends to you, turn and pour a cup for the children He has entrusted to you. Walk in the way of the Lord’s commands and watch as a nation will rise up and praise His Holy Name.

It isn’t too late for the young woman on the dance show. Why not join me now in praying that a full cup of the Living Water would be served up in her presence?

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