How have you learned “father”? Take an honest inventory. Think of the male figures in your life growing up—the good and the bad, including your father and/or stepfather, coaches, teachers, pastors, men held out as role models in the media, perhaps the fathers of your friends. Call to mind and make a list of the men who surrounded you. Without editing or filtering, what words would you use to describe the traits you saw in those men?
How has God raised the condition of fatherlessness in your heart? Notice what isn’t “working” in your life as a signpost of fatherlessness. What have you done with this part of your story?
Pause for a few moments and think back over your story from the last decade or so. What are several examples of ways God was working to father you, even if at the time you may not have had the capacity to receive or respond as a son?