The Call of a Husband and Father

   

 There is something God has written on my heart with great conviction. It is what His love is supposed to look like in our lives. We all have people in our lives that we love, and we love them the best that we can. In my life I came to terms with the reality that the best love I had to give to those I cared most about was not enough. What is on the inside always comes out, no matter how diligently we strive to make things different. I was a selfish boy who cared more for me than for those I loved. It was that selfishness that corrupted the love I sought to give. What came out was the best I had to give, but it was really all about me.

It was this truth that God used to bring me to Himself. I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I didn’t want to hurt my wife. I didn’t want to hurt my kids. The turning of my heart was a moment when I cried out to God with complete sincerity to just make me the man my wife and kids needed me to be. I didn’t ask Him to help me. I didn’t ask Him to make things better for me. I asked Him to do whatever it took for me to be the man they needed me to be. This was the beginning of my new life.

     God showed me that the only way I could love my family the way they need to be loved is if I would lay down my life. I had to die so that they could live. I had to take up my cross so that I could love them the way they need to be loved. I realized that only through defeating selfishness could I give of myself in such a manner that my love would be genuinely felt by the recipient

      It is the love that God showed me when He suffered the crucifixion that has changed my life. While I was still in rebellion against Him, living selfishly for myself and hurting the people around me, He still loved me. He pursued me in spite of myself, and never gave up on me. It is this love, unconditional and sacrificial, that I wanted to be able to give to my family. By yielding to God, He has shown me what love is supposed to look like. After all, God is love.

     I now love my wife and kids. God has shown me that I am to love her as He has loved me. I am to not give up, and I am to lay down my life for her just as He did for me. I had caused great pain for my wife in the past, and those wounds are not yet healed. I must continue to trust God and His timing while I wait for Him to bring about what He has shown me. It is the impossible, and truly when I see with my sight instead of by faith the fear and doubt come rushing in.

     I cannot say that I know much, but I can say that I know God. I know love for the first time in my life. Because I know love, I know hope. Without God I am nothing but a selfish vacuum where my best is short of ever being what I would want it to be. With God, it is Him working through me. He can and will do what I cannot. Love is sacrifice. Love is everything, and without love there is nothing. I am bound to what God has shown me. Though the doubts and fears come, God always moves to keep me on track. He is faithful even when I am not.

Osa McDonald

6/10/13