100 Years of Fatherlessness
If all you see is a boy in orange then you'd be missing it...
But then again, you don't have the back story.
You don't know that I have my maternal great-great grandmother's last name. And that I came from a country where a child's father had to "claim" the child as his own to get his last name.
So, for more than 100 years, the De La Nuez last name passed on from mother to child. For 100 years, a male helped make a child, but never became a father.
You might also not know that on my paternal side I am the first man in more than 100 years to have children with only ONE woman. Yeah.
Wild.
Growing up, I was a fatherless boy searching for approval and affirmation wherever I could find it. Then that boy grew into a man's body without much changing inside.
At one point I was physically 20 years old, but emotionally 12 years old. I was so lost in trying to become a self-made man and trying to fill a God-sized hole with women, social currency and military awards. Am I the only one here?
I was just ONE uninitiated man from a bloodline of countless uninitiated men. Brokenness was my inheritance. Shame was its executor.
And then, God.
Honestly, I can't tell you why He did it or what for. But I can tell you with full confidence that God embraced me and CLAIMED me as His own son.
God showed me that I was a son to THE Father and that from the foundations of the Earth, He had desires to father me. Yeah.
Wild.
"God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." -Eph 1:5
So much has been redeemed. So much has been recovered. And there's still so much more that He's doing in my life.
Today, I am a novice hunter showing my son the little I do know.
My son doesn't care that I don't have it all figured out. That doesn't qualify me to teach him.
What qualifies me is a willingness to be there, to love him and continually claim him as my son.
That is the Kingdom of God.
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, 'Abba, Father.'" -Rom. 8:15
Did you know that God wants to father YOU! He longs to know you. To lead you and shape you into the man He created you to be.
All He asks is that you take a step forward. Listen to his beckoning call. He will match that with two steps.
"We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us." -Rom. 8:23
Run to the Father.