To commemorate Father’s Day and Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, each Morning Devotional for the month of June will highlight an important lesson of faith learned from a father or a father-like figure. We begin today with Phillip and his father.
The person I want to highlight as the father figure who has had the most significant impact on my life as a man is none other than my very own father, John Prewitt. The most influential thing my father taught me was choosing God even when everything in you, what’s happened to you, and what’s happening around you says otherwise. My father was one of the many unlikely men in my life that God used to bring me to Him (Matthew 19:26).
For context, my father wasn’t very religious growing up, really didn’t go to church with us when my mother brought me and my siblings, and never recited scriptures to me like nursery rhymes. Growing up and into my adult years, I wasn’t too far off from him myself, with my view or belief in God or the little knowledge of who God was I had. However, my father always instructed and repeated to me continually “to live my life off this book- the Bible”, whenever I had questions about life, whenever issues arose on my path, or I was lost and didn’t know what to do or where to go. Anytime I would respond or think to myself, what does that mean? My father would consistently and snarkily respond, “Just keep living boy.” The thing I couldn’t fathom regarding my father, especially in my youth, was how does someone choose God when they have been through so much, how could God still be good in all of this sadness?
For further context, my father was expected to be drafted to the NBA after having a stellar college career at an HBCU which got him inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. However, a week before the draft, he had a severe knee injury and had to give up the sport and his dreams altogether. My father had been through a few divorces, most notably, losing a child at birth due to health-related issues, having another child battle with cancer, and another child diagnosed with epilepsy. Through all this, I used to ask him if he could change it, would he? My father would say something along the lines of “No, I wouldn’t change it for the world”, and like clock work, he would respond afterwards with this statement, “In life, we all go through good and bad things, at the end of our lives we all just hope we experienced more good than bad.”
Some could say how do I trust God, trust my life to Him, and most importantly, choose His ways over my very own? What I say to that is, “it’s an every day and moment-to-moment task.” Some days are easier than others, and others may be harder than the day before. My spiritual mentor has a great definition of what faith in God is. He states that “faith in God is trusting him no matter what your circumstances look like or how you feel.” I recently read something in my devotional that stated, “Faith in God isn’t just a faith that believes He’ll bless us with what we want-it’s also what empowers us to endure through trials and denials.” I think many of us can speak to different trials or dire situations we’ve all faced in our lives. Who or what did you place your faith or hope in? I know from personal experience when I placed my faith in things other than God, I fell flat on my face or got burned doing so, because I put my faith in the created and not the Creator (Matthew 7:24-27 NIV).
I remember when both my parents got sick, my father had a stroke and my mother was going through a near death sickness of her own, I had no one. I couldn’t rely on my parents, the ones who I always looked toward for motivation or to put my faith in when I needed reassurance or support the most. I literally had to put my faith in something other than the strongholds of security I always knew, my parents or myself. It was a mighty task but God brought me to my expected end and they both are still with me till this very day. What I learned from those situations, especially my dad’s health scare was, in this life we are going to go through it and be tested. We, as mankind, are limited and fragile even in this technologically advanced world. We all will have to place our faith or hope in something. So, where are you placing yours?
Happy Father’s Day, and thank you to my Heavenly Father for giving me the earthly father that made a man of faith out of me. I LOVE YOU DAD!
Scripture Reading: Job 2:10; Matthew 7:24-27,19:26; 1 Timothy 4:8
