The Father You've Always Wanted

Ed shares how fathers can profoundly impact their children's lives by healing their own father wounds and connecting with God as the ultimate Father. He reveals personal struggles as a pastor whose children resented his ministry life, and how God transformed his fatherhood journey.

• The first image children have of God comes from looking at their father
• Many successful people still carry deep wounds from absent or unaffirming fathers
• A father's blessing is crucial for a child's identity and protection against destructive influences
• We can only give away what we've received—healing must start with encountering God as Father
• Fatherlessness creates "spiritual orphans" vulnerable to addiction and identity confusion
• Current culture often undermines rather than celebrates fatherhood
• God is turning the hearts of fathers to their children as promised in Scripture
• Transformation happens when fathers move from self-focus to child-focus
• It's never too late for God to heal and restore your relationship with your children

Visit www.thefatherdifference.com/store to get your copy of The Father You've Always Wanted. Plus, get your access to our free coaching resources and free book at www.thefatherdifference.com/links!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The Father Difference
• 9:07 The Impact of Fathers on Children
• 16:10 Ed's Personal Journey as a Father
• 22:18 Fatherlessness and Its Consequences
• 27:10 Healing Father Wounds Through God
• 32:52 Book Overview and Weekly Series

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, we're getting ready to get rolling here. I'm your host, ed McGlashan. As soon as we get rolling here, we're now live. Let me kind of cue in my friends on there. We go on Instagram, welcome. Got my wife calling me here and we are live here from Southern California. Welcome, love to hear where you are calling from. Send me a post, a comment and let me just turn this off here so we don't have any further interruptions Really excited about sharing with you today just the incredible impact that men have in the life of their children, that the impact that you can have as a dad.

Speaker 1: 1:06

And if you're a mom, there's some takeaways for you too. Thursday at 12 o'clock every week, we have a special live edition of what we do. We're going through a book together. I'm going to announce a book that we're going to go through together here. If you want to follow along on Monday nights and you want further training, we have that for you too. And so let me know where you're tuning in from. I'd love to hear from you and know how I could pray for you and your own story. So, anyway, welcome.

Speaker 1: 1:46

I am your host, ed Tanney McLaughlin, and I've had the privilege of doing something that I love to do and that is helping guys like you become the best father you can be, because I know this. I know that once we I know this, I know that once we stand there in the labor delivery room, something happens to us as fathers. Remember that first moment where you held your son or your daughter, or you found out that you were becoming a dad. Depending on how that announcement was, if you not had any children could have been a shock. And yet there's something that you know extraordinary happens when you enter that place of being a father and really learning how to embrace that place and just the incredible benefit to your children you are Dad, but also the incredible benefit of you learning how to be the father they need you to be. There's probably nothing that's more powerful for us as men than really learning how to be a father and welcome different people. Different countries are joining in here and you know we got some gals that are even here Welcome.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Tonight you might be here listening in to see how you could even be better as a mom for your kids. Well, there's all that in what we're going to share, because is there anything more powerful for you as a guy, as a man, as a father, than when your kids are doing well. But is there anything that's worse when they're struggling and you're not quite sure what to do? Well, I've made it my life mission for the last gosh since I've been 40 years old, which is many moons ago, more than 28 years ago. Can you believe it? Do I look that old? You know, maybe I do, but it's just an honor to be here with you here at the Father Difference, and I'm just really grateful to be able to share some things with you and a book that I wrote called the Father You've Always Wanted, and the subtitle of the book is how God Heals your Father Wounds. It's so much more than that. It's really about how God can turn even the worst story into the best story that you can possibly imagine. And so let's get into what we're going to talk about tonight in this book, into what we were going to talk about tonight in this book and really the difference that you can make.

Speaker 1: 4:49

First thing, I want to tell you you probably don't know this, but there's a castle in Southern California and it's a castle for young people that get stuck in addiction, and I remember going there. I'm going to read a little bit to you. It's the headquarters of Teen Challenge here in Southern California and it's an incredible ministry that provides a faith-based solution to teens that are dealing with addiction. And it's not like the castle in Europe where you've seen in movies, full of knights and nobles. Instead, this castle is filled with spiritual orphans who have never known the love and blessing of a father. And it's extraordinary, with all the technology that we have and with all the additional things that we can add into our life, that nothing beats a father's blessing in the life of a son or a daughter. Nothing beats that in our life.

Speaker 1: 5:54

I played with some of the greatest football players that ever played, the ones who are still doing well and ended well. Many of them had great fathers in their story. I wish I could tell you that was a lot. This football is getting ready to get started. There's a lot of guys whose hopes, dreams, name and everything for the sake of all their families is on the line at training camp to make this football team, to make this football team. And so many times great players came into training camp who just spent most of their childhood absolutely isolated, alone, only having a single mama, and I want to tell you, without single mothers, there wouldn't be much of an NBA. There wouldn't be much of an NFL A lot of professional sports. Moms paid the ultimate price and yet, at the same time that moms are paying the price, we, as sons and daughters, on the playing field, we're looking for that one guy, we're looking for that dad in our story.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Well, that was a scene going to this castle and I write. I've enjoyed the privilege of speaking at many different venues over the past few years, but I'll tell you the truth I've never witnessed the kind of hunger I saw one night in the castle. It was clear from the very first worship song that the room was filled with gratitude from those that have come for those whose life has been rescued from the gutter. Those lives have been, they've gotten handles and been able to really overcome that monster of addiction that came their way. Tears were flowing as they began to speak. At the end of the message I asked the crowd how many of you did not have a father who knew how to love and bless you? And I couldn't believe. It was a sea of hands all over the room Before I finished the invitation to come forward.

Speaker 1: 8:01

At the end of my message. They rushed the stage and how many young lives had been left to set adrift because of not having a loving father. What they needed was a new father and Jesus came to give them that relationship. And you know the prophet Jeremiah, you know there's a great verse actually in Lamentations. He describes our generation when he wrote this one line orphans, we are not a father in sight and our mothers are no better than widows Lamentations 5.3 in the message Boy. I wish that wasn't true in so many of our places and so many of the playgrounds and so many of the ball fields where kids are out there, mom's there, but dads are there, sometimes working, sometimes distracted or sometimes completely out of the picture, and so that affects them. That affects them and who God's made them to be. And if you're just tuning in, some of you are just joining.

Speaker 1: 9:23

We're starting a series the Father You've Always Wanted of a book I wrote through Baker Publishing, learning how to connect to God as your father in a way that it heals the deepest places in you and really connects you to who he's really called you to be. And I love what Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, wrote. There are countless men and women today suffering from the painful effects of growing out without a father in their lives. I understand that pain, but in the Father You've Always Wanted, ed helps readers understand the healing and hope found in God, our Heavenly Father, and that's really the hope that we have. So the way God levels the playing field for those of us who were born without having a dad, in our story he comes through in ways that our fathers aren't capable of coming through, and that's what this whole book is about how to connect to him, his boys, his blessing, how to unlock. On Thursdays, the gals and I are going through this book as well. It's kind of a whole family study and many wives have tuned in and really appreciate those are coming Welcome.

Speaker 1: 11:01

There's a number of you that are checking in, even on an Instagram, live in Facebook and keep your comments coming. I want to hear about your story and kind of what's going on, because you guys are the reason, those of you that follow me and respond to my posts. You're the reason that I do what I do and I'm so grateful to be able to be there in your story and to help you in any kind of way that I can. So let me share a little bit about my story from the introduction of this book and, like many dads, my own capacity, my own early attempts at being a father, I failed miserably.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Anybody else, any other guys out there who would say hey, that's me too, and I was a pastor at the time and I was raising pastor's kids and they were suffering. They, you know, they were resenting the life and ministry I was living. And it didn't matter that dad was a preacher and dad had, you know, all these people in this church following him and dad had all these conferences that he would travel and go to. What really mattered to them was is my dad going to be there for me? And I write in the introduction here, which is so true, our family was broken because there was not a loving father present me.

Speaker 1: 12:31

You know, I meet guys all the time that they think that you know, their job is to be a part of making a baby, but they really, because of the way their fathers, you know, fathered them, it sort of stops there and they go out and try to make a living all the time. Well, the truth of the matter is that you can make all the money in the world and if you don't have the heart of the matter is that you can make all the money in the world and if you don't have the heart of your son or daughter, they're gonna. They're gonna suffer and they might get all the things they need and they have a roof over their head and and all these other. But what matters to them more than they don't matter and change their own lives, is how you begin their story and how you model what a present father can be. I mean, one writer said it at one time.

Speaker 1: 13:31

I don't have the quote, but the first image of who young people and children think God the Father is is by looking at their dad. Pretty interesting comment, isn't it? So what kind of father are you now and what kind of father do you want to become? Love to hear about that in your comments or questions in our short time together. To hear about that in your comments or questions in our short time together, because it's possible to be that kind of dad.

Speaker 1: 14:04

You're looking at somebody who was really a broken father and I thought that the National Football League and the achievement and everything else would be a pathway for my children, and so me trying to coach them and push them didn't actually produce that. It just produced this gap between me and them where I was sort of like Big Ed my dad was a football player and my were, like, not sure about themselves. And when your kids aren't sure about themselves, they're vulnerable to the craziness that the devil throws at them, trying to label them or rename them or even, you know, in the worst cases, regender them on, thinking that they're going to, you know, kind of stepping in and taking away the role that we have as fathers to put them into a life of misery. And that's reality out there with our young people today. But God's answer, my friend, is Christ in you, my friend, you being the father he's made you to be. I love this next line here.

Speaker 1: 15:21

What I needed was not another attempt to becoming a better dad, like doing the external things that I needed. I needed a miracle in my heart, because my heart was where, focused on me. How about you? Where's your heart focused? On your life, your job, the things you're doing, how you're providing or the struggles you have? And yet your children? They're growing up in a world right now where, more than ever, they need you to be present, talking to them, sharing about your own struggles with them, helping them navigate the waters of when they're in a storm in their own story. So I needed a miracle in my heart and I realized something without a blessing from my own father, I had little to give my kids, and I write about this in my books and I've talked about it if you've been around is that we're only able to give away what we receive. It's the way we've been made. We've been made two ways by God.

Speaker 1: 16:31

The words spoken over us really determine how we see ourselves. If you think about your best friends and people in your life that have the most impact with you, aren't they the ones that speak life into you, lift up your arms when you're down? Well, imagine you being that kind of father for your children where your kid's first place of turning when you're struggling is you Boy. That's a great moment, because what that does is that it brings along the person who God has given the authority you Dad, to be in the life of your sons and your daughters, and when you're there, and you're present, and you're there and you're playing with them and you're listening to them and you're helping them navigate all the waters not that you've got to have all the answers, but when you are present, that says a lot, not distracted. Hey, come with me. We watch a football game. Well, there's value to that. You can teach them to be a fan.

Speaker 1: 17:51

But ultimately, you want your kids to look at your life and say one day to you when I grew up, I just wanted to be like you, dad. Is there anything more powerful than that? I don't know. And so what I needed was I needed an encounter with God, the Father, so that my heart could turn away from myself and towards my kids. Boy, that's a mouthful, and that's not an overnight thing. That's something that God had to do in me, because I didn't quite understand how selfish I was until I started having children. And they come out needy. They need a lot from us, and you can distract yourself with all kinds of things, but at the end of the day, their biggest questions they're looking your way, dad, and they're wondering what does he think about me?

Speaker 1: 19:02

Have you ever noticed how your sons and daughters, when they're little, they kind of look at you when you walk in the room and look in your face and the way you look back at them? I have a dear friend who's part of one of our men's studies in Newport that I'm a part of of, and he determined early in his life when his daughters walked in the room he would treat him as though he hasn't seen him for years and he's so grateful to be able to be with them. What a great application. And his daughters are just extraordinary. They're extraordinary women, mothers and wives, and they're also incredible in business because much of their own identity got formed because their daddy looked their way. So how are you doing with that? That's a powerful thing that God can do in your own heart. And you know I meet all kinds of men when I'm on my journey all kinds of levels of businessmen and successful men and guys that don't think they're much of anything.

Speaker 1: 20:25

And years ago in Colorado I'm doing an event at a church and there's a guy that I ended up asking questions of the group just before we prayed for all the men in the room about the blessing of the Father, and a guy raised his hand and he said we started talking and so he shared with the crowd he goes. You know I've made said I'm Jewish. I became a follower of Yeshua, of Jesus. Later in my life I've made every dollar I think I could make. I've had cars and companies and I've done incredibly well financially in my life, but all I've ever wanted that I never got was my father to tell me one time they loved me. Was my father to tell me one time they loved me? And so he was one of the men that came forward, many men that day. I remember praying for him and he just openly wept as the presence of the Lord began to touch this boy inside of him.

Speaker 1: 21:45

That's this yearn for a dad in his story, a father. We've been made to be fathered by God. We've been made to be fathered by our dads too, as well as mothered. But he suffered. And with all that accomplishment you would think that he would, you know, feel like he had lived a life well lived, and yet there was this missing piece inside of him. And, like so many of you and me, you know, many of us start out our whole story waiting for that breakthrough moment where we kind of get to the next level and we suffer and we struggle, and yet God's made us to father us, and I love this quote here. It's, you know, effort alone didn't work for me of trying to be a better dad. My good intentions were short-lived. What I needed was an encounter with the only father who could turn my wounds into a blessing.

Speaker 1: 23:00

It is time to stop beating up fathers and instead give them some tools and answers. To stop beating up fathers and instead give them some tools and answers. I meet guys every day who you know. They're part of churches and they're there. They come when they go and go forward and repent and ask God to help change them. But they feel beat up, they feel marginalized. And if you're around social media today, where do fathers get celebrated? There's more and more guys rising up and doing some incredible things and so grateful to be part of the troop of fathers out there and granddads who are interacting with their children. But men want answers. They want to know how to do what they need to do. They want to know how to forgive when they don't have it in them. And it's so good to see you in different places around the country, even outside the country and Texas welcome you, and just so grateful that you're here at our live stream. Keep the comments going and we'll do the best we can to support you. So where are we going with this tonight, this short little thing? Well, here's kind of where I want to take us and for the next number of weeks I want us to go through this book together.

Speaker 1: 24:37

The Father You've Always Wanted, it's my hope. I write in the book. This book is both miraculous and practical. And it's miraculous as you encounter the blessing of the Father for your own life and it's not in my power or yours, but in God's and practical in many ways that you'll be able to transfer that blessing to those you love, because it's not what you want to do, it's not the difference that you want to make with your children and with your wife if you're married. See, satan wants to destroy men in their God-given role so he can unravel their families and destroy their children. He wants your kids and he wants your grandkids. See, god made men the foundation of blessing for their families and if you want to destroy a marriage and a child, you get rid of that husband or father and that's kind of you know that's a strategy.

Speaker 1: 25:37

I mean, look at all the places where men are beat down. I mean, how many movies have you seen where the father is the hero? You don't see very many that the father is the hero. You see where he's the deadbeat dad, and even my dog, dino, is out there giving me witness to what we're doing here tonight. Hey, dino, we hear you and so just think about that in your own story and then kind of finally, is you know?

Speaker 1: 26:16

The Bible says that he's in one day, that God's going to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and I believe that we're in that day right now. Without the healing of men's hearts, we have little hope of turning the tide that is threatening to drown our families. If you agree, give me a thumbs up. And so great to see you shilling forward here in Canada and so grateful that you're watching and you're a part of this tonight. And I mean, that's really what God's going to do. He's before the great and coming day of the Lord. He's going to do. He's before the great and coming day of the Lord. He's going to do something.

Speaker 1: 26:47

I think we're seeing that. We've seen the effects of what fatherlessness does in the world, and now God always plays his card and you know he's never out of the deal. As soon as the culture gets wicked, we think it can't get any more wicked than this. God does something with you, with us, his people, that he absolutely loves and he does stuff in us that's so profound and deep that it changes the course of our families, no matter how crazy the culture gets, because the culture is always going to be crazy. It was crazy back in Jesus' day, it's crazy in our day and it's going to be crazy in our kids' future too. So it's not about how crazy it is or how unsafe it is out there. If you're smack dab in the middle of the love of the Father and His Son, you're in the safest place you can possibly be, and that's because that's where he is. And so you know, as we tie this up tonight on this short live thing, next week we're going to actually go through chapter 1. See when Jesus made that promise to His disciples I won't leave you as orphans, I'll come.

Speaker 1: 28:08

The word there used for orphan is also translated fatherless. So he's not talking about you that were born without dads and moms in your life, or you that didn't have a father in your life. He was talking to the whole crowd that day and he was saying, basically, all of you were born without God, the Father, in your life. So we all start the same place with this. Well, we all need Christ. We are all broken. We need him in our story, and the benefit of him coming into our story is not just that we are saved, which is incredible, we're forgiven, which it took his death on the cross and his blood shed for us, but he also gives us access to his Father, to the Father we have always wanted, his father, to the father we have always wanted.

Speaker 1: 29:01

And if you want some of that man I want to encourage you to you can get this book at our website. Let me see if I can, you know, pull that up for you and my assistant out on a special night with her hubby, but you can get that the Father You've Always Wanted at our website, at thefatherdifferencecom. You can go there and do that, and I think there's actually a banner for that. Let me find it here. And yes, indeed, where is that? Here? We go Right here. If you want to get a copy of this book, you can go to our website, thefatherdifferencecom. If you want it right away, you can get it on Kindle, and I'd get it on Kindle if I were you too, because you can cut and paste. If you see something in there that you can grab, you can drop it right down, cut it and paste it right in your journal and love for you to have that write down, cut it and paste it right in your journal and love for you to have that and it'd be my gift to you and would love to give you more access for all the things that you need. And so, before we leave tonight, you got questions. I would love just put them in the comment section right now.

Speaker 1: 30:21

Next week, on everything that we talk about here, on our live thing at the Father Difference, we're also going to leave back at the end of our time. We're going to have about 30 minutes where we're going to be live and then the second 30 minutes 25 minutes is going to be a question, a special Zoom coaching link that we're going to have so you can come and ask your questions and, if you still want to get even more, one of the incredible benefits of being a part of the Father Difference is that we have an online training that you can being a part of the uh, the father difference is that we have an online training that you can become a part of and that that will take you to a whole new level, because it will it'll teach you how to do the things that yours truly started learning how to do with my family. That completely changed and rocked our family, and it'd be an honor to be able to share that with you. And so if you're interested in those kind of things, go to my website at thefatherdifferencecom. We have a number of things there. If you want to be part of that coaching group, you can grab that text on your phone or just go to thefatherdifferencecom and you can download all those resources our free devotion, et cetera to help you in your story.

Speaker 1: 31:51

So before I leave, I'd love to just be able to pray for you and kind of where you are as a dad, father, I pray for my friends that are watching. I ask you to be with them, to speak to them in such a profound way that they are never the same. And I pray for those who had broken dads, who really want to join this series, and those who had okay dads or their dads just didn't gave them all they had. But they feel like they're missing something and I pray that you would bless them and use them and begin to speak to them about your incredible love that you have for them, that you even put together a scripture for us to give us hope that your promise is that I will be a father to you and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord, god Almighty Father, I thank you for my brothers and sisters that are watching. I pray you'd be with them tonight. I pray you would use them and remember my friends.

Speaker 1: 32:52

It's never too late for God to do an incredible work in you. Just look at Ed McLaughlin and I'm learning every single day and he can do the same thing with you. So if you want to learn some new skills you want to. You know you, you want to grow in your ability then sign up. Go to our website, sign up and we'd love to be there. Bless you, my friend. So great being with you and can't wait to be with you next Tuesday night at six o'clock Pacific Standard Time Actually, five o'clock Pacific Standard Time. God bless you.