Receiving the Father's Love: Becoming the Dad Your Kids Need

We explore how a father’s true power begins with receiving the Father’s love, why belief shapes behavior, and how the principle “more is caught than taught” changes home life. Stories of loss, hope, and a prophetic call for prodigals to return point us toward simple, daily steps of presence.

• Mission to equip men to be fathers who make a difference
• What the Father thinks about us shapes how we live
• Zephaniah 3:17 and the Father’s joyful song over you
• Modeling faith through crisis and loss
• Hope for prodigals and a renewed vision for 2025
• Prayer for families, cities, and restoration
• Invitation to join and support the Fatherhood Academy

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Mission
• 0:49 Current Events And Emotional Weight
• 2:01 The Core Question: What God Thinks
• 4:14 Belief, Behavior, And Presence With God
• 6:50 Zephaniah 3:17 And The Dancing Father
• 10:15 From Theology To Fathering Practice
• 12:48 Prodigals, Hope, And 2025 Promise
• 15:19 Prayer For Families And Cities
• 16:52 Fatherhood Academy & Support Invitation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What kind of father do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to become for your family and for yourself? If you've ever wondered how to step into the fullness of your role as a father, husband, and man of God, then you're in the right place. Here at the Father Difference, our mission is to inspire and equip men to be the best fathers they can be. It's a powerful mission. And today, we're going to explore exactly how you can take steps toward that calling. Whether you're a father, a son, a husband, grandfather, single dad, stepfather, or just looking to grow, I believe God has something powerful for you in today's message. Whether you're tuning in live or watching this later, we are so excited to have you here. If this is what you're looking for, then subscribe so you can tune in each week to the Father Difference Live. You can sign up below. And now your host, a husband, father, grandfather, author, and former NFL player, Pastor Ed McGlass.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15

Hey, well, welcome. Good to uh see you in a new year. Boy, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world. Uh, not only do we have a new president in our country and all of that, and we've we're uh still uh dealing with the fires here in Los Angeles and people that have had tremendous loss. And so there's just there's just a lot, a lot of things. It's an emotional time for so many people. And we're we're uh gonna we're gonna talk today about just about learning how to receive for yourself as a man. If you're a gal listening in, but what are some things that you can do that will in 2025 draw you into not only a more loving and powerful relationship with God the Father and His Son, but it'll give you the things that you need to receive so that you can teach your children to do the same. Because here's the principle right from the beginning, and you've heard me say this before, and it's it's really true that with your children and being a father who makes a difference, more is caught than taught. The more time you spend receiving from the father yourself, the more impact you're gonna have. Well, welcome to my friends. I have one of my daughters, uh Jenny Bell from Ireland. She's my one of my spiritual daughters over there. She is uh just absolutely the bell of the ball. Just uh incredible person and personality, number of the different friends. Make sure you log on and let me know. Instagram, rumble, tick tock, which I guess TikTok has been turned back on. It was off for a while, and uh now it's back on. And and and so anyway, it's good to be with you. And so, what how do you uh navigate the the season that you're in and have the biggest impact that you can make? Well, we're actually going through a book of mine called The Father You've Always Wanted. And we've been doing little bits each week. And this week, the the title of the chapter is What Does the Father Think About Me? So if you were to you were to think about that question tonight, and you were to say, What does the God the Father think about me? It's easy to one of the things that's easy to do is say, Oh, well, God loves me, of course, for God so loved the world. He gave his only son that whoever believed in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And one of the things that that I found, you know, in this whole relationship with building your life around the love and and the presence of Jesus and his father in your life, is that what you believe will determine your actions. And what I mean is that if you really believed in the deepest part of who you are as a man tonight, or maybe you're a gal watching tonight, then your life that should shape what you do in your life by who loves you and when you know it. And what I found most often, you know, in our coaching and even in myself, is that I know that God loves me. The Bible tells me so. Jesus loved me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Then why don't we spend more time with him? Why do we keep him at bay? Why do we spend so much time trying to prove ourselves so that somehow we're going to get reconnected with a God by the actions that we do or how holy we become? How do we connect to the Lord in the midst of a great tragedy in our life, like many in LA are experiencing right now? How do we measure that? How do we deal with that in our life? Because if you if you take us a survey just over your last week, if you just think about this last week of your life, and you were and you were to you know kind of give me a report of, or you know, just be honest with yourself and kind of report on how you spent your time, what are you doing? Because if you really believe that God really truly loves you, then wouldn't you want to hang out with him all day long? When you want to pursue him and find out what's going on, or do we spend most of our time feeling as though we're not quite in the place we need to be? So I need to change some things, make my life right, or fulfill my New Year's resolutions so that somehow in the midst of all that, I'm gonna have more favor with the Lord. Instead of understanding that when Jesus died on the cross, he died so completely in all the brokenness that you've ever done and would ever do. So that when we come to him, not only are we forgiven, when we come to him, we realize that we've always had this incredible access to him by just saying, My Father who art in heaven, holy is your name. And so part of part of you know navigating crazy times in your life, and we all have those, is really learning about how much God really loves you. And to do that, I want to tell you a little story, kind of around a verse that I love so much in the Bible. And let me kind of set this story up. I'm gonna share the verse with you, and we're gonna talk about it for a few minutes. We have a shorter show tonight because I'm gonna spend time on kind of one thing that you can take away that would really help you in a maximum way tonight. As a man, as a husband, is a father. And uh, and so here is here's the story. I was in my office, you know, just thinking about my son Edward, my oldest son Edward. I had wasn't able to make a trip to a country club back east. He was in a golf tournament, wanted to be there, wanted to be with him. And I just I came upon this verse in the Bible that was just so powerful. And and I'm just thinking about my son, how much I loved him. And uh that that moment when you think about your kids and when you when you're able to just push away all their foibles and things in their life and things that they deal with, and you're just able to be present with them and just it just be in this place where you can be completely present loving them. And you know, I started thinking about them, and I started thinking about you know how much I loved him. And I was in my reading that day, I read this verse in Zephaniah 3, verse 17, and it's a picture of what God the Father thinks about you in your life when he thinks about you in Zephaniah 3:17. It says that he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you with his love, and he will exalt over you with loud singing. And that that word uh loud singing can actually mean that he gets so overwhelmed with his love for you as he displays that love and affection towards you. He gave his the his only son to die in your place, that it causes him to sing like an opera, and to another version says, and he will dance over you with loud singing. You imagine in heaven, Zephaniah gets a picture of God's response over those that he loves, that his love is so great that it causes him to dance. And so I was thinking about this verse, and and really, you know, you know, calling out to the Lord to capture more of my heart. At the same time, show me how to be a loving, present father with my son Edward, who was away in a golf tournament and I couldn't be there. And so I started watching his scores online, and he was playing a great tournament and was so excited for him. And and so I got out of my desk and I started to dance around in my office, kind of imagining how God would dance over me with his love and sing over me and started singing and dancing and jumping around. And we're on a second, my office in my church is on the second story of our building, and the floors, you know, that were were creaking, and I didn't realize I was shaking the building, kind of a picture of like a dancing hippo. And I was dancing and spinning and just just having the time of my life singing loudly, and my uh secretary at the time comes into my office wondering what the heck's going on, because evidently I was jumping up and down and was making such loud racket, you know, on the floor that she thought maybe it was an earthquake. And it was me dancing around and just, you know, just was just so overwhelmed by this moment and and had just in reckless kind of abandon, just dancing over my children with love and uh thinking about them and just connecting to the truth that that's was the heart of the father when he sent his son to die for you and me. And I looked at her and she opened the door and sees me dancing, and she goes, I thought it was an earthquake. And I started laughing over myself and went back to my office and sat down. And and the Lord spoke to me in in that moment. He said, As much as you love your sons and your daughters in your life, you should hear the song I'm singing over you right now. Think about that. That's something that is such a gift from God when you understand and connect to the fact that He absolutely adores you and wants to be the Father that many of you never got to have. Which, by the way, is is one of the reasons that Jesus came, not only to die for our sins, but to create a moment for you and I to be completely captured by his love for us. For God so loved the world, he so loved you, he loved me, that he gave his the ultimate sacrifice of his love was the life of his son Jesus. And so he he didn't have like Jesus wasn't like the second son, he was the only son. And he poured out all of the wrath and the penalty that we deserved in that moment. Matter of fact, in 2 Corinthians 5, it says that he who knew no sin, talking about Jesus, became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. In other words, Jesus didn't take on a sin nature, he took on the penalty of everything that we would deserve that we deserve, and he took it into his body hanging on the cross and died with the weight of all of our sin on him, so that we could be free from that the moment we receive that from ourselves from trying to win his favor by being religious, or trying to do anything that we think helps add to what God's done for us. And when you get that completely as a man and realize that your ability to be a great father, or say you're a single gal that's watching, is not dependent upon your ability to make things happen so that God will be pleased for you. Because once we receive Christ in our life and he forgives us, he exchanges the righteousness of his son Jesus, who lived a perfect life right into deposits it right into our account so that when we pray, he doesn't see an old sinner praying and asking for favor. He sees a son or he sees a daughter. See, God set this whole thing up to get his family back that he lost in the Garden of Eden. And that's one of the most profound things. If you just think about the plan of God to redeem the world, is that his plan was to love us so completely through offering his son as a sacrifice, such that you and I, as we learn to receive that every day, can become the righteousness of God to our friends and our family and to people around us. And by the way, that's a secret. Learning how to receive that for yourself is a secret of you being a great father or a great mom or a great friend or a great man to make a difference. And it's not so much about all the stuff you know, it's about at the end of the day, who is that one who loves you so completely that it completely takes away your fear to go for your life. You know, the Bible says in Corinthians that perfect love casts out fear, it drives it out. The only way, the only person that has perfect love is God. So the more we receive that for ourselves, the more impact that we can have. So, and all that to say tonight, wherever you're calling from, whether you're calling from Ireland or Sweden or other places around the around the globe, how good are you at receiving God's love for you today? What is your waking thought in the morning? Is it the I want more of you, Lord? Or Lord, I want to give you more of me so I can prove myself. And it's about that first thing because here's the here's the secret, and we'll kind of tie this together, of really walking with the Lord and and really becoming a father that really has impact with his children. And that is to the level that you learn to receive from God as a son yourself, or if you're a gal, as a woman yourself, as a daughter, all those things that you receive now become the grace you need in your life to love your children, even when it seems impossible, and they struggle. Because our kids are going to struggle because they're in a battle, you know, a spiritual battle against their own lives. And the tension many times that we have as dads when our kids are struggling, is gosh, what do I need to do to break through for them? And that's just that's a noble desire. But a better, a better question would be what do I need to become in you? So that when my children see my life, they see you, and it draws them to Jesus. And that's the secret of being a great dad and having great impact. It's not that you have perfect technique or you do everything just right. I want to tell you the the secret is living that life in front of your children. And I'm gonna share a little something that just happened. Many of you know that my uh oldest son Edward and and my daughter-in-love Katie, their their home burned down in the Palisades, like so many others, and they weren't able to be home, they lost everything that was there, they were on a trip in New York City, had to get back, and we got our grandkids out of there, went up and they were staying with the nanny, and and we had them, and and so I as I was talking to my sons, he was processing this. And he was processing it, you know, looking through satellite images of his home there, right down the street from Merwan uh shopping center there, the Palisade shopping center, and and the satellite images were coming in, and and people were trying to see, you know, find pictures of their home. And uh and so it was an incredibly emotional time. And so you there what you can't possibly say anything to bring any kind of peace or hope into that circumstance, because it would be just shallow compared to what he said to me. And he was on a walk, actually on a run, and he he said, Dad, let me tell you. I I watched you for years go to God and go to Jesus when you were went through hard times when you never had a house burned down, but you had all these different things. I watched you and all the attack you had to go through, and being a pastor, and all the things you had to try to to manage. And I learned from you, Dad, you taught me that I can really trust God even when my house is on fire and that he's gonna see see me through because he did it with you. And I gotta tell you, those words just hit me in my core. He didn't need a sermon from me. He he got it by watching me live my life, and I'm so grateful that he learned that, and that lesson didn't come because I was such a great dad. There's something that you gotta have inside of you. I mean, I I wear this jersey, though my Rams jumped offside in the final drive, one of the guards did, and and they lost the game. It wasn't in my ability in the football field. I I wear this jersey as a reminder that even on my best day, in my biggest victories in my life, they're not big enough to set my children up for the life that God wants them. But what it is, is them watching you go through the worst times and connect to the Lord, and you waking up and spending time praying for them, and you put you know being that example and following. And when they see that you trust more in God than in your ability, it gives them great hope. And that's what your children need right now. You might have children that are far away from God who've walked away, who are trying to redesign who they are as human beings, because they hurt. Maybe your relationship's not so good with them. But I'm gonna tell you, they're still watching you. And that's why, you know, loving them, praying for them, and them watching you deal with things when you go through a hard time is such a powerful thing. And and here's here's a caveat too, just to throw in there. Even when you do it badly, and you confess to them that you're doing it badly, and you ask for forgiveness, and you connect to the Lord anyway, it's the one of the most powerful sermons you can preach. Because they're gonna do it badly, and they're gonna remember. I watched my dad get on his knees and repent. That's my way home. So you can trust those things that you've sewn in that way. Those are powerful things, and I say all that is that one of the promises that God gave me for 2025. I really do think it's gonna be a year where God makes fathers great again. Stealing some of the line of the MAGA movement. I think it's a much bigger line because so goes fathers, so goes the world, so goes family, so goes children and grandchildren. I believe that God this year, in what he's shown me, is that he we're gonna see lost children return home in record numbers because he loves them more than we could as moms and dads, and he's heard your prayers, and he's gonna do things in you throughout this year that's gonna open your heart for more to position you for your prodigal children to come home. And if you've got a prodigal child or maybe a child that's canceled you uh this year, I'm here to tell you is that God the Father is preparing them to come home, and you're gonna see it this year. And we're already seeing signs of this with some families that we're coaching. It's exciting watching what God's done. Sometimes it takes a long time, but maybe you're in that place, and I'd like to kind of close and pray for you if you're in that place and you've got some kids that are suffering right now. And and just uh your takeaway if you came in a little later, as I saw a few of you come in, is that uh your your technique for really finding that healing that you need as a man or as a woman tonight is found in Christ. And the more you open your life and pursue Him to receive more of that in your life, the bigger model that is for your children. And the way home, you are you're paving this way home for your children by how you return when you've had a broken season, and that's such good news. God uses our foibles and our brokenness as a pathway home to Him. And that's such good news. So let me pray for you. So, Father, I thank you for my friends that are watching. I thank you for them coming. Then we have a whole new year and many things we're gonna talk about and and be together. Uh, Father, I remember all those in LA who've lost everything in their minds. But for those that are in you, they've not lost you, Jesus. You're the only one who can turn around and begin healing and give them the foundation to be your people, to love those friends of theirs who've lost everything because that's all they have is their stuff. And they don't have you. So, Lord, pour out your spirit in a mighty way throughout LA and all those places in North Carolina with all the devastation in Florida and the hurricanes and all those places where people are suffering. Use your church, use your people, Lord, to be the light and the love that their community needs. And Father, I pray that you would bring their children home, you would heal them and their families, you would restore marriages that are unrestorable, and you would have your way. And we give you all these things. Lord, and we pray this all in the matchless name of Jesus. And all God's people said, Amen. Hey, thank you for being with me. I'm really excited. There's some new shows coming up. We're gonna let you know about and some special guests that we're gonna have live. And so I'm praying for you. And uh before you get out of here, we got a little kind of ending video. If you've not seen this, it kind of shares about what we're doing with the Fatherhood Academy. And I'm just so grateful to be here. And if you're just tuning in, just out of the blue, I'm Ed Tanya McGlassen, and I am so grateful that you're here, you're watching, you're learning, you're listening, maybe you're replaying this, and we're here to help you and serve you to become the best father and dad and husband you can possibly become. And if you're a gal, don't forget Thursday at noontime, we have our show for the difference really a mom makes or a mother makes or a grandma makes, or yeah, you can be there, and so grateful that they're they're there, you can be there on Thursdays, and next month we're we have an exciting guest that's coming, and I can't wait for you to meet her. She's she's just off the charts, amazing. All that to say, and I'm so grateful to be here tonight, looking forward to 2025 and all the things that God's gonna do. Remember, it's never too late for God to do a new beginning. Well, here's that video clip I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00: 31:47

Dear friends, imagine a world where every father feels equipped to lead with faith, love, and purpose. A world where families thrive and communities grow stronger because of devoted, Christ-centered fathers.

SPEAKER_01: 32:02

You know, beloved, that is the vision that God's put back to their father. That's what God is doing. I meet dads daily who want to learn to be better fathers. Yet many have never been shown how. Too many families are being fractured through bitterness and with parents and grandparents even being canceled. That's why we're launching an online community to quit men to be the fathers that God has called them to be. It's more than a program, it's a part of a movement that God is already doing to reshape fatherhood as a sacred calling rooted in the teachings of Christ. And we're calling this the Fatherhood Academy, where men will embark on a journey of healing and spiritual restoration that helps them transform their family relationship. And to make this vision a reality, would you consider partnering with us financially as we continue to reach and disciple every man, dad, and grandpa that comes our way? Your donation will help create a ripple across the neighborhoods, communities, you know, and ultimately our nation. Anchoring each child here's a vision in the unwavering love and guidance of a devoted dad. Your end-of-the-year gift right now, whether it's a one-time donation or an ongoing pledge monthly, will make a huge difference. Together we can equip fathers to build hope-filled futures for their children and their grandchildren. Remember, my friend, the Father loves you, and he sent his son to let you know. Pray it for you, Pastor Ed.

SPEAKER_00: 34:01

Click the link to donate today. Thank you for believing in this mission and joining us on this transformative journey.