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Key Bible Verse: I have the highest confidence in you, and my pride in you is great (2 Corinthians 7:4). Bonus Reading: Matthew 10:29-31

Fathers should recognize that to begin to live from the center, a son must be fully convinced that at the end of the day—when the lights are off and the cheering has died down—there's a place where he's safe, loved, and cherished for who he is.

Of course, celebration, acknowledgement, and reward are appropriate in helping your son learn to appreciate success for what it is. But if he sees his life as mostly an up-and-down cycle of reward and failure, he'll fall into the pressure to live from the outside in.

Your job is to teach him to somehow celebrate life in the midst of the journey—maybe with a milk shake to contemplate both the error and the home run, or just the joy of the game, or the new friends on the team. That's a perspective he needs, especially from you.

Remind your son that he's loved and that it makes no difference that he won't start next week, or that he always has to play right field, or that God didn't design him to be a quarterback. "None of this changes anything about who you are," you need to tell him, over and over. He's designed for and good at many things. The joy of life is in the living.

—Chap Clark in From Father to Son

My Response: For each child, here's a strength to affirm:

Thought to Apply: Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.>—DANIEL E. KELLEY (in the song "Home on the Range")>

Adapted from From Father to Son (NavPress, 2002) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Help me, Father, to make my children feel as loved and accepted by me as I know I am by You.

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