Show Me the Father

One of the greatest needs God has put into the heart of every human being

is for a father.

All of us have a fatherhood story.

We either can share about how much we loved him

and how much he meant to us...

or how deeply he hurt us.

We see father wounds all around us.

The hurt, the bitterness...

the anger...

the unforgiveness.

People who've grown up without a dad

that was present or loving in their homes...

the word "father" is not a good word for them.

They're seeing the brokenness of this world. They're struggling

in their marriages. They're trying to provide for their families.

And they don't know that they have a father.

And his heart is tender towards us.

If you've been looking for a father, if you've been wanting a daddy...

if you want to experience what it is to be fathered by God...

your perfect Father in heaven can change the trajectory of your life.

Your daddy wants to restore you.

There is a loving Father in heaven who has created us.

And He wants a relationship with us.

I got a full scholarship to go to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

The Seattle Seahawks drafted me in 1976.

I played seven years with the Seattle Seahawks.

After that, that's when I got into my teaching and coaching career.

I love coaching because of the relationships

that you develop with the players.

You get close with guys.

Mental part is what makes the difference,

doing the little stuff right, because everybody's got physical talent.

And so they know who I am and what I'm all about.

And that they know that I care about them. They know that... I care about you.

I want you to be successful.

The crowd settles in for Super Bowl XXXIV.

-St. Louis against Tennessee. -We went to a Super Bowl in Tennessee.

We were the Houston Oilers, then we moved to Tennessee.

-We became the Tennessee Titans. -Into the end zone.

I was hired by Pete Carroll.

I got to go back to Seattle and spend seven years on his staff.

Went to the playoffs six out of seven years

and two straight Super Bowls.

I would always tell my players, "If all you get from me is someone

that teaches you how to run the inside zone,

someone that teaches you how to run an option route,

if that's all you get from me, man, you can get that from a video."

I said, "I pray that I give you something that will take you beyond this,

that will help you become a better man, a better husband, a better father."

I wanna make a difference in the lives of young people,

the way my father made a difference in my life.

And I would look at each guy that way, like, "You are my son,"

in the way I will relate to him.

As a father would relate to a son, as my father related to me.

My dad was my hero growing up.

His presence in our life...

how he saw more in us than what we saw in ourselves.

Speaking to me as a Black young man,

not to hear the noise that I was hearing from other people...

who was trying to tell us that, "You are limited in what you could do

and where you can live and what you can be."

Not only was that lie being sold to me by those outside of my community,

but there were people within my community that had bought that lie also.

They was telling me, "Going to college, you're just dreaming."

And my father wasn't buying it.

My father asked me a question, he said,

"What do you wanna do when you graduate from high school?"

And I had a plan.

Work in the steel mill, get a nice car, and live in an apartment.

So he took me on a trip. Got in the car, he said, "I don't want you to say a word."

So we drove down to that apartment complex,

which was a public housing unit.

He said, "Don't buy the lie that this is the only place you can live."

We drove to that steel mill

where my dad worked for 30-something years.

He said, "Don't buy the lie that this is the only place you can work.

Son, you're better than that. Don't buy the lie.

You can do more than that right there.

Hey, don't forget who your daddy is.

Don't forget who you are."

So my father, he was letting me know

my identity was supposed to impact my behavior.

When I was in college, I had this desire to wanna know God,

but I'm a visual learner.

I was talking to people about Christianity,

they were telling me what Jesus Christ could do for me.

And I was looking at these people, saying:

"Doesn't look like He's making any difference in your life.

You talk like I talk, think like I think, go where I go."

Quarterback Sherman Smith takes the ball through the Marshall defense.

And so one day, it was my senior year, right before the draft, I said: "God,

I wanna know if you're for real. I need somebody to show me."

God responded and revealed Himself to me.

You know, training camp started,

this one guy walks in, big Black guy, big, old barrel chest,

and on the back of his shirt, it said:

"Hutch is going to Seattle to do God's battle."

And I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, no, man. Here it is.

I've come some 2000 miles

to run into another one of these 'Christians.'"

I'm watching Ken Hutcherson.

We're having a relationship because we talk and stuff.

But I'm watching his life.

I'm checking him out, gonna see what this guy's all about.

There was something different about this guy.

In our last preseason game, he gets hurt, blows his knee out.

Take him off the field, word comes back down on the field

that his career is over with.

And he has ice packs on his knee and he's got a smile on his face.

And he just says, "Sherm."

"Man, I'm excited."

And I'm looking at him, "Okay."

"I'm excited to see what God has planned for my life."

He said, "Sherm, I'm a Christian. And nothing happens in my life

that's not filtered through God's hands first."

He said, "I'm excited to see what God has planned for my life."

And right there, I said, "This has to be for real.

You can't fake that right there."

And right there in that room, I said, "Please tell me more about Jesus Christ."

He said, "God loves you. God loves you so much

that your sins are forgiven, past, present and future."

He said, "Not only did God love you so much,

the thing that has happened is God says He's gonna save you

from the penalty of sin. He's gonna save you from the presence of sin.

But now, God is gonna save you from the power of sin."

I said, "Lord Jesus, come into my life."

Identity is the key to spiritual growth.

You have to know who you are.

My dad laid the foundation for that thinking.

And then when Hutch came to me and said, "Don't you know who you are?"

He was saying the same thing to me.

"Don't you know your identity is supposed to impact your behavior?"

What a father is supposed to be...

is a man who has accepted the role and responsibility

of transferring the character, person, and purposes of God

through him to his offspring.

A father is the founder. We talk about Founding Fathers.

The word "father" means source from which other things come.

It can also mean "chief" or a "leader."

Our Heavenly Father is a source of blessing

and love and provision and protection and wisdom.

And a father on earth

should be receiving those things from his Heavenly Father

and pouring those out on his children.

So he is the mirror, the model, and the imprint.

He's a mediary between heaven and earth to the next generation.

The problem is that earthly fathers crack the mirror.

So the mirror of the Heavenly Father doesn't come through clearly.

Today on Focus on the Family, we're gonna look at fatherlessness.

Your host is Focus president and author, Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller.

The research about fatherlessness in America is heartbreaking.

Ninety percent of all homeless and runaway children

are from fatherless homes.

Eighty-five percent of all children who show behavior disorders

come from fatherless homes.

It really stacks the deck against us.

I know this firsthand because most of my childhood

was spent without a father.

Concept of fatherhood, for me, was tough.

A father was somebody who hurt you,

a father was somebody who disappointed you.

My biological father was an alcoholic.

One day, he'd run his hand through my hair and say he loves me,

and the next night, he'd be drunk, threatening me.

One night, I was 5 years old,

my dad was drunk, sitting in a La-Z-Boy-type rocker,

and he had a hammer in his hand.

And he was banging the hammer on the ground, saying,

"I'm gonna kill your mother when she gets home."

I looked at the walls, and the walls of our house had holes.

He had been hitting the hammer through the walls.

My siblings put me in my mom's bedroom and tucked me in.

I remember as a 5-year-old pulling those blankets up to my neck,

feeling like this is the only protection I had.

Next thing I knew, a police officer walked through the door,

right when his partner was putting my dad in the police car.

And then they drove away.

Next day, we were on the move.

I think we lived in seven different houses,

kind of running from my dad.

My mom remarried actually to kind of a real aggressive guy.

Hank was his name. I called him "Hank the Tank."

He was an ex-military dude.

Used to do a white-glove test every Saturday morning in our house.

One time, I didn't hang my jacket up, and he came in and said,

"Hey, hang up that jacket 500 times and yell out the number.

Follow the rules or be crushed."

I remember one day, the bedroom door was slightly ajar,

and I heard my mom yell for me, "Jimmy!"

It was weak, but I went in and I was shocked

because she looked frail. She was thinner.

But I didn't think anything else other than maybe she just...

You know, she was pretty sick.

My mom was not doing well. I didn't know what was wrong with her,

but Hank would lock her inside the bedroom

and I'd go weeks without seeing my mom,

even living in the same house. And Hank would always threaten me:

"Don't bother your mother. You're gonna wear her down."

One day, my brother was back from the Navy.

He was 19, I was 9.