Northwest News!

Below is an article by CHUCK NORRIS that should be a great challenge and encouragement to you men and especially the fathers.

Taken from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56220

I was genuinely flattered to hear of the worldwide enjoyment of my parody and hyperbolic WND article this last week, “If I am elected president.”  It is often said that the most powerful position in the world is the U.S. presidency. But I believe it hits much closer to home than the White House and is a role, quite frankly, that I’m much more eager to fulfill.  Before I reveal that commanding position, I’d like to discuss the power utilized in it.

The purpose of power

Calvin Coolidge, America’s 30th president, once confessed, “I suppose I am the most powerful man in the world, but great power doesn’t mean much except great limitations.” Similarly, Thomas Jefferson once pleaded, “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” Their point is that power wasn’t granted by God to be wielded like a sword but to be used to empower and better others through wise decisions and actions.We equate power with dominance, rule and self-glorification ñ that is unfortunate. I believe when God created us in his image, he gave us the authority and autonomy to rule the earth, not one another. Power was given to serve, not enslave. As I’ve taught a myriad of martial arts students, the greatest form of power is still restraint and harnessing that potential to help others. Great leaders have always understood this power principle, including Jesus, who demonstrated the original intent for our autonomy. He said, “Whoever wants to be first must be your servant ñ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And so should we do the same.

The perversion of power

When we don’t properly recognize and utilize the power God has granted us, we naturally abuse it. An example of this can be found in my now deceased, but once alcoholic, father.Dad was generally a good man when he was sober, but sobriety was not his area of expertise, or even practice. When he was drunk, the littlest things sent him into a rage. Even if he heard water running while suffering from a hangover, he would explode in an abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives against everyone in the house. The devil might be in the details, but he’s also in the bottle ñ I’ve seen his spirit at work.Growing up, my most difficult and confusing relationship was with my father. My father abandoned his role as a servant-leader, model and mentor, dodging his duties and authority by drinking himself into a constant stooper. As a result, he failed to reflect a shadow of the Almighty’s image to his children, something I believe is the highest calling of every father.He failed to see that what gives fathers a unique power is that they bear the same title and reflection of our Heavenly Father. We were designed to show our children what God is like. In that sense, fathers are children’s first Sunday school. That is likely why George Herbert said, “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”

A power under attack

With this honorable type of power in our original design, it is no wonder that there is today a war on fatherhood and masculinity. A year ago in the Whistleblower, WND’s Managing Editor David Kupelian wrote a great article about this cultural assault and has since been featured on a national radio broadcast of the American Family Association, in which he also explains why:

• Television today portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs.
• America’s judicial system is wildly biased in favor of the mother in child custody disputes.
• In public school classrooms nationwide, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind.
• Between six and nine million American children, mostly males, are taking Ritalin, the most popular treatment for “attention-deficit” and “overactivity” problems at school.

With masculinity on the cultural butchering block, it is high time that men arise to not only protect our national borders but the boundaries of godly fatherhood!

The power of presence and soap-on-a-rope

The true measure of a father is what happens after Father’s Day ñ after he has been honored by his children or whether or not he has at all. For it is the duty and honor of a father to value his children even more than he expects to be valued by them.While I was overjoyed to be the recipient of my seven children’s love on Father’s Day, I seriously don’t believe their affection can hold a match to my adoration for them ñ and I’m determined to find multiple ways in this life to demonstrate that to them. I’m so proud of you, Mike, Dina, Eric, Kelley, Tim, Dakota and Danilee! And I know God has great plans for each of your lives.I really believe it doesn’t take as much as we think to be good fathers. As Tim Russert noted in his excellent book, “Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons,” much of the adoration echoed from children for their fathers originates from simply taking time to be with them and making a big deal out of the simplest things. As Bill Cosby once said, “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”

A power you can take pride in

Gentlemen, it’s time to move beyond the guilt and mistakes of the past and press on to being the fathers God has created us to be. Though I’ve been far from a perfect father too, I refuse to allow my mistakes to hinder me from being a better one in the future, and I encourage you to do the same. It’s time for us to re-enlist rather than retire from fatherhood.We all need the passion of Douglas MacArthur, who declared, “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder ñ infinitely prouder ñ to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’”By the way, if you somehow failed to read between the lines, I will always believe the most powerful position on earth is being a father.