Lord, I pray that your Fatherly love can sink into the hearts of men today. Your healing touch is needed desperately. Some men feel their deepest pain today. All the bitterness, guilt, sorrow, sadness, jealousy, anger, fear, and loss comes to the surface today. This is a day that America celebrates fathers and there are way too many sons that feel emptiness or rage towards a "day" and a man that was never the father described in all the greeting cards or shown on the TV commercials. For some, it becomes a day of reflection and resolve to never become like him–the father they know or wish they didn’t. Some decide they will make sure they become to their children what their father was never able to be for them. Some succeed, some don’t. Some have the chance, others not yet. For some, their father is no longer alive and healing never took place. Father’s Day is like an arrow to the heart with pain, guilt, and anger taking turns making fresh wounds.

Heavenly Father, I pray today will be different. I pray today will be the day for healing. You are a God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Please sink your love into their hearts to bring healing to their past hurts. Hurts that may have been inflicted by a father who was probably full of a father-inflicted pain himself. Help each one to go back in their heart and mind and find a way to forgive the man that was unable to father him the way he should have and probably wanted to. Please help each one to find compassion for the little boy that their father once was. The little boy that grew to be a man and inflicted such pain on others. The little boy who never found comfort in His Heavenly Father and was unable to live up to what he should have when he fathered a son. That little boy became a father that let people down. That little boy needs forgiveness. And the children of that little boy need to be free of the pain.

Father, I know I will never know the depth of the pain that each feels today. Lord, help them to cling to You as the God of today as they step unwillingly into the past to put to rest that pain so it doesn’t rob them of their future. Help them to see that You are the father they have always needed. You are the one that is the ultimate loving, caring, Father.

Lord, help them to look back and be grateful for the surrogate fathers you have placed in their lives—grandfather, uncle, step-dad, or neighbor. Help each to understand that it was intentional on your part that as you saw a father lacking in one area, you brought someone else into the child’s life to be there.

Lord, thank you for having your hand on all your children. Help each man today to feel your love so complete and so deep that it can finally overcome the pain of the past. Help each one to turn to you to learn how they can parent their own sons and daughters. Please heal and soften their hearts, fill their hearts and open their hearts to you as the Healer that can set them free. Lord, as you say in Ezekial 36:26–You can take this heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh. It will be a new heart, softened toward obedience to you. For You so loved the world (all the sons) that you gave your only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. Lord, please help each one to let Your deep love replace the love they longed for from their father. Please help them to allow you to replace the pain with peace. Please give them the everlasting life that only You can give. They are looking for something from a mere man that they can never get, but they can have it in You.

Father, please make this a day of healing. Make it a day that the fathers of today can strengthen their ties with their sons while they can. Some never had that chance and Lord, we pray that you can reach back into the past and deliver the words of forgiveness and bring back to the present the words of love and acceptance a son longs to hear. Help them to hear the words from You, Lord. The words that say You love each one of your children completely and please let that be enough, because You will not allow any less from these fathers toward their children (even from those that do not yet have children of their own.)

Help this to be a new day for fathers and sons (and their daughters.) Let it be the day it was intended to be–a celebration for the love between dads and their kids. Even if that love needs to be between you, Abba and your children.

Thank you Lord

Amen