Gail and his Knights

I just finished the book Raising a Modern Day Knight. (I got it for $5 including shipping) It’s a book for fathers about raising sons. It was good I’d give it a B overall. I like Reb Bradley’s book better.
Anyway the premise of the book is how fathers can truly teach their sons to be men. The main idea is a Man needs to reject passivity, accept responsibility, lead courageously, and expect the greater reward (Joy).

I am blessed to say my dad like almost all of my friend’s dads did these things..

The author of this book Robert Lewis did not have that blessing. After reading this book it helped remind me how GREAT a blessing having a Godly father truly is for a son.
To put it in perspective let me paraphrase some of the stories about the author’s dad:

1. Robert had numerous division 1 football scholarship offers from big time schools he ended up going to Arkansas. His dad did not help him whatsoever in the process of choosing what school to attend. The only thing his dad told him was “it’s your decision”.
2. The guys dad missed his own sons wedding, he had a good reason he was too drunk at home!
3. One Night long after all the kids had moved out, Robert’s dad was drunk and wanted to go out for more drinks his mom tried to stop him from leaving to go drinking, he pushed his wife away as he was walking out the door. Unaware he had made her hit her head on the coffee table and broke her neck! Dad stayed out drinking all night went straight to work the next day and got the news, he had a heart attack on the spot. While in the hospital his son came to visit, dad was so out of it he thought his son was the DR and started telling him how many mistakes he made in his life, and how proud he was of his son that was a pastor and how he loved him. This was the first time Robert had EVER heard these things from his dad! After his dad realized who was standing in front of him Robert witnessed to his dad for over an hour, by the grace of God his dad was saved.
4. The night of the accident Robert was at the church He pastored. There meeting was about prayer, the question was asked what is the one thing you want to trust God to do that you think is absolutely impossible?
   

you already know what Robert prayed for…

My point of all of this is no matter what trials and tribulations you may be going through God is in control. It’s hard to accept some times.

1 Samuel 2:

⁹ He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. ¹⁰ The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.

If we are able to participate in raising Godly children it will bring great joy to us. So far I can totally attest to this. Even though Nolan and Nathaniel are so young. I pray that 20 years from now this will still hold true…

Proverbs 23:24 The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.

I recently exchanged emails with my old high school football coach mike gims.
One thing I can say about him is for all the coaches I had in all the sports I played from elementary on up is coach gims was a good christian testimony as a coach. I am not saying that all the other coaches had terrible testimonies, but Coach Gims exemplified it. He also stressed how we needed to keep christ first and that football will not matter in a few years.
I had been surprised to learn he was no longer coaching high school(he had been coaching for over 15 years) he had moved on to coach college. I thought cool. I played for coach gims for 3 years when I was a freshmen he was an assistant and then sophomore and junior year were his first two years as a head coach. He was always trying to be innovative sometimes it worked like our run and gun offense which was not common in High School those days. Then sometimes it didn't like running the lonesome polecat a few too many times :). He made his mark with the run and gun and improved upon it and I am pretty sure that is how he was able to move up the coaching ranks.
In his email, He shared with me that he was having his entire team of college players read the book raising a modern day knight. That's coach, always stressing the importance of keeping christ first! here he is trying to help men be fathers, and they don't even have kids yet! Oddly coach has 2 or 3 girls and no boys. The book is for fathers on how to raise their sons to be Godly men. It's also where I got the title for this blog. Knowing I have two sons of my own he suggested i pick up a copy. Finally last week I went ahead and ordered mine. I have read the first 3 or 4 chapters and I like it so far. It's an easy read, if i have the time I should knock this book out in no time.
Thanks for the tip coach, you never quit coaching do ya? If you are still coaching in 18 years i have two boys you should look at :)