Stories about me being a father to my kids and what we can learn about our faith while parenting our children.
Christian Living
Leadership
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Hey everybody, it's Danny, I want to say thank you for tuning in to the Heart Way podcast and I want to give a special thanks to those of you who are tuning in from really all over the world. We're so grateful that you are a part of our community and that you listen in on an ongoing basis. If you've been encouraged by what you've heard, I want to ask you to share this with a friend. You never know the impact that one of these messages can have in another person's life. And if you yourself have been impacted and you'd like to continue to partner with us to keep this work going, check us out at heartwaychurch.com slash give. Every dollar that you give goes a really long way towards helping us do what it is that we do. Well, we love you, really hope you enjoy the podcast. Good morning, Heart Way. How you guys doing out there? It's Father's Day. Listen, listen, can y'all give it up for this beautiful woman right here? You already know, I got my wife getting my stand ready. Listen, listen, that woman there, listen, you have no clue. Like, this ain't even part of the message, but like all jokes aside, a prayer answered. Like if you don't believe in, if you haven't seen what God can do when you pray, let me just tell you that that's a prayer answer right there. So I love you. So it's Father's Day, right? So to all the fathers, I'm about to trip, I'm about to lose my cool. Let me start that again. Listen, but it made you laugh and snort a little bit. So it's Father's Day and it is truly an honor to be able to get a chance to share this morning's message with you. For those that don't know me, my name is Clifford and listen, I do not take this for granted. It is truly a blessing and a second prayer answer to be able to share with you. So today's Father's Day. So typically when I get ready to start a message, I tell a joke, something funny, you know, a dad joke. That's just what I do. But today I got a little bit of advice. Maybe I'll give you a joke. All right. I'll give you a joke at the end. All right. So the advice to all the fathers, the men out there, be the man that you want your sons to be and the man that you want your daughters to marry. All right. Ladies, be the woman that you want your sons to marry and the woman that you want your daughters to grow up to be. You see, because what we learn and for those that have kids and to those that will have kids, they see everything. They hear more times when you're not speaking with them than they do when you are speaking to them. So they pay attention, absorb everything. So be great because you are being watched. So let's jump into today's message. So for those that are uninitiated, who haven't been here when I've taught, this is a participatory event that's about to happen. That means you help me, I help you. Today being Father's Day is a bit of a tough day and a great day. So my father's birthday was two days ago on the 16th and it also marked the two and a half year anniversary of his death. And so if you see me get a little bit emotional, just clap me on and we can get through this together. Right? You guys got my back? We good? All right. So let's jump into this. So like I said, I need you guys to participate with me. So what I want you to do right now is close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes and don't open them until I tell you to open them. I have a question for you. What is the image you see when you hear the words, loving father? Now keep your eyes closed. For some of you, the image may be a father that has been loving and caring and thoughtful. Maybe even be a superhero who has been accepting of you and kind and joyous and fun to be around. For some of you, that image may be a little bit marred. It may be a little bit distorted for you because for you, the two words loving father being in the same sentence may be a bit of an oxymoron. Because maybe the father that you've had here on earth has not been loving, has been a little bit harsh, a little disconnected, a little bit far and distant. And lastly, for some of you, that image may be a blank picture, a blank picture because maybe your father wasn't there. Maybe your father, a tragedy happened when you were younger that took him home to God. Maybe he just wasn't there. He was an absent dad. Open your eyes. You see, for me, as a father, it is one of the proudest moments of my life. It is something that you talk about before you become a father, you hear everybody talk about this new level of love. And I'm like, listen, I'm in love. I love my wife to death. There's no next level of love. But when you have kids, you learn that there's this whole new level of love that you cannot express. You cannot put into words. You see me? I'm a very proud dad. And if you take a look up on the screen, on the left is Bryce. This is three days after he was born. We were watching Super Bowl. And he's laying on my chest, and then you can see definitely I'm a girl dad as well. She's always trying to, like, she's a daddy's girl. So she's always grabbing my face and putting my face close to hers. She's been doing it since she's been a baby. So for me, I'm a proud dad, right? There's nothing they have to do to earn it. It doesn't matter their good grades in school, how well they perform on the soccer field or anywhere else. I'm proud of them. And that's where my love has started from the beginning and will always continue. As the same, I believe that God is very proud of Jesus. He actually says it in Matthew 17 5. So let me set the scene for you. This is a time where Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to the mountain. And while Peter is still speaking to Jesus, this happened. Matthew 17 5, it says, he was still speaking when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. You see, there's nothing I wouldn't do for my kids. Not a single thing. Even if it's taking food off my plate to make sure they have something extra to make sure that they're good. Even if it means working late hours and working in the middle of the night to make sure that they have a roof over their head and food on their table. You see, I would give anything, even including my life, to make sure that their lives are protected and healed and ready to be able to face this world. And I believe that God would do the same thing. As a matter of fact, I know that he has. And there's a point where we used to look in the Bible and you could see how God demonstrated this. I often think how God felt when he made the decision to send Jesus to us. In John 3.16, we understand that we've seen this verse thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times. John 3.16 is probably one of the most well-known verses in the entire world. You see it tattooed on people's bodies. You see it on the blackouts of football players. Tim Tebow would notoriously wear John 3.16 up under his eye. It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, and that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I want us to stop and think about that verse for a second. Could you imagine having to choose to send your one and only son, knowing his fate, knowing what would happen for him to go to the cross? Could you choose to send your one and only son to save your adopted children? You see, that is a father's love. You see, without a father's love, there would be no peace. Without a father's love, there would be no redemption. Without a father's love, there would be no savior, no joy, no hope, no love. Without a father's love, there would be no you. There would be no me. Second Corinthians says, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. What is a good father always trying to teach you? You see, for me, I'm always trying to tell my kids, like, come here, let me tell you a little something. Let me give you the road map to this. And I don't know about you, but where I grew up, there was always some old dude trying to give me some knowledge. Right? He was like, yo, come here, young buck, let me give you this word. Let me give you this game. Let me speak something into your life. Let me give you the knowledge that you need to be able to handle all of this stuff. You see, for me, at the time, I didn't really understand it. I didn't really absorb all of those things. But then, as I got older and I became a father, it started to make sense. And when I start to look at that as to what God was trying to do, he was trying to give us his knowledge. He was trying to give us that word. And it came in the package of Jesus. Everything that God was trying to get to us, he said, I'm going to give you the living word. Think about it for a second. He taught us how to handle conflict. Turn the other, in the scripture where it says, turn the other cheek. How many times? 77 times 7. He taught us that every now and then, we need a little drama in our life. When he walked in, was flipping over tables in the temple, right? He taught us how to treat our parents. In the scripture, it says, honor thy father and thy mother. He taught us how to handle our relationships with our friends, where it says, love your neighbor as yourself. He even went as far as to help us to understand how to invest our money. In the story of the talents, where the master was getting ready to go away and he gave five talents to one and two to another and one to the third. He showed us that the one that invested the five made five and got back. And he said, good, my good servant. And he did the same with the two. But the one that did not, was too afraid to invest, he buried it. He showed us how to invest everything that is important to us. What I want you guys to understand in this time is that God gave us what we needed. God gave us the things that we needed, even though we didn't realize that we needed. And Jesus kept trying to tell you, this is not me speaking. He said, this is from my father. In the scriptures, John 12, 49, it says, I don't speak on my own authority. The father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. Can we pause for one quick second? How many times that we try to tell people something, right? It could have good content, but it's about how we say it. We always say, well, I'm trying to tell you this, will you just listen? And it could be all facts. It could be something to help them. But it's how we say it. So God sent Jesus to model everything that we were going to ever face back then and to now. There's this image that I saw on Facebook. I want you guys to take a look. You see a father holding his son's hands, looking upon him with great reverence. He's very proud of him. But if you notice, if you take a second to look at that father, he's missing something. You see, everything that I have belongs to my kids. If you've met my son for any moment of time, you understand that that is my boy, right? He looks like me. If you watch his mannerisms, he acts like me, right? My wife says she just birthed my kids because you look at they toes, they toes, those are my toes. But in this image you see, the artist showed where holes were taken out from the father to make the son whole. God did that in Jesus. He took everything out of himself to make Jesus whole so that way we can be made whole. It is from the father that we get everything. It is from the father we get our laughter, our wit, our resilience. He's trying to teach us everything that we need to know to be able to face the challenges that we will face. In the scriptures, it does not say that your life will be perfect without hardships. It does not say that your life will be perfect without tears. What it does say is that through all of that, that God will be right there next to you. So as a father, I take pride in trying to make sure that I teach my kids everything, whether it's about God, whether it's about love, whether it's about relationships, even what I do. So a couple of months ago was Bring Your Child to Work Day. So I was like, I had Bryce with me. Babe was a little upset she had to go to class, but it's OK. Look at that face. That's what I'm talking about. Listen, pray for me. I love you. So we get Bryce ready. We're both excited. We both got on our journey shirt. I had a whole day planned of meetings and things that I had to get done that day. So we hopped in the car, and we started the day at our M&A attorney, our Mergent Acquisitions attorney. We've been in the middle of trying to acquire another company for some time. And so we had to go and meet with the attorneys to talk about the things that we needed to watch out for as we reviewed documents. On the way to this meeting, Bryce is sitting in the back, and he says, Daddy, what's a pension? I was like, a pension? So I explained to him what a pension was, and I was like, where did you hear that? He was like, my teacher had said something about her pension. And so I explained to him what a pension was. Shout out to all the teachers out there. So he says, well, Daddy, do you have a pension in your company? I was like, no, I don't. He was like, oh. I said, but let me tell you about what we're trying to do instead of a pension. What we've been working on is trying to purchase land and build some apartment units. And so I explained to him the math that if we had 10 units that profited $500 a month, I said that's $5,000. And if you keep doing that same model, and by the time that you and Bea get to college, we may have up to 100 units, or we may have up to 150 units. And that is residual income. That is income that will continue to be there for you and Bea long past Mommy and Daddy. And so I wanted him to know that we were investing in something so that way his future is bright, and that way his sister's future is bright, and their lives are better prepared to be able to face, again, the challenges that we may face. And that they don't have to face the same things that we went through. So as we got to the meeting, it was a big deal for him. He had his own watch on, but he's been wanting to wear one of my watches. It's this one here. Since I got it, I walk in the house, and he's like, can I have it? And I'm like, no. And I found out the reason why he kept wanting to press to wear this watch. And all the guys in here knows why he wanted to wear this watch to school. It was a girl. And so as soon as I kept hearing, I'm like, what's her name? But this was a special occasion. We're going to business meetings, and he needed to have the proper wrist wear, right? So I was like, take your watch off. And I put on this watch, and I had my other watch on. I had it in my pocket, hidden, so that way he didn't realize it. And so we get into the meeting. We're sitting down with the attorneys. And I'm sitting there, and I'm thoroughly impressed with him. I'm impressed because he has a little notepad. He's writing down questions so that way he can ask me once we got in the car. And so having that moment of being there in an office setting, teaching him about what I do. So we leave there. We have other meetings that we got to go to. And we're running nonstop, right? And then I had a doctor's appointment. So as we're leaving the doctor's appointment, oh, we stopped and got lunch. And we're on 95. I'll never forget the moment. I can close my eyes right now and see where we're at. We're about to pass the Fort Lauderdale Airport on the right-hand side. We're driving to my office. And he says, Daddy, your career is perfect for you. And I'm like, thank you, Bryce. I was like, why do you say that? He says, because you go to all these meetings. You got to shake hands and talk to these different people. And you got to put together these proposals so that way you can get the deals done. He was like, and it's all these twists and turns. He said, it's like a curly fry. It's like a curly fry. He said, and then you come home. You play with me and Bea. He was like, you hang out with Mommy. You cook dinner. He was like, but you don't let what you do affect our time. He said, so it's perfect for you. He said, you can handle it. He said, most people in the world couldn't handle all of the twists and turns in life. He said, but you can handle it. He said, but you can handle it. The clarity in his voice. There was no stutter. There was no break. There was no ums. It was clarity. I sat there in awe. Can I tell you a little secret? I wanted to turn back and look at him, but I couldn't. I was kind of not afraid, but I was just like, there was just like this pause to look back and see who was speaking to me. Because the clarity is something I've heard it before. I've seen it before. I just couldn't put my hands on it. I couldn't believe it. During that time, we were in the middle of working on this development deal. It was to develop 63-unit apartment buildings. Some of you I've told about this. So we're going through the process. Now, I am invested. When I say invested, emotionally, financially, my time, everything. Because the development was supposed to be a development in the Highland Park District in Miami. It's the medical district. And so we were planning to develop 63-unit apartment buildings that was going to be close to the hospital so that way doctors and nurses can actually hop on a scooter or walk to the hospital. And so we were developing this. And so we started to come up with this plan that was to be able to have every convenience possible for them, from blackout shade so when they get home at 7 o'clock in the morning that they can close their blinds and go to sleep, to make sure that they had a scooter in the apartment building so that way if they got called in the middle of night, they can rush over. We wanted to do something to take care of the people that has taken care of us. So I was invested. And as things go and things don't always work out the way you want, a twist and a turn, the deal falls through. The investor doesn't wire the money in time. And so we're trying to get everybody on the phone. And we're trying to make things happen. And they're like, well, it's been sent. And it hasn't been sent. And we go back and forth. And all these twists and turns, like, I can't sleep. I'm up throughout these next couple of days trying to get everybody to get everything done. The wire doesn't get sent. We lose the contract. Somebody puts the development up on the contract. This rocked me. Like, I remember coming into church. And as a leader, what Pastor Danny and I do, we encourage people. We always are trying to inspire people. But what you learn is that even when you don't feel inspired, you still have to inspire. Even when you don't feel encouraged, when you feel broken and beat down, you still have to be able to encourage. And I'm very transparent in my story because I want, at this very moment, to encourage you. You see, as this deal fell apart and I'm walking through and I'm trying to get my focus back, you see, I learned a long time ago, and I think I've shared this with you once before, that if something happens in my life, I give myself a timeline. I remember one day at work, things were just bad. I had two things that came to me that was just not good. And I was like, all right, you got 20 minutes. You got 20 minutes to cry, to scream, to do whatever. You got 20 minutes. So I sat in my office for 20 minutes bawling. Good thing about being black, when you cry, you don't turn red. You're good, you know? But I gave myself that timeline. And so as this deal fell apart, and I'm like, you got this timeline. But I started to think back about you can handle it. And I kept trying to focus on that. And so one day, I'm driving in the car and I'm praying to God. I'm like, listen, I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me, because I'm tired of the same storyline. I'm tired of going through these exact same things. And I need you, I need to just hear a word. Am I doing the right things? Am I, you know, should I shut down my company? Should I move into another industry? What would that industry be? What should I do? Tell me, I need you to speak to me right now. I'm driving to the bank. I get to the bank and my phone rings. I look at the caller ID, it's this guy by the name of Patrick Patterson. Now, Patrick used to work for us about three to four years ago. He was one of our superintendents. Big dude, probably six, three, six, four, 300 plus pound guy, like, but he's a big teddy bear, right? Patrick, like shortly after he started working with us on his day off, he ended up having a stroke and his doctor was like, listen, cause Patrick's probably in his early sixties. The doctor's like, listen, no more working for you. You're done, right? No construction, no nothing. You just, you know, you got to take care of yourself. So you would think that would be the end of Patrick's communication with us. Patrick has texted us multiple times a week for the last three years. Words of encouragement, giving us calls. We're praying for you, brother, praying for your company, praying for everything that you guys do, everything your hand touches. That's just Patrick. Even when we have called him when Patrick lost his son, when we called to encourage him, he was encouraging us. Continuing to say that we're praying for, as we're telling, we're praying for you and your family's peace. He said, brother, I'm still praying for you. I'm praying for your business. I'm praying for your family and your kids and your wife. And I just told him, thank you. So I look at my phone as Patrick is calling me, but this day I ain't really trying to hear no encouragement. I ain't feeling it. I'm just not in this moment. I don't wanna pick up the phone. I don't wanna have to put on this brave voice over the phone that everything's cool. But I pick it up and I pick it up and I say, I said, hey, Patrick, what's going on? He said, hey, brother. He was like, I just wanted to, he said, God put it on my heart to call you right now. I just wanted to tell you that, God wanted me to tell you that you're in the right place. You're doing what you're supposed to do. So keep up what you're doing, brother. He was like, I don't want any time, any more time. I love you and you have a wonderful day. I prayed that prayer three to four minutes prior to that call. That call lasted about 13 seconds. If you just stop and be open to God speaking to you, it doesn't always come in the package that you're expecting. Why is it that if it doesn't come in the package that we expected, we start to disregard the message? Why is it that we set it aside and we don't want to think twice about the message because it didn't come in this nice little pretty box, in this pretty form, or the way we expected? If we stop and think for a second, we look at the jewelry that we have on, that diamond, that diamond that you are wearing, it came from a rock, a mountainside, that somebody had to work to go get it. The gold that you are wearing, whether it's the jewels, the oil that we put in our cars, everything that has value comes from this unassuming, modest place. But yet we always want to disregard when we get something great and it's not enclosed into something beautiful as we see it. The Jewish leaders in God's time thought the same thing. You say they kept looking at Jesus, this can't be our Savior, our Messiah, this can't be it because, listen, we're expecting a vast army. They thought he was going to come onto the scene like Prince Ali of Aladdin with horses and elephants and all this, you know, big hoopla about his coming. But God didn't allow that. What God wanted to make sure that he understood is that whether you came from nothing or you came from a lot, that you are great. Jesus was born in a manger. He could have brought him into a wealthy family, but he didn't. But everybody started to discredit his message because he didn't come from them. This is just the carpenter. Jesus went into the rooms that everyone kept saying, what are you doing in there? If you're the Messiah, you wouldn't be hanging out with those people. You wouldn't associate yourself. You wouldn't be seen rubbing elbows with those people. Not those people. But God wanted us to understand that you have to trust his process. God wanted us to understand that the packaging, the packaging is actually great. For us, the packaging was Jesus. So the next time you start to pray to God and you get a phone call, somebody walks up to you, open your heart, be receptive. We go through a lot in this world. Everyone in this room has probably faced some trials or tribulation at some point in time. It's like, I've got, I'm done. I can't do it anymore. You see, God knows your breaking point, but we give up before that point is broken. You see, our breaking point is based on damage control. God's breaking point is based on restoration control. I'll say that again. Our breaking point is based on damage control. We're trying to minimize how much the impact of whatever we just faced. God's breaking point is about restoration control. He's saying it's okay to be broken because he's going to be able to restore you from that. Think about every seed that we plant in the ground, the vegetables and fruits that you eat. It's a seed. It's closed. How do we get the fruit out of this seed? It must be buried and broken. And then from the brokenness comes the fruit. In our lives, we may be broken over and over again, but be planted. Stay steadfast in God. Back to that day that I'm having this conversation with my son, I get home, I get in the tub, taking a bath. My wife's sitting on the floor in the bathroom, and I'm telling her everything that happened. And she's like, that was God. That was God speaking to you. God was telling you that you're going to be able to handle what was coming. The breakdown of this deal, it was the twists and turns. Side note, I can't look at curly fries the same anymore, and you probably won't either. Going to Arby's and trying to get some curly fries, and you're like, dang. This is life. So I'm sitting in the bathtub in tears, in tears. For I thought he was talking about past life and things that hadn't happened yet. But what God was saying in that moment was, you can handle it. One of the things that Bryce said to me that day, when he finished up, I told him, I said, thank you, son, for telling me this. I said, this means more to me than you'll ever know. And I said, I'm glad that you came with me so that way you can see it. And he said, daddy, I've always known. I've always seen it. I've known since I was born. How does he know since he was born? Who told him? Who whispered in his ear when he was sitting there as a baby? Who whispered in his ear who he was sending, who God was sending him to? There's a quote that says, the heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature. That is truly a father's love. For me, it's the paradigm between two sons. You see, God used his son as my savior, my redeemer. God used his son to teach me how to be a father. God used his son to help me along the way, to give me his word. But then God said, I got to kick it up another notch. He decided to use my son. He used my son to encourage me. He used my son to be able to help me to realize that God is still right there. For you today, it may be the paradigm between a one son and a daughter, or a son and a father, or a son and a mother. Whoever God is using, be receptive. I could have looked at my son and discredited the packaging for this word. What does he know? He's 10 years old. He hasn't lived through anything. I could have discredited what was happening in that moment. But I could not. I would not dare. Because the clarity, again, was undeniable that it was God who was speaking to me. That's the reason why I hesitated to look back. That's the real reason that I was driving in motion, but stuck in that moment. It could not be magic. I couldn't believe what was happening. So today, I challenge you. I challenge you to put God in that space at the beginning of my message when you think of a loving father. Because it's only by a father's love that you sit here right now. As a father myself, of course I will want my kids to put me in that space. But what I don't want them to do is to forget the father that's holding me in that space. Know the value of the word, the word that God gave us. And never forget the sacrifice it took to get it to you. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for your love. Lord, we are grateful for your kindness. Lord, we're grateful for your peace, and your patience, and your strength. Lord, we're grateful for everything that you have laid in front of us. Lord, we thank you for Jesus on this Father's Day. We thank you that you thought that much of us to send your one and only son. Let us never forget the heartache and the turmoil that it must have caused you to be able to send your son down here to save us. Let us live our lives with that in our heart and our mind. Let us stand here and know that no matter the trial and tribulation that we may have faced or that we are going through right now, Lord, that we can do all things because you are our father. Let us also trust in your timing. Let us never give up. Let our breaking point be your breaking point. Let us always remain pliable to be able to be restored. Lord, I ask that you just touch everybody in this place. Lord, give their hearts peace. Give their hearts joy and love. We ask this in your son Jesus' name. And every heart says, amen. Listen, thank you guys so much. We're so grateful for each of you. I pray that you guys have an amazing day. We love you. Take care.
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