Welcome everyone, to another episode of ‘The World Needs A Father’. And in today's lesson, we're looking at ‘A Father Affirms Potential’. And I pray that each one of you will be blessed as we look at this topic. ‘The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it and indulge in it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of your words.’ Proverbs 18:21. Today, I'd like to speak to you on how a father affirms potential and how we can learn a language that will help build people up and not tear people down. Good day. I'm Andy and I’m here to journey with you as we discover in the word of God, and through life, how we can be affirming to others.

When you got up this morning, what was the very first thing that you did? Many of us may think that we are intentional in what we are doing. That we are planned, make decisions in order that we will do what we decided to do. But by and large, I believe more often than not, what we do is really out of habit, for we are all creatures are habit. And on this worn, well-worn path that we tread on day in day out, create for us a culture.

And culture come in many forms. And we first begin in ourselves. Habits, things that we do on a regular basis that become part and parcel of our life. In our family, our family culture. And within our family culture, perhaps our community culture, the ways that we are from the ethnic group that we belong to. And then whether we see our national culture. And now there's even a global culture, you know the TikTok culture, the social media culture.

And all these stems from the fact that culture is a learned pattern. Patterns of perception, values, and repeated behaviours into habit that is shared by a group of people that are dynamic and heterogeneous. Meaning we are diverse, we are so different, and yet we can have similar cultures, like the culture of the internet, cultures of social media. Everyone walks around with handphone and we feel that we cannot live our lives without one. And this has become a new culture.

But here at ‘The World Needs A Father’, we want to make culture. We wanna create culture because we do not want to conform to the patterns of the world. Because many times, what happens in the world is so contrary to what God wants us to do. It is opposed to the word of God.

The word of God says, ‘For our struggle really is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ And so once we know who our true enemy is, once we know that the forces that we are against is strong, then we need weapons that's not of this world. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they are divine power to demolish strongholds. And so we need to go to God and put on the full armour of God that he has provided for us. That we were able to stand strong and firm against the onslaught of the enemy.

We need to be counter culture, setting new trends and not following every new trend that the world throws at us. So this new trends of culture, we want to base it and follow the biblical standards of the world of God. As one organization, India Techline says, they are geared to the times, but anchored to the rock. We want to be relevant today, but we also want to be firm in our values, which is the rock Christ Jesus.

And that's why we need to learn this very important aspects called affirmation. Affirmations have the power to motivate us, to act on certain things. Helping us to concentrate on achieving our goals in life, giving us the power to change our negative thinking patterns, and replace them with positive thinking patterns, assisting us in assessing a new belief system. But above all, affirmations can reaffirm the positivity back into our life and help regain or increase our self-confidence. And that's why we want to encourage all fathers, even mothers to use affirmation more than correction.

You know, if we don't affirm our children, they will go elsewhere to find that affirmation because everyone of us need it. And unfortunately, social media gives us an avenue where we can seek and find this affirmation. We post things, we post pictures. And sometimes these pictures are not our real self. We kind of like improve and make ourselves make up. And now with the apps, we can make ourselves and beautify ourselves easily. So that we can get ‘thumbs up’, we can get ‘likes’ and we can get people to affirm us through this social media. And sometimes it can go the other way. And this media bullying, where people are being accused or slandered in the media. And then people get depressed because of that.

We need to seek affirmation from the right sources. People closest to us, people who really care and people's words that really would mean more to us than just anybody else, any ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ giving us a ‘thumbs up’ and the ‘likes’. We need to affirm one another. And as parents, as fathers, this is not only our privilege, but our duty to gird and undergird our children with words of affirmation, building them up, giving them confidence to face the challenges that they will face in life.

You know affirmation or positive behaviour produces far better developmental results than the correction of negative behaviour by ratio of 5 to 1. So for every word that we use that pulls them down, we need to do 5 times you know, of affirmation in order to balance the scale. So rather use your words of affirmation that will give them a good basis of living life and being able to face the challenges that life affords them. Now simply put, affirmation is a better educator than correction. Now personally too, I find that when I’m being affirmed, especially by my loved ones, by my dad, my mom when I was younger. It helps me so much to go on continuing. You know as a young person, I wasn't very good in school, I had challenges. But because of the belief in especially in my dad, he said ‘you can do better next time. Try again, try harder.’ And every time I fall, every time I do something wrong, he would encourage me to not give up, to move on. You will do better next time. And then spurred me on to try to do my best the next time.

Self-affirmation is also important. When we know who we are and our identity, that we are believers in Jesus Christ. He says He has given us the right to be children of God. As sons of God in Christ, we need to understand that we are unique. There is no other person than us, in a sense that when God made us, He broke that mould. Because he is so creative, He doesn't need to do something to duplicate something. Even twins, right, are different. So each one of us are uniquely made and uniquely different. But each one of us are also significant, we’re significant because each one of us has a purpose. God created us, for us to do good works that he has created beforehand for us to do. For we are all is handiwork. And we also need to understand that we are lovable, we are not only loved but lovable. You know, because as every parent, when they look at their child, when God made us His children, He loves us. And that means He accepts us for who we are. I thank God for accepting me for who I am. And I now have to accept myself for who I am with all my weaknesses, my failures. If God can accept me, I cannot be too proud not to accept myself as well.

And I need to know that I’m capable because God says all of us have been given gifts, given abilities, which we can use for His glory. And because of that gift that He has given to us, I need to use it and exercise it for the good of others. And in doing it, I may fail, I may fall, I may wonder away. But you know what, I am still loved. Because that relationship that we have with Got will not change. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And with that I am secured, I know who I am. And I know that even when I fail, God is there with me, that I can always come to Him and confess my sin. I can ask Him to forgive me and give me strength not to go back to do the same things all over again.

And that's why we need to also learn to tame our tongue. We already established that in the tongue there is a power of death and life. It is in the power of the tongue. And so James tells us, ‘the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.’ And if we don't tame it, we don't use it for building people up, it will go the other way and we will be tearing people down.

And that's why Paul says in Colossians 4:6, that we as sons of God must always let our conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that we may know how to answer everyone. And that is important. And we need the Holy Spirit. Luke 12:12 says, ‘at that very hour, the Holy Spirit will give us the right words to use.’

I like to drink coffee and I like to use an illustration using a cup of coffee. If you have a cup of coffee and I push you. What will spill out of the cup of coffee? It’s coffee, because the cup is full of coffee. But if it's full of tea, then tea will spill out. If it's coke, coca cola will spill out. If is water, water will spill out. So what's in the cup is very important. And so when we are pushed in life, what comes out? Anger, resentment, fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, or love, patience, peace, comfort, joy, faithfulness, self-control? What's in the cup will come out?

The question is, what's in our cup? It all depends on what is being poured in. If this cup or glass was originally filled with coffee and it’s all black and dark. If we start pouring clear water, clear, refreshing, nutrient rich water into that cup of coffee, into this glass, eventually, it will dilute the coffee. And we keep pouring, after a while, there will be no more coffee. There will only be this clear water in it. So what's in our cup? And I pray that each one of us will allow the Holy Spirit, the living water to come and purify us, day in and day out.

So that we will have the fruit of the spirit which is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. For against such things, there is no law. And so I pray that what's in our cup will be God Himself, the spirit of God. So that when we are pushed, when we are facing difficulties and challenges, affirmation will come out that the good in us will come forth.