What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him (Part 1) - Byron Yawn

Blended Families

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Finally, A Father

Guest: Byron Yawn

From the series: What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him

Bob: Every father leaves an indelible mark, an impression on the heart of his son, for good or for evil. Here’s pastor and author Byron Yawn.

Byron: Whenever I ask some man “What was your relationship with your father like?” there’s always this moment where they’re trying to figure out how to say it without being critical or dishonoring their father. I think there are some men who have suffered greatly at the hands of their fathers, so I don’t invalidate the concept that we’ve all made a victim of someone in our life. We are wretched and sinful people, but the cross doesn’t allow us to remain victims. The cross allows us to overcome.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, May 29th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Byron Yawn joins us today to talk about some of the things that all of us wish we had heard from our fathers when we were growing up.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I was going to start today by asking you a question, and then I thought, “No, it’s probably not a good question to ask.”

Dennis: What was the question?

Bob: I was going to ask you, on a scale of 1 to 10, what kind of a score would you give your dad? How did he do? – 10 being he was great, 1 he was lousy. Then I thought, “It’s not a good question” because then you’d ask me, “Well, what score would you give your dad?” and I would go through that process of trying to evaluate the score. Then I thought, “Do we really want people starting to score their parents?” That’s probably not --

Dennis: There’s a lot of that occurring today.

Bob: There is, and I –

Dennis: It’s on the low end of the scale, too.

Bob: And I don’t think it’s healthy for us to go there and dwell there, and muse about it and gripe about it.

Dennis: No, I don’t think it is. I think what’s most important, and you’re already hinting at it – we need to be talking about what is a man, what is a dad, what does he do, and how does he function under the lordship of Jesus Christ in his life. We have a guest with us here on FamilyLife Today, Byron Yawn, who has written a brand-new book called What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him. Byron, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Byron: Thank you, Dennis. It’s a privilege to be here.

Dennis: Byron is a writer, a speaker; he and his wife, Robin, live near my son in Nashville, Tennessee, and they live there along with their three children, and have years of ministry. I’m just curious, why would you tackle this subject? You have three children. Has the learning curve for you been a steep one as a dad?

Byron: I think like every dad it has been steep. The reason I tackled it on a personal level is that I was just compelled. I’ve had many good examples in my life, and many bad examples in my life. The truth is, I just love my sons desperately, and the world is a grinder and as a pastor I encounter a lot of failure on the male level, as husbands and young men.

Dennis: You see a lot of men who don’t know how to be a dad?

Byron: I do, and I see the consequence of it in young men’s lives. So I didn’t want to be the cause of two more statistics, and I just sat down and started writing essays to my sons of things that I wanted to say to them. So on the personal level it’s a father’s heart to his children. Now I don’t know that I tackled it as much as it tackled me.

Bob: You said you’ve seen good and bad examples. You had two very clear good and bad examples, because your dad, the man who gave you life, didn’t stick around very long.

Byron: He did not, and in no way was an example for me, nor had he had any major influence in my life. As I look back on it now, as I’m 40, God spared me, but because of my adoptive father, Dr. Yawn, which is where I got the worst name any preacher could want –

Dennis: Let’s spell it, so our listeners know. They may have missed it. It’s Y-A-W-N.

Byron: Thanks for being explicit.

(Laughter)

Byron: He so exemplified what it meant to be a servant, and he embodied the unconditional love of God as it is seen in the Gospel for me. I was young enough that I didn’t have a real memory of my biological father, and I was young enough that I was forming my memories of who my father was based on the man that was in front of me. Honestly, until the age of about 10, I didn’t really realize he wasn’t my own biological father, which I think is a testimony to his love.

Dennis: You know, your story is providing hope for some listeners right now, who are in a second marriage, a blended family, and they’re wondering “Can redemption occur in the midst of a broken family” -- that took what was an ideal, something they had hoped for that would go the distance, and whether it was desertion, divorce, or a child out of wedlock or whatever it way, it’s now a blended family.

Your stepfather – his first name was Victor, right? -- stepped into your life and provided a model and an influence and an impact that only God could use to imprint your life. You had a conversation with him outside a courtroom that really impacted your life.

Byron: That’s right. I was around five years old, and we were in a courtroom. It was in Mississippi, and it was a hot summer day. I was out in the little foyer of the courtroom on a bench that looked like a pew. I can remember it like it was yesterday. He knelt down in front of me and he said, “Would you like to be my son?” to which I said, “I didn’t know I wasn’t, but of course.”

And I think whether biological or adoptive, a lot of fathers fail to make that connection clear. So it was an enormous blessing. I mean I got it; it clicked, and I always valued that relationship as a result of it.

Bob: He went from that question into the courthouse and formalized the adoption.

Byron: That was it. I mean, that was the moment, and there are so many doctrines that ...