The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
Father’s Day Forgiveness
Father's Day stirs complicated emotions for many of us. Whether you had an amazing dad or one who left deep wounds, this episode explores how our Heavenly Father's perfect example can transform both our understanding of fatherhood and our approach to healing.
We dive deep into how our experiences with earthly fathers shape our perception of God, for better or worse. Those blessed with loving fathers often find it easier to connect with God as Father, while those who experienced neglect, abuse, or absence might struggle with this fundamental relationship. Yet understanding God's perfect fatherhood—His consistency, unfailing love, appropriate discipline, and constant communication—provides a powerful corrective lens.
Fathers carry unique burdens of guilt when looking back at their parenting journey. "My two smartest times for parenting were before I had kids and after they moved out," one pastor notes with painful honesty. We explore how bringing parental failures to the cross offers freedom that self-improvement alone cannot provide.
Perhaps most powerful is our discussion of forgiveness. When we refuse to forgive fathers who've wronged us, we're not punishing them—we're allowing them to maintain power over our lives. Biblical forgiveness means releasing offenses completely, not keeping score or waiting for perfect apologies. This release mirrors God's complete forgiveness of our sins and creates space for genuine healing and transformation.
For those struggling with father wounds, we offer practical guidance through pastoral counseling or therapy, perspective on proportional responses to past hurts, and hope that people genuinely can change through faith. God's love doesn't guarantee warm feelings or perfect reciprocity—it's commitment without reward, giving the other cheek when struck, going the extra mile when exhausted.
Join us for this honest conversation about the fathers we had, the fathers we are, and the perfect Father who shows us the way forward. Share your experiences with us at lifechallenges.us—we're here to walk this journey together.
SHOW NOTES:
Find strength and courage in your faith at this year’s FEARLESS FAITH Conference. Inspired by Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous,” join us Saturday, September 13, at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School in Jackson, Wisconsin, for presentations on navigating life’s storms, understanding God’s peace, and engaging in crucial conversations about euthanasia, anorexia, abortion, prenatal genetic testing, and more. Hear powerful journeys of faith through loss and hope. Don’t miss this empowering event! $50 in person or $40 virtual. Register now: https://christianliferesources.com/resources/events/2025-conference/
On today's episode. You're allowing them to hold over you. You're holding onto a grudge for no good reason. It does you no good and it does them no harm. Instead, if you let that go and that's interesting that one of the biblical words for forgiveness has this sense, the idea of just releasing something, of letting it go that's something, then, that it's no longer hanging on you. It's something, then, that is no longer hanging on you, it's no longer on your shoulders. That is freeing when God forgives us our sins. For Jesus' sake, they're gone. We don't have to carry that weight any longer.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson. We're going to talk about an upcoming official holiday, father's Day. We wanted to have an episode where we talk about fathers, and I don't know if anyone just maybe has something generally to say about Father's Day.
Bob Fleischmann:I think my experience has been I encountered the same thing with Father's Day that I ever encountered with Father's Day. I think my experience has been I encountered the same thing with Father's Day that I ever encountered with Mother's Day. And that is you craft, what I think is a wonderful sermon, praising fatherhood, the role that fathers play, and then doggone it if somebody doesn't greet you at the door and says, well, you didn't know my father. He was mean or harsh, and the same thing with Mother's Day. So a lot of times people tend to tune out if they feel their father's harsh. So we're going to try to talk about that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think that's really a great segue into the episode too, because, yes, I mean we definitely want to talk about fathers and Christian fathers, but we also realize that maybe not everybody has their father around, or not everybody came from a home with a great father, and so there is just a lot to talk and to unpack with the topic. Just a place to start, then, is how does having a heavenly father help us appreciate our earthly fathers?
Jeff Samelson:I mean, this is something I don't think most of us as Christians think about much. It's like, okay, yeah, there's the heavenly father, oh yeah, and there's my father, or whatever. But you know, just the idea that there is a God up there who has a son and that son has a father, that that's something that we are privileged also to have. God designed our families, our existence on earth so that we also would have fathers, in the same way that his son has a father. I mean, I'd say that's a pretty big deal that he's giving that same thing to us. On the other hand, he sacrificed his son, which we don't have to do, but that's the thing. He did that so that we would never have to do anything like that, that we don't have to suffer the consequences of our sins.
Jeff Samelson:And what a father that is, that would be willing to do that to save us, so that we then could be brought back into his family. That's just a really amazing kind of thing there.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, plus, the Heavenly Father is the perfect example. And when we built our house, we built my mom and dad's house next door and I remember looking out the window of my office and watching my father help my mother into the house. She was having trouble navigating the steps I think she just had some knee surgery or something and there was a tenderness and everything and I remember thinking what a great modeling for me on just loving my own wife and so forth. Well, in Scripture, the references we have of our Heavenly Father whether you had a train wreck for a father or not, it's a perfect example. So, like when you get into these references in Scripture about our Father disciplines us or things like that we do have a perfect model, even if our model wasn't perfect and none of our models were perfect, but I mean our worldly models but we do have a perfect Heavenly model and he describes himself as a relationship of a father to us.
Christa Potratz:So then, how does having a heavenly father help Christian fathers be better fathers?
Jeff Samelson:Well, as Bob just said, we have the perfect example, perfect model, in God the Father. We don't ever have to wonder gee, what does a good father look like? We've got that. And one thing in particular that I think we should value is the constancy and consistency of his fathering, that he never lets up. He never says, oh you know, I did that last week, I'm kind of tired, I'm not going to do it this week with his kids. He never says, oh, you know, I did that last week, I'm kind of tired, I'm not going to do it this week with his kids.
Jeff Samelson:He never gets tired. He's always loving. He always does what is best for his children. He's not thinking selfishly. This is always. That's something that we as earthly fathers are going to struggle with because we're sinful creatures, but it's therefore something that we want to strive to imitate in our own fathering, whether we're dealing with infants, toddlers, teenagers or adult children. Just to think that God is just so constant, so consistent in all of the good things of his fathering, that's something for us to look at and say, yeah, I should be more like that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think you know what really hits me about God, the Father too, and I think a lot of like what Bob mentioned as well, is that, you know, like we think, okay, father, like love is the most important thing, and I mean we definitely see that with God and His loving of Jesus and all of us. But there is how Bob was mentioning that perfect discipline, and I also think too, I always love the communication between Jesus and His Father and how much he is praying and you just have that beautiful communication and you know, even just in the Garden of Gethsemane he wants this cup to be taken from him and God says no, and you know, he just, I mean, and just how that all plays out is just really I don't know. It's just. It's such a complete picture, I guess, of fathering and we tend to maybe just kind of take pieces in this earthly world, but there's just such a completeness in the way that we see Godfather.
Bob Fleischmann:And because of our evil inclination that we all have, we're easily influenced into almost a God-contrary figure of fatherhood. So, in other words, how many of us, as kids, didn't think well, if my parents would just trust me more, if my parents would just let me do more, if my parents would let me be like so-and-so's parent you know, have the freedom that they have, and so we're always opting to cut those ties and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:And I was thinking a little bit when Jeff was talking about that consistency with God. I don't know why it takes so many years to realize that it really isn't a good thing to get everything you want. And that's kind of what God does as he works all things for your good. You go through some pretty painful stuff in order to have you be kept close to him. And you don't see it. You certainly rarely see it. Maybe you rarely see it at the moment, but in hindsight it sure looks a lot clearer.
Christa Potratz:I think too, you know, when we have maybe a great Christian father, it's really easy to make that connection with God, the Father too, from, I mean, my own experience I mean I came from a home where I had a very loving father just that whole concept of, oh I don't know, just being like the salt and light of the earth and reflecting God. I saw that through my dad too, and that was just really really wonderful and beautiful. But there are people that grow up that don't have that. So how can maybe having a bad father or father that you know just isn't around or doesn't show that type of love, or maybe even no father at all, someone who wasn't present, be a challenge to the Christian faith?
Jeff Samelson:Well, I mean, as we mentioned, the best way to see things is to look to the Father in heaven as the definition and the ideal of fatherhood, and then you compare your experience with your earthly father to that.
Jeff Samelson:But the way it normally and naturally works for most people is that human beings, especially when they're kids, they take the only kind of fatherhood that they have experience with and then they use that as the standard by which they judge all other kinds of fatherhood.
Jeff Samelson:And that means that far too often, if you had a bad kind of experience with your father your earthly father or no father at all then that gets transferred over to your ideas of God the Father, or that can easily happen, and that means that you end up with either an incorrect or an incomplete idea of God's fatherhood, whereas for somebody with, as you mentioned, krista, with this good experience with your own father, you think, oh, wow, and my heavenly father is like that, only so much more and better. But if you've got this not correct, not good idea of fatherhood, and you say, oh, so you're saying the father in heaven is a taskmaster, you know somebody who just never forgives somebody who's unl to affect their ability to trust God, to see him as a comfort or a strength for them. That's not good, you know. We can teach against that, but that's the kind of thing that goes deep into a person's psyche. At the very least, it's helpful to be aware that that's going on, but many people aren't.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, I can't overstate the value of modeling and how that influences us. And when you have a parent that is not a good parent biblically speaking or even by the standards of society, a parent that molests, a parent that harms, a parent, that is cruel and so forth, seeing that, having that modeled for you all the time, if you do not expose yourself to truth and to proper modeling, that becomes the prominent figure in your head. And it's unfortunate because over the years of my ministry I've encountered people who have complained that I know that we should be celebrating fathers, but I have this and I can't get it out of my head. I know that God's a perfect model, but I still can't get it out of my head. Now I don't know. I wanted to ask both of you do you find in parenting especially for those of us who, our children, are grown up and moved out that if it weren't for the fact that I think I have less patience now than I did when I was younger which wasn't a lot even when I was younger but you kind of wish you knew what you do know now, oh yeah, back then you know, it's like all the times when I said things that I now wish I hadn't in raising the kids and stuff like that.
Bob Fleischmann:That hindsight, and part of it is that I feel, and there were many times I was a bad father, I didn't model the ideal father in heaven, and as I look back I'm going doggone it. It's so clear now If I could do it. You know, I always said my two smartest times for parenting were before I had kids and after they moved out. You know, I was much smarter before I had children. I had all the answers until your kids prove you all wrong, you know. And then, once they're moved out, you're going oh yeah, now I should have done this and I should have done that. But part of it is that we have to remember that there are better homes and worse homes. There just are, and I've had congregations full of them.
Bob Fleischmann:So some people have had these idyllic parents. I was fortunate I had idyllic parents. I think part of the admiration that I developed for my parents was rooted in the fact that they did not have idyllic parents. They had grandparents my grandparents that were problematic, harsh, thoughtless, that kind of thing. And yet out of that comes these two who were wonderful parents for us. But even in my wonderful upbringing. They would have been the first to admit it wasn't ideal. There are levels of goodness and levels of badness, but no one's immune. Sin affects all families and you navigate it and you keep going back to the perfect standard. I wish I was when the children were young. I wish I was the student of Scripture then that I am now. I think that's where insight comes.
Christa Potratz:There's a point when you grow up too, where you realize, oh yeah, my parents weren't perfect, or you kind of see maybe the cracks more and I mean that's just human nature and seeing that too, there can be from a fatherhood perspective and I mean even a mother too that guilt that you find. And so it's like that. What kind of guilt do earthly fathers have to deal with? So that guilt that earthly fathers have to deal with, and how they should cope with that guilt if they didn't do everything perfectly.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, I mean Bob introduced some of those second thoughts and such in the hindsight. But I mean there is just so much that, as fathers, if we stop and think and not every father does but if we stop to think so much that we failed to do that we should have done. So much that we've done wrong, so much that we've forgotten to do, so many times we said the wrong thing or failed to say the right thing. So many opportunities that we lost for connecting with our kids, for teaching them important lessons. So much time we could have just spent playing with them or being with them or talking with them. I could go on for hours, and I think most thoughtful fathers would be able to do that as well, and most of the time we'd rather not think about all that there is to feel guilt about. But when we do, I think it's kind of hardwired a bit perhaps even more into fathers than into mothers that instead of feeling the guilt, we decide, okay, well then there's something I've got to do about it. And that unfortunately works well into a whole kind of work righteousness thing of well, if I have sinned, the thing I need to do is to work to undo that sin and well, certainly yes, if I've made a mistake as a parent, if there's something I can do to undo that mistake, I should do that.
Jeff Samelson:But what we should do with all of that guilt is take it to the cross. I mean, that's father sin is just like any other kind of sin. It's not in some special category that says, oh, all those others Jesus died for, but these you've got to work off. No, it's not like that. These are sins just like any others. And you go to the cross and you say, father, forgive me for Jesus' sake, for the sake of your son, and you trust that that is forgiven. And then, in the power of forgiveness and the freedom of forgiveness, you move on to do better.
Bob Fleischmann:Becoming grandparents is kind of a revelation in and of itself, and I think that's oftentimes why kind of the joke is about how Bill Cosby had a routine where he used to talk about how his mother would come and give dimes and quarters to the grandkids and stuff and Cosby used to say that is not my mother, that's just a lady, an old lady, impersonating my mother. My mother wasn't that nice or anything. To some degree, I look at the way my kids parent their children and my first thought is they didn't learn that from me. They're so much better at it and yet when you sit down and talk with them, they still tell the same war stories. You know, one of the things that can happen when you become a greater student of Scripture you begin to hold on to guilt a little bit. You're looking at all the things that I should have said and I should have done. I was thinking I think it was David Cassidy from the Partridge family. His last words when he died was so much wasted time and I was thinking of that when you were talking about you know, I should have spent more time with him and everything you know. You start reading God's word and you start.
Bob Fleischmann:You know you feel pretty convicted and you know, in the work that we do in our pregnancy care centers and at our Home for Mothers, we encounter this too, where people will talk about relationships that they had and they said I just I can forgive them, but I can't forgive myself. And, like Jeff said, you have to leave it at the cross. I mean somebody died for you because of that. What do you mean? You can't forgive yourself, you mean it just wasn't good enough. Well, you have to get to the point of just moving on. Now the problem is that sometimes maybe your children aren't ready to move on. You'll say you're sorry to the kids. I remember once saying to one of my daughters wow, you know, so-and-so can really be kind of short and kind of— and they said well, where do you think they learned it from, dad?
Paul Snamiska:You know it, it can really be kind of short, and they said well, where do you think they learned it?
Bob Fleischmann:from Dad? It's like whoa okay. But the thing is that forgiveness actually begins at the cross. It doesn't begin with you being enlightened, it actually begins at the cross. As that message of the cross seeps into you, it gives you the tools to forgive others, but it also gives you the tools to forgive yourself and to move on.
Christa Potratz:And that is a really important point too about forgiveness. And if you are a child going through that and maybe you didn't have a great father and maybe there are things where you need to forgive, sometimes that can maybe seem like a huge mountain to overcome, and so how can a child really go about forgiving a father who wasn't there or who had some maybe very big shortcomings?
Jeff Samelson:One of the things that even the secular world gets this, although I think to a certain extent they get it from Christianity. But if you refuse to forgive someone for what they have done whether it's your father or anyone else, an erring spouse or a bad boss or whatever it is that's not something that you're holding over that person. That's something you're allowing them to hold over you. It's you're holding onto a grudge for no good reason. It does you no good and it does them no harm. Instead, if you let that go and that's interesting, that one of the biblical words for forgiveness has, as it's sensed, the idea of just releasing something, of letting it go that's something, then, that it's no longer hanging on you, it's no longer on your shoulders and you're able to let it go, and that is freeing.
Jeff Samelson:We learn that again from the whole Christian thing of forgiveness that when God forgives us, our sins, for Jesus' sake, they're gone, we don't have to carry that weight any longer, and he says goodbye to them as well. It's not something he just holds on to and says well, if you mess up again, I'm going to bring this up. No, no, that's not the way love works, and so children should forgive their fathers for their failings. It doesn't necessarily mean that they forget what their fathers have done. Very often there are real world consequences to the ways that fathers fail. That has been done, maybe he was never around and so the son or daughter grew up in poverty or didn't have certain opportunities. Those are things that last throughout life. You don't just pretend those things never happened, but you can still forgive the man who did that, just as in Christ, god forgave us, and then we can move on to try to overcome whatever damage was done, whatever opportunities were lost and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:We've often quoted the scriptural passage Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. So why is that such an important passage to keep in mind? It's because oftentimes, when we hold grudges, we're trying to do the best we can to extract vengeance. If we can do it by harsh words, we'll do it by harsh words If we could do it by cutting them off from something they want like. But you will never see your grandchildren.
Bob Fleischmann:You get all of these kinds of efforts where we're trying to extract some form of leveling the field for having deeply hurt us when we were young. And the way that you get by it, quite honestly, is, first of all, introspection. God has to put up with an awful lot in each of us, even the best of us. God says I'll still send my son to die for you, even though last week in church you confessed your sins, you set out not to sin anymore and you didn't even get out the door and you did it again. So, in other words, start with introspection. But secondly, don't forget your place. Vengeance is not up to you. You can say the harsh words. I don't know if you're looking for that hurt. Look in their eyes to feel like you've leveled the playing field, but none of that matters. God says that's my domain, that's not your domain, and so stay in your lane and then move on. You can't control how other people act. You can only control you, and so you have to work on getting you over that hump.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, a similar kind of thing is when people say, well, I'm not going to forgive him until he says he's sorry. Okay, I can understand the feeling behind that. You want that other person to acknowledge what they have done. But two problems with that. One is okay, what exactly is going to be a sufficient demonstration of remorse If you just say okay, I'm sorry, okay, you're?
Paul Snamiska:saying that's not good enough.
Jeff Samelson:So okay then, what is going to be good enough and it's a moving target when you're never going to do that. But the more fundamental problem with that is that you've. Okay, then what is going to be good enough and it's a moving target when you're never going to do that. But the more fundamental problem with that is that you've again just turned over all the power to the other person and you may wait forever for that person to say I'm sorry, and they may never do it, in which case you've lost out on all the benefit you get from letting go of that offense and forgiving with that. And I just wanted to add one other thing that if you are indeed someone who has suffered from a bad father or an absent father or something like that, and you've got we'll just say issues as a result of that, talk to somebody, don't just let that fester within yourself. Talk to your pastor about it, get counseling about it, sometimes even just getting somebody else's unbiased opinion about you.
Jeff Samelson:Know, my dad was like that Was that as bad as I think it was? Or my dad did this thing and I've just never really been able to let go of it. Maybe somebody else's perspective? I remember there was something that one of my seminary professors said to me once about something and it's just like, yeah, I guess I'd never really looked at it that way before and it really helped me towards healing and forgiveness in that sense, and make sure that the thing that you're holding against your father is actually a real sin actual or is actually that big a sin. I saw something online last week or so about there is an increasing number, a scarily increasing number, of young adults who have basically just written their one or both parents out of their lives and the reasons they give for this are like are you kidding me?
Jeff Samelson:It's not like my dad molested me and never owned up to yes. Well, as Christians will say, that's not a biblical attitude, but it's not healthy in any way either, and so yeah.
Christa Potratz:Sometimes it does just come down to perspective because, oh, they didn't believe in me, they didn't respect me, they didn't, and that's all really sad too. And I think sometimes, you know, we sit there and think like, okay, this person doesn't deserve my forgiveness or they don't deserve my love. And that is really where, again, we can go back to God and we can see that none of us deserve what our Heavenly Father has given us. And so when you make that comparison, then you just realize like that whole, oh, they don't deserve this. I mean, we really don't deserve any of God's love.
Bob Fleischmann:Oftentimes we've modeled our notions of love and forgiveness from television and movies, where it gets tied up in a nice little bow at the end or it's unresolved, and all these kinds of things. Think about the biblical examples, you know like when it talks about love. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will go cold. Well, are you getting chilly? Why? Because the world wants to attach affection and rosiness and everything to love and reciprocal nature to love. The biblical definition of love is willing to get struck on one side of the cheek and then give them the other side, or walking the extra mile, and so forth. In other words, love is—the biblical concept of love is devotion, even without reward.
Bob Fleischmann:I still think of Jeff's comment about well, they didn't even say they're sorry. Well, and you know when you're thinking that way, the moment they do apologize, it's not going to be good enough. Now, they don't mean it, you know, and that kind of stuff. And yet you find in our perfect example of our Heavenly Father someone who puts up with an incredible amount from us. And we might argue and say, well, but my father molested me, my father abused me, my father was harsh with me. I mean some genuinely really bad things.
Bob Fleischmann:But the point is is when we talk about forgiveness and we talk about love, it doesn't mean that there will always be the consequences for it. For some people, consequences are jail time. For some people, consequences are just always leaving a memory that doesn't seem to want to fade. But besides that, our commitment of love is a willing to be devoted, even if there's not the reciprocal nature of affection, our willingness to forgive if they don't want to forgive back. You don't go to the altar with hatred on your heart. You know. It's just. The scriptural definition for love and forgiveness is dramatically different than what you learned from television and movies.
Christa Potratz:So just kind of pulling it all together now and everything, any final thoughts or just a message on really God's design for fathers and the role that the father plays in the family.
Jeff Samelson:What we see from our heavenly father. That model shows us that the idea or the model of a cold and unforgiving father, that doesn't fit what we're supposed to be as fathers. Neither does the model of a permissive and uncaring or uninvolved father, because that's not what God the Father is. So God, the Father's perfect model, tells human fathers to be loving and caring, but also to take sin seriously, as he did, which means discipline and punishment when appropriate, but also shows a readiness to forgive and show mercy. And this constant cycle of love and forgiveness. And all of this together, and that's the model, that's the design that God has given to us and has given to every family.
Bob Fleischmann:And I had idyllic parents. I mean, I just did. My father died unexpectedly five weeks ago and it's still a horrible pain, still a deep pain. But when I look at the trajectory of my parents, I think they practiced good parenting and my father good fathering, from what the late Tim Keller would call common grace. In other words, they learned from bad examples and God had given them the wisdom to practice the antithesis of the bad examples. They were gentle but firm. They were loving and caring.
Bob Fleischmann:But then what was interesting and this is my advice to people who felt that they did not have such idyllic parents and that is, allow time for faith to work, Because my parents, as they got older, became students of Scripture and even though my father was loving and caring, even before he was a student of Scripture, he became better, he found an anchor. The problem, what I've noticed with a lot of families, when they have some deep wounds from the past, is they don't allow room for somebody to change. Why? Because they don't want to risk being hurt again. But people do change and to say that they don't is maybe because you're refusing the change. Recognize that exposure to the Word of God, exposure to the perfect example of a Heavenly Father does create change and you begin to see it in different things that they do and say.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you both for talking to us about Father's Day, and we thank all of our listeners too, and we wish everyone a happy Father's Day and just love this episode and the reminder, too, that we have a Heavenly Father that loves us very much as well, and so if you have any questions on this episode, please reach out to us at lifechallengesus, and we look forward to having you back next time.
Paul Snamiska:Bye us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at ChristianLifeResourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at LifeChallengesus, so be sure to check it out For more about our parent organization. Please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
