Courageous Malachi 4:6
The Resolution
Adam Mitchell
Send this to someone

Watch this. Three minutes. Then three questions below it.

Courageous The Resolution 2011
“I don't want to be a good enough father. I want to be a great one.”
Adam Mitchell
Watch on YouTube ↗
How This Connects to Your Life

Adam reads and signs a covenant to his family. The resolution is not made because everything is resolved. It is made before the resolution.

Boys don't become men automatically. They become men when a man deliberately initiates them, names who they are, calls them to something.

The resolution is a decision made before the crisis. Make it before you need it.

Malachi 4:6
Read on Bible.com ↗
“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents.”
Your son is building his picture of God from the father he can see. If you are absent, he learns God is distant.
Three Questions.
No wrong answers. Just honest ones.
1
What decision about the kind of father you want to be have you been deferring until conditions improve?
2
Is there a son or daughter watching you decide who you are every day? What have they been seeing?
3
What would it mean for your son or daughter to hear you say out loud what you commit to be?
The History Behind the Film

Courageous is the film at the center of this study. The scene is chosen because it captures something true about the specific challenge this study addresses. The filmmakers may not have intended a theological reading, but the truth they captured is there regardless of intention.

The History Behind the Scripture

Malachi 4:6 sits inside a larger argument Paul or one of the other biblical authors is making about how the renewed life looks in practice. The verse is not a standalone principle. It is part of a sustained argument about what it looks like when a man actually believes what he says he believes on Sunday morning.

How It All Connects

The connection between this film and this Scripture is the same one that runs through every study in this series: what a man sees in the mirror when he watches that clip is exactly the gap this Scripture addresses. The film names the problem. The Scripture names the source and the solution.

This Week
1
Plan one intentional experience with your son this month that requires something from him.
2
Look your son in the eye this week and tell him specifically who you see him becoming.
3
Ask your son one real question this week, not about grades, about his interior life.
4
Pray over your son out loud this week where he can hear you. Let him hear a father interceding for him.
← Back to All Studies