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This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United Kingdom. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request.

Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

All emphasis within Scripture quotations is the author’s own.
ISBN 13 Paperback: 978-1-9160612-0-0
ISBN 13 Ebook: 978-1-9160612-1-7

Cover design by Sam Nudds.

For Worldwide Distribution. Printed in the USA.

Foreword

Introduction

Reveal The Father

1. Reveal The Father

2. An Invitation To Women

3. Holy Jealousy

4. Everyone Needs Adopting

5. The Journey Of Sonship

6. Overcoming Lies: Part One

7. Overcoming Lies: Part Two

Things Fathers Do

8. Fathers Do Things

9. Create Home

10. Model Authenticity

11. Love Unconditionally

12. Provide Covering

13. Provide Safety

14. Give Grace For The Journey

15. Give Identity

16. Help Their Children Discover What They Love

17. Believe In Their Children

18. Celebrate Victories And Establish Memorials

19. Raise Favorites

20. Foster Growth

21. Demonstrate How To Cope

22. Demonstrate An Attitude Of Thankfulness

23. Show Their Children The World

24. Teach Responsibility

25. Create Opportunities

26. Dream With Their Children

27. Serve

28. Model Duty And Royalty

29. Give Inheritance And Leave A Legacy

30. Restore Lost Years

31. Create “Normal”

32. Establish Moral Truth

33. Create Culture

34. Model Affection And Healthy Emotion

35. Cultivate Wonder And Joy

36. Show Their Children How To Love Their Spouses

The Continued Journey Of Fatherhood

37. Man-to-Man

38. Fathering Organizations

39. The Heart Of The Matter

40. The Father’s Toolkit

41. You Live The Final Chapter

FOREWORD

There is no subject more important to every person on earth than God is love. Love is not just something that God is, it is something that He does. I experienced a baptism of love in the year 2000 that totally transformed my life and has given me the grace to receive, become, and release the Father’s love in the darkest places in the world. Becoming love and living fully loved begins by first encountering and receiving that very love. God loves us just the way we are, but He wants us to be like Jesus. Jesus came and demonstrated how good the Father is and how loved we are.

If you desire to encounter Papa God’s passionate heart for you, I have some good news! Things Fathers Do by Paul Manwaring is a gift that I believe has the potential to transform your life and the world you live in. During the past fifteen years, I’ve had the honor of developing a close friendship with the author and I’ve observed him as a natural and spiritual father who beautifully reveals our Heavenly Father to those around him. This is a message that needs to be caught just as much as it is taught. You teach what you know, and you reproduce who you are. In Things Fathers Do, there is an impartation available for you to receive an upgrade. In the natural and the spiritual, Paul is making this available to all of us who desire to live love out loud. It is the Father’s good pleasure to demonstrate His personal, powerful, and passionate love to each of us. God loves me as much as He loves Jesus and that is what makes me extraordinary in an ordinary world. God’s kind of love never fails. In His love we have everything!

Things Fathers Do continues to overwhelm me and I’ve learned over the years that whatever overwhelms you, shapes you. The more you receive God’s outrageous love, the more you become like Him, so that your life, family, and workplace will be saturated with what Love does.

Don’t settle for less.

Leif Hetland

President, Global Mission Awareness

Author of Called To Reign

INTRODUCTION

Dear Dad:

I am just finishing my third book. Yes, I became an author— among other things. Writing this book has been another journey into my heart, memory, and spirit. Many times when I preach about the heart of our Heavenly Father, I talk about you and the day, thirty-two years after you died, that I lay on my bed and had an imaginary conversation with you. As I came to finish this book, it occurred to me to continue that conversation and share with you the impact you’ve had on this book—and my life—through this letter.

You’d have thought by now—I’m sixty—that I would have forgotten you or “got over” losing you when I was fifteen years old. I have come to realize that “getting over it” is not a realistic goal for anyone who suffers the loss of a loved one at any time in their life. In fact, I often tell those who are grieving to, instead, work to weave the memory of their loved one into the rest of their daily lives. I guess I am living my message. To be honest, it would be impossible to forget you. I look a bit like you, although I have never grown a beard or mustache past ten days’ growth. My two sons love the things you loved and my grandsons are beginning to share those passions as well.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to write these words. When I realized that abandoning my sonship was unhealthy, I learned to be comfortable with memories of you and I became determined not to focus on what I didn’t have, but to make sure that I lived with a desire to become the very thing I lacked. Of course, I would have loved to celebrate life’s major events with you during these past forty-five years, share with you my joys of marriage, having sons and grandsons. Sharing these things with you is an experience I will never know, but I have been blessed to enjoy the journey and even more so now that I am aware I am living out things for which you had such value.

Dad, I wrote this book because there are so many people who have experienced absent fathers or fatherlessness and I hope that our story will help them to become the fathers they want to be, regardless of what they had or didn’t have. This book is about things fathers do. My goal is to help people, especially fathers, to know that in their doing—in the living out of their lives—they make a difference. And the more confidently we do the right things, the greater the impact of our lives.

One thing I know is that whether our fathers still remain on this earth or not, their influence should never end. I am amazed by the way that DNA gets passed on: family traits get passed from generation to generation, even if the generations never meet.

I find myself with four things in my life that are so clearly influenced by you. We never spoke about what I would do when I grew up, apart from childhood dreams of sports, astronauts, and train drivers. I never had an adult conversation with you about dreams and skill sets, logical choices, and how to pursue my gifting. Yet somehow, your life influenced mine in these profound ways. The first of these is that you were clearly a strategic thinker. I cannot imagine that you would have been selected for your work with Barnes Wallis and the bouncing bomb or sent to Germany to clean up after the war without a mind for strategy. You probably don’t know this, but strategy and strategic thinking is also a trait I carry and one that has influenced my career in more ways than one. The second thing that influenced me is when you interviewed with Mum—just before I was born—to work with troubled young men, a job that you only didn’t get because it wasn’t suitable for a pregnant woman. I also pursued a career working with troubled young men, prisoners, in fact. The third influence is when you became a manager instead. I eventually became the manager of a prison, again following in your footsteps. The fourth influence is that through all of those years you were a regular preacher. I still have your notebook, by the way. I found it in a metal box along with a gun and some engineering and other equipment. Don’t worry, I handed the gun in. I even had one of your sermons published in my first book; it was very good.

Those four pieces of your life have so clearly been a part of mine. I have worked as a manager of a juvenile prison, studied, taught, and practiced strategic planning, and now I travel and preach. You gave me more than you knew.

I will always remember how much food was a part of our family. It still is. Memories of what you loved live on, and time spent around the dinner table was a gift you gave me. I even recently discovered how many German foods you loved. You should know that I never visit Germany or Austria without eating a Vienna Schnitzel. You loved quality, and that trait has also been passed on. The cheese, bacon, and ham we sold in Sunnymead’s Stores & Post Office were the best, you made sure of it.

These days I have a football and rugby ball always at the ready in the boot of my car, ready for fifteen minutes with my grandson. It reminds me of you, the way you might stop somewhere like Richmond Park and get the cricket stumps out to play a quick game. In all honesty, I can’t remember many things that you said but I do remember the things you did and the impact they had on my life. You taught me not to be embarrassed when shopping for gifts for my wife. I still remember all the times you took me with you when shopping for Mum. You taught me to go to crazy lengths to buy the best gifts for my sons by the way you had things delivered for your sons and nephews, and that was before the days of online shopping.

And of course, the last thing you ever did was buy me an SLR camera. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t valued photography.

Dad, you did things, big and small. The way you ran your grocery store and cared for your customers taught me how to pastor people and to love beautiful and excellent things. You always took an interest in the world around you, you treated all women with great respect, and I could go on. You demonstrated so many things.

Most profoundly of all, you showed me all of this before I was fifteen. Perhaps it will encourage others to know the effect that you had, even though you left this life too soon.

This book was birthed when I was creating a memory with my youngest son, which you would have loved: attending the World Cup in Brazil. I still remember sitting with you and watching England win in 1966. We still haven’t done it again— win the World Cup, I mean—but we will. I remember how you loved the singing of “Abide With Me” while watching the FA Cup, and of course I remember the hymn you loved to quote when you made a mistake: “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, Forgive our foolish ways.” And I remember your verse from the JB Phillips translation: “Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.”

I became a Christian the day you died. It was both the best and one of the worst days of my life. The things you did meant more than you knew, that’s why I wrote this book.

My prayer is that those who read this book will find hope, redemption, and restoration through the telling of our story. Some have also experienced the premature departure of their father, and others never had a good example of an earthly dad. I pray that people will realize the power they have to live life not regretting the deficiencies, but determined to look past their lack and give of themselves so that others—especially their children—won’t experience that same lack. Of course, there are those who have had great life experiences with their dads. For them, I hope they will see how blessed they are, and live determined—as you did—to pass that blessing to the generations to come.

Your son,

Paul

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION