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Champions for Life: The Healing Power of a Father's Blessing

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This book points out the extreme importance of having a father bless his children throughout their entire lives.

This may seem to be an alien concept in our secular culture, where too often people reject a father figure and act like fathers are optional. It is too "cool" and "trendy" these days to know single mothers who never married the father of their child, but the reality is that it devastates the self-image of the fatherless child.

Bill points out from experience that at all the prisons he witnesses at, it is always very hard, even impossible, to find an inmate who has a good relationship with their real father--they usually curse their father for not being there for them while they were growing up; which is the breeding ground for criminal activities and gang membership which becomes the surrogate family, and blesses the individual for doing criminal acts, instead.

I am a big fan of professional athletes who preach the Gospel, so I am very happy with this great book from Bill Glass!

Bill Glass is a retired NFL football player from the 1960's, who has been heavily involved with his own prison ministry for decades, Champions for Life.

This book is basically Bill Glass writing about the importance of a Father's Blessing in the life of everybody, not just prisoners--everybody needs that affirmation and encouragement from their father (or father figure)!

Not only is the blessing important, but the curse is also discussed. What parents say negatively to or about their kids has a major effect. Bill discusses his personal, accidentally inflicted curse, when he overheard his mother telling someone that Bill was not good looking at all. No parents are perfect, and his mother never even knew that he overheard that remark, but it haunts Bill over 60 years later, throughout his entire life. What your parents say about you really DOES matter, though, hurt people try to shrug it off.

Bill discusses that, too. If a parent refuses to bless, or has died, then you must forgive the parent and seek the blessing from another father figure.

The blessing must always be unconditional. Bill uses his sports experience to contrast between unconditional blessing versus coaching. Coaches are never satisfied, always push for more, and their blessing is dependent upon performance, because the coaches job is on the line, and so is the athlete's job, if winning is not achieved. Coaching is performance based. Parenting and blessing is unconditional, NOT dependent upon a child's performance or achievements. We have to bless our kids just because they are our kids, NOT because they first had to achieve a goal, like a good report card. Belonging to the family is unconditional, but remaining on a sports team is achievement dependent.

Bill is helped by pro sports writer Terry Pluto, but this is essentially the thoughts of Bill Glass, relating anecdotes from his own life, prisoners he has met, and Bible passages. Terry and Bill have been great friends since 1996, when Terry got Saved, after obseving one of Bill's Prison sessions for a writing assignment.

I like this book because you learn a lot about Bill's own life, his football career, and how Bill's parents raised him in a Christian manner. Bill Glass was a player on the championship Cleveland Browns, one season before the first Super Bowl. If the annual Super Bowls has started one year earlier, Bill would have been a winner of the first Super Bowl.

This book is very personable, not technical or clinical. Reading it is like hanging out with a really great, caring Christian fellow who wants to help people by learning from the mistakes of others. This book is full of common sense advice, which is actually not commonly practiced, these days.

Another good book by a Christian and former NFL player is IN THE TRENCHES by Reggie White, an NFL Football Hall of Famer. There is something about being a huge, macho football player that seems to make these Christian athletes more daring and unashamed to use their sports fame to push the message of the Gospel. I love reading books by these pro athlete Christians.

The Father's Blessing has long been a topic needed in our society. Glass takes the message to our people in a simplistic approach. We've known the word but never quite understood its real meaning until today. "Well words" he explains need to be verbally spoken over our people. Fathers, either in absence, ignorance, and/or stubbornness withhold this great gift which our God has designed us to desperately need and seek out. Fathers do the best with what they have, and operate out of what they've been given. However, the tables are turning with this liberating knowledge. Simply look at the cry of Esau, "But father, bless me too !!" The value of it has never lost its place in the family unit. God has not removed it, nor changed His heart on the subject. Satan cannot kill it, the church can no longer ignore it. The absence of it is putting our men in prisons, according to Glass, 30 year seasoned prison minister, and former NFL ALL-PRO veteran. People make harmful decisions due to the lack of it. All have to have love, value, and belonging. Do we continue in an "all-fire stupid" mode, or do we learn, discover, and execute a real missing component in our society?