(AgapePress) - "I'm just a dad who loved his kids," says Wayne Hastings, "and chose to get involved. I cannot overemphasize the need for dads and moms to get actively involved in their kids' lives. I know there's not time, but the clock is ticking."

Hastings offers that advice out of personal experience and with no small degree of wisdom. His daughter Jennifer is married and his son Zachary recently graduated from college. And from all accounts, Wayne and his wife Pam have done a lot of things right.

Hastings says, "It was important to me that [my children] understand the power of prayer in their lives." One experience illustrates his success in that area.

"Zach was 10," he says, "and we were in the back yard playing football. I kicked the ball short, and he dove for it and came down on top of a pipe buried in the ground. It sliced open his knee to the bone.

"I panicked. I screamed at my wife, 'Call the doctor, we're on our way! Get some towels! Zach's been hurt! We've gotta go!'

"I ran back outside and my son was lying on his back saying, 'Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus.' At that moment I knew that in all those little prayer times, we had made a connection. In a moment of crisis, he'd applied it and I hadn't."

Hastings' voice still cracks and his eyes moisten as he recounts the incident 12 years later. "I don't have a Ph.D. in child training," Hastings says, "but I have a burden for parents, fathers in particular, to be actively involved in raising their children in a godly fashion."

A vice president with The Parable Group, Hastings faced a demanding schedule of public speaking and consulting. Still, he always made a conscious decision to invest himself in significant fashion in rearing his children. Along the way, he and his wife discovered a number of principles he highly commends to other parents.

"It came to me," he says, "that St. Paul's relationship to St. Timothy was a lot like the relationship of a dad to a son." Subsequently, Hastings studied St. Paul's Letters to St. Timothy to identify the principles St. Paul believed critical as he mentored St. Timothy in the faith.

Hastings' latest book, If You Take My Hand, My Son is a rich, annotated list of those principles. Each chapter title identifies one principle, e.g. "Leading a Boy to be a Man of Integrity." The meat of the chapter then explores how parents can teach integrity, with examples from the Hastings' own family journey. Ten additional chapters address such principles as mercy, confidence, peace and discipline.

Two things that come up often, whether Hastings is writing or speaking, are the critical elements of time and communication. Again and again, they surface as major factors, no matter what principle he's addressing.

"First of all," Hastings says, "it comes down to making a decision to spend time with your son. Working on Saturdays together, taking a lemonade break from mowing the lawn. Just sitting down in the shade offers incredible moments to talk and teach, to help him learn life as you see it, to communicate your values and vision to him."

Hastings says it was a particularly emotional experience to write about his daughter in an earlier book, The Sound Of My Daughter’s Voice. This book gives insight into how the parental role changes as a child develops into the person God desires, from childhood to empty nest.

"It was very important for me to get involved in Jennifer's childhood by being there for playtime," he says. "I was able to challenge and encourage her. She's a performer, so I watched her perform."

He emphasizes that it's never too late for parents to have an impact on their children. "When Pam and I first became parents, we didn't have anything," he explains. "We weren't believers at the time and we weren't prepared at all." They became believers after Zachary's birth, so they actually began parenting with no Christian foundation.

He says, "I have a lot of moms and dads say, 'Gee, my guys are teenagers. It's too late.' No! It's not too late. It's never too late to start praying fervently for your kids. It's never too late to sit down and ask them what's going on and really listen and not judge. It's never too late. Whether they're two or 15, roll up your sleeves, get involved, enjoy them. You'll love it. It's a good ride."


(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)