Some Fatherly Advice

I have a bad habit of reading ahead in my Glow in the Dark devotional booklet, but today I am glad that I did. This does not appear until August 5th, a day that I am at camp. The following letter was written by Bro. Morris Hunsucker, the assistant pastor of Faith Baptist Church of Avon, Indiana. He originally wrote it to his daughter, but also had it published in Glow in the Dark. I slightly changed it to make it applicable to both genders.

Dear Reader,

1. Be careful not to trust your heart alone. The Lord gave you a brain for a reason, so use it to reason.
Thinking through your “relationship” and honestly evaluating the positives and negatives in the light of God’s will for your future may not sound very romantic; but someday you will live “happily ever ever after” because you did.

2. Don’t expect any relationship with any human to be perfect. We are all flawed by a sin nature. We all make mistakes. The person that you are looking for is not going to be perfect. There was only one perfect person. The person that you are looking for will have their problems; but you will be able to love him/her in spite of them. And sometimes, you will ever love him/her because of them. I am not saying that you must expect or accept anything less than God’s best for your life. I am saying, unless you are perfect, don’t expect or require perfection in others. You want someone who is striving to do right and find God’s will for their life. Only a foolish hypocrite thinks that they are already perfect. Place a high value on a humble mate.

3. Never lower the Biblical standards that you’ve learned from God’s Word, but don’t be afraid to change those which you cannot support or lower those which no person could possibly reach. Be both right and reasonable. By the way, make sure that the person that you are looking for will not lower their standards to accept you. If they accept less than they think is God’s best for them, they will never be happy or satisfied with the relationship.

4. Always be more concerned with what you are putting into a relationship than what you are getting out of it. True love is an all-consuming, self-sacrificing, heart-felt desire to meet the needs of another. At least that’s the definition I get from John 3:16. Have a servant’s heart and find someone who has the same. A relationship where both people are striving to meet the needs of another will be blessed with great joy.

5. Trust your head more than your heart, your eyes more than your ears, and the facts more than your feelings. Choose service over selfishness, faithfulness over flattery, and personal holiness over personal happiness.

6. If you’ve considered this advice and still don’t know how to proceed, then PRAY and WAIT. That will not be easy, but it is the trying your faith that will make you strong. There will be many times on the field of service when all you can do is PRAY and WAIT. Ten when others panic and run, you will be able to stand. Your faith will have grown strong though the patient endurance of the trials that you have already faced. Simply put, you will be able to trust God then, if you learn to trust Him now.

God bless,
Morris Hunsucker


-Glen