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

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, wh