Our guest blog this week is from our good friend Mark Chester from Who Let The Dads Out? Mark shares about a powerful moment, when he realised just how much influence his everyday routines were having on his children.

‘Daddy, I want to be a man,’ my son, Billy said to me one day when he was five years old.

‘That’s great, son,’ I said. ‘If you keep eating your vegetables you’ll grow big and strong and one day, you’ll be a man like me.’

‘No, I want to be a man now!’ he said.

‘Okay,’ I said, unsure how I was going to navigate the rest of this conversation. ‘How are you going to do that?’

Billy already had a plan. ‘I’ll get all the things that will make me a man.’ And off he went around the house in search of manly things!

Sometime later, he came back to me to show me the objects that he thought would catapult him to the status of adulthood. He proudly presented a set of keys, a wallet, a phone, a notebook and a pen.

In an instant, the truth behind Billy’s whole venture hit me square between the eyes. These were the five possessions I put into my coat pockets each morning when leaving the house, and in the evening, when I would take them back out of my pockets and put them on a shelf by the front door.

Billy was learning how to be a man by copying me. He was looking at the fine details of the way I lived my life for clues about how he should live his. I also realised that my daughter Megan, too, was learning what to expect from men by watching how I behaved.

Billy’s attempt to become a man prematurely renewed my resolve to be the best father I could be, because Megan and Billy, their children, and many more future generations of our family to come – even those who will never know me personally – will be affected by how I am a father to Megan and Billy.

What we do in these everyday moments, really does influence our children’s viewpoint on the world. It’s the same for our everyday journey of faith with God. As parents, we really do have the greatest influence in our children’s lives. What could you do today to influence your children’s faith? They really do see everything!

You can find out more about the incredible work that Who Let The Dads Out? are doing with dads across the UK here.