A FATHER'S LOVE FOR HIS FAMILY

I read the other day that almost 30 million children in America grow up without a father. Eighty five percent or more of them live in poverty in this great country. Oh it gets worse! Those children are 20 times more likely to attempt suicide, fifty times more likely to take drugs and 40 times more likely to go to prison. However, what is really alarming about those statistics is that, they are old. I heard a statement once that, if we paid as much attention to our plants as we do our children, we’d be living in a jungle of weeds. Is that not heartbreaking to you? Yesterday on the radio I heard a song and one of the verses was, “I wish that I would do what I didn’t do in the past”. How true are those words to us all; because we all have regrets. However, each new day allows us a new opportunity to recapture what time and wrong choices have reeked on our lives and our families.

There is no doubt that there is a huge gap in the family when the father is either absent or he is not providing for his family with the proper emotional and spiritual training that his children need. I believe that most folks would agree not to condemn, but to challenge fathers to question their time and where they are spending it, or if it is simply neglect. There is no doubt that many men work hard to care for the physical needs for their family. Yet, even within that group of men, many of those fathers neglect other areas that need the attention that only a father can provide. Some men believe that as long as they put food on the table, they are doing their jobs as a provider. While that may sound manly, it is simply not acceptable. Nor, is it the healthy way that God meant for a man to be as a father and leader in his home. Thank God for mothers who do stand in the gap, but the Bible says that God will ultimately hold the man responsible for the spiritual training and emotional well-being of his children. By the time a child is 12 years old research shows that they have learned 75 per cent of all that they will ever know. The challenge is, “what teachers will they have learned it from”? Will it be from television, the words and lyrics of songs that they had no business listing to, but was allowed, because it was easier to ignore than to discipline? Maybe, because the parents themselves listen to it and see nothing wrong with it. Will they have chosen to learn wrong things from their peers, because of the double standards within their own home; do as I say and not as I do? Did they learn what they know from a friend’s parents, who’s teaching was unacceptable? As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

Who is bending your children? If you are investing all of your energy into a job or a hobby and leave none for your family, you will pay the high price. While you get only one chance at raising your children, you can stop at any time from making the wrong choices; and get on the right track. Your children will either grow up to resent you, repeat your mistakes, or rejoice in the memory where a home was filled with love and was spelled TIME. If having grown up in a home where the father spent the time needed and provided the loving nurture and discipline to his children, he will have taught them that no matter what wrong choices they make in life, they will know how to turn them around to their advantage, to be productive and happy; because they will have learned it from home. In the book of Malachi we are reminded to remember the law of God for ourselves and how important they are to teach our children. It gives warning to remember our past mistakes and realize that we are in a war. A spiritual war that is constantly tugging at our children’s heart to come, to take part, to indulge in lifestyles that seem to offer them temporary satisfaction but in the end bondage in some form or another.

As parents we must fight for them, fight with them, not against them. By that I mean to make every effort possible to reach them and not give up! If our love is the kind of love that they need, we will have succeeded in helping them to reach their potential. Malachi 4:6 says that :”He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the children to the father”, God is able, are you willing? Would you begin today, to pray this prayer for yourself or someone you know that may need some extra help in this area. There is nothing that can take the place of a father’s love for and in his family.

Loving on you today,

Bren