Current topic: Pray with us for Families.
Good morning.
We call God our Father. “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word,” (2 Thessalonians 2:16, 17). Then we have earthly fathers, men who look after their children and train them according to the way they should go. And we also have the father of lies. “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies,” (John 8:44).
The role of a father is to be a pillar of support, to encourage, train and equip, guide, lead and motivate his children. This is what Father God does for His children as we see in the passage above, and it is even what the father of lies does for his children. Where do you think do criminals, witches and all the other servants of the devil get their support from? Satan must keep them happy in order to drag them with him to hell.
Any man can make children, but not any man can father children. A lot of men simply provide for their children financially and that’s where their responsibility ends. Many people walk around unbalanced, unfulfilled and hurting for they never had a father to look up to. The father therefore plays a very important role in society. The quality of the lives of people depends on how the father-figure functioned within the home during the growing-up stage of the children, in fact right throughout life, for a father will always have more experience than a child. Was the father available with advice, with encouragement, with playing with the children? Did he guide the children towards their heavenly father?
The father of lies understands the importance of fatherhood, since according to Jesus he himself is a father. He also knows how important fatherhood is to God the Father and therefore he makes every effort to cause as many people as he can to be raised without worthy fathers. Just look at the portrayal of fathers in many movies and television shows. A father, that is supposed to be a respected figure, is often humiliated, looked down upon and diminished by the behaviour of the children and the wife. In movie marriage relationships the husband often walks in the shadow of an overpowering wife.
Furthermore, encouraged by benefits from government sources, many girls see to it that they get pregnant in order to get benefits and in this way many children are raised fatherless. This also happens due to peer pressure because their mates have children. The result is an unbalanced, ill-equipped next generation.
What are we to do about it? As Christians we are the salt of the earth and we should make an effort to pray intensely for these situations. On our prayer blog we have a prayer for families and fatherhood. Within the church we should realise that there are many fatherless people that may visit the church and when we reach out in evangelism we should understand that many children grew up fatherless, so we need to be fathers to them. Men in the church can consciously take up the role of fathers to young people who had no father. When we counsel people with problems, even in their older age, many of the problems may relate to the absence of a father-figure in the home and we need to keep it in mind.
Lord, help me to be a good father and even a father to the fatherless.
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