Fathers Be Fathers

Fathers Be Fathers - What a Kingdom #2

God has given me something to share with fathers. The something He has given me is to shout about the POWER of a father’s prayer for his family.

This thing started last Sunday morning. I was sharing about it in the church lobby with whoever would listen. The message was nearly loud enough in my head that I considered asking for the microphone at the beginning of the service. I didn’t.

This morning, I asked the Lord, “Does this topic really need a shout?”

He said, “It shouldn’t, but it does.”

The shout is about the power. The impact. The great spiritual force that a father’s prayer carries.

As a father, your fervent, faith-filled prayer for your family will:

1.     Change you. Make you wiser and more patient. It will serve to establish God’s version of love order in your life. Your priorities will conform to God’s will.

2.     Divine protection will surround your children. They will mature in this world while at the same time enjoying a growing relationship with both you and their creator. There will be joy, and they will know where it comes from.

3.     Both you and your children will find and nurture relationships with others that propel your lives toward a deeper friendship with Jesus. And you will be successful in rejecting those relationships and temptations that can destroy.

4.     You will have surprising insight into how best to handle every situation and every decision in the affairs of your family. If restoration is needed, you will begin to see it happening. You will know exactly how to recover from the occasional mistake.

5.     You will more and more naturally be able to obey this instruction in Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (ESV)”

The point that God is stressing here is the POWER of a father’s prayer for his family. This is simply a fact of how God created reality and how His kingdom works. Men, pray for the provision and protection of your children. Pray that they would know the will of God for their lives and walk in it. Pray that they would have ears to hear the Holy Spirit for themselves.

Praying this, along with your seeking Him for yourself, is the incredible leverage that God has given fathers. This is how you overcome the evil that relentlessly tries to invade your children. A privilege, a responsibility, and a joy. What a Kingdom!

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Late one evening, my high school-aged son came down from upstairs. I was in my reading chair, falling asleep while trying not to. I was ready to go to bed. My son was in a bit of a panic; he had just remembered that a homework assignment, for which he had a whole week to complete, was due in the morning. There was no way he was going to be able to complete it on his own.

My first thought was that he deserved whatever the consequences were and would hopefully learn from it. I was a bit angry that he even thought I should help him at this late hour. I thought, “Too bad, son, you messed up, now it's time to pay the piper and learn from your mistake.”

Somehow, I kept all this to myself. Surprisingly, I changed my mind and my attitude. We went up to my office, fired up the computer, and I helped him write a rather good paper for his history class. I managed to keep my disappointment in check and put on that “we can do this” attitude. No problem. It felt a little supernatural.

There was no need to rebuke my son. He obviously felt very bad and was sorry for his mistake. It was actually kind of courageous of him to ask me for help at such a late hour. We never discussed this. For some reason, I remember it well and think of it often. God taught me something that night, 27 years ago. Children are children; they need love, forgiveness, help, and encouragement. No matter what. We are all children of God.