The Word That Suits: It's Time To Gist With The Fathers

It’s a beautifully rainy morning in my part of the world and I am so enjoying the coolness of the weather. And also thanking God for another glorious opportunity to share His word again on this blog. It’s always fulfilling speaking about the goodness of God.

I have grown to have huge respect for the male gender; for some reasons that I cannot explain but do not have apologies for, I respect men a lot. This has greatly helped me in my marriage to be able to submit to my husband as the Lord instructs us women to do. Not that I don’t respect women, in fact I love being a woman and I thank God for making me a woman. I feel empowered being a woman and I love to encourage women to be the best that they can be. And yes, I respect women a lot. But maybe because I am a woman and I know and understand how women are wired, what it takes to be a woman and the dos and don’ts of being a woman, so being a woman is not strange to me. I love me, and I also love women like me.

But for the men, they sometimes still appear as a misery. They think differently, approach issues differently, they have ego that must be rubbed, what interest us as women does not interest them and there are new things to discover about the man each and every passing day. So in this season of celebrating the men, I will take permission to speak to the men again through my post today. It is father’s day celebration season so I humbly would want to take a glimpse at some fathers in the Bible and see how they fared as fathers maybe our present day fathers would learn a thing or two from them.

Job 1:1-5

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among the people of the East.

His sons used to take turns holding feast in their homes, and they would invite their sisters to eat and drink with them. When the period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.

The first father I want us to take a look at is that very wealthy man who was the greatest man among the men of the East in his time called Job. One beautiful lesson that I would like to highlight in the story of Job is that: First he was a very wealthy man, and so it will not be wrong to assume that Job was a very busy man. For him to be so wealthy that heaven recognized him as the greatest among the men of the East in his time requires a lot of brain work on the part of Job. He was overseeing great wealth and so he will be burdened with several meetings, several people will be flocking around him for favors, the leadership of his community will reckon with him and require his counsel in running the community. So to say that Job was a very busy man. But he was never too busy to father his children. In all of his wealth and affluence, Job made it a regular custom to gather his children to purify them should in case they had sinned against the Lord in their hearts.

Job was not just concerned about his children sinning openly against God, I want to believe that he was confident that with the training he had impressed on them they dare not sin against God in the sight of anybody. But he was even worried about the sin his children may have committed against God in their hearts where no-one but them alone can reach. That was how far Job took the training of his children. That was how important God meant to him. So we are not surprised that God will say to satan concerning Job that “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” We are also not surprised that God has blessed Job so much in his lifetime.

These qualities of Job are the qualities God is looking for in the lives of fathers today; fathers who will produce for Him the godly offspring that He seeks. And that is why God instructed through Moses that fathers should impress the commandments of God on their children. This goes beyond just teaching the children, but ensuring that the word of God is deeply fixed on the mind and memory of their children such that it is retained in them and becomes their living code of practice. This is what God requires of the fathers.

Judges 13:8-10

Then Manoah prayed to the Lord; “O Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born.”

God heard Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman while she was out in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. The woman hurried to tell her husband, “He’s here! The man who appeared to me the other day!”

Another father that caught my attention in the Bible is the man called Manoah, the father of Samson. He had been trusting God for a child and then all of a sudden an angel appeared to his wife and told her she will be giving birth to a Nazrite who was destined to deliver his people from the hands of their oppressors. She was given some rules to follow as she prepares for the arrival of their special son. But I specially appreciate what her husband did when his wife brought the news of the angel’s visitation to him. The Bible said Manoah prayed and asked the Lord to send the angel again to teach them how to bring up the child.

Manoah did not doubt what his wife had told him; he did not assume that he knew what it takes to raise a child and so he was well prepared. He didn’t conclude that since the angel had given the instructions to his wife, then she should just do as she had been told. But rather he knew that it was his responsibility to bring up the boy to be born and so he prayed. He asked the Lord to show him and teach him what to do in order not to fail on the job and God heard and answered him.

Are fathers still praying to God to teach them how to bring up godly offspring for the Lord or they are assuming they know what to do? In humility I confess that I am not so vast in the Bible, but still in the little I know, I am yet to come across a portion of the Bible where the mother is held responsible for the misconduct of her children, yet the fathers have been chastised by God for not training their children in the of the Lord. So fathers, Manoah prayed and God heard and answered him, wouldn’t you do the same in order to please God in the godly offspring that you produce for him?

1 Samuel 2:22-26

Now Eli, who was very old, heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. So he said to them, “Why do you do such things? I hear from all the people about these wicked deeds of yours. No, my sons; it is not good report that I hear spreading among the Lord’s people. If a man sins against another man, God may mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord who will intercede for him?” His sons, however, did not listen to their father’s rebuke, for it was the Lord’s will to put them to death.

And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men.

1 Samuel 3:11-13

And the Lord said to Samuel: See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it to tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family – from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family for ever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them.

The story of Prophet Eli is the last of all the father stories that I want us to consider; not that we have exhausted the father examples in the Bible, but so that the post isn’t stretched too long we will stop at the story of Eli.

What beats me about Eli is that Samuel grew under his watch yet the Bible says he grew in stature and favor with the Lord and with men, yet his own sons, born by him where the error in his walk with the Lord. They became the cause of his death and the curse on his lineage for ever. What we need to understand is that Eli taught his children about the Lord, he rebuked them at old age when he heard what they were doing wrong, but what he failed to do was to impress the commands of God, the fear of God in their hearts.

The word impress means to 1.) To affect deeply or strongly in mind or feeling; influence in opinion, 2.) To fix deeply or firmly on the mind or memory, as ideas or facts. So what God requires of the fathers which Eli failed to do was to fix the word of God deeply in the hearts of his children. This goes beyond mere teaching. It is ensuring that what is taught stays permanently on the minds and hearts of those who are taught and never to be erased. It requires a minute by minute, second by second monitoring that is to be done prayerfully with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is only by so doing that can we produce the godly offspring that God seeks for him.

Again when we wives begin to wonder, “what are the roles of men in marriage”, here is another a huge assignment for the men in marriage, to train the generals of the Lord. May the Lord God Almighty bless the fathers and teach them to bring up their children in the way of the Lord as the Lord pleases in Jesus name.

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