This Sunday is a day that is set aside to honor and celebrate Dads. The role of fatherhood is a vital one; we should take our cues from the highest example that is set before us in Scripture: God, our Heavenly Father. God didn’t just create us and then abandon us to find our own way in the world; He interacted with and instructed mankind. In Genesis, we see that the Father created a home for His children, provided for their needs, fellowshipped with them in conversation and exercise, and gave intentional rules which were for their own good. The Father also described the natural consequences if they disobeyed and, when those rules were broken, He showed love and mercy through discipline and sacrifice. We see the same process worked out when He chose Israel out of all the nations of the world and, again, in His creation of the Church – the Body of Christ. Ours is an awesome God and an amazing Father; praise His name!
Fatherhood.org reports on their website: “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 17.8 million children, nearly 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. That’s enough children to fill New York City twice or Los Angeles four times over. Research shows that a father’s absence affects children in numerous unfortunate ways, while a father’s presence makes a positive difference in the lives of both children and mothers.”
Fathers aren’t meant to sire their children then disengage from their lives. Men, we must be intentional and we must honor our roles as husband and father; this is done best by studying the Word of God and following the example of our Creator God. One more thing, dads, it’s vital that when it comes to discipline, we deal both positively and negatively. In other words, we need to discipline with both words of affirmation and prohibition. (Revelation 2 and 3 give us good examples of this.) Outside of discipline be affirming as well; point to God’s grace working itself out in them with these affirmations. (“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow…”)
As you read these three Decency Minute scripts or listen to Bill Johnson narrate them, I encourage you to think on the importance of fatherhood and how things might be different in a world that follows the righteous and godly examples of fatherhood presented in Scripture.
Since “Pride Month” first began to gain influence on the greater culture, Americans have become used to having their eyes assaulted throughout the month of June. Ugly men in elaborate make-up, miserable looking women clearly trying to show excitement for their life’s choices, most tragically of all, the children they raise who will struggle to ever learn their own purpose or grasp their innate dignity, all draped in rainbow flags and pride slogans. Corporations have thumped Americans on the head with Pride displays, Pride commercials, Pride nights, Pride marches.
Yet, decades after being forced to recognize “Pride Month,” Americans aren’t getting any more used to the idea. If media coverage can be trusted as a metric, in fact, I’d say opposition is trending upwards.
If you are sick of LGBTQIA+ propaganda, take heart. You are not alone. Americans all around the country feel the same way that you do – and they’re starting to get feisty.
“On my honor I will … do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
This former BOY Scout fondly remembers quoting the Boy Scout Oath. I’m saddened that the change of their name – from Boy Scouts of America to just Scouting America – represents this once great organization’s declining shift of values.
In 1972 there were nearly 5 million members – all boys; today, there are less than a million “scouts.” Unsurprisingly, that drop aligns with its steady rejection of moral excellence. Ten years ago, homosexuals were allowed to join this group and five years ago females were included under the “cloak of wokeness.”
Like the Boy Scouts, by abandoning duty to God and country, we’ve become a nation that is physically weak, mentally asleep, and morally crooked.
We often warn of the two-tiered justice system – where conservatives are wrongly prosecuted while leftists break the law with impunity.
This was once again exemplified as thousands of pro-Hamas extremists surrounded the White House calling for Jihad, burning American flags, assaulting a park ranger, and vandalizing historical monuments. No arrests were made.
Meanwhile, just days before, three teens were arrested in Spokane, Washington for leaving skid marks on a LGBT Pride flag painted on a crosswalk. The teens are being charged with a felony and could face 10 years in prison for defacing this revered symbol of sin.
Leaving skid marks on a Pride flag is a felony, but burning an American flag and spray-painting vile messages on American monuments is condoned.
As Habakkuk says, “the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.” Yet, as in Habakkuk’s day, God IS at work. Rest in Him.
“How many yet…teach their children the way to hell by inducing them to sin betimes; by instructing them to be proud and revengeful, to backbite and rail, to speak filthily, to curse and swear, to scorn holiness and the word, and ministers, and ways of God. How much worse, says one, are such parents than the devil himself? As it is worse for a mother to dash out the brains of her own child against a wall than for a wolf or a dog or a bear to kill her child. It is in your hands to do them the greatest kindness or cruelty in all the world. And if you saw a burning furnace, much more the flames of hell. What would you think of that parent who could find in his heart to cast the child into it or to put him into the hands of one that would? If therefore you love them, show it in those things wherein their greatest interest is concerned. Do not say you love them and yet be so unmerciful as to damn them. And what can you possibly do more to damn them than to bring them up in ignorance and sensuality, and neglect of God?” ~John Shower
“And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” (Gen. 18:17-19)
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