Dad – Being There!

He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” Malachi 4:6

Almost 20 million children in America grow up without a father – 75% of them in poverty. And it gets worse; these children are five times more likely to commit suicide, ten times more likely to take drugs and 20 times more likely to go to prison. Luther Burbank said, ‘If we paid as much attention to our plants as we do to our children, we’d be living in a jungle of weeds.’ Father, answer these three questions: 1) Are you giving your children things instead of yourself? By the time they’re 12, they’ll have learned 75% of all they’ll ever know. The question is who will their teachers be? Television? Some drug-addicted celebrity? Their peers? As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. 2) Are you giving your best to your career or to them? If you spend all your energy at work and leave none for your family, you’ll pay a high price. Remember, you get only one bite at the apple. Your children will grow up either to resent you, repeat your mistakes or rejoice in the memory of a home where love was spelled T.I.M.E. 3) Are you setting a spiritual tone for your family? Or does your wife run circles around you in this area? Thank God for mothers who ‘stand in the gap’, but the Bible holds fathers responsible for the spiritual training of their children. Listen: ‘Fathers…bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord’ (Ephesians 6:4). Ten or twenty years from now, what are you going to wish you’d done today? Start doing it!

Prayer
Heavenly Father, help me to be the best parent I can be by spending time with the children You have entrusted to me. In Jesus’ Name, Amen