Life is made of choices, moments, and relationships. With Father’s Day being celebrated tomorrow, I wanted to write about the influence of fathers in our lives, whether for good or bad, and how to respond to that. In addition, I encourage you to consider your relationship and response to God, the Heavenly Father, for it is the most important and life-changing of all your relationships.
Fathers Are Important
Fathers along with mothers have a huge impact on their children. Families in turn, fundamentally influence society as a whole. Unfortunately, there is a destructive effort by some to weaken the family structure in order to dismantle a culture built on godly values and reconstruct it on a humanist foundation. Parental rights are being stripped, children are being pitted against their parents, marriage, family, and gender are being redefined. Throughout history this has been the tragic course many nations have taken. The family declines which leads to moral decline, which leads to spiritual decline and a collapse of the civilization. Careful observation and numerous studies show the devastating effect a lack of a father has on children. Dr. Edward Kruk lists several disastrous impacts in an article for Psychology Today:
- Diminished self-concept and compromised physical and emotional security
- Behavioral problems
- Truancy and poor academic performance
- Delinquency and youth crime, including violent crime
- Promiscuity and teen pregnancy
- Drug and alcohol abuse
- Homelessness
- Exploitation and abuse
- Physical health problems
- Mental health disorders
- Less likely to sustain employment and have opportunity for advancement
- Lack long-lasting relationships
- Live less years on average
As you can see not having a good, supportive father causes a lot of problems. Although this note is primarily a call to sons and daughters to honor their fathers, if you are a father I exhort you to turn to God to help you carry out your responsibility. You must love, protect, provide for, lead, and serve your family. Your wife, your kids, and your community need you to.
Caveat
Before I write further I wanted to express that I understand honoring your father might be difficult. Father relationships can vary from joyful to bitter, loving to hurtful, supportive to oppressive, or just plain non-existent. Your relationship to your father might be good, bad, or a mix of both. We are all broken people. Due to our self-centeredness and wrongdoing, we fall short of living up to God’s glorious design for us whether we are a father, a mother, or a child (Romans 3:23; Isaiah 55:6). But by God’s grace and power it doesn’t have to stay that way. Relationships can improve if people look to God to bring about change from the inside out.
Honor God First
So let’s start there. In order to best honor your earthly father, you must first come to receive and honor
God as your Heavenly Father. God created you and loves you. He gave you an earthly father and mother in order to raise you, love, you, teach you, and point you to him. Even though your parents may have failed to do that, it was still his design for them. God wants what is best for you, which is for him to be your Heavenly Father. He wants you to be with him as a part of his family, to be like him, and to do what he does. However, your self-centeredness and wrongdoing prevent you from having a relationship with him. But Jesus, God the Son, changed all that. He became a man, lived the life you should have lived, was crucified to pay the death penalty for your sin, and rose again to give you victory over sin and death. Anyone who trusts and obeys Jesus to save them can become a child of God and enjoy abundant life as a part of his royal family now and forever.
This is the most welcome and wonderful news! Through faith in Jesus, you can know God, your perfect father. God is patient, God is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. He does not dishonor others, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, he keeps no record of wrongs. He does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. He never fails. He has sacrificed everything for your best (1 John 4:8-10; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Respond to God’s love for you by loving him back. Honor him. Make the most of how awesome he is. Surrender your will to his. Rely on him. Place your hope, loyalty, trust, and obedience completely in him. Find your greatest pleasure in pleasing him. Enjoy his presence and providence. Let his spirit and love alive in you spill over to loving and serving others on his behalf.
Honor Your Father
From a loving, saving relationship with your Heavenly Father you can draw the grace, power, and wisdom to best honor your earthly father. Even though this is simple to say, I know it is not easy to do. Ask God to help you and he will. If you have a good relationship with a father who is supportive, express your love for him by praying for him, spending quality time with him, giving him a gift, serving him in some way, affirming him verbally, listening to him, or giving him a hug. In contrast, you may not have a good relationship with your father and so doing what I just mentioned would be hard or impossible at this point. Maybe your father is uninvolved: absent, rarely available, busy with work, or uninterested in you. Maybe he is irrelevant: clueless, unempathetic, doesn’t speak truth into your life, or doesn’t challenge, equip or inspire you. Maybe he is unloving: mean, abusive, and doesn’t protect, guide, or provide for you. Paternal relationships such as these are agonizing, tense, and difficult. However, you can still pray for your father and honor him for whatever good you have gleaned from him or whatever you have learned from him even if, sadly, it is only be what not to be or not to do.
When I was a teenager my dad left our family for an adulterous affair. He returned for a tumultuous while, but later abandoned us completely. The hurt and burden this put on my family forced us to remain desperate for God. But for that I am grateful, because having to rely on God is good and right. However, still at times, the pain drove deep and the tears burned. Abandonment robbed us of money, food, and a place to live. Once closely knit, our family shredded into isolated threads of sorrow and disillusionment. Loneliness darkened the days and the future nearly dissolved into hopelessness. But God was always there. And he is there for you. With God’s help you can still honor a father who has not acted honorably toward you. You can start by forgiving him as God has forgiven you. Your father may not even be sorry, but you can still forgive him. It doesn’t mean everything is fine, that you condone what he has done, or that he is a good person. To forgive him means that, by God’s grace and power, you no longer choose to blame him for the hurt he has caused. This frees you to heal and move forward. In time, if you can reconcile with him that can be a blessing, but if not that’s okay. After forgiving your father, pray for him. Also ask God to show you small ways you might be able to serve or appreciate him even if it is from a distance. In my case, after several years my father was sorry for his sin and he asked my brothers and my mother for forgiveness. We did so. He had remarried by then, so things were different, but God helped us restore a relationship.
Conclusion
No matter where you are at with your father or with God, your situation can improve. By trusting Jesus to save you and change your life, you can have an awesome relationship with God now and forever. Then by trusting God to work in your relationships with others, he can bring healing and restoration and give you a healthy perspective. Love and pray for your earthly father, even if he seems unlovable. It’s worth it for the change it can foster in you and him. Do this as an expression of your love for your Heavenly Father. In the process, you will be blessed. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise—“so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3).