Fathers Be Strong And Courageous Series

Rocking Rod Stewart sings a song to his son, in that song forever young he sings of his hopes and dreams for his boy, “

May the good Lord be with you

Down every road you roam

And may sunshine and happiness

Surround you when you're far from home

And may you grow to be proud

Dignified and true

And do unto others

As you'd have done to you

Be courageous and be brave

And in my heart you'll always stay

Forever young”

Today is Father’s day and I want to acknowledge fathers, grandfathers and men in general today. I want to recognise that while fatherhood is a natural thing it does not always come naturally to all fathers, and I’d like to take this time to discuss a piece of advice another Father passed onto his son about a building job that the son was going to be involved in and see how that might just make a difference in our current society. We live in a nation where men struggle and where Christian men are not being all that they can be. Men, God has a plan for your lives, you have a part to play in that plan moving from a plan on paper to becoming the all you can be.

But how?

Well a fine example of how to address this can be found in 1 Chronicles 28:20 and 21. This comes in the form of a great bit of Fatherly advice From King David to his boy Solomon. This advice was given about building the temple. This is it!

”David also said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished. The divisions of the priests and Levites are ready for all the work on the temple of God, and every willing person skilled in any craft will help you in all the work…..”

What I would like to address in this piece of Scripture are three things that David was able to pass onto his boy. Today I’m going to address one of these statements from this piece of advice; this is part of a three part series. If you are ready to hear it and even if you’re not …here is the first bit of advice.

The first was this “Be strong and courageous, and do the work”. As a Christian men, and as a whole church community…God has a work for us to do. We live in a society where many are valued less and less. We only need to see that there is more concern for Snapper [fish] quotas than the ready availability of legal highs. We have real child poverty issues, we have some of the highest youth suicide rates in the developed world, we are 20 / 100 000 a head of the United Kingdom and many of our ancestors left there because it was a sucky place to live, this nothing to be proud of. It is obvious we have a work to do, let’s be strong and courageous and get stuck into it.

Why do you think David, this by now grey headed old codger of a King would give young Solomon the advice; “Be strong and courageous and do the work”?

Well one thing we know about David was that he had been both of these things, as a young Shepherd he out of all the Israelites had cleaned up Goliath. This was in reply David gave when Goliath demanded to know why the Israelites had sent a boy to fight him and he had just told David that he was going to be feed to the birds and wild animals.

David’s reply to the soon to be dispatched Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (1 Samuel 17:45-47)

Brave words; courageous stuff, Imagine being known for speaking those words and then doing it, this young fella was the hero to a nation. David was as courageous as they came, a real bloke’s bloke. How many of us would like to be known for words like that, David put Goliath right, he even used Goliath’s own words against him, ‘your whole army will be bird and beast tucker, “the Battle is the Lord’s!” ‘