A Father's Fears Series

According to the Guiness Book of Records the last Emperor of

Morocco, Moulay Ismail, who lived 100 years from 1627 to 1727 was

reported to have fathered 548 sons and 340 daughters for a grand

total of 888. He would, no doubt, say amen to the brief poem of

Wilhelm Busch, "Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can

be rough."

This may be true for many and even most, but that fact is,

fatherhood is not easy for a large number of men in the Bible, and in

our contemporary world. We tend to think of the mothers who can't

have children, and we say poor Sarah, poor Rebekah, and poor

Rachel. This is legitimate compassion for these barren women, but

seldom to never do we hear the same compassion for Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob. Abraham is the most famous father in all of history, but

he could not become a father for decades. The husbands of barren

women we now know may be the ones who are infertile. But

regardless of the cause, it is just as hard to be a non-father as to be a

non-mother.

We have many records of this in our day. Tom Holman, a

clinical psychologist, wrote an article entitled Becoming A Father The

Hard Way. Not only was he infertile, but his wife had endometriosis

and was forced to have an hysterectomy. After years of trying they

both had to give up their dream, but they couldn't let it die. They

finally flew to India where a 4 year-old girl Sumi was placed in their

care, and they became parents. Doctors, lawyers, pastors,

professional people, and blue-collar people of all kinds are going

through the struggle every day to make their dreams of parenthood

come true. It is seldom seen, however, as a father's struggle.

Michel Robinson, a teacher and associate editor of Nurturing

News: A Quarterly Forum For Nurturing Men, writes about his

wife's miscarriage. All of their friends used him as a mere conduit

through which messages were forwarded to his wife, as if the loss was

only hers, and he was a mere observer. It was a miscarriage of his

fatherhood as well, but nobody saw his loss, and nobody felt his

sorrow and anger. This is going on everyday around the world, and

we are all guilty of being insensitive to a father's battle to become a

father. We want to look at the father of the strongest man whoever

lived in this message. He was Manoah the father of Samson. His wife

was sterile and he had to live with a dying dream and the fear that he

would never get the chance to be a father. But God intervened and

promised he would have a son who was to be a very unique son. No

sooner is this biggest battle won and his fatherhood guaranteed when

we see Manoah expressing a second fear of fathers.

I. THE FEAR OF FAILURE.

The son is only a promise, but already Manoah is filled with

anxiety. He is overcome by his inadequacy to be a father. In verse 8

he cries out in prayer, "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." This was pre-Dr. Spock days, and nobody had a book on the

market on how to raise a miracle baby as a Nazarite. Manoah was

feeling pre-father panic, for he had no idea of how to be a father.

This is a common fear of fathers. Most new fathers know more about

a car than a child. Being a father is so much trial and error, and

there are no erasers.

D. L. Stewart in Fathers Are People Too says that they teach you

in high school how to find the square root of pi, but not how to find

the key to the bathroom when your wife is out and your 3 year old is

locked inside with the water running under the door. In college they

teach you how to put together a term paper on 18th century

journalism, but nobody teaches you how to put together a 10 speed

bike as your 12 year old stands there expecting dad to know

everything. It is natural for fathers to fear failure, for you can be a

good man, a great man, and even a godly man, and still not know

much of anything about raising a child. Manoah was a man of God,

but his godliness did not give him confidence. He felt a desperate

need for instruction. Here is a father to be who is the hungriest

father I know of in all the Bible for knowledge and wisdom

concerning how to raise his son to fulfill the role God had for his life.