A Dads Legacy

I remember one day when my daughter Danielle was talking about boy problems. When I started to chime in she said, “Dad, you don’t know. You’re too old.”

None of us guys came with a clue on how to be a good husband or father. It came through time spent on the job, and it is something we’ll be learning the rest of our lives, because there’s going to come a time when we’re going to be grandfathers. And if I could, I don’t believe in step dads, rather I like to think men as dads who step up.

The only problem with learning how to be a good husband and father from our dads is that our dads were flawed, and while they may have set a good example, it wasn’t always the best.

My dad was a great provider, but emotionally he as extremely distant. Maybe that’s the way his father was with him. My father was also a disciplinarian, and boy did I get disciplined. They didn’t name me Dennis for nothing. And while he took us as children to church, this didn’t last long, and my father, while a deacon showed little if any spiritual inclination when it came to the family.

And so while we learn both the good and the bad from our fathers, how else are we to learn the role of father and husband? We learn from our relationship with our heavenly Father, and from His word.

The unfortunate part is that most of us use our own relationship with our fathers as a guide to what our heavenly Father is like. If our father was distant then we probably think that God is the same way.

Some of us have a real fear of our fathers. We fear punishment and rejection. Like when our mothers said, “Wait till your father gets home.” And so we think of God in much the same way, just waiting to punish us when we blow it.

This leads to our never believing that we’ll ever be good enough, because it was always that way with our fathers, trying to win their approval, but never quite measuring up. Therefore our fathers were always disappointed in us, and we think the same way about God.

Let me just say that it is unfair to our heavenly Father to use our earthly fathers as a standard. But to find out about our heavenly Father, and what we are to be like based upon His example, the Bible is our best and greatest source of information and insight.

So what does the Bible provide as a way of example as to what it means to be the man or the head of the house?

Provider

When Peter asked the Lord how they were going to pay their taxes to the Roman government, Jesus told him go fishing and to take a coin from the mouth of the first fish he caught. What this teaches us is that our heavenly Father is a provider.

We see the same, and even to a much greater extent with God’s provision for His children, the Jews, in their 40 years in the wilderness, providing manna every day.

This can also be seen in the New Testament when Jesus fed the multitude with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. First He prayed and gave thanks to His heavenly Father, and then the Lord multiplied the fish and bread to feed this great multitude several times. This is another example our heavenly Father’s provision.