The Daddy Declaration

The Daddy Declaration

EOLS: God has ordained fathers as the head of the house to love, protect and discipline their families.

All beauty is God’s beauty, and all truth is His truth. Sometimes in the secular world we can see and hear things that touch us. A song that always causes me a moment of reflection, and often some tears as I sing along badly is from Dan Fogelberg, The Leader of the Band

The leader of the band is tired

And his eyes are growing old

But his blood runs through

My instrument

And his song is in my soul --

My life has been a poor attempt

To imitate the man

I’m just a living legacy

To the leader of the band.

Indeed we are a “living legacy” to the man who we called father. More so than ever in my life, I realize that I am becoming my father. I look like him, I talk like him, I act and react like him.

For me, I do see my life a poor attempt to imitate the wonderful Godly man named Bobby Jones who raised me. He was my best friend and I praise God that Dad is in Heaven now, and I know that I will see him again!

Fathers, both great and terrible and everything in between are perhaps the most impacting factor in a child’s life. The role of the father has profound impact not just the outward aspects of a child’s life- a father is possibly the greatest determining factor in a child’s spiritual development.

A quote that I carry in my head came from the great preacher A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of God:

“What comes into our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us.”

How very true, and how very revealing this quote is. This Father’s Day, I’d like to begin with a quote of my own, which I believe well follows:

What comes into our minds when we think of our own Father is indicative of what we naturally think about God.

I find it interesting that a people called the Jews when they had been scattered among the nations and their motherland dominated by Rome, their spiritual condition was closely connected to the condition of their homes. Malachi prophesied four-hundred years before Christ of the coming of John the Baptist, and Luke quotes the prophecy as the Angel tells Zechariah of his son’s work:

He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ’to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

(Luke 1:17)

The Greek Scholar A.T. Robertson said of this verse:

Hearts of fathers (kardias paterōn). Paternal love had died out. This is one of the first results of conversion, the revival of love in the home.

John the Baptist would come in the spirit of Elijah and God would bring a revival to hearts. One of the greatest indicators would be-paternal love would be be restored to the nation-through the home! It would literally be preparation for the coming Kingdom of God.

Only a few years later Jesus himself came on the heels of John the Baptist. God in the flesh, the Savior of the World and the Great I AM would come as a man and he would come to a nation which had heard the truth preached widespread for the first time in four-hundred years. He would begin preaching a radically new view of God.

He called Him “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” He spoke of the Jehovah God as His Loving Father, and of his intimate relationship with Him.

And you know the story. He showed us what love is, He bridged the gap between us and our loving Heavenly Father. No longer did we have to cringe in fear, but in Christ we can come boldly to the throne of Grace! Clothed in the Grace and Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ we can enter that same loving relationship with our Heavenly Father.

I love what Paul says of this wonderful relationship with our Heavenly Father:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

(Romans 8:14-17)

And isn’t it interesting that God in His wisdom, prepared the hearts of people to receive Him in Christ Jesus, by first speaking to the hearts of fathers towards their children?