TRUE MANPOWER is Demonstrated Through FATHERHOOD
Men have been likened to dynamite that effects for better or worse all within their blast zone. As dynamite will mangle and destroy so will men whose power is not harnessed by Godliness. But when the power is harness it blesses for generations to come. Let’s take a look.
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?
1. A Godly Father loves God
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
A. The basis upon which happiness is built and priorities of relationship.
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
B. If you do not have a right relationship with God, it is futile to think you can relate properly to others.
2. A Godly Father loves his Wife
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.
A. Real love seeks to meet all the needs of another person.
,1 Corinthians 13:1–13 NASB,95
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there isknowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
B. Your sons are learning from you about how to treat their wives. One day they will treat their wives the same way you treat their mother.
3. A Godly Father loves his Children
A. Love is more than provision for material things.
Don’t miss your children’s childhood; there is no second chance at childhood.
B. When discipline is required, do it in love,
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.
Don’t beat them up out of anger.
C. Children interpret the time spent with them as love. Forget “quality time” vs. “quantity time”
4. A Godly Father is a man of Integrity
A. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
means doing the right thing even when no-one is watching
and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.
The integrity of the upright will guide them, But the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.
Let your eyes look directly ahead And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. Watch the path of your feet And all your ways will be established. Do not turn to the right nor to the left; Turn your foot from evil.
Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a good conscience, desiring to conduct ourselves honorably in all things.
B. Honor
Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.
