I would like to start off today’s newsletter by wishing all Fathers a very warm and special “Happy Father’s Day”. Today is a day of reflection and celebration and it should not be downplayed or overlooked in any way. As we reflect on the book of Genesis, we note that God designed and created them male and female to fulfill distinct purposes, functions, and responsibilities on Earth in accordance with the qualities and characteristics inherent in their nature.
Today we will be focusing on celebrating and reinforcing God’s design of fatherhood.
God gave the male priority by creating him in His image first. He was also the first to communicate with God, to receive instruction, to see God’s vision of creation and the first to be placed in Eden’s environment. His positioning of first clearly established his priority and headship of the family.
God created the male with a specific design and purpose and embedded the seed of generations in Him. Acts 17:26 reads “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands”.
The male carries millions of sperm because he was designed to be the originator or source of generations, hence the reason no seed can be found in a woman.
As Christians, we ought to respect and honour not only the Headship of Christ over our lives, but also the inherent male identity ordained by Christ. Men are the foundation upon which the human race was laid and as such a society can only be as strong as its males. Within the family structure, no matter how empowered and independent women become, if the father is not fulfilling his God given purpose as the foundation, that family will be built on shaky ground.
As believers, our primary focus should not be on understanding the mandate for our fathers from the world’s perspective but from God’s design. While society focuses on assigning gender to specific roles, God focuses on assigning gender to His distinct purposes. Many of the same roles can be overlapped across both genders, however, there are clear-cut purposes ordained for males and females by God.
Let us seek to celebrate and uplift our men with our words and actions.
By reinforcing God’s intended purpose for our fathers, we can begin to heal our lands. Rather than assaulting our fathers with harsh words and criticisms, let us uplift, support and strengthen them where they may be weak.
When Eve was created from the rib of Adam, God established a pattern wherein the male became responsible for anything coming out of him. Look at how powerful a father is. A Father bears the responsibility of being the teacher, the leader, the cultivator, the protector and the provider for the female and any offspring that comes out of the female. This does not mean that a woman has no place in the contributions of teaching or providing. It simply means that those purposes are of primary assignment to the man.
The woman was created as the perfect complement and companion to the man to share in the dominion of the Earth. Everything in the woman was designed to compatibly help and to be a blessing to the male and yet, we are living in an era where the “modern woman” has removed herself from that responsibility while bashing men for falling short in their responsibilities as well. The family structure can only stand when the purposes of the male and female are in unison as God designed it to be.
The time has come for us to stop downplaying and devaluing the critical role of our Fathers. It is quite evident that without the right foundation, we are all doomed to continue feeling the effects of a broken home and a broken society.
As believers, we have a responsibility to submit to God’s purposed design and to celebrate, strengthen and applaud the efforts of our Fathers. We say thank you to all the men who continue to rise to the mandate of fatherhood. We appreciate the foundation that our committed fathers have laid and continue to lay. We commit ourselves to loving, forgiving and cherishing our Fathers as we continue to look to God, our Supreme Father for his continued wisdom and blessings.
