THE RIGHT KIND OF FATHERS
Earthly fathers have a great opportunity to make the eternal difference in a child’s life. Thank the Lord for men that give themselves in love.

Though Father’s Day was not set aside for special recognition until 1910, from ancient times, people have paid respect to fathers in some fascinating ways. The ancient Egyptians believe that disrespect to a father was one of the seven most deadly sins.

The Ancient Greeks honored their fathers by always serving the head of the house first at mealtime. Dad was given the choicest morsels at the dinner table, and a libation was poured to honor all the fathers of the tribe living and dead.

Some of the fathers of ancient Greece sat down to meals in their own special throne-like chairs. At banquets it was considered respectful for sons to anoint their fathers with oils and perfumes.

Julius Caesar was the first man to be called “Father of his country” but there have been many others since his day and in our own dear America our youngsters know George Washington by the same title, “Father of his country.”  Along with Washington, we have had the Pilgrim Fathers, Puritan Fathers, and the Founding Fathers who framed the Constitution. For more than a century the senior member of the House of Representatives was called “Father of the House.”

THE ORIGIN OF       FATHER’S DAY

The originator of this special day was Mrs. John Bruce Dodd. Dodd planned Father’s Day in 1910 as a tribute to her father, who had devotedly raised his family of six children after the death of his wife. She asked that all who had a living father wear a red rose. Those whose fathers had passed on were to wear a white rose. Although ever since then Father’s Day was celebrated in many states, it was not until 1936 that the third Sunday in June was officially designated as Father’s Day.

“What are Fathers made of?”

Someone has said the following about fathers:

A father is one that is forced to endure childbirth without an anesthetic.
A father is one that growls when it feels good…and always laughs very loud when it’s scared half to death.
A father is sometimes accused of giving too much time to his business when the little ones are growing up.That’s partly fear, too.
Fathers are much more easily frightened than mothers.
A father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in his child’s eyes.
He’s never quite the hero his daughter thinks…never quite the man his son believes him to be. This worries him, sometimes.
So he works too hard to try to smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own who will follow him.
A father is one that gets very angry when the first school grades aren’t as good as he thinks they should be.He scolds his son—though he knows it’s the teacher’s fault.
A father is one that goes away to war, sometimes.
He learns the ruggedness of a soldier’s life and would run the other way except that the war is a part of his only important job in life, which is making the world better for his child than it has been for him.
Fathers grow old faster than other people because they, in other wars, had to stand at the train station and wave goodbye to the uniform that climbs aboard….
And while mothers can cry where it shows…fathers have to stand there and beam outside…and die inside.
Fathers are men who give daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough…so they can have grandchildren that are smarter than anyone else’s.
Fathers fight dragons…almost daily.
They hurry away from the breakfast table off to the arena which is sometimes called an office, or a workshop. There, with calloused, practiced hands they tackle the dragon with three heads; Weariness, Work, and Monotony.
And they never quite win the fight but they never give up.
Knights in shining armor…fathers in shiny trousers, there’s little difference as they march away to each workday.
I don’t know all that good fathers do when they go to the life beyond, but I’ve got an idea that after a good rest, he won’t be happy unless there’s work to do.
He won’t just sit on a cloud and wait for the girl he’s loved and the kids she bore. He’ll be busy there too…repairing the stairs…oiling the gates…improving the streets…smoothing the way.

“Dad, Are You Too Busy?”

 In these days of the high cost of living, most fathers have to work long hours, possibly on two different jobs, in order to keep the wolf away from the door. It is very easy in such case to neglect to show your children the love they need. It will be easy for you to decide to rest on Sunday instead of going to church with them. One of the most beautiful sights I ever see is to look down from the pulpit and see a whole family seated together in a pew. The church service is not a convention to which the family should merely send a delegate. It is something that should be looked upon as a family duty. You owe it to your children to set them a religious example. You brought those children into the world. God has entrusted them to your care, and you must not fail in your awesome task. A little six-year old boy gave one of the best definitions I ever heard of parenthood. He said, “Parents are just babysitters for God.”

The Bible is clear in the fact that a man who does not provide for his family is worse than an infidel, and my hat is off to any father who works hard and long to make an honest living. However, that is not the most important thing in life. Fathers, don’t let your “business” cause you to lose your children. So often we hear someone say, “If I had it all to do over again, I would spend more time with my kids.” I have heard others say, “My children used to want to talk with me, but I was too busy to listen. Now I want to listen, but they are too busy to talk to me.” If you do not take the time to get acquainted with your children today, tomorrow they will be strangers to you.

In the affluent society in which we live, too many people have the wrong idea about so many things. We are prone to pity the children who do not have all the things we see others have. We get the misconceived idea that what they need is the abundance of things. How many times have I heard young dads say, “I came up the hard way and never did have much. I don’t want my children to have it rough like that. I am going to give them everything they need.” The truth of the matter is that your desire to save them from what you term “a hard life” may just be the worst thing you can do. I believe that any informed person who deals with the confused, wayward youth of today will tell you that the problem with most of them was not the absence of things they did not have, but the pampering with abundance. I cannot pity the child who does not have expensive material things nearly so much as I do the one whose father does not have time to play with him, talk with him, and pray with him.

“Companionship”

Dad, you must begin early in your child’s life to relate to him if you want to be able to communicate in the teen years. You cannot buy your child’s affection with expensive gadgets, cars, motorcycles, etc. Friendship, companionship, affection is a result of two people sharing a significant moment. It comes from having a common experience. A father must give of himself and make time to do so. An unknown poet once wrote-
When mother comes and
tucks me in,
She says she trusts me so.
She knows I’ll be kind and true,
Wherever I may go.
But, when Dad comes and
tucks me in,
He leaves the room a sight.
Most everything is all upset,
by our big pillow fight.
Fathers, you have a tremendous privilege to build for eternity. Your houses will some day crumble. Your stocks and bonds will become useless one day. Your cars and boats will become outdated, but that child’s immortal soul lives on.
 “Must  Assume Responsibility”

Every child, in order to have a well-rounded, properly adjusted life, MUST have a strong male and strong female image with which to identify. I think most child specialists are agreed that the boy needs a strong male image more than the girl does. She needs a clearly defined female image more. However, the girl also needs a father’s companionship. According to figures I have been able to gather, the majority of cases of adolescent girls committing suicide, or attempting to do so, are cases where there is parental deficiency and a poor father-daughter relationship.

One of the saddest tragedies that have ever befallen our country is this insane trend toward a unisex society, men looking like women and women looking like men. Several leading New York psychologists made an extensive study of the abnormal behavior of so many of today’s youth. They too found that much of it could be contributed to the fact that the children did not have the proper parental influence. They reported that one reason so many boys don’t seem to be able to decide whether they want to portray the male image, strive to identify their gender, or else style their hair like women, wear feminine clothing etc., is because they did not have a strong male image in the home. Likewise, the girls who wish to dress mannish and assume the role of men are often those who have no strong female image. Mother wears pants and bobbed hair to look like a man, smokes cigarettes, drinks liquor and “cusses” while daddy wears long hair, even longer in some cases than mom’s, wears his clothes fashioned almost identically with those of his wife, and the child grows up hardly knowing which is his father and which is his mother. Now this is not the idea of some prejudiced crackpot but rather the finding of learned men who have spent a lifetime studying human behavior.

Dr. Forrest, a psychiatrist for the William Alanson Foundation has made some startling disclosures on this subject and one of his colleagues from Reed Army Hospital says, “When fathers do not take leadership roles, boys so often are overcome with femininity and take on an exaggerated masculine behavior to conceal it.”

The worst result when Dad doesn’t assume responsibility and leadership, when he fails to be the very zenith in masculinity, he then creates the modern Mom who is obliged to, or else desires to take over completely in her son’s and daughter’s life. This reversing of sex roles in the home is creating much of our psychological and sociological problems. Someone has said, “Even though he may be a senator, governor, college president, or industrialist, a man may make his most significant contribution to his country by the far-reaching, yet unsung, kind of job he does as a father.”

“A Model Prayer For Fathers”

Dad, I hope you are a praying father. If you are not, you are failing in one of the most important fields. Effective prayer can never be that which is read from some prayer book. It can never be that which has been committed to memory and then said over and over. However, may I give you here a model prayer that will just about cover every aspect of your duty as a father? From it you can enlarge your sincere prayer to God.

 “I have a boy to bring up. Help me, Lord, to perform my task with wisdom and kindness and good cheer. Help me to see him clearly, as he is. Let not my pride in him hide his faults. Let not my ear for him magnify my doubts. Quicken my judgment, so that I will know how to train him to think, and to be in all things, pure and simple.

“Give me great patience and long memory. Let me remember the hard places of my own youth, that I may help when I see him struggling, as I struggled. Let me remember the things that made me glad, lest I forget that the child’s laughter is the light of life.

“Teach me the love that knows no weakness, tolerates no selfishness. Keep me from weakening my son through granting him pleasures that end in sickness of soul. Grant that I may love my son wisely. I have a boy to bring up. Teach me to give him the values and beauty, just rewards of industry. Help me send him into the world with a mission of service. Strengthen my mind, that I may teach him that he is his brother’s keeper, and to serve those who know not the need of service, and not knowing, need it the most. I have a boy to bring up. So guide and direct me that I may do this service to the glory of God…and to my son’s happiness. Amen.” [We are pleased to reprint this sermon that Dr. J. Royce Thomason (Bro. Royce) had previously printed in “The Voice in the Wilderness.”]

Please take time to search www.thevoiceinthewilderness.org for related articles. Marriage and the Home is a critical topic. After almost 40 years of marriage, my wife and I give the Lord praise for His blessing upon this union in Christ.  Today ‘tis truly “More Precious Still.”  We pray for you!