Honoring Your Father - Good or Bad

Happy Father's Day

We all have very different experiences with our earthly father some good and some bad.

Our fathers were and are sinners, the worst of sinners just like us. They have make and will make serious mistakes in regards to their family and children. Some fathers will harm their children physically, emotionally and others will lift up and love their children.

Our heavenly Father asks us to honor our earthly one if at all possible.

My experience with my father was not a good one yet God used it to make me the God honoring man I am today. He had abandoned my family 4 times by the time I was 18, he would just disappear for a week of two or longer. We were left without money, food, the necessities. I had to step up and help provide. He came form a very large family that moved often, his father was a railroad worker, they spent much of their childhood in tents. He had a 9th grade education. He actually did very well all things considered in his work yet he was incapable of handling stress and failure and ran away from everything. His pride always got the best of him. There is no excuse for a father to abandon his family.

It took me most of my adult life to forgive him and understand that his leaving was a blessing and that like him I am also a great sinner, no excuses.

Honoring ungodly, sinful people means calling them to repent of their sin and encouraging them to do what is right. An wise and honorable response to sin is confronting it, refusing to enable it.

So I never really knew my father, perhaps in heaven.

God comforts the brokenhearted children of BAD fathers by inviting them to honor Him our ultimate father.

A Godly Father is indeed a treasure an if you have such a Father praise god!!

On this Father’s Day, regardless whether your dad has been all that you ever hoped and dreamed, or perhaps you’ve now grown old enough to see his faults and failings, there are certain virtues to respect in dad, even as we love the same overlapping virtues in our mothers.

Let’s honor dad today not just by pointing out what made him a good parent or person, but a good father.

Little is said of the ordinary saints whose prayers, lives, and instruction shaped these men mightily used of God. Mothers often play a invaluable role in the lives of great men.

Of the lessons God teaches us, one important lesson for me is to relentlessly pray that my children that they may know the Christ that I know.