Seventeen years ago God blessed Julie and me with a beautiful baby girl whom we named Belinda and seven years later, another we named Sarah. Our oldest is a senior in high school this year, so along comes the year she’s been looking for along with all the stuff that goes with it. Senior dues, pictures, invitations, cap and gown, prom, seems like something new every week.
A month or so back, I had the privilege to accompany her while she had her senior portraits taken. Yes, I said privilege because my seventeen year old daughter that thinks she’s a grown woman now doesn’t always want her daddy around for activities such as this anymore. Friends are more into play now.
Anyway, we arrive for the sitting, fill out the paperwork, wait a few minutes, then it’s her turn. She goes into the back to get prepared as I patiently sit waiting and observing others as they have their pictures taken, and I’m thinking about random stuff. So it’s at this point in my thoughts that it actually hits me like a ton of bricks! Huh, she’s a senior, been in school for twelve years and is now rapidly fixing to graduate and move on to the next chapter of her life. Wow! Where has time gone? Emotions kick in as I sit there (yes, tears) and reflect on the last seventeen years of her life. I’m thinking, as a father have I brought this child up right? Have I and am I leading my family to live for, worship, and serve God as Scripture instructs us that we should? Proverbs 22:6 (KJV) Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. This verse does not guarantee us that because we raise our children in church and in the word of God that they will continue this in their adult life; after all, they, too, are still of the flesh and are sinners just like us parents. We should train them up in the word of God and teach them to love like Jesus loves. We are to love them and set them free in hopes that what we taught them will stick as they continue their walk with and love of Christ. They may veer off course, go down a different road, a road more broad, a road they’ve heard of but not traveled because we as parents were still somewhat in control while they were under our roof. Hopefully, they will return to the map, the instructions they were taught from the gospel, put on the armor of God, and get back on track.
Some that know me, or think they do, may be asking themselves why it sounds like I am doubting the rearing of my child. Julie and I are active in church and serve in different ministries. The church has watched as I got baptized and was there when I surrendered to the ministry. What’s up? Truthfully, most of the people that read this know the after Christ me not the before Christ me. 1 John 2:15 (KJV) Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him. Brothers and sisters, once that verse fit me to the “T,” and this may be where you are right now. I was of the world, in the world, loved the ways of the world, partaking in them and living it. I did not love the Father. Therefore, I was not a good father or husband, for that matter, and was not leading my family in the right direction, which should have been toward the cross and not the pits of hell.
James 1:8 (KJV) teaches us that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. This was me, unstable in my ways as a leader for my family, and that wasn’t good. I was not a good example. I was not focused on God at all, so we may or may not have gone to church; even so, I was doing things that I had no business doing and wasn’t leading in any one direction. I was all over the place, making it hard for anybody that I was supposed to be an example for to get bearings on what was right from wrong. I mean drinking, cursing and only God knows what else on Saturday night and sitting in church on Sunday morning like it’s all good. Really? This is Jesus speaking in Matthew 6:24 (KJV) No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I can remember when Belinda was smaller, she always wanted to go with Daddy, but I wouldn’t always let her because I didn’t want her to see what I was doing or saying or be around the people I was around because of what they, too, were involved in because it was mostly filth. Because of my ignorant decisions, I lost valuable time with my daughter that cannot be gotten back. Men, we should keep in mind that a lot of times if we can’t take our children with us to where we are going, then maybe we should question where we are going.
We don’t want our children and family going to hell, but are we the ones leading them there? It’s time to question ourselves. Where are we going? Wherever we’re going, Heaven or Hell, that’s where we are leading our wives and children. By the grace of God and a lot of praying that at the time I didn’t know my wife was doing, I was able to realign my broad double minded thinking into a more narrow focused way of leading which points toward God. TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!