Encouraging daddies in the holy fear of God!

Psalms 34
11 Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

Psalms 103
13 Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.

If we were to look the role of a father from the Bible, we see it has to do with leading his children to trust in God and fear Him. This fear the Bible teaches us is holy fear, a reverential fear by which a person understands his/her life is accountable to God and he/she is therefore moved to find their rest in Christ from all anxiety while fervently pursuing the righteousness of God in their lives, and in the families they head and raise.

Proverbs 9
10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Proverbs 16
16 How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver.

This world compels parents today to give their children a good education to do well in life. Yes, a good education is a must for your children but as Jesus says in Mat 4:4… the believer does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Therefore, I would urge and encourage you brethren, to instill in your children the fear of God by teaching it to them and living it out by example. I have come across many parents, who say they have given all they could give to their children but their children are useless. Having known these parents of theirs over time I have noticed that these parents have been poor examples of bearing the likeness of Christ, which is the very nature of God as revealed in the Moral Law. These parents fed their children with only material good while living out their lives without the fear of God. Hence, Luke 6:38, comes into play and these parents get a taste of the indifference they showed God, from their own children.

John 9
31 We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him.

Remember Daddies, when you teach your children the fear of God, you are helping them mature in spirit so that they may grow from relying on you to relying on the Lord. From the Bible, we ought to understand that there are two types of fear: holy fear & unholy fear. Unholy fear comes from the fear of punishment because deep within a person feels the oncoming of God’s good justice, which he/she must escape out of their dearness for nothing more than their own lives. Holy fear on the other hand comes from being trained in godly discipline (from which we get the word Disciple), where we who were once sinners and now saved in Christ are taught how to man up before the ungodly in standing up for the righteousness of God (Mat 10:28 & 13:45-46).

So, it is we see that the role of any good father, is to teach his children the holy fear of God, that in His time Christ may welcome you into His abode saying… well done good and faithful servant and you may rest in peace knowing, your children shall keep up the good fight and be conduits of Jesus’s blessing upon the earth.