Jeremiah 11:3 “Tell them that this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: `Cursed is the man who does not obey the terms of this covenant.'”

This is not the image we like to have of God! I keep coming back to the breakdown in the family, and especially the denigration of fathers and fatherhood, because it’s no accident that the Bible consistently speaks of God as our Father, in the OT as well as the New. When the devil succeeds in downgrading our image of what a father is, corrupting it in many ways, he has driven a huge wedge between us and God. That is why the last verse of the OT, prophesying the ministry of John the Baptist, says, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” (Malachi 4:6) It is very difficult to have a right relationship with our heavenly Father when we don’t know what a father is really supposed to be. A true father is both loving and firm, establishing rules and enforcing them. He isn’t a tyrant, but he insists on what is right. He delights when his children do what is right, and he punishes them appropriately when they do what is wrong. Anyone who has been raised by such a father is well prepared to hear and receive the Gospel, that says our heavenly Father loved us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to take the punishment for our sin. This is why society as a whole glorifies motherhood over fatherhood, and television generally portrays fathers as bumbling idiots. Any male can ejaculate, but it takes a real man to be a father!

I was enormously blessed to have such a father, imperfect though he was (as we all are), and I have reaped the benefits. How good a father I have been is up to God and my children to decide. However, I deal all the time with people who have been deeply wounded by the fathers, or lack of fathers, in their lives. Absent fathers, indifferent fathers, and abusive fathers abound. Simply being heartbroken at the wreckage it produces in their children’s lives doesn’t correct anything; I’ve got to introduce those children to their heavenly Father, while modeling what a human father should be like. At this point I am a father figure to some degree to a great many people. I must be consistent in my obedience to God so that the image they receive of Him through me will be undistorted.

Father, thank You for Your grace in bringing that girl here yesterday. Thank You for giving her the courage to open up and share what she has been through, and for those You arranged to have here at the point she was sharing. She is desperately hungry for Your love, in all its purity and power. I pray that You would pour that love out on her, through us as a church and directly into her heart. I pray that this would open the eyes and hearts of the church members to understand the need that surrounds them, so that they may offer themselves as Your instruments for meeting that need, for the salvation of many and for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!