A Message to Parents — June 17, 2012
Author
Dr. Roberto Miranda
Summary: Blessedness and true prosperity begin when we fear the Lord and actively delight in His Word—not out of mere religious formality, but with a hunger for God. That Word shapes us to be good parents, spouses, friends, and workers, and our faithfulness leaves a blessing that can reach our children, grandchildren, and future generations. Therefore, every father must irrevocably accept his responsibility, regardless of the circumstances surrounding his children’s birth: he must visit them, love them, provide them with fatherly warmth, and cover them spiritually. Those without biological children can also exercise spiritual fatherhood or motherhood by protecting and guiding the lives of others. Healthy masculinity neither preys upon nor oppresses others; it imitates Jesus by being merciful, compassionate, protective, generous, and a defender of the weak. We must be fiercely loyal to our children, spouses, homes, and communities, and mentor others. What is sown in faithfulness will continue to reverberate, while the prayers of fathers and mothers will cover their children even in rebellion. We can entrust our home, finances, and descendants to God, because He remains faithful and has thoughts of good toward us.
He led me to share with you fathers, but also with the whole Church, some verses from Psalm 112, which are the Lord’s promise for you, man, whether or not you are a father in the biological sense. Listen to the Lord’s promise: “Blessed is the man who fears Jehovah and greatly delights in His commandments.” Man of God, that is the foundation of all prosperity, all blessedness, and every blessing: delighting in a Word that is powerful and active, dynamic; actively delighting in and finding the fruit of the Word, of the Lord’s principles—not merely coming to a church to fulfill some formal, social obligation, but coming with hunger, with an appetite for God, with a desire to pour ourselves out before Him and declare our love.
Knowing that, as the psalmist says, one year in Your house is better than a thousand outside it, delighting in the house and the affairs of the Lord—the person, the man, who feels this way—and God is bringing many young people to the Church. I rejoice in that, not because the rest of us older men are not equally valuable, but how good it is to see young people beginning early to seek God and setting their lives straight. They could be out there doing whatever they please, but God is touching them here in the House of the Lord. How wonderful! There is no need to be ashamed of that. Bring your party friends here; even if you are hungover from the previous night’s revelry, bring them, bring them to the House of God. Do not worry; we will straighten them out here. But delight yourself, delight yourself, man, because that will enable you to be a good father, a good husband, a good friend, a good companion, a good employee, a good worker.
That Word of the Lord will nourish you. It says that there is a promise; it says that his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren—his descendants—will be mighty on the earth; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Man of God, father, if you are looking toward the future and having children, the Lord’s promise is that your descendants will be known, your descendants will know the Lord, and your descendants will be blessed because a man in the past spread his mantle over that future generation: your mantle of love for God, delight in the Lord, and love for His Word. And that will follow your descendants. Perhaps you will not be there to see it, but there is a blessing that will follow them, and you will be watching them from heaven. Perhaps they will not even know why that blessing came, but it will be because a father, a parent, an ancestor loved God and served Him, and the reverberations of that service and that love for the Lord continued until they reached you. And that is something wonderful.
There are times when blessings extend to us and we think it was because of something good we did. No, the blessings came because of something that someone before you did, putting spiritual money in the bank from which you are now benefiting. Brother Medrad recently gave me something—he had done research into my ancestors—and it was fascinating. I received information about my great-great-grandfather in Puerto Rico. I am Dominican, but my grandfather’s side of the family was from there. And as I looked at the pictures of my ancestors, one was named Trinidad, another was named Evangelista, and I have a sense that, because my family was Protestant decades and decades ago, when there were not so many evangelicals, there may have been a fear of God among my forebears, and it is still blessing me here. And I hope it is blessing you as well.
Because that is how it happens, brothers and sisters: when we live faithfully before the Lord; when a father, a man, blesses his children with his blessing and his spiritual covering; when a mother or a grandfather does so, the blessing, it says, passes down to the third and fourth generation. There is a passage that says God blesses up to a thousand generations. Not even an elephant has a memory as great as the Lord’s—remember that. What you do will continue blessing your generations. Therefore, man, perhaps you are only now beginning to be a father; perhaps you made a mistake and there is an unexpected child out there. Well, all right: cover that child with your fatherhood, nourish yourself with the Word of the Lord, feed on the Gospel, let it cultivate you and sculpt you in a different way, and then pass that digested blessing on to your children. Make sure they have a father who visits them, loves them, watches over them, and never allows them to lack a father’s warmth, a daddy’s warmth. No matter what the circumstances of their birth may have been, you are a father, and that is irrevocable. God’s blessing will be upon your good work toward your children, and soak them in your blessing and your love for God so that it may pursue them.
For the Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” God’s blessing, God’s mercy, God’s echo will pursue him wherever he goes, and it will catch up with him someday. Believe that; live that, father, man of God. And may this Church, may the Church of Jesus Christ, model the finest values of fatherhood and motherhood as well. Amen? We must be fathers who are fiercely loyal to our children, our wives, our homes, and our neighborhoods, and we must mentor others and serve as guardians to other children. Perhaps you are not a biological father today, but God still wants you to be someone’s spiritual father, or someone’s spiritual mother. God has a purpose for your life, and that is to discover and protect life. That is one of the things the Lord was speaking to me about this morning. Forgive me, this is already part of the sermon I am preaching here, but I will cut it short later.
But remember this: one of the things God was reminding me of is that a man’s nature is to be merciful. I believe that a man—a man with a healthy sexuality—is by nature a protector. God has made us protectors; God has made us defenders of life. A man who is a predator, an abuser, and an oppressor is living a deformed life, because I believe that he has the heart of God, and God’s healthy masculinity protects life: it covers, defends, stands in front, provides, blesses, and takes the food out of its own mouth to give it to his wife and his children. That is a man. It is not someone who goes around like a macho man, fathering children left and right. That is what the world teaches you. The truly healthy man is a man who covers, protects, is merciful, is compassionate, blesses the weak, and throws himself over the helpless person to shield him from the incoming projectile. That is a healthy man, and that is the nature of Jesus.
God wants fathers like that, men who cover and protect someone, something. The world needs that example, and if we behave that way, God will bless us, prosper us, strengthen us, and give us a vigorous, whole, lucid, joyful old age, because what we sow in our youth He later blesses farther down the road, and His blessing continues reverberating through the generations. There is a blessing for us. We fly upon God’s wings, and therefore we do not grow weary, but renew our lives like the eagle. So that is God’s promise for you today, father, for you, man of God, who have been called by nature to be a father. God commits Himself to you and to every household. We do not have to be afraid. The future is bright for the children of God. That is God’s promise to us today. Do not worry. God has control of your loved ones. God is in control of your family, your finances, and the generations ahead of you. That is God’s concern. He is committed to you, and He will fulfill it because He is faithful.
If there is a mother or father staying awake in prayer for their children, those prayers will be coverings over their lives wherever they may go, and He will bless them and bring them safely into harbor, sooner or later. Even if they rebel, the Lord will bring them back through His mercy and His goodness. Believe it; that is God’s provision. The Lord says, “For I know the thoughts that I have concerning you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you the end for which you hope.” Glory to the Lord. Amen, amen. Be blessed, my brothers and sisters.