Daily devotion – The day after Father’s Day
Jhn 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Leading up to and preparing for last Sunday’s Father’s Day message, I spent a great deal of time pouring through the Word of God and many bible commentaries I have in my study on the role of being a godly man, not just a godly father. I shared with the group I was with on our Wednesday evening prayer night, how disturbed, troubled, and heartbroken I am as I see what is happening with the raging attack on biblical masculinity in our world today.
It’s Monday morning as I write this devotion and my heart is still troubled. For I see the young men in our society and especially some within our Church fellowship who are having to fend for themselves due to strained, troubled or distanced relationship with their own fathers. My closing prayer if you can remember on Sunday was that we as men of God need the Lord to help us be the men of God, He desires each of us to be. But also, I said that godly men need other godly men to encourage each other to stay the course, to stand in the gap, to face up to the savage attack on biblical masculinity.
Church is not a place where we just attend. Church is a place of godly relationships, a living organism empowered by the Holy Spirit for each of us to encourage and be a blessing in one another’s lives.
Rom 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
Our society is plagued by a spirit of complete selfishness, a consistent selfish living mindset.
May we be a people of prayer, people who have hearts troubled enough, softened enough, to be driven to break away from selfish living and be a brother or sister in Christ in the truest sense.
Many of us take having a father or being involved in a loving family for granted. But for many of our brothers and sisters in Christ, they know not of such fatherhood or brotherly love. We as Christ’s Church I pray, will be troubled by the Holy Spirit in these dark days, to the extent that we will see with the eyes of our loving Saviour, those around us who live alone, have experienced their family disrupted, and we will step in, be alongside them, and provide by God’s grace, God’s comfort, strength, and support in these lonely lives.
Helen and I, had our family and grandkids over this last Father’s Day – a gathering that is both noisy, blessed and exciting. All around our house as the ‘tidy up’ continues today, out on the backyard, there were signs – ‘grandkids have been in this space’!
As I went into the bedroom that is now called the ‘kids’ playroom’, there were more signs of ‘grandkids have been here!’
But there was something else left there, there was a very real sense from God as I stood in the room, of God’s delight. It’s hard to put into words, but it is this very ‘presence’ that we as brothers and sisters in Christ can bring to those alone, without family, in the Church that God has placed us alongside.
This Sunday, will you ask God to open your eyes and your heart to see what He sees and come alongside someone whom God places upon your heart – to be family, perhaps to even have a father’s heart for.
The challenge for this Sunday, and every day, is to ask God to open our eyes and hearts to see what He sees. Who has God placed in our lives that needs the love and care we can provide as Christ’s disciples? Whether it’s someone without family or someone who simply needs the love of a brother or sister in Christ, let us extend the love that marks us as followers of Jesus.
This is a most blessed ministry not to be taken lightly.
Psa 68:5 Father to the fatherless, defender of widows— this is God, whose dwelling is holy.