Dad, what are you passing on?

Dad, what are you passing on? Like it or not, you are passing something on. It might be your presence or your absence, great memories or lousy ones, health or dysfunction, tools to succeed or habits for failure, love or anger, selflessness or selfishness, and so much more.Putting a child into this world is the easy part. It is what we do after that gift of God is conceived that determines whether or not he or she is either blessed or cursed by their father. Yup, fathers are meant to be blessings to their sons and daughters and that means taking on the lifelong responsibilities of being a Dad. Strange, we go to great lengths and spent millions of dollars to teach our children how to avoid conceiving children and how to get rid of them if they “accidently” do, but we teach so little about the lifelong responsibilities of godly parenthood (especially to boys/young men).Dad, what are you passing on? God devoted an entire book of the Bible, Proverbs, to things Dads should pass on to their children. But the most fundamental, the most important thing for Dad to pass on to his child/ren is a love for God and His Son Jesus Christ. “You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind, or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands” Deuteronomy 5:7-10 (NLT).“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well” 1 John 5:1 (NIV).“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” Ephesians 6:4 (NIV). Can you raise great kids without the Bible, without any emphasis on God? Yes you can. There are wonderful Dads who are not believers and there are lousy Bible wielding dads (lousy dads of any sort don’t get a capital D). However, the God-given responsibilities of all Dads go beyond passing on what is good and upright, it also includes the godly, the holy.Our responsibility as Dads is to pass on the right stuff, including being a living example of what we pass on. Our responsibility is to be a blessing according to God’s definition. Then at some point our children have to make a choice to embrace responsibility themselves, decide whether or not they themselves will be a blessing or a heartache to both God and their parents. May we give them every reason to choose the former.To God be all glory, Pastor Hans