The Father Connection : Bishop Tony Samuels
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. - Malachi 3:5-6 KJV
There is a divine connection between fathers and their children. As you look at society, you can see the effects of a fatherless generation. There is a father-absence crisis in America today. According to the U.S. census bureau, 18.3 million children (that is 1 in 4) live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. The effects of this absence causes the chance of success for these children to decrease. They are 4 times more likely to live a life of poverty; seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teenager; more likely to have behavioral problems; more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; more likely to go to prison, and more likely to drop out of high school. So now you can see why the enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy this relationship between fathers and their children. In doing so, he wreaks havoc and the cycle continues.
Ephesians 6:2-3 (KJV) says, …for children to honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. When children have a good relationship with their father, the Bible promises it will go well for them. Honor means: to hold in high respect; to esteem highly. That’s why children should always honor their father, for their part in bringing you into life. Proverbs 23:22 says, Give respect to your father and mother, for without them you wouldn’t even be here, and don’t neglect them when they grow old. Sometimes the issue is that children have not given their father a place of honor in their lives, and that’s because they have not given them a place in their hearts; they have closed their fathers out. It’s time, children, to turn your heart back to your father.
One the reasons honor is so important is because if you don’t honor someone, you will not receive from them. Look at what Jesus said concerning a lack of honor in Mathew 13:57-58: And the people became offended and began to turn against him. Jesus said, “There’s only one place a prophet isn’t honored—his own hometown!” And their unbelief kept him from doing many mighty miracles in Nazareth. It’s hard to receive from someone you don’t honor. Why is this important when it comes to fathers? A father has the ability to impart destiny, identity, and inheritance…so if there is no honor, children can’t receive these things from their father.
Proverbs 19:14 says, Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. So a father has the ability to impart inheritance to their children. Fathers also have the ability to impart identity. Genesis 35:18 says, And so it was as her soul was departing that she called his name Ben-Oni; but his father called him Benjamin. You see, the name his mother gave him was out of what she was going through. Ben-Oni meant “son of my pain.” His father named him according to his destiny, and called his name Benjamin, which means “favorite son; son of my right hand.”
Identity comes from fathers. A father’s words have the ability to shape their children’s destiny, so fathers should spend time speaking to destiny more than the issues of their children. Even though Jacob in the Bible was a trickster, when his father spoke blessings over his life, it overrode the issue and shaped his destiny. God is ready to break generational curses, but we have to restore the breach, and the breach is the relationship between fathers and the children. So today, forgive your father; today, forgive your children; and watch the Blessings of God flow!
Happy Father’s Day,
