Fatherhood – Meritt Musings

Honor

www.bible.com/1713/exo.20.12.csb

What does honor look like to you? I saw a picture not long ago that communicated this concept to me. It was a picture of a young woman bowing low before an older woman. The caption read that the younger woman had been crowned Miss Thailand (not sure about that) and she had come home after her crowning to her mother’s house. The picture was their first reunion. The contrast was startling, for here was this young woman, full of life, well-dressed, and beautiful, her whole life ahead of her. But she was choosing to honor her mother, a shabbily-dressed woman for whom it seemed life had passed by. It was as if to say, everything I am, everything I have accomplished, I owe it all to my mother. I think that is honoring your mother.

It’s strange, considering our world today, how many forget this. Consider that our very existence depended on a chance. We were not guaranteed, but that the person you are today depended on the chance encounter between an ovum and a sperm. It could have been any one of a million sperm. But God knew. And you were conceived. Your mother carried you for nine uncomfortable months. Your father, hopefully, worked hard to raise you for 18 years. They put in a great deal of effort to make sure you would not only survive, but succeed. That’s big.

Today we honor our father’s particularly. These are the men who gave up their dreams and rights to make sure their own children would be able to achieve their own. Do you think your father wanted to watch Barney or Blue’s Clues? Do you think he wanted to go to work everyday? We don’t often account for the sacrifices our fathers make for us, but they did. And there should always be a place in your to honor them.

That being said, I’ve have had too many tell me horror stories about their parents, especially those that took advantage of their children, abused their children, and made their children sacrifice for them. You know, even if you grew up in that kind of household, that that wasn’t right. The shame and wrongness of it violated your inner sense of justice and rightness about what a father (and a mother) really are. But Your heavenly Father has not forgotten. I know it was hard, and part of you may blame God for letting it happen, remember that God has let you sin too. But may I appeal to all of you who know what a father ought to be and hasn’t found him yet. God is the One you’ve been looking for. He is the One who has loved you since the beginning. His love is pure, undefiled, and holy. He wants the best for you, and has offered the very best sacrifice for you to show His love. He sent His own Son, who was maligned and mistreated, and was killed, having all of his personal rights violated and taken away. But God in Christ loves you, paid for your sins, and offers you today a way back, a way forward. He wants you back. He wants to show you what love is supposed to feel like. It’s not about abuse or fulfilling His own “needs”. It’s not about shame and violation. It’s about real, honest love. He loves you, not for what you can offer Him. He loves you, regardless of how broken you are. For you deserve this love, love which has been denied you by men who were supposed to give it to you. For this is the real love of the Father who made you.

Some of us had good fathers, and we celebrate them today. Others did not. And may I invite you then to know the Good, Good Father. He longs to wrap you up in the shelter of His arms, where you will be safe, and no one will hurt you anymore. You are precious to Him. And though you may have run from Him all your life, He considers none of that. He loves in a way that no man could ever do.

Dear Father, though my own father has been a good man, I know you excel him. There’s no competition. I am glad that you blessed me with a great Dad, but my prayer is for all those who didn’t have it so good, whose fathers abused them and molested them, used them and made them ashamed to live. My prayer is for their peace, that they may know you as Father. Father please heal their heart. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Desires of Your Heart

www.bible.com/1713/psa.37.4.csb

As a father, I try to follow my children’s interests as best I can. My oldest is into Warhammer 40K. My oldest daughter is a Dungeons and Dragons DM for a small group at her high school. My younger daughter loves fantasy and dragons. My youngest is harder to pin down, as he is still finding his thing, but he loves watching videos and playing video games with his friends.

So when birthdays and Christmas come around, I have a notion of what they might be interested in. Of course I give them a gift card because I just can’t do the “wow” gifts anymore, the complete surprises that make them wonder if I can read their minds. I know my kids have dreams of what they want to be and what kind of person they will become. But sometimes I wish I could read their minds, just a little bit.

“Fathers, if you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven?” God knows far more than I do. He knows my heart better than I do, and His gifts are never too late. He always knows what I need when I need it. He knows my frustration. He knows my joys. He knows me.

I should add that the delights of your heart ought to be what delights Him. I would ask yourself, is what I want really something that honors God too? Of what you truly want is something God has expressly forbidden, or worse could cause someone else harm, is that really something you think God is going to give to you?

People are always saying to me when I ask of there is anything I can give them, “Yeah, get me a bucket of money,” or “a million dollars!” They intend is a joke, but it reveals a piece of their heart. All my problems could be resolved if I just had enough money. Yet, if you cannot he content with what you have, what would more money do for you? There is never enough money. Just ask someone who has a lot of it. Solomon was the wealthiest man in the Bible. It wasn’t enough. Just read Ecclesiastes.

God wants to give you what your heart desires, but only when you are ready, and only if He desires it for you. You can’t just take this verse out of the context of the Bible and make it what you want. It has to agree with everything He has written, such as, “I have learned to be content in all circumstances.”

Heavenly Father, I know that my desires are stained with sin and selfishness. I want things that I ought not to have. As a good Father, you have seen my good impulses and rewarded them. You encourage me in doing good and loving others. You have shown me in being a father that it is hard to give your children what they want, to withhold from them when the time isn’t right, and to see them grow and mature, sometimes the hard way. I can’t imagine the grief you feel when we want and grasp for things that will harm us. Help me Lord to be a better father. Help me be a better husband. And help me Lord know what are the good things. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Justice and Righteousness

www.bible.com/1713/amo.5.24.csb

So I’ve been working on laundry and housework today. Been singing a couple praise tunes, but nothing profoundly spiritual. Kids are out of school today for the holiday. I’ve got a half-day since our census is down at the workplace. So I’m sitting here trying to think of something profound to say.

Justice seems to be the theme of the day, right? With Trump’s impeachment trial in the news, and Virginia’s gun issues all over the headlines. People are looking for justice. But then there is also this holiday, which seems to me to be more about civil rights than about Martin Luther King, Jr. today. I mean, what other civil rights advocates got to have a federal holiday? MLK had the advantage of being a martyr, but there are plenty of civil rights advocates that have done as much. Emmett Till didn’t get to grow up to be a great speaker. Malcolm X was just mean. Louis Farrakhan is trying to be the next MLK but he’s in the wrong religion.

And what are they preaching about justice today? In short, it is to hold the sons accountable for the sins of the fathers. Specifically, modern advocates of “justice” want to take away from those that have and give to those that have not because of the belief that the “have not’s” are poor because they didn’t grow up with the same advantages today that the “have’s” did. Therefore “justice” is wealth redistribution on the premise of historical bias.

Do you know why there is such a thing as “white privilege”? It is because white families tend to keep their fathers around longer than black families. Why do Asians do so well, even better than whites? Because Asian families have an even higher expectation of their children than whites do. When you look beyond the race issue, you find families that are suffering because the traditional nuclear family no longer exists for many children. If you have a successful black man, you will find a successful family behind him. You will find a family that had high expectations for their child.

“Social justice” isn’t an attempt to make a level playing field. It’s an attempt to rehabilitate the War on Poverty of Lyndon Johnson. He believed that if blacks learned to depend on government, and replace the father with a welfare check, blacks would vote for democrats in perpetuity. So far, he’s been proven right. It’s human nature. If you are handed something without working for it, you will fight to defend your right to receive it, because you “deserve” it. No one has a greater sense of privilege than someone who didn’t have to work for it. Ask rich kids.

Is this a rant? Yeah, probably. I frankly despise anyone who cloaks family breakdown and economic disadvantage with skin color. America is the freest country in the world when it comes to economic opportunity and faith. That’s why she is most harshly attacked in these areas. If justice flowed like water and righteousness like a river these other problems would disappear in a generation. If we were right and just and fair with each other, if we acted with integrity with our fellow man, “racial inequality” would vanish. If we practiced that simple Christian principle of “think of each other more highly than yourselves” what good could we accomplish?

Father God, we are wise enough to realize that we have not done well as a nation. Our fathers committed sins that we are still paying for. I know there is anger on all sides of these issues, and to stir up the embers of old fires isn’t helping anyone. Father as your people, whether our skin is white, black, yellow, red, or green, we know you did not make a “master” race, because all of us are made in Your image. Help us to remember that it is not about the color of skin that makes us special, but the cost for our souls. May we remember that we were bought with a price, not with gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. It is the value of His sacrifice that makes us valuable. It is the cost of His blood that makes every life costly. Help to remember all of these things and grant us wisdom to deal with our fellow man with gentleness and respect, regardless of their skin color. We pray these things in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Rest Assured

www.bible.com/1713/psa.23.1-2.csb

What do you do to relax? Do you take in a movie? Read a book? Watch your favorite TV program? Maybe you go out with friends, or spend time alone. Regardless of how you recuperate, one thing is certain: you need rest.

Rest is more than sleep. Rest is peace. Rest is comfort. Rest is essential to our function. If we operate continually without rest, we will suffer, both mentally and physically. Are you in a place where you cannot rest?

This Psalm composed by David under the direction of the Holy Spirit tells us about rest. The Lord leads us to rest. If we are to find peace and comfort in this life, it can only be at the direction of the Shepherd. Sheep are willful, fearful things. They wander off, they do what they want, often to their own detriment. It takes a shepherd to lead them to their food and their contentment.

Yes shepherds do this to make a profit. This is how they make their living. Sheep are good for a couple things, making wool and providing meat. Sheep who are well-cared for can provide a shepherd with a good living. He knows what environment makes for sheep that are content. And he does his best to provide it. When David and Jesus apply this model to people, they aren’t taking about the profit, but the care and relationship between sheep and Shepherd. God doesn’t need anything. And there is nothing we have to offer Him that will give Him profit. God cares for us because He made us. We are His children. He loves us because He made us with His own hands. But rather than act like men, we often act like sheep.

Do you wander off and try to find your own way? You will find no rest that way. Do you seek to make yourself the center of your life? There’s no rest there either. God offers the rest of the comfort of the Father’s arms wrapped around you.

My wife showed me a video yesterday of a returning serviceman greeting his young son after a long absence. The young boy’s reaction was predictable, but precious. As soon as he recognized him, the young boy fiercely hugged his father. In front of all of his peers, as this was filmed at a school, the boy forgot everyone else. His father was all that mattered in that moment. His father’s embrace was no less. Do you long for that love? That’s the rest that our Father calls us to. That’s the embrace of heaven on the first day.

Are you longing for rest today? Spare a moment with your father. Enjoy the embrace of His love for you, even as the Father for the Prodigal. “Prepare the fatted calf! This son of mine was dead, and is now alive!” Experience the joy and rest of the Father, no longer a Judge of your sins, but Redeemer of your soul.

Enter thou the joy and rest of thy Lord.

Good Gifts

www.bible.com/1713/luk.11.13.csb

I think I know better than to give my children things they can’t handle. Jesus says you would not give your child a snake or a scorpion if they ask for an egg. We know better then that. If my child asks for some food, I don’t give him a spider. We are not that cruel. Even cruel people don’t do that to their own children, at least I hope not. There are always exceptions.

But Jesus’ point here that that even we, who are evil by God’s standards, are not so cruel to our children so that we willingly hurt them when they ask for a gift. We may not give that exactly what they want, but what we think they need, in order to help them. My kids would ask for carbs and sweets, but they get proteins and veggies because that’s what they need. But as a father, I know them well enough to give them what they really want on occasion. And that’s a key point. If you know your kids, you know what gifts make their heart sing. And if I know my own children in this way, God knows us even better.

So when we ask God, He knows what we want and what we need. He also knows how to bless us that truly satisfy us. I believe God will occasionally bless us in a way that doesn’t necessarily exalt Him, But is something that makes us really happy. Sometimes God gives because He wants to see us smile, not for His own glory but for ours. Mind you this doesn’t happen often, but I believe it does happen.

What have you asked for lately?

A Father’s Compassion

www.bible.com/1713/psa.103.13.csb

Happy Father’s Day to all the men who have sired progeny today. This day we set aside to honor and remember those men whom we call “Dad” above others. Some memories are harder than others. For some, dad was a hard-nosed disciplinarian. For others, he was non-existent, or cruised from day to day from his recliner and never-ending case of beer.

No surprise, dads are human. As one Scripture says, our fathers disciplined us the best they knew how. I empathize with those whose fathers were less than ideal.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Regardless of what kind of father you had, you had a better picture in mind. It’s funny, even children raised by bad fathers can tell something isn’t right. It’s like we have this implanted knowledge of proper fatherhood, and when we become fathers, we suddenly feel nervous because we feel we will fail that inbuilt standard.

That’s why today I want to draw attention to this verse, because compassion is something we seldom associate with fathers. Discipline, angry outbursts, hard working, but compassion? We see that come out in grandfathers, seeing their grand babies for the first time, and feeling like God has given them another chance. I think grandfathers may feel the grace and forgiveness of God more acutely.

Compassion is a gift given where it is not deserved. You can’t earn compassion. It is given freely and with no expectation, and when fathers are expected to raise kids according to rules, learning the helped knocks of life, compassion seems like an extra lesson. More than this, it is the measure of a good father. A father who exercises compassion is the reason we have a Father’s Day today, because a little girl once thought there ought to be a day to honor men like her father.

Father I want you to do a compassion check today. Do you care when your child is sick, or your wife is hurting? Do you seek your child’s best interests, or your own? What is more important, your needs or your wife’s? If you were able to answer in love, you are probably doing okay.

Men, I want to encourage you today to take after your Father. He has called you to be His witness to your family of His love and grace, as well as His justice. MY you find that just as sensitive a balance as I have.

God bless you all!

So What’s the Promise?

www.bible.com/1713/eph.6.2.csb

We have a lot of Scripture to thank the Apostle for. We can attribute much of our daily practice and theology to him. Which is why this passage presents us with a problem.

Paul has written elsewhere that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law, and that we are no longer under the law, but under grace. That said, he presents this text “Honor thy father and thy mother”, the fifth commandment, complete with its context, for this commandment contains a promise “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land” the Lord God is sending you to, i.e., the land of Israel. Here’s why this is a problem.

The promise of the fifth commandment is to the people of Israel, so that they could occupy and inhabit the land of promise indefinitely. The promise involved a particular piece of real estate. However, Paul does qualify this promise in its original context. Instead, his quote ends at ” land”. The problem, one might argue, is that Paul is appropriating the land promises made to Israel and passing them on to the Christians of his day. In a greater argument that Paul is extending the promises (and obligations) given to Israel are also to Christians. That’s a lot of weight to put upon one verse, especially taken out of context of the rest of Paul’s words.

Rather, Paul is extending the promise here made to Israel by observing a different focus. His focus is on the promise of “long life” rather than the land. The land here really could be anywhere Christians find themselves. The strength of this promise comes from the authority of God Himself. So why do Christian children, who have honored this commandment, still die young?

Let me present the third possibility. That the land of long life promised here isn’t eighty years and dying of old age. What’s in view here, a child that honors his father and mother by clinging to the God that saved them is a child who is promised eternal life in the land God has prepared for them.

If we are honoring father and mother, we are working out God’s will in our lives. We are honoring those He chose to bring us life, and this is important, whether we actually respect them or not. Being able to honor them is to fulfill the commandment, and to honor the God that maybe even despite them, brought you to Himself.

Not every parent is perfect, and many don’t come close. But the commandment of God is non-negotiable. Honor means respect, both in life and in memory. Honor can be honest, but it must be respectful. If you have good parents, this is easy. If not, this is one of your greatest challenges. But know that we are all in this together. If you need help, ask. Let us pray with you.

I hope you can have a happy Father’s Day. God bless you all!

His Holy Dwelling

www.bible.com/1713/psa.68.5.csb

Does God Care? He doesn’t have to. God exists in His Holy Dwelling infinite, eternal, needing nothing. In His palace He reigns supreme over the universes, the realm of the spirit and our own realm. He also exists in His own realm, the realm of uncreated Being, where He alone exists. His Being unveiled in His fullness would destroy all created realms and beings. Therefore, God chooses to reveal Himself in veiled form, dwelling as a “King” in His Heavenly palace, or a s a “Father” to His “Son”. The truth is that God is so much more awesome that we can imagine that we could not have invented Him, because we don’t know what He is, really, for that knowledge would be too much for us to grasp.

This is the God who cares. He cares for those so far beneath Him as to be microscopic. Why? Because we contain one unique quality in all of creation: He made us in His image, a concept that we still argue over today.

This verse points his care for widows and the fatherless. These two groups are considered because in the culture of Psalms, these groups are irrelevant because the culture was tied to family relationships. Broken families such as these were second or third place in that society. We still carry some of that water in our own culture.

By caring for those considered least, we know that God cares for the whole. God cares for us all equally, as He is often a father to those whose father is unavailable. He is a husband to those wives who feel alone. God fills in the gaps in your life. In a very real sense, He does this through HIs people, which is why I encourage you to attend a local congregation if possible.

Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you. God bless you today.

Revolutionary

www.bible.com/72/rom.1.16.hcsb

Jews AND Greeks? Are you serious? God wants to save both of them? What about the Romans?

Seriously, the power of God is the gospel. Without regard to piety, reverence, law-keeping and ritual, the gospel has more power than any of these. The gospel is a story. It is the story of an Almighty Creator God who wants to save His Creation, namely Man from his own rebellion. So God sends His Son as witness and testimony to the care and love of God. Man kills the Son in the ultimate act of rebellion. The Son rises from the dead in order to demonstrate His forgiveness for sin. He is the God who loves us despite our evil to compel us to change.

This requires of us in humanity a desire to return. Under the right circumstances and conditions, something in us will revive that had died. It is our love for our father. Our desire to be approved and loved by our father. Our desire to make our father proud of us. It is as deep-seated in us as our need to breathe. It transcends culture and language. And the gospel is the power of God to restore that fundamental relationship despite our sin and grief and guilt. It is God who forgives, who stands ready to receive us back when we’ve realized in the hog pen that being in our father’s house, even as a servant, would be far better.

I challenge you with the gospel today. I know this world is lost and broken. It has Daddy-issues. But the gospel is stronger. The world has rebellion, strife, murder and death, but the gospel is stronger. It is the power of God unto salvation. And it is ours to wield simply by telling.

God bless you today.

Source Code

I had the opportunity to watch “I Can Only Imagine” last night, the biographical movie about Bart Millard’s journey to stardom in the band MercyMe. If you are familiar with his story, you know he grew up in a abusive home and left as soon as he could, only to discover he couldn’t be “authentic” until he resolved his issues with his father. In the meantime, his father had turned to Christ and became a different person. Their reconciliation becomes the impetus for Bart’s own transformation. His father’s death prompts him to write the eponymous song. The shining point of the movie is Bart’s moment in Nashville, having sung his song, seeing his father clapping for him. In an interview, Bart explained that he believed he sang to two people that night, both his father, and His Lord. It moment worthy of the Kleenex.

That moment also got me to thinking about father-son issues, in which this movie traded heavily. Even if our parents, mothers or fathers, treat us horribly, even if we hate every fiber of their being, every breath of their body, there is still a part of us that cares. There is still a part that longs for reconciliation, even if it’s no longer possible. That’s why this moment is so powerful in the movie, because it resonates. Everyone has a father, and everyone desires approval from that father. We all want our fathers to be proud of us because it is built into us to care what our father’s think of us.

We can’t explain it, because it isn’t part of the intellect. In fact, it defies the intellect. It is part of what I liken to “source code”, or more exactly, that code that a computer has burned in to its motherboard that tells it how to read a hard disk, before it ever loads the first bit of the operating system and everything its ever learned. It’s the BIOS of the human psyche. It is built into us as human beings to have a relationship with our parents. When that relationship isn’t “right” it leads to a host of other problems, “daddy issues”, psychological syndromes and traumas later on. As described in the movie, Bart couldn’t have a close relationship with his girlfriend until he resolved his relationship with his father. How many people labor today in horrible marriages, live-in situations even same-sex relationships because that one aspect of their being was wrong?

We are all built with this source code, called a conscience. The Bible recognizes this:

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
(Rom 2:15)

Written on our hearts, our BIOS if you will, is the law of human beings. As sentient, rational beings, we are built with a set a laws of interaction (not unlike Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics) that direct the “rightness” and “wrongness” of our actions. Our conscience (C.S. Lewis’ moral law argument) is universal. Every human being has one, and they are all coded with a set of unwritten laws of human interaction. One of those laws is that relationship between parents and children. And when we willingly violate those laws, that’s when we run into problems,from simple (in the form of fractured relationships) to complex (in the form of mental illness). I believe that a person who consistently violates his own moral code, deterred by his “conflicting thoughts” in his conscience, is well on the road to insanity. He is trying to reconcile a world of his own creation with the real world as written in his source code. A logical being (which we are, to a fault) cannot hold two diametrically opposed points of view simultaneously, and still have a hold on reality.

So how do we address this innate moral code so that we can correct ourselves for error? Can we correct ourselves? Let me re-introduce you to the most succinct explanation of our innate moral code ever written, complete with correctives for repair. You may know it as the Ten Commandments.

“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
(Exo 20:3-17)

I will come back to this issue of parents and children, but to do so, I need to look at the Ten, the underlying principles that each describe, and how they affect us when they are broken. These commandments are so well written, that if you know how to read them, you can discover both the underlying moral code that we were built with, and the correction for applying that moral code to life. The manner in which God sends these ten is I believe one of the most dramatic in history (He wrote them down with His own finger so we wouldn’t miss how important they are). He doesn’t do anything like this until Daniel 5 (where he writes again, saying, “you have been measured and found wanting”). These ten, though immediately applicable to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, describe the innate moral code of all human beings, which is why they affect people every time they are posted. This is why many want them taken down.

For the next several posts, I will be taking and looking at each commandment individually, and its parallels in Deuteronomy 6, with other passages in tow. I can’t wait to dive into these things with you. Thank you for reading and I hope this is an encouragement to you.