Fathers, Love Their Mother!




Heard a quote concerning a renowned Christian Pastor. It was his widow who was interviewed after remarrying following his death.
When asked how her new husband could measure up to the great man of her past she said simply her late husband loved Jesus, but her new husband loved her.
The only indictment of a great pastor and theologian, but a stinging one.
A man cannot be a good father until he is a good husband to his wife. He can do all sort of wonderful things for his kids and give them all his attention but if he doesn’t give them the picture of how a godly man keeps his covenant to his wife he has failed. The children can feel completely loved by their father but not know what love is unless he also shows it in how he keeps his relationship to the one with whom he took a vow.
Paul tells the Ephesians in chapter five:
“25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, …28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body.”
God established the family this way so that boys would see what it meant to love a woman and girls would see and know what to look for in a man. When the father fails he leaves such a hole in their knowledge.
Even if you have already been divorced from their mother, men, it’s never too late to respect her and be godly and committed in all future relationships.
We do so much living at the expense of the next generation and then hope and pray they get it right. Men, it’s time to step up to the plate…time to lead by example. No one can teach your children like you can, simply by doing the right thing. Honoring God and working hard and being responsible and teaching them how to respect themselves and their mother - and by doing so they might just respect you too.
In the movie” Fireproof” The husband and wife are estranged but still living in the same house. They are about to go through a messy divorce when the husband, Caleb, played by Kirk Cameron, recognizes he cannot love without Christ. He commits himself to Jesus then commits himself to fixing the marriage he destroyed by his selfish ungodly behavior.
In one scene Caleb gets on his knees and confesses the way he has hurt his wife and begs her forgiveness and every time I watch that I cry too because I did the same things in my marriage. But God got to us in time for my daughters to see what God can restore, and what God can do to make a man a better husband and father.
I speak as a sinner, saved by grace, when I tell you these things. Only God could make me able to love my wife the way I should. It is not our place to judge how much our spouse is loving us but to look at ourselves and ask if we are truly loving the other.
If you think you love someone are you wanting the best of them for yourself, or the best God has for them?
True love? We look for it and long for it and even think, occasionally, that we’ve found it…but what is it, really?
Most of us have an idea what love looks like but do we really have any idea what it is?
The Bible says…it’s God. God is Love.
1 John 4:16b “…God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
Love wants the best for others…right?
Take it another step: Love wants the best for others before self…right?
One more step: Love wants what God wants for others…Right again?
Love wants love for the one loved. To love is to want God in your heart so that you can show God – who is love – to the person you wish to love.
Love is to sacrifice and put the needs of others before yourself. That is what Jesus did. This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10
When someone says you can have the love of Jesus know this, that Jesus shows His love in that He gave everything for you; that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
The greatest commandment is that we love the Lord our God with all that we have and all that we are. The irony of this is that we cannot do it without Him. Seems God in His great mercy made us to need Him. It’s really all about Him; everything is about Him; this love thing is about Him – and yet in His love and mercy He makes it about us.
Isn’t that what Love is?
Fathers, honor God by showing your children what love is - by the love and respect you give to their mother. This is the best gift you can give to your kids.