According to U.S. Census, there are an estimated 70.1 million fathers. While mothers are placed in a higher pedestal in today's society, Father's Day is nevertheless the nation's fifth largest card-sending holiday. On this special day to honor your father, dad-in-law, son-in-laws, and granddads, The Gospel Herald has listed out several key Bible verses that may help you jump starting your card writing and gift ideas (listed below).
The history of Father's Day originated from this nation's Christian heritage, where the idea of celebrating fathers was conceived slightly more than a century ago by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington.
In 1909, while Dodd listened to a Mother's Day Bible sermon at church, she wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm. In the following year, a day was chosen for the first Father's Day celebration, June 17, 1910, proclaimed by the Spokane's mayor because it was the month of Smart's birth.
But it wasn't until 1966 did Lyndon Johnson made the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed a law that made this a permanent national holiday to celebrate Father's Day.
According to studies, the majority of the children in America have fathers who remain an active part of their lives, but 24 million children in America- one out of three- live in homes without fathers. A study of 13,986 imprisoned women showed that more than half of them grew up without their father. Forty-two percent grew up in a single-mother household, and 16 percent lived with neither parent.
In 2012, Prof. Ronald Rohner examined the cases of more than 10,000 children around the world, and he discovered that a distant or cold and absent father damages a child for the rest of his life, often resulting in some kind of criminal activity or substance abuse. He concluded that a father's love is indisputably as important to a child's emotional development as a mother's.
Father's Day: How Epidemic of Absent Father Destroys Society
In this nation, children are in need of positive role models. And Christians are called to live modeling the life of Jesus, so that those who see may also resemble by example to walk in the way of the Lord in spirit and truth. Through sacrifice and love, our children can then come to feel and understand a glimpse of God's love for them. This sacred duty of being a father is often times neglected, so that is why the Church and families should celebrate and the encourage the fathers as Dodd did after listening to a church sermon celebrating Mother's Day about one hundred years ago.
Here are Bible verses about the role of fathers and husbands:
When a father fears the Lord, the children can live in peace.
In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge. [Proverbs 14:26 ESV]
A father is the protector and fighter for his family.
Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place. [Deuteronomy 1:29-31 NIV]
A father is a leader in the family, whom the children can look up to as role models.
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." [Joshua 24:15 ESV]
Besides providing for the family, a father gives instructions and biblical wisdom to his children.
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. [Deuteronomy 6:6-9 ESV]
Like our heavenly father, our earthly father mirrors the love that Christ has shown to us.
"Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous; is not proud; is not conceited; does not act foolishly; is not selfish; is not easily provoked to anger; keeps no record of wrongs; takes no pleasure in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things." [I Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV]
A father's role in the family to to help kids learn the scripture. Encouragement for husbands, son-in-law, brother-in-laws.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV]
God works through fathers to impact their children and families.
For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him." [Genesis 18:19 ESV]
A father rejoices when their son shows prudence and wisdom.
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him. [Proverbs 23:24 ESV]
Without the father, there would be no son, and without the son, there would be no father.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. [Proverbs 22:6 ESV]
Because of our father's sacrifice, we are able to enjoy the fruits and the provisions.
The righteous who walks in his integrity- blessed are his children after him! [Proverbs 20:7 ESV]
Blessings and curse are passed down from one generation to the next.
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." [Exodus 34:6-7 ESV]
A good father disciplines his son out of love and with love.
My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. [Proverbs 3:11-12 ESV]
Do not provoke your children.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. [Ephesians 6:4 ESV]
Parenting is a temporary stewardship. Marriage is forever. The best thing you can do for your kids is to be a good husband.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. [Genesis 2:24 ESV]
God cares about the relationship between fathers and their kids.
And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." [Malachi 4:6 ESV]
