Fathers Matter

A while back I was listening to a teaching series by Perry Noble called Adam & Eve and he shared some statistics in one of his messages that I now want to share with you as we approach Father's Day. 

• 90% of the inmates in prison did not ever have a relationship with their father 

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes 

• 90% of all runaways are from fatherless homes 

• 85% of all children with behavior disorders are from fatherless homes 

• 80% of all rapists are from fatherless homes 

• 71% of all high school drop outs are from fatherless homes 

• 71% of teenage pregnancies are taking place in fatherless homes 

And Dave Ramsey recently tweeted "Children without a father in the home are 2x more likely to be poor." 

What am I trying to say? Despite what you may have heard from culture, fathers matter. You see...

In our culture a man is often portrayed as an idiot, which is partly why so many women think they and their children will do just fine without one...

Our culture encourages women who haven't found a husband yet, but who want to have a baby, to just go ahead and get pregnant via artificial insemination, as if the baby will do just as fine without a dad as with a dad...

It's considered "cool" in our culture for a lesbian couple to adopt children, as if the children will do just as well with two moms as they will with a mom and a dad...

In other words, culture says dads don't matter. But this is a lie of Satanic origin that Christians should be careful not to buy into. Focus on the Family says "There is no mistaking the majority of more than 30 years of social science research that indicates children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father. These studies show this is the best possible environment for children to grow and thrive." 

Fathers...YOU MATTER. And we can best learn to be a good earthly father as we follow the loving example of our Heavenly Father. I hope you'll make the decision to do that if you haven't already this Father's Day. If you need help with that I'd encourage you to listen to a message I once preached entitled: Today You'll Be With Me In Paradise.