Beautiful Girls

The times are changing! Life is like this. All parents say, "enjoy them now because they grow up so fast!" It is strange to see your little girls grow into young women before your eyes, but it does happen. It is amazing to see and watch. My job as a dad is to be sure that I am there loving their mother and leading them day by day. We are reading through Esther with the older girls and it provides us with a great picture of what a dad should be in the life of his daughter. Mordecai (by the way means warrior, men need to be a gentle warrior for the sake of their loved ones) adopted Esther when she was young. He taught her and guided her and she learned that he was good and she obeyed him. When she was taken into the palace of the greatest ruler of the day, Mordecai still came by everyday to see how she was getting along. That is a good consistent dad! I read a quote recently about Jonathan Edwards, the last of the American Puritans. He was a great man, maybe the greatest scholar and thinker that America has ever produced! The quote said, "Edwards read the Bible diligently everyday to his 11 children and prepared them for worship, his own children benefited greatly from his ministry, committing themselves to lives of holiness and service." I want to be like that!

The Time When Kings Go Out To Battle

I am sitting not too far from where we believe that King David sent one of his best men to die in battle. If you know the story you know that the cause for this terrible thing was that the king had taken this man's wife for himself and now she was pregnant. He was caught by the cords of his own sin and had a choice to make. Would he confess and repent or would he cover up. For over a year he covered it up until God sent his prophet and David's friend Nathan to confront the king. It took courage, humility and wisdom to do what Nathan had to do. He confronted the king and David repented but the consequences never left his house. What was the cause of this sliding into sin? How did a man who God said is a man after my own heart get to this place? It is clear in the first verse of the chapter, "At the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab... But David remained at home! He stopped battling against sin, he gave up a responsibility to someone else that was his responsibility to carry. He committed a sin of omission, he did not do what God called him to do! This is an easy sin for us men to commit! We get tired, we get discouraged or we get fed up and so we just quit!! But we cant there is too much at stake! Our wives, kids, friends and future generations will pay the cost for what we do not do that we should have done. We need to go out everyday to do spiritual battle. We need to love, share about Jesus, serve and stay clean. The consequences for not doing this are deadly.