“Make yourself bald and cut off your hair, because of your precious children…for they shall go from you into captivity.” Michah 1:16
I know. Great motivational quote from Scripture to begin a post with, eh? But there is a reason. A few weeks ago, I wrote a “Part I” to this post, but I felt there was something still to be said. If you recall, the last post dealt with the ways of the kings of Israel and Judah, and how they either did, or did not, follow the ways of the Lord. The point of it was that we fathers (and mothers) have a responsibility to walk before the Lord, to follow His ways, not only for ourselves, but for our kids.
The verse above from Micah is a shocking reminder of the consequences when we don’t. When Micah wrote, the people of Judah and Israel were on the verge of being invaded, and taken captive, by the Assyrian empire. Why? They had continued to walk in the ways of their fathers before them, and those ways were not good. Evil begat evil. Bad choice begat bad choice. And fathers begat sons and daughters into it all. The failure of the people to worship the Lord God alone, and their propensity for worshipping worthless idols in His place, was passed from generation to generation, father to son.
So here we sit, in 2010. Things haven’t changed much. As a dad, I’m faced every day with the very real temptation to worship the worthless instead of the Worthy One. Every day, I have the choice to follow the ways of my father (who led me in the right way), the way of the Lord, or I can follow the ways of my flesh. I can bow down to lust, prosperity, position, pride, anger, etc. Or there is the ever dangerous, and seldom realized idol of uselessness. Oh, how many useless things do we bow down to every day in the West?!!! How many pointless endeavors take up our time? Time that could be spent drawing closer to the Lord of all, or doing His will in this lost and dying world.
Because, my friends, if we don’t, we’re leading our kids straight into captivity. Sin enslaves. It captures us and carries us off with hooks in our noses, to be led wherever it chooses to lead us. That’s the future of our kids, if we don’t wake up and walk in the ways of the Lord ourselves.
The answer is simple: Jesus. I leave you with His words, which outweigh anything I could ever say:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin, and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
Amen.
The Wading Pool 