Every young man wants to have the perfect father and we get frustrated or even mad when we realize that our dad is far from perfect. Nevertheless, we must understand that there is no such thing as the perfect father (except for God). If you are a father, you will agree with me. You are NOT perfect. If you are a child and you are 6 years old or more, you already know your father is not perfect!
Fathers do some very dumb things. Take it from me, I’ve done some really stupid stuff and my kids know it and my wife can confirm it! But we don’t get up one morning and say to ourselves, “I think I will do some dumb things today and become a bad father”! That is not how it happens! Let’s take a look at a very good biblical example of just how we become lousy dads.
Solomon
Solomon’s experience fits our current series “The Perfect Dad,” because he was a long way from being a perfect father. He started out his reign as king of ancient Israel in pretty good fashion. When he came to power as a young man, instead of asking God for wealth and fame he asked for wisdom to rule God’s people. God honored his request for wisdom and kicked in the wealth and fame as a bonus.
After a while Solomon began marrying women from other nations, perhaps to form political alliances. In addition to the foolishness of polygamy, Solomon began adopting some of the pagan worship practices of his foreign wives. God wasn’t pleased of course and Solomon had to learn some valuable wisdom the hard way.
Solomon represents the two ways you can gain wisdom as a man. You can ask God for it since He loves to dispatch wisdom to the sincere; or you can learn wisdom the hard way by doing the wrong things.
“The 7 Worst Things Fathers Do.”
Which brings me to “The 7 Worst Things Fathers Do.” We want to look at the wisdom of staying away from wrong patterns of parenting. Every father makes mistakes but the wisdom of the Bible will help you avoid many of them. Solomon is the human author who was guided by the Holy Spirit to warn us of the mistakes we need to steer clear of in family life. Many of the Proverbs written by Solomon have to do with the father-child relationship.
Since there are seven things, I will take one at a time and briefly expose the problem. I suggest you take some time to study it more deeply from the book of Proverbs for yourself. Interestingly, there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs, so you can read and meditate on one chapter every day of the month.
The Magnificent Seven
So what are the Seven Worst Things fathers Do? I am glad you asked. Dads do a lot of things, but the seven worst things we can do are:
- Baby your child.
- Put your marriage last.
- Push Your Child Into Too Many Activities.
- Be Your Child’s Best Friend.
- Fail to Give Your Child Structure.
- Expect Your Child to Fulfill Your Dreams.
- Ignore Your Spiritual Life.
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