These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates.- Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Today is Father’s Day. I wish to take the time to dedicate today’s writing to each and every man who has taken on the role of being a father. I read at one time that anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad. It saddens my heart when I hear yet another story of a father who has left his family and children and gone Awol (absent without official leave). I believe that the strength of a home, society and nation is directly in correlation with the existence of having a strong father figure within its walls. Personally, I am thankful for my dad, Richard J. (Dick) Tarjick. As I’ve written before, dad never knew the love of an earthly father here on earth but I truly believe he did a remarkable job of raising four kids and always being a great provider for us all in the family.

In Genesis 3, we read the scenario where Adam & Eve have been snared and lied to by the enemy and tricked into eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In verse eight we read. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. And in verse 9, God calls out to Adam. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” Did you see that? God called out to Adam, the man of the house. The one in whom was He had placed in charge and gave dominion to back in Chapter 2. Scriptures tell us in Chapter 2 and verse 16 that God commanded Adam “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Although it was Eve which first took the fruit and tasted it and gave it to Adam, God held Adam responsible for allowing sin into their “household” if you will.

Men, we are responsible for our families. God has given us this role and title and does not take it lightly at all when it comes to leading our families in His ways. I truly believe a great majority of the issues we are seeing and experiencing in our society today is due to the lack of men who have forsaken their calling as Men of God and have left that responsibility to their wives or more tragically, have left and forsaken their families altogether.  Here are just a few examples I came across while preparing for this writing:

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (US Dept. Of Health/Census) – 5 times the average,
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
• 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  (Center for Disease Control)
• 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average.  (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26)
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  (National Principals Association Report)

And these are just the highlight of statistics that I came across. Men, if you love your families as I do, please answer the call that God has given you and step up the plate and be the father that they are so desperately needing you to be. I’ve heard some men say, “Well, I’m just not going to tell my children what to think or what to believe. They can choose to think for themselves”. My friend, if we as fathers don’t lead our children in the ways of the Lord and direct them in the way they should go, this world surely will and the world’s way always leads to death and destruction. Yes, the choice is ours as it was for Adam from the very beginning my friend, but the price we will ultimately pay in the end will cost us more than we fail to realize. It’s time to rise up O’ Man of God and take back our rightful place in our homes, jobs, cities, societies and world. Who’s with me?

For His Kingdom,