The father hood of God: Demystifying Fatherhood.

We live in a post-modern society which is buzzing, busy, innovative, progressive, ever changing and so forth. But we also live in a post-modern society that is laden with broken families struck with awful murders, as liberal as in no place in history, with teenagers more wayward and reckless. Actually, the teenage space has changed worlds apart since I finished my high school education just some 15 years ago. I am like seriously? we were the ones who ushered the “Dot.com” era at the turn of the millennium. We thought of ourselves as the most updated species of human beings walking on earth at that time, yet today I feel like an outdated 33-year-old young professional caught in between two generations (Apparently, I still do a lot of youth ministry).

I have found out that in the midst a morality crisis in my country (Kenya) that threatens to spiral out of control is an alarming statistic. I read in an article b the daily newspaper , the leading newspaper in Kenya prior to this year’s father’s day celebration that only 20% of a sample of 3000 indicated that they enjoyed their relationship with their earthly fathers, the rest either said that their fathers were missing, dead, or alive but absent in their lives, in other words alive but missing in action[1].

This speaks of Fatherhood crisis. How do the 80 percent navigate through the turbulent teenage years and into adulthood? I believe the agenda of the enemy still stands strong; to steal ,kill and to destroy and he is seeking to destroy a whole generation by destroying something fundamental to their bringing up, fragmenting homes and destroying fathers and father figures.

But also, God is our father and our earthly fathers are to picture our perfect heavenly father. There is how God set it up for us to emulate and follow, when we forget, disregard,or are not aware of how this system works, we experience fragmentation and breakdown of families and societies and eventually a whole generation.

If you fall in the category of the 80% above don’t worry, you are not alone, I fit in right there in (Ndaani ndaani ndaani)and I can attest its turbulent to manouvre this life if we don’t understand this concept. Fatherhood is central to our identity because fathers primarily give us our identity. I am not an expert who has maneuvered this road, I am a learner and what I believe is that when we understand and Know God as our father; whether we have had earthly fathers or not then almost all of our life’s major issues have already been solved.

Behold what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God, and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. (1^st John 3:1 American standard version)

In part 2, we delve deeper into the aspect of Gods fatherhood, we will find out that he is our source and identity. We will also try to meet the two, the fatherhood of God and the crisis of our earthly fathers.

Stay put!