In my
last post, I highlighted that that we were going to address
some attributes of God as our father. My attention amongst many attributes that
we can associate God with as our father as
1.
Our source
2.
Our identity and
3.
The one who takes/has taken initiative
We tackled the first one, God our father as source and now let’s
take about the rest of the attributes.
2. God our father as our identity
The biggest battle of a human being the battle of identity.
Once we figure out the why of our reason for being in this world and once we
figure what our mandate is, then we are good to go as regards to life. Similarly,
man (Male)’s biggest battle is the battle of identity. A man without identity
is like a commoner sitting on a jumbo jet and trying to control it to its
destination. I believe a lot of boy child issues like ‘drugs and substance abuse,
irresponsible, illicit sexual behavior, violence, suicides, low self-esteem, a
lot of transgender issues; Homosexualism, etc stem from this core that the
identity of the male child is under threat. We saw it from the statistics in
the last post that only 20% of young people enjoy a healthy relationship with
their fathers.
This can only spell danger to many people growing up in a
miasma of a great identity crisis, our young people are always the biggest
target of a negative media influence which majorly wants to portray a negative
or a superficial self-image.
But what is man’s identity? (male and female) Are we defined
by our pasts, our dysfunctional or even functional families? Are we what the
media tells us we are; that a functional man is successful (material wise), is appealing,
has a great drive of fulfilling all kinds of desires? I will ask you a direct
question. Who are you?
John 1: 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to
those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children
of God— 13 children born not of natural descent,
nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God
The primary identity of man is of being Gods child. You are
not what you do. You are not defined by what you wake up early in the morning everyday
to do? What you do is very important but does not suffice to define you.
The bible says that if we receive Christ, then we have received
the privileged permission of being called a child of God.
43 God our father as
the one who has taken initiative.
Men are
wired to take initiative in providing solutions, giving direction, innovations
and simply calling out things, creating and executing dreams and most importantly,
building and sustaining a home.
There is
nothing as powerful as a man with a purpose who takes initiatives, is not
afraid of risking it out to bring success.
This is a
picture of who our heavenly father is; the one ho has taken the initiative.
First of all, when he created man, he made sure that man had the suitable environment
for his success on earth. Simply no human being ever born on this earth has
been born incomplete as if God will come and complete the work of creation
later.
And even
after the fall of man, God took the initiative of doing whatever he could to
restore man to himself. And that’s what love is; it takes initiative.
John 3:16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son, that whosoever may believe in him will not perish but have everlasting
life.
In conclusion I will address the
fathers or if you are a father figure or a man in the road of finding your
purpose.
-
Fatherhood is not chest thumping or self-advocating:
I have heard men who are disgusted with other people exclaim “Utatambua Leo Mimi
ni mwanaume” or if a man is annoyed by a woman, then in an anger rush throw
careless words which are demeaning or less deserving of respect.
A lion never
roams around the jungle announcing itself as a lion. It just prowls stealthily
and though the beast is not the fastest animal on land it will bring down an
animal twice as fast as itself.
-
Fatherhood
is not male chauvinism: You don’t climb the fatherhood figure by belittling
others, looking down on members of the opposite sex. Irrationality, roughness,
violence has never brought anyone near the Guinness book of records. Real men
are calm, collected and reasonable and is able to control his anger. The bible
likens a man who has mastered his anger to a fortified city.
-
Remember a man always takes the initiative. Don’t
sit down and observe as your world crumbles before you. You can do something.
God has made the man (The woman too) as potent as he can be to tackle anything
that sets itself against him. Its time fathers offer leadership and direction
to their homes. Fathers will not sit and lament when their sons and daughters
waste away under the pressure of this world. Men carry solutions, foresight. A
man at his best (Man with God) can conquer anything!!
Genesis 1
:27 So God created mankind in his own image,
