Real fathers are providers, priests, prophets to their families not mere baby-makers – Agyinasare

Bishop Charles Agyinasare has said real fathers are those who work hard to provide for their families and also serve as priests and prophets at home as well as treat their wives as queens and give their children all the needed attention.

Teaching about fatherhood on Father’s Day, Sunday, 21 June 2020, Bishop Agyinasare said God puts a lot of premium on fatherhood and, so, the Bible makes a lot of emphasis about fathers.

“If you go into Scripture, there are 1,190 verses that pertain to father, fathering, fatherhood and fatherlessness”, he said in his virtual church service at the Perez Dome, adding: “Fathers alone are mentioned 700 times in the Bible. And in Malachi 4, the Bible puts a lot of importance on fathers from verses 5 and 6. It says: ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse’”.

“So, the Bible is saying, in the last days, if there is not a return of the heart of fathers to children and the heart of children to fathers, God will strike the earth with a curse”, he noted.

“It makes fathering and fatherhood very important and very special”, Bishop Agyinasare observed. “Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 23:2: ‘A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.’ And Hebrews 12:8 says: ‘But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.’”

“The truth of the matter is that fatherless children lack direction, the blessing of a father and identity”, he said.

“When we talk about fathers, there are different kinds of fathers: biological father, that is one who gave birth to you; we have a surrogate father, the one who took care of you; we have father in the Lord, the one who leads you to Christ; we have father in the Ministry, the one who nurtured you in Ministry; or we have father of the church, your pastor; we have father of the nation, who is the President; father of a company, etc”, he explained.

He continued: “The New Testament starts with fatherhood. Mathew 1:1, the Bible says: ‘The Book of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham’. So, the Bible starts by showing us the fathers of Jesus Christ. It puts a lot of importance on fatherhood”.

“When we talk about a father, we are not talking about a baby-maker. Some fathers are just baby-makers, they impregnate a woman, they produce a baby and that is all. When we talk about fathers, we are not talking about people who just have a title as a father but they don’t play the function or role of a father”, he pointed out.

“Mostly, fathers must follow other fathers to be good fathers. However, the American Psychological Committee says that only 34 per cent of adult males could say that they considered their own father to be a role model. That means that a lot of fathers are not role models. The truth of the matter is that fatherless children are more likely to commit crimes, so, the American Psychological Committee says that the number problem facing society today has to do with absentee fathers”, Bishop Agyinasare said.

He intimated that: “It's the same all over the world. Twelve per cent of delinquents, that is youth who are in crime, youth who misbehave; come from two-parent homes. Eighty-eight per cent of bad children come from either a single-parent home or a no-parent home. And, so, children who grow up without a father, tend to have a problem with self-acceptance and emotional security”.

“In Psalm 78: 3 – 8, it shows us that fathers must be those who hand over the baton to children. And it goes from children to children. So, fatherhood is a serious responsibility because it’s about things that transcend generations”, the founder of Perez Chapel International said.

Touching on what is expected of fathers, Bishop Agyinasare said: “Fathers must be providers. If they are going to be providers, they must work hard. Unfortunately, there are many lazy fathers. If at 10 am in the morning, and as a father your hands are still between your legs and you’re singing: ‘Nearer my God to Thee’, you’re a lazy father because fathers must work hard to provide for the family. Unfortunately, there are mothers today, who are doing two, three jobs and the father is doing some [insignificant] job, he’s lazy, by the time you go to his house at 11 o’clock, he has a towel around his waist with a big stomach like mine and picking his teeth after eating ampesie”.

Fathers, Bishop Agyinasare added, “must be priests to the home”. “The father must stay in the place of intercession for the house. The father must be interceding for the destiny of his children and the family. The Bible tells us in the Book of Genesis how Isaac prayed for Rebecca when Rebecca had no child and there was a breakthrough”.

Further, he said: “The father must be the prophet of the home. As a prophet, he must buy into the mind of God to know the destinies of his children and guide them to it. As the father of the home, he must buy into the future and plan for the family. As the prophet of the home, he must speak into the prophetic destinies of his children”.

Additionally, he said: “As the father of the house, he must cherish his wife as a queen and he as the king of the house. That means that he must not maltreat the wife or the mother of his children. If he’s not still married to the mother of his children, he must respect her all the same. He must not speak derogatorily about the mother of his children to his children”.

A father must also “be there for the children. He must be in the lives of his children”.

“A father cannot know the child until he spends time with them. And before you can spend quality time with your children, there must be trust. And, so, your children don’t just need your gift, they need their daddy in their lives, their daddy must make time for them. When you make time for your children, they become more confident in unfamiliar settings, they are able to deal with frustrations, they are able to adapt to changing circumstances, they make the children gain a sense of independent identity and those children are more likely to mature into compassionate adults, they make them more sociable but absentee fathers suffer in their old age because the children don’t have a relationship with them”, Bishop Agyinasare mentioned.

Citing an example in the Bible, Bishop Agyinasare said: “If you look at the family of Lot, Lot lost his family because you can see that probably he wasn’t making time for them”.

He noted that the consequences of fatherlessness can be dire. “It is said that fatherless children, on the average, score less on their tests and fatherless children are five times more likely to be poor and ten times more likely to be extremely poor”, even though he admitted that there are a few exceptions to that rule.

“Fatherless teens are more likely to be sexually active. Fatherless daughters are more likely to be single mothers”, he noted.