GlocalNet

Sunday is still reverberating over those present in worship. We finished the MANUP series and I concluded it on respect. This is the one thing a man needs from those significant in his life more than anything. You can download it or listen on the internet at northwoodchurch.org. I defined what respect was, why it is important, who gives us respect, and how we gain it. I gave a few moments to come and kneel and pray at the end of the service. The front of the platform was crammed with men sobbing, broken, fathers and sons kneeling and praying together. I had people grabbing me, later emails and calls - telling me that that was the best sermon I’ve ever preached. It wasn’t—it just hit a cord—a need. Leonard Ravenhill spoke at our church many years ago. He told me, “Bob, focus on the families, that’s the overriding sense I get.” He was right then and he’s right now. As our society slowly sees the dissolving of the family, more than anyone else, it is the destruction of men, their loss of leadership and of respect that will ultimately doom us. The problem in reversing the trend goes to the heart of Fatherhood. It takes a generation to produce a man, and it can be lost in a single generation.

Many of you know I love to read the Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. He wrote in The Home we Build Together, “Jews spoke Yiddish for a thousand years. They lost it in a single generation because one generation did not teach it to their children. Freedom can be lost in the same space of time, if we do not teach our children why we are here, in this country, with these traditions, and how it came to be what it is.”

Fathers, stand up, act courageous, act like men—your sons are following you.