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VOL VIII   NO. 6  JUNE 2007

REV. ROBERT KELLEY

 


To The Fathers and Godly Men

 

Rev. Robert Kelley is the founder and president of Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. and pastored the St. Mark Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon at the time this was published.

 

The world is going the way God has foretold through all His prophets, Jesus Christ His Son and His apostles.  But does our community just have to go out like that?  Or did you fathers labor long hours in fields, factories and wars just to watch your descendants destroy themselves in the corrosive muck of drugs, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases, lawlessness, incarceration and violent deaths?  Is this also why you endured racial insults, taunts and discrimination to watch our community totally breakdown and collapse under the weight of our participation in the rebellion against God?

 

Happy Father´s Day!  Fathers, godly men; we are not helpless!  I write to you as I did the mothers and godly women to appeal for your heartfelt prayers of faith before God crying out, "Lord, spare our people and nation.  Save our hard-headed and stiff-necked men!"  You may believe this is harsh and alarmist since you and your boys are safe and prospering now.  But as the chaotic aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita showed, when the community breaks down, everybody is impacted.

 

Restoring our men and community then, must be everybody´s problem but especially the fathers and godly men since we are God´s designated leaders and warriors in the image of Christ (Genesis 2:7-9, 15-24, 3:16-20; 1 Corinthians 11:2-12, 14:34-38; 1 Timothy 2:8-3:7; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5)!  It is far past time we stop seeing the war imagery of the New Testament as merely metaphorical.  There is a real, albeit invisible global war raging on this planet.  God and His sons at war with the devil and his hordes over human souls (Ephesians 6:10-12)!  Therefore, men, the call to prayer for revival is also a call to arms for us (Ephesians 6:13-18)!

 

While our foes may be invisible, the casualties they inflict daily among our men are visible and staggering!  For example, according to Armstrong Williams in an October 2006 article in the National Liberty Journal, more of our men are in prison than are in college.  Of those that go to college and then move on to land high profile jobs in government, industry or sports, we all too frequently hear of their moral and character failures.  Many of these men are as busy abandoning their families through irresponsibility and divorce as those who have no college education!

 

How many intelligent and articulate black men have I met that have bought into the rebellious lie of these times that morality and character are a matter of personal invention or choice.  They know as they explain this lie that it is illogical and wicked.  However, because they wish to continue living their lives as they see fit without guilt (so they think), they put it out there.  And since they have no transcendent, bedrock morality, what do they value?

 

They highly value themselves, approval, position, power, achievement however gained, self-serving pursuits, money, material goods and things that go "bling, bling" around their necks and on their bodies.  They are haughty, disrespectful of parents and authority, unruly, ungrateful, unabashed lovers of pleasure, lacking self-control, stubborn, irreconcilable, cruel and without real love for people or God.  Some are outwardly religious, but know nothing of God´s life changing power (2 Timothy 3:1-5)!

 

Even as good as our armor and weapons are to fight against the demonic forces who have taken our men captive, many of us fathers and godly men have sat idly by so long, we need basic training again (Hebrews 5:12-14)!  We are the reason most of these men have no regard for local churches.  We are weak in the knowledge of Christ; we are spiritually impotent or willfully corrupt in rebellion against the Lord.  We have permitted the feminization of our churches where the thoroughly masculine Jesus of the Bible has been replaced by one who is more like a woman in catering to them.  We must repent!

 

We must also repent before the Lord for our disavowal of what He created us to be as men in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-28; Psalm 8:3-8; Hebrews 2:5-13)!  Indeed, we must stop apologizing for being men and embrace the purposes and destiny our Creator has called us to in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:28-30; I Corinthians 6:3a; I Peter 2:9-10; Revelation 1:4-6)!  Those things said, we do need to apologize to the fatherless and widows for not looking after them as God does (Psalm 68:5-6; James 1:27); our wives for not treating them as Christ modeled for us (Ephesians 5:25-33)!  Our godly wives will joyfully follow our lead when we follow Christ´s (Ephesians 5:22-24)!

 

We must apologize to our sons and the young men in our churches for failing to model biblical manhood to them.  A manhood that displays the morality, character and values of the living God; a manhood they as well as many men outside of the churches scoff at as being unrealistic because of our failure!  We must also apologize to our daughters for our failure because they went out looking for men just like us and found them to everyone´s grief!  Biblical manhood is possible to consistently live out, but only through the power of the Holy Spirit!

 

Finally, after revival overtakes us (Lord willing) and we do strap on our armor and take up our weapons, we must apologize to any man we dare witness Christ to as we go since the unsaved know what a hypocritical mess we have made of things.  If we do not rise up now to liberate as many of our men as possible from Satan´s camp, he will soon be leading the remaining sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:1-3) to all out war against us (Daniel 8:23-25)!

 

 

©2007 Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc