As a father, two verses stood out to me in today’s devotion for the 50 Days of Prayer and Fasting:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them.  Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. – Ephesians 6:4 (NLT)

Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged. – Colossians 3:21 (NLT)

“Do not provoke” and “do not aggravate” are two exhortations by Paul given to Fathers about their relationship with their children.    In the former verse the word translated “provoke” is suggestive of a deliberate action to make a child angry. In the latter verse the word translated “aggravate” is the idea of continual action or ongoing actions that involves “quarreling” with a child.

I’ve got to confess that I’m guilty of doing both things that these verses warn against.  I’m guilty of provoking my children to anger.  How?  There has been a time when I’ve promised to do something with my children and I’ve broken that promise.  Oh sure, to me the excuse was valid and something I just couldn’t get out of but to them it was a broken promise from their father.  What that experience taught me is the importance to be careful of what I promise - and what I do promise, I need to follow through on.

It’s the exhortation from Colossians that probably troubles me the most.   Paul writes about the consequence of a father aggravating their children - discouragement.   Discouragement has got to be one of the worst emotions any child has to deal with and certainly is a major contributor to so many other potentially harmful and destructive emotions - fear, depression, and anger are a few.  The truth is Dads, our children look up to us.  God has given us a divine responsibility and role in the home as the leader of the family and our children are looking to us as their source of inspiration and guidance (even though they won’t admit it 90% of the time!).

This hit home in a really shocking way recently when I woke up this past Saturday and every single one of my children came up to me first thing and said, “Dad, are you going to do something with us today?”  Why did it hit home?  Because for the past two weeks I have been at the church office a lot doing things that I had committed to, completing work that didn’t get done during the day because of unexpected things happening through the week and in the process I had aggravated my children by not spending time with them.  Oh sure, I gave them much hugs and kisses and tucked them in bed at night (when I could),  I wrestled with them here and there, but really, all those things I had done were short in duration and sparse in frequency.

It wasn’t so much the words that they said but the emotion behind the words that really caused me to pay attention.  When they asked, “Dad, are you going to do something with me today?” you could sense the resignation in their voice like they were almost waiting to hear me say, “Sorry guys, I’ve got to go get some work done.”  So what did I do?  Well I wish I could say, I cleaned my schedule that day and devoted the entire day to them, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

What I did do is make a conscious effort to take the time I did have with them that day and make the most of it instead of falling back on the excuse I used all too often “I just need some time for myself…”.  I did the same the next day.  I did the same the next.   The point is, I realized that lately I had been saying, “no” more often to my children’s requests for me to do things with them than “yes” and that was leading to discouragement.  How am I doing?  Better, but I’m still working on it.  Pray for me and if you see me, remind me of this post

I’m convinced that one of the ways we as fathers aggravate our children the most is when we simply don’t spend time with them!  Today was definitely another wake up call for me and a reminder of things I must continue to do in my life to encourage my children.  Excuse me, Liam, Jenna, and Karissa are here for Time Out Tuesday - I wanna go see what they are doing…