Understanding The Power Of Fatherhood by Dr. Myles Munroe: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Root of Society

The greatest spiritual, social, economic, and psychological curse on humanity is fatherlessness. Every major problem in a nation — social, economic, academic, even physiological — is connected to the absence or ineffectiveness of fathering.

• The tree is only as good as its roots. A rotten root produces a dead tree; a contaminated root produces contaminated fruit.
• A house is only as valuable as its foundation. As long as a foundation is sound, no government condemns the building — the value is not in the roof or the windows, but the foundation.
• The quality of an offspring is determined by its genes, whether plant, animal, or human.
• The condition of the root affects the whole life of the plant, and the father is the root of the human family.
• The strength of the foundation affects the value of the house.

Humans are the only creatures who adopt a defect as a plan — an ordeal made into an ideal. A single-parent home, however common, is a defective environment, not a new standard. Fix it in your generation. Stay with your wife and your children.

Why Fathers Are Powerful

• A rotten root destroys the tree; a defective foundation condemns the house.
• Watering the root gives life to the whole plant — whatever goes into the father ends up in his children's children.
• Fathers guarantee fruitfulness and protect the family in a crisis, the way a root anchors a tree through a hurricane while the leaves and fruit cannot save it.
• The father works behind the scenes. Roots are never seen, yet they hold everything together. Serving your family as a father is not a gift; it is an obligation.

A house without a foundation is the greatest crisis a nation can have. A teacher is not a father. A guardian is not a father. A friend is not a father.

1 Corinthians 4:15

Though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ I became your father through the gospel; therefore, imitate me. A father is someone you can imitate — and you cannot imitate someone you never see. A man who is physically present but never truly seen by his children cannot be imitated, no matter how often he claims the title. A father is the one who is present, observable, and emulated. He does not point the way; he leads the way.

Why We Need Fathers

Malachi 4:6

When the Christ comes, He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, or else the land is struck with a curse. Scripture ties a nation's curse to the absence of fathers.

• Psalm 68:5 — He is a father to the fatherless.
• Psalm 103:13 — As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

Honor Your Father

Matthew 15:3-4 and Proverbs 20:20

Honor your father and mother; whoever curses father or mother is under judgment, and his lamp is snuffed out in pitch darkness. Dishonoring a father, scripture says, is a matter of life and death — a picture of how serious honoring parents is, not a call for actual violence.

The word "father" is the Hebrew abba — source, foundation, root, sustainer.

• Exodus 20:12 — Honor your father, your source, and your mother, that your days may be long in the land. This is the only one of the Ten Commandments with a promise attached.
• Ephesians 6:2 — The first commandment with a promise: that it may go well with you.

To honor means to respect, esteem, admire, encourage, elevate, magnify, celebrate, and recognize. Scripture never says "honor your good father" or "your holy father" — it simply says honor your father. Fathering is a position and a function, not a title or a name. You honor the position, not necessarily the person. A father does not have to be perfect to be honored — honoring him is what brings long life, regardless of his character.

Father as Source and Sustainer

Genesis 2:24

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. It is the man who leaves his father — the woman was never designed by God to leave hers. The word father means source and sustainer; the woman came out of the man, which is what made him "abba" in the first place. God's plan was for the woman to exchange fathers, not lose one — the father hands her, and his role, to her husband. That is the picture behind a father walking his daughter down the aisle and placing her hand in the groom's: he is transferring the role of source and sustainer, not simply giving permission for a wedding.

This is also the root of the biblical dowry. When Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, he went to her father, Laban, not to Rachel herself, and worked seven years to come up to the standard her father had built in her — then seven more, when Laban gave him Leah first.

What a Father Provides for a Daughter

1. Foundation

   A woman who never received worth from her father will settle for the wrong kind of attention, mistaking it for value.

2. Identity

   A daughter's sense of her own womanhood is shaped significantly by her father.

3. Direction

   Daughters need a father's counsel on decisions, and the security of hearing "that's a good decision" or "I think you should go this direction."

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4. Counsel

   On career, on relationships, on her body — without it, she is left to experiment and learn by trial and error.

5. Security

   Security to a woman means there is no competition — she is the only one, not one among many.

6. Protection

   From being taken advantage of, physically, economically, and financially.

7. Covering

   Whatever comes to her has to go through him.

A father who deliberately marks his daughter's sixteenth birthday with genuine honor and dignity — treating her as a woman of value, worth flowers and a proper evening out — gives her a standard for how a man should treat her for the rest of her life.

Obey Your Parents, Honor Your Father

Scripture distinguishes obeying parents from honoring a father and mother. A parent is whoever actually raised you, paid the bills, sat up with you through hard nights — that could be a grandmother, an aunt, or an uncle. A biological father who was absent for years and reappears expecting instructions to be followed can be honored as a father, but he has not earned the authority of a parent to be obeyed.

Genesis 9

When Noah lay drunk and exposed in his tent, one son ran out and told everyone what he had seen. The other two walked in backward, covering their father's nakedness without looking. Those two were blessed. The blessing comes with the honor, not with the gossip.

Spiritual Fatherhood

• Spiritual fatherhood is not a personal choice or preference — it is a position tied to who leads and covers a house.
• It is a divine appointment, not a self-chosen role.
• It comes with a particular anointing for that assignment, one that cannot simply be copied or competed with.
• It does not require perfection.
• Spiritual fathers have the power to protect — the way Moses interceded for Miriam when she overstepped and God moved against her.
• Honoring spiritual fathers protects and extends life and ministry.

Jesus said He spoke nothing of Himself, only what He heard the Father say — and because He honored the Father, the Father gave Him authority: "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased." To consistently acknowledge where you came from, spiritually, protects your ministry. Where there is no father acknowledged, there is no future secured.

How Fathers Are Dishonored

1. Familiarity — reducing a father to the status of a peer or friend, including calling him by his first name.
2. Treating them as common, rather than giving them honor above others.
3. Disrespect — in word or tone, even in what is said in front of them.
4. Taking them for granted.
5. Minimizing their anointing — assuming you carry the same grace they carry.
6. Magnifying their weaknesses instead of covering them.
7. Comparing yourself to them, without knowing the price they paid.
8. Treating them as an equal rather than honoring the difference in position.
9. Failing to respect that the anointing on their life sets them apart.