Fatherlessness and God’s Solution

Continued from Spiritual Parenting and the Spirit of a Nation:

In June of 1962, in the Engle V. Vitale case,
they decided to take prayer out of school. In November, just five months
later, the father of our nation President Kennedy was murdered…

Teen pregnancies, high-school drop outs, increased violence on college campuses,
low test scores… It seemed something was unleashed on our country that we had not
seen to this degree yet. But…

God had an answer called the Jesus Movement. Thousands of
young people–long-hair, didn’t smell right, didn’t act right–were hit by the
Holy Spirit and set on fire for Jesus! I have met so many that were birthed in
this revival and are still going strong today, but…

Many of these young radicals went to their pastors, their
parents, leaders and said, “I feel God calling me to lay my life down for the
nations of the world, to ‘go’ and do what He said to do.” And their leaders
looked at them and said, “That’s nice, but go and get a college education
first, go get a job first and then maybe go…” And this radical movement of God
was shut down just as quickly as it started!

In 1997, I preached a message on this very subject to an
adult crowd of around a thousand in California; at the end of my message, I had
an altar call: “If you were called as a teenager during this time of the
Jesus Movement and felt the Lord asking you to ‘go’ and you were told to wait
by your parents, leaders, pastors, I want you to come to the front, and let’s
renew your calling to the nations of the earth.”

Over 300 people ran to the
altar! Crying, sobbing, asking the Lord for forgiveness and promising to not do
that to their children and grandchildren. Many were pastors that repented
for telling these young Jesus Movement disciples not to go. It was a stunning
moment that I saw repeated many times over as I shared this message.

Now, of course I believe in a college education, but America
has made school and money our gods. I want to train my kids in their gifting,
their “bent,” as Proverbs 22:6 puts it: “Train a child in the way [or bent, that is
‘gifting’ they have] he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

When we don’t teach our kids to pray and fast about how God
wants their life to look, but just tell them how we want it to look, I don’t
believe we are honoring Scripture.

My natural kids and my spiritual kids understand I want the
very best for them and that I will get in the dirt with them and help them walk
it out, I will point them to the Word and the voice of God; I will not tell
them what to do. That is what our nation needs: spiritual parents that put NO
other gods before them and when they blow it, are waiting with arms wide to
dust them off.

God is turning the hearts of the fathers to the children…