Father's day

On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.

he next year, a Spokane, Washington, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.

In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last.

Today, when the whole world is celebrating father’s day

Our father God in heaven: His compassion - Psalm 103:13, Deut 1:29-31, John 3:16, Eph 1: 4-6 - Blessings, election and predestination

Our response to father God in heaven - Lord’s prayer - Mat 6:9-13 - His will be done on earth as it is in heaven

We as fathers in family 1 Thes 2:11, Eph 6:4

1 Thes 2:11 - Exhort, encourage and implore

Exhort - Calling someone alongside to help. One biblical example - John the Baptist (Luke 3:7-18), produced repentance (8)

1 Thes 4:1-12 : About a walk to please God (4:1), Aim- sanctification (4:3), Excel still more (4:10)

Encourage - Console or cheer up someone. Who needs encouragement? Everyone! Discouragement, spiritual warfare, sin. Encourage one another - 1 Thes 5:1. Result - Will not be hardened by sin Heb 3:13

Implore - Insist (Bear witness), easy to give up. Because of rebellious heart and affinity towards sin

Our fatherly involvement in the church

1 John 2:1, 7, 12, 28