Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
When men are blessed with fatherhood status, most of us exude with joy, pride, thankfulness, responsibility, and protection toward our children.
Christian men understand that these little ones given to us are from the Lord and most of us take on willingly the responsibility of raising our children God’s way.
After all Christian Dads want to see their children blessed with “every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3) like they are. They also want their children to be happy and content and to grow into well-balanced adults who have learnt to make wise choices in life for themselves.
But this is where Dads need to show wisdom in being well-balanced fathers in their responsibilities toward their children. For it is so easy to allow our joy, pride, and protection to smother our children’s individuality, or to be so loose in our training and disciplining of them, that their individuality ends up over ruling our responsibility!
Kent Hughes puts it like this in his book ‘Disciplines of a Godly Man….
Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a wet bar of soap – too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too loose a grip and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control… We ought to begin our fatherhood by holding the tiny helpless bar snugly, but as it grows, gradually and wisely loosen our grip