I chose to launch my blog with a series focusing on families. In particular, I’ve sought to examine various aspects of a father’s role as head of his own family. Abram/Abraham was a great template for this. If you need a quick review, this should help:

• Everything begins with God, who commits Himself in covenant to men, who then multiply covenant faithfulness through their marriage and children. God chose Abram to found the nation of Messiah for many good reasons, one of which was his daring faith. But perhaps even more was his latent understanding of fatherhood. In Abram, the heavenly Father found a suitably strong earthly representation to launch his grand designs.
• Family was central to Abram’s notion of influence and divine reward. When he imagined success, he imagined children, not money, success, fame or power.
• Sarai, his wife, was not incidental, but fundamental, to Abram’s ability to bring forth the desires of his heart and realize the promise of God. This beautifully confirms the importance of both marriage and covenant as God’s means to bringing His kingdom to earth.
• Time is not a mechanism of delay, as we often think, but the means of fulfillment to our God-sized dreams. Thus, fathers must learn to embrace the long view in raising their children. Short term solutions rarely produce lasting fruit.
• To achieve our ambitions as fathers, we must not only invest in our children, but radically follow God beyond our own comfort zone. This requires us to take risks in faith, embrace uncomfortableness, and contend for our kids.