my daughter, my valentine

 “Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. Also, guide the young men to live disciplined lives. But mostly, show them all this by doing it yourself, incorruptible in your teaching, your words solid and sane. Then anyone who is dead set against us, when he finds nothing weird or misguided, might eventually come around.” (Titus 2:1-8 The Message Translation)

 “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children by coming down hard on them. Take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master.” (Ephesians 6:4 The Message Translation)

There is much revelation that can be mined from the two scriptures above, but in this I want to focus more on the relationships between fathers and daughters and the impact fathers have in their lives.

Men, your daughters are watching you.  Everything you do, everything you say, how you treat them, how you treat your wife and other women.  You are the primary example of what the relationship between a man and a woman should be.  Whatever it is you are or are not doing will affect how they view themselves and affect their future relationships.

With this in mind, why don’t we do what the scripture says, to “take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master.”  When I see that phrase, personal involvement comes to mind.  I believe what God is telling us is that we need to do more than give our daughters instructions, make rules about curfew and the kind of guys to watch out for.  Not saying there is anything wrong with these things, but there needs to be impartation into their lives.  We need to embrace our responsibility as the leader in our homes and influence and model, not dictate, what is the Godly way. 

Part of our role as a father is to “lead” them in the right way.  Let’s give them an example to follow.  Let’s “take them by the hand” and show them how they are supposed to be treated when out on a date by literally taking them on dates.  This can start early, but it is never too late to start.  My daughter is only two at the time of this article.  Our latest date was a trip to the movies to see “The Princess an the Frog.”  During this time, she is the center of my attention.  I shower her with all the love and affirmation I can come up with.  Even though at two, she rarely makes it through the entire movie without her eyes getting heavy, the point is not that she isn’t old enough to sit through a movie.  The point is that there is one-on-one time with her dad, who is modeling and demonstrating how the gentle, godly love of a man should look and feel.

It is also our role to show our daughters how their future husbands should meet their emotional needs.  Much of this will be modeled by the way we meet the emotional needs of our wives.  They will learn how a man should talk to them, serve them, cover and protect them by our execution of these things towards their mothers – whether the mother is in the home or not. 

Bottom line, when this Valentine’s Day roles around, let’s all decide to do our best to include our daughters in the “romancing” and expressions of love.  Let’s tell them how much we love them so that they don’t have to search for it from others that want to take advantage of them.  Let’s build their self-esteem by telling them they are beautiful, smart, capable, and supporting them in their endeavors even when we may not have a natural interest in those things.  Let’s take the time to listen to them and encourage communication with them.

The Bible says that as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth (Psalm 127:4).  A mighty man knows his target and he skillfully points his arrows in the direction of that target and hits it. When we set the target for our daughters to be virtuous women of God, we skillfully point them in that direction by the personal, quality time that we spend with them, the gentle and firm instructions and corrections we give, and the Godly example we set before them.  My prayer is that when its time to send my daughter off, she will hit the target God intended for her life. 

You better believe I’m giving it all I have to ensure her safe delivery.

By Eddie Mason, III, Director