Asher's Blog

Some time ago, the Holy Spirit began to teach me about God as my Father and about the kind of father He expects me to become.

By God’s grace, I believe I will have many children, but the number of children is not really the point. The deeper question is whether my children will encounter, through my life, something true about the fatherhood of God. Will the way I love them make it easier for them to believe that God is loving, trustworthy, holy and always willing to receive them when they return to Him?

This question became personal because I realised that I had sometimes found it difficult to relate to God in the way He wanted me to relate to Him. I knew the language of God as Father, but knowing the doctrine and resting in the relationship are not always the same thing. Somewhere inside, many of us still imagine that God’s willingness to receive us rises and falls with our performance.

Yet the gospel presents a Father who loves us completely, wants us to walk in holiness and has already made provision for us to remain in relationship with Him when we fail. He does not lower the standard of holiness; He supplies the grace through which we can return, be cleansed and continue walking with Him.

When I understand that kind of fatherhood, it changes both how I approach God and how I raise my children.

A Father whose holiness does not cancel His love

God is holy, and His love does not make sin unimportant. A good father does not prove love by becoming indifferent to what destroys his child. God wants me to walk in purity because sin damages people, distorts desire, breaks trust and takes us away from the life He intends for us.

However, God’s holiness is not a barrier He enjoys placing between Himself and His children. In Christ, He did everything necessary to reconcile us to Himself. The cross shows the seriousness of sin and the depth of love at the same time. Forgiveness is not God pretending that nothing happened; it is God dealing with what happened so that shame does not permanently separate His child from His presence.

First John 1:9 says that when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us. That promise gives the believer somewhere to go immediately after failure. We do not have to hide until we feel worthy enough to pray again. We do not have to punish ourselves for a period of time before God is permitted to receive us. We come honestly, confess, receive forgiveness and allow the Holy Spirit to help us walk differently.

God has protected the relationship from the silence that guilt can create.

This does not mean Christians never experience conviction. The Holy Spirit can make us deeply aware that something is wrong and lead us towards repentance, restitution and change. Conviction is specific and redemptive: it shows us what must be brought into the light and directs us back to God. Condemnation is different. It tells us that failure has become our identity, that we should hide and that there is no meaningful path home.

The Christian life is not the absence of moral responsibility. It is freedom from condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and that freedom gives us courage to take responsibility without being destroyed by shame.

Forgiveness keeps communication open

One of the most beautiful parts of God’s fatherhood is that He has made continued communication possible. If every failure persuaded me to avoid Him, the very moment I needed His wisdom and help most would become the moment I withdrew from Him.

Many people know this pattern from human relationships. A child breaks something, tells a lie or disobeys an instruction and then hides because the child is more afraid of the parent’s reaction than confident in the relationship. The hiding does not correct the problem; it adds distance to it.

God wants truth, but He also wants nearness. He invites us to confess because confession brings the real person and the real failure into a relationship governed by grace. When I know that I am loved, I can tell the truth about myself. When I believe love will disappear the moment the truth is known, I learn to perform, conceal and protect an image.

This is an important lesson for fatherhood. My children should know that wrongdoing has consequences and that truth matters, but they should never become uncertain about whether they can talk to me. If fear teaches them to hide ordinary mistakes, they may also hide the serious things for which they urgently need help.

A father must create a home in which confession is safer than concealment.

That requires emotional discipline. If every disclosure is met with rage, humiliation or a punishment disconnected from instruction, children learn to manage the father rather than trust him. Correction should be firm where necessary, but it should preserve dignity, explain the principle involved and make restoration possible.

The goal of discipline is not to make the father’s anger visible. It is to help the child become wise.

Leave the past behind, but learn what repentance requires

Paul wrote about forgetting what was behind and pressing towards what was ahead. Few people had more material for condemnation than Paul. Before his encounter with Christ, he persecuted believers, approved violence and dragged people into imprisonment. If he had spent the rest of his life trying to repay God through guilt, he would not have been free to carry out his assignment.

Paul did not deny his history; he interpreted it through grace. He remembered enough to remain humble and grateful, but he refused to allow the past to become a permanent argument against obedience in the present.

That is the balance believers need. We do not need to feel guilty for something confessed and forgiven ten years ago, five years ago, yesterday or five minutes ago. We should make restitution where our actions harmed another person, accept necessary consequences and learn from what happened, but chronic self-condemnation does not make us holier. It keeps our attention fixed on ourselves rather than on the grace that restores us and the life we are now called to live.

A good father should teach the same pattern. When a child has admitted wrongdoing, accepted correction and made things right, the offence should not become a weapon used in every future disagreement. Children should not grow up believing that mistakes are stored indefinitely and brought forward whenever the parent wants control.

Forgiveness allows a family to have a future.

The father in the story of the prodigal son

Jesus’ story of the prodigal son remains one of the clearest pictures of the Father’s heart. The younger son demanded his inheritance, left home and wasted what he had received. When his circumstances collapsed, he prepared a speech in which he would ask to return not as a son but as a servant.

The father saw him while he was still far away and ran towards him.

The father did not call the son’s actions good, nor did the story suggest that waste had no consequences. The son returned having lost the resources he carried away. Yet the father refused to make failure the final definition of the relationship. He restored the son’s place before the son could earn it back.

That picture matters because many people believe God is waiting with folded arms, ready to listen only after they have explained themselves perfectly. Jesus presented a Father already looking down the road.

God says that when we seek Him with all our heart, we will find Him. He is not hiding from the child who wants to return. The difficulty is often that guilt persuades the child to stop searching.

As a father, I want my children to possess that same assurance. Home should not become a place they can enter only while succeeding. When they fail, face confusion, make an unwise decision or find themselves in trouble, they should know they can come home and tell the truth. Receiving them does not mean endorsing everything they did. It means the relationship remains strong enough to carry correction, healing and a new beginning.

Children often imagine God through their experience of authority

God is infinitely greater than any human father, and no parent should imagine that a child’s faith is entirely determined by parental performance. Children have their own minds, experiences and spiritual journeys. They may encounter God beyond the strengths and failures of their families.

Nevertheless, fathers possess enormous influence. Before a child can understand abstract theology, the child experiences authority through parents. Love, discipline, protection, consistency and forgiveness become embodied ideas long before they become doctrines.

Research on child development supports the importance of stable, responsive relationships. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child describes repeated, attentive interaction between children and caregivers as “serve and return”, a process that helps shape the developing brain and supports communication and social capability. Research reviews also associate active father involvement with children’s social and emotional development, although outcomes always depend on the quality of involvement rather than the father’s mere physical presence.

A father can therefore make trust easier or harder to imagine. If his love is unpredictable, a child may learn that authority is unsafe. If he is affectionate only when performance is impressive, love can begin to feel transactional. If he never apologises, the child may assume authority means never admitting wrong.

Conversely, a father who is present, truthful, affectionate, disciplined and quick to repair his own failures gives children a living vocabulary for trust. He does not become God to them. He demonstrates, imperfectly, qualities that help them understand what fatherly love can mean.

This responsibility should humble fathers rather than make them controlling. We are not owners of our children’s conscience, and we cannot manufacture their faith. We can create a home in which faith is credible because the character of the parents does not continually contradict what they teach.

Joseph and what a son may carry from his father

The Holy Spirit drew my attention to Joseph. When Potiphar’s wife repeatedly tried to seduce him, Joseph refused and asked how he could commit such wickedness and sin against God. This happened before Moses, before Israel received the written law and before Joseph had anything resembling the Bible, sermons, podcasts or the resources available to believers today.

What had been placed inside him?

Scripture does not tell us that Jacob gave Joseph the exact counsel I imagine, so I do not want to present inference as biblical fact. Yet it is reasonable to reflect on what Joseph may have learned from his father’s life and from the stories carried in his family.

Jacob had encountered God personally. He had left home under dangerous circumstances, worked for Laban for twenty years—fourteen years connected to his marriages and six years for the flocks—and experienced both exploitation and divine provision. His story included dreams, fear, blessing, conflict, mistakes, perseverance and a God who remained present through all of it.

I can imagine Jacob telling Joseph that circumstances do not cancel covenant, that God can provide wisdom in an unfair environment and that delay does not mean abandonment. Joseph may have carried the memory of those stories when he was sold, transported to a foreign country, falsely accused and imprisoned.

He may have reasoned that the God who preserved his father could preserve him. Even when nobody from home could see his decision, he understood that his life remained before God.

That is one of the great powers of a father’s testimony. Children may forget a lecture, but they remember the story of what their parents survived, how they prayed, what they refused to do and where they found strength. A father’s past, honestly told, can become courage stored inside a child for a future temptation the father will never witness.

Love without favouritism

The story of Jacob and Joseph also contains a warning. Genesis says Jacob loved Joseph more than his other sons, and the special treatment contributed to jealousy and hatred within the family. The fact that Joseph was deeply loved may have helped form his identity, but favouritism damaged the relationships around him.

Children need particular love without destructive comparison. Each child should know, “My father sees me, knows me and delights in who I am,” without needing a sibling to be diminished for that love to feel secure.

A father may naturally connect with different children in different ways because their personalities, ages and interests differ. Equality does not require mechanical sameness, but justice requires that affection, opportunity and discipline do not create a family hierarchy in which one child must continually earn what another receives automatically.

The lesson from Jacob’s house is not merely to love children strongly. It is to love wisely enough that one child’s security does not become another child’s wound.

Loving their mother is part of loving them

One of the things I tell men is that claiming to love your children while treating their mother badly creates a contradiction the children will eventually understand. Children do not experience parental relationships as separate compartments. When a father humiliates, neglects, abuses or continually dishonours their mother, the harm enters the emotional environment in which the children are growing.

This is particularly important in many African communities where fathers are often assigned a strong leadership role, but the principle is not limited to Africa. In the West and elsewhere, children also observe how parents use power, resolve conflict and speak about one another.

To say that a father must love the mother of his children does not mean every marriage will continue, or that people should remain in unsafe relationships. Separation and divorce may occur, and some circumstances require firm boundaries. The enduring responsibility is to treat the other parent with dignity, protect the children from adult conflict, fulfil obligations and refuse to use the children as weapons.

When a marriage remains intact, loving your wife gives your children a daily picture of covenant, honour and partnership. They watch whether you listen to her, protect her dignity, share responsibility, remain faithful and repair conflict. A son learns something about how women should be treated, while a daughter learns something about the treatment she should never be taught to accept.

If a father has treated his wife wrongly, authority does not require him to pretend it never happened. One of the strongest things he can do is apologise, make restitution, seek help where necessary and allow the children to witness genuine change. An apology does not weaken fatherhood. It teaches that strength includes the courage to face the harm one has caused.

The same principle applies in reverse: mothers should not destroy a father’s dignity before the children, and both parents carry responsibility for creating trust. My emphasis on fathers comes from the burden I feel as a man and from the patterns I have observed, not from a belief that only fathers can damage a home.

Children model the life they repeatedly see

Parents are understandably anxious about raising children in a corrupt world. The internet, school, friends and popular culture introduce values that may conflict sharply with what a family believes. We cannot isolate children from every influence, and trying to control everything may leave them unprepared to make decisions when we are absent.

Yet parents should not underestimate the power of a consistent home. Children pay attention to what is normal in the family. If swear words are not used at home, they may still hear them elsewhere, but they know those words do not represent the family’s standard. If parents speak truth, honour commitments, pray, read, work diligently, apologise and show generosity, the child receives a repeated picture of how life is lived.

Modelling is not magic. Children may test boundaries, reject instructions or make choices that cause pain. The proverb that training a child shapes the path ahead is wisdom, not a mechanical guarantee that removes human freedom. Nevertheless, consistency gives children a reference point to which they can return when the world offers competing models.

The crucial word is consistency. A rule becomes confusing when the parent violates it freely but punishes the child for copying the behaviour. If I tell my children not to lie while they watch me lie to avoid inconvenience, my conduct becomes the more persuasive lesson. If I demand respect but speak to their mother with contempt, they learn that power, rather than dignity, determines who deserves respect.

Children listen to instruction, but they study character.

Love makes instructions simple to receive

For children to receive instruction deeply, they need to know that the person correcting them loves them. Fear may produce immediate compliance, but trust allows wisdom to remain after the parent leaves the room.

This is why love, leadership and consistency cannot be separated. A father should love his children openly, instruct them clearly and live in a way that supports the instruction. If he offers affection without guidance, he may leave them without boundaries. If he gives rules without relationship, they may obey temporarily while learning to conceal themselves. If he teaches one thing and lives another, he trains them to distrust words.

Children should hear their father say, “I love you,” but they should also experience that love through presence, attention, protection, correction and sacrifice. Love notices what is happening in their lives. It knows their friends, fears, gifts, questions and the pressures they are facing. It does not outsource the spiritual formation of the child entirely to school or church.

A father cannot wait until a crisis to begin speaking. The counsel that protects a teenager may need to have been repeated gently throughout childhood, attached to stories, family habits and the credibility of a life the child respects.

Let your children see how you trust God

Joseph’s story has stayed with me because his father could not accompany him into Potiphar’s house or prison. Every parent eventually reaches that boundary. We cannot stand beside our children in every room, screen every relationship or make every decision on their behalf.

What we can do is place something inside them before they enter those rooms.

Tell them how God helped you when your own future was uncertain. Let them see you pray before making difficult decisions, admit when you do not know what to do and seek wisdom rather than pretending to have every answer. Explain the consequences of choices without presenting God merely as someone waiting to punish mistakes. Teach them that holiness protects what is valuable and that obedience is a response to love, not an attempt to purchase it.

Most importantly, show them what returning to God looks like. Let them see that when you fail, you confess, receive grace, repair what you damaged and continue walking. A father who pretends to be flawless may raise children who think faith requires pretending. A father who demonstrates repentance shows them that grace is real.

I want my children to remember, when they face temptation or suffering, that my father trusted God, my father loved us, my father loved our mother, my father told the truth about his mistakes, and the God he served always gave him a way forward.

That memory may become strength when I am not there.

The father I am becoming

Being fathered by God does not make me a perfect father. It gives me a pattern and somewhere to return when I fall short. I can learn from the Father who is holy without being inaccessible, who corrects without abandoning, who forgives without calling evil good and whose love makes honest communication possible.

My children do not need a father who never makes a mistake. They need one whose mistakes do not become permanent because pride prevents confession. They need a father who loves their mother, repairs harm, keeps his word, listens, teaches and lives consistently with what he preaches.

They also need freedom to encounter God for themselves. My role is not to make their spiritual decisions through control, but to create a home in which God’s love is believable, truth is safe to speak and holiness is presented as life rather than fear.

The lesson the Holy Spirit is teaching me is both comforting and demanding: I can father well only as I continue allowing God to father me. I must receive the forgiveness I want my children to understand, remain close enough to God to be corrected and let His love reshape how I use authority.

If my children learn to trust my love, hear truth in my words and see grace in the way I live, then when I tell them that God is a loving Father, the idea will not be completely foreign. They will already have seen a small, imperfect reflection of it at home.