Ah-Ha!

                Last week we attended a conference on orphan care, as my wife and I sat and listened we became very aware of how God has been preparing us for this ministry for a long time.  The focus of the conference, although talking about orphans, focused on the issue of Fatherlessness.  In other countries, without social welfare systems, the death or lose of a father is equivalent to being an orphan.  In many countries opportunities for a single mother to make enough to provide for a child are almost nonexistent. 

                But, the same can be said about fatherlessness even in our country.  God intended for children to be raised by both a mother and a father.  Our culture has devalued the male role model and has tried to make fathers seem optional.  While in Honduras it becomes quickly clear that children need men, 80% of Honduran children are raised in single parent homes.  But, these children beam when a man takes time to wash their hair or play with them.  It fills a hunger in their lives that they may not even realize exists.

                We sat and listened to how God challenges his people to care for the fatherless.  God makes 13 commandments in the law about caring for the fatherless, 7 prophets made charges against the people of Israel regarding their neglect of the fatherless. Read the example below, this was a big responsibility for God’s people.

 Deuteronomy 14:28-29  At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns,  so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (NIV)  

Even Job talked about his care of the Fatherless in Job 31 to defend his morality.  Somehow this is what had captured my heart, not because I had read these Biblical texts looking for a cause but because God was at work transforming my heart.  Jen and I will often comment that people stand out as my kind of people; I have a soft spot for those that struggle through life.  But, a common thread is that a majority of these people are also fatherless.  God used passages like this to reconfirm what I felt God is doing in our lives.

                We thought it was odd that months before we are running off to work in an orphanage, we had this ah-ha moment.  The light bulb comes on and we discover that God has been shaping us all along to do this new ministry. I have been a Minister to the Fatherless for a long time, but have not connected the ideas together until this weekend.  The thing is God loves the Fatherless, and he has given me the same broken heart for these people. 

                I also believe very strongly that God shapes each individual by His spirit at work in our lives to accomplish very specific tasks within the Church that is why we do not have people fighting over filling our Sunday school teacher positions.  God has only wired some of us for that task.  Now I am not letting you off the hook, if you are not called to teach Sunday school I challenge you to discover what God has shaped you to do.  God does not call Christians to be idol or even retire from Christian service.  In fact I believe as you mature in your faith you should better understand exactly how you should be serving, I am still figuring it out!