The Lord is shouting for the Fathers to come home! The world is not devoid of men who have offspring, but in reality, they have abandoned the family ship, leaving their children to fight the choppy waves of life without provision for their needs, protection from storms, or promotion into their destinies!
This prophetic sense has been on my heart for about six weeks, and it all began with a vision I had of my son, Jason. I was in a prayer meeting when the vision began, and I saw him in a stadium filled with thousands of men. Jason was teaching them the principles of fatherhood and enacting a rite of passage into true God-given manhood. The scene in this picture grew and I began to see stadiums filling up all over America with men going after the heart of the Father!
I texted my son while the vision was fresh in my heart, and he replied: “That’s what God has been telling me for a year.”
I believe the Lord is moving on the earth as a Father! I see Him touching the world in a way that will restore the hearts of fathers to their sons just as we see in Malachi 4:5: “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”
Malachi perceived a world absent of fatherhood, not fathers. And I see the same symptom in culture today. This is the most fatherless generation in American history in which our fathers didn’t die in war! Think about that! Our fathers are alive and not off to war, but their hearts aren’t in any way home.
The presence of fathers in a home can make or break identity and destiny in the hearts of their children. Beyond that, the effects of absent fathers on a larger societal scale tower over our culture, casting shadows into morality that, if not stopped, will stretch until right and wrong become completely subjective and left to the whims of each individual!
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
My mother got pregnant with me in 1954 out of wedlock, and therefore my parents immediately got married. Although this knee-jerk reaction was common in the ’50s, I find that in today’s culture this response to an unplanned pregnancy is rare.
In those days, it was taboo to have children outside of marriage. So society created a stigma or positive peer pressure for people to do from the outside (with their behavior) what they were not yet ready to do from the inside (live morally from their core values and inner-nobility). Therefore, people often behaved morally even though they were still operating in sin.
Then, in the 1960’s, the Sexual Revolution hit the world, and cultural morality began to shift in colossal and destructive ways. The motto of the Sexual Revolution was: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” It meant: have sex with anyone you want, make no commitments, and forget about covenants.
Let’s pause so I can make myself crystal clear here. The truth is that the world is the world! It will always be steeped in sin until the sinners find a savior…hence how we all, including myself, got here. I’m not explaining this cultural problem with any condemnation. I’m simply observing societal shifts so we can accurately understand how we got where we are today. Remember, what you misdiagnose, you mistreat. The same is true in culture.
What I’m getting at is that the ’60s didn’t create a sin movement. Sin was already happening! What it DID do was cause people to question morality until the black-and-white of right and wrong faded to a murky, misguided grey. Before this, people sinned but they knew it was a sin. However, in the ’60s, culture began to say, “This isn’t bad! Do what feels good!”
Fast forward to 2019 and society doesn’t even agree on what sin is anymore! In my mother’s day, when they did something wrong they knew it was wrong. But today, Believers have to convince people of what is right and wrong!
THE PERFECT STORM: DARWINISM AND THE SEXUAL
REVOLUTION
In the midst of the Sexual Revolution, another powerful force was emerging in America. Although it had been introduced to our school system decades prior, Darwinism took root for the first time in the early ’60s.
The Sexual Revolution created the perfect environment for Darwinism to establish itself because people were violating their own moral values and were looking for a way to avoid answering to God for the guilt they were experiencing. Charles Darwin gave the world the excuse that they needed to live like hell and not answer to Heaven.
The theory of evolution took away our purpose because it told us that we came about through a series of cosmic accidents. There was no divine design, no purpose for which we were created, and no Creator who loved us enough to die for us. This philosophy naturally elevated pleasure as the highest goal of life and, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” became an underlying tone in society. These ideas began to be infused into the American culture, as well as the church.
LACK OF MORALITY CREATES A FATHERLESS CULTURE
We can’t deny that there are great societal effects of human fatherlessness! These statistics are shocking and cannot be ignored! As you read them, I hope you let the reality and weight of this matter sink in and see that when you remove fathers from the home, society gets very ill!
• 70% of youths in State institutions are from fatherless homes.
• 63% of youth suicides are from homes without fathers.
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children grew up without a father.
• 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes.
• 85% of all rapists motivated by displaced anger are from fatherless homes.
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from homes without a father.
I see 5 more cultural side effects of fatherlessness:
1) Men are being feminized because mothers are raising them without the presence of fathers. The result? Gender confusion of a man being raised only by a woman is helping to perpetuate homosexuality. The absence of fathers in the life of a daughter is also contributing to gender confusion.
2) Abortion is another major side effect of fatherlessness because women are being impregnated by men, not fathers! I propose that most often abortion is not the sin of motherhood, it’s the sin of fatherlessness. According to a study by CareNet , women turn to the father of the baby more than anyone else when considering abortion. In fact, their study showed that the child’s father is the most important influence on a women’s decision to have an abortion. True fathers protect, provide and promote their offspring.
3) Men lack confidence in their ability to lead and provide for a family because it’s never been modeled for them. Therefore they delay or reject marriage relationships. You can read more about that here.
4) Fatherless men tend to be players instead of leaders. Men invite boys into manhood through the rite of passage. The rite of passage is the process in which men acknowledge that a boy has become a man. Girls experience a “rite of passage” when they begin their menstrual cycle. Without the rite of passage, boys struggle growing up as they grow old. Consequently, they prioritize pleasure above purpose largely because they are ill-equipped for manhood and paralyzed by the fear of failing.
5) In a fatherless society, authenticity is being redefined as being true to your feelings instead of being true to your purpose. In a feminized society that results from fatherlessness, feelings are exalted to a point that is out of balance. Our culture now lacks the balance of the truth that how we feel is not how we are, and beyond that how we feel is not WHO we are.
A PROPHETIC WORD FOR A NEW SEASON
God already has dreams and solutions for our societal problems! Psalms 68:5 says, “A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, is God in His holy habitation.”
God is a Father to the fatherless! He’s also a husband to the widow. If you’re without a father-figure I want to encourage you that the Lord can make up the difference in your life, as He did the same in mine!
I also believe that the Lord is breathing these two prophetic words over us to heal our fatherless culture, to restore men to their God-given purpose, and inspire virtue and nobility into society again:
1) There is another Promise Keepers-type movement rising in America! I believe that millions of men, those with or without natural children, are going to become present, powerful and passionate fathers. I see a movement that teaches the skills of manhood and enacts a rite of passage by the thousands!
2) While speaking at a Bethel Worship Team meeting recently, I felt the Lord say that there is a music revolution being birthed that is going to touch the secular world with Kingdom songs!
The power of songs is demonstrated all throughout time as an underlying force of hope in the face of great challenges and injustice. Timely anthems leave their mark on society and even go so far as to shift the very course of history. It was the great philosopher Plato, who happened to be Greek, that said, “Let me handle the music for one generation and I will control Rome.”
Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist, founder of the Underground Railroad and great deliverer of hundreds of American slaves, used songs to communicate the plans for when and where to meet on their journey out of bondage and into liberty. They called these songs “Songs of Deliverance.”
The Lord is releasing new songs of deliverance over our generation that will lead people out of their dysfunction, cause mothers and fathers to rise up, and restore our culture back to virtue and truth! Today I release that new song, and a spirit of fatherhood and motherhood over you…that God may cause you to be a revolutionary to our culture, just as Jesus was!
Does this resonate with you? How do you see the impacts of fatherlessness play out in society or even in your own life? What do you feel God is saying in that place? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!
