John Farley
Pastor-Teacher
Sunday,
January 24, 2016
Practical Christianity:
The kids AREN’T alright
The family
Let’s talk about fatherlessness.
No airline would let their pilots fly a plane that was missing half of its navigational equipment.
A child needs a loving father and mother to navigate life without major turbulence.
Our cultural leaders no longer see a child without a father as a tragedy that must be addressed.
Exo 22:22-24
When God uses the word “orphan”, He means a child who has lost his father.
Lam 5:3
We have become orphans without a father,
Our mothers are like widows.
יָﬨוֹם
yathowm
it means “fatherless”.
Deu 10:17-18
Psa 68:5
A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
God tells His people to look after
the widows and
the orphans.
Isa 1:17
Jam 1:27
In 1970, 40 percent of American households consisted of married couples with children.
Today that number is down to just 19% of homes.
As recently as 1970, according to the census bureau, 85.2% of American children were living with two parents.
Today, only 63% of America’s children are living with two married parents.
Of children living with only a mother, 7 percent had never been married – in 1970.
Today 48 percent of those mothers have never been married.
The research is in, and the kids are NOT alright.
Nearly half of the children living with a single mother – 45 % – live below the poverty line.
Only 13% of children living with both parents live below the poverty line in America.
Today, 25% of mothers with children under age 18 have no partner present in the household.
Nearly 65% of American children under 17 live in a household that receives aid from one or more Federal programs.
Consider two other two urgent social problems: teenage pregnancy and the incarceration of young males.
Boys raised in a single-parent household were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as boys in two-parent homes.
About one-third of girls whose fathers left home before they turned 6 ended up pregnant as teenagers, …
… compared with just 5 percent of girls whose fathers were there throughout their childhood.
Children born to cohabitating parents do worse on most indicators of health and skills than those born to a married couple.
Two-thirds will have split up before the child reaches the age of 12 (compared to 25% of married parents).
Children who end up in a single parent family as the result of the death of one parent …
…do not have the same poor outcomes as children raised by single parents due to a divorce or out of wedlock birth.
The great Old Testament book of practical wisdom for daily life was written by a father to his sons.
Pro 4:1-5
The father and the mother are shown as vital to the well-being of the youth.
Pro 6:20-21
And why all those warnings to the young men to reserve their sexual activity for their one and only wife.
Pro 5:15-23
And it helps to explain why the Lord tells the Christian husband not to divorce his wife.
1Co 7:10-11
The Lord gave the human race a precious gift when He gave us the institution of the family.
The family is patterned after the relationships that exist within the Trinity.