S5 Ep. 301 The Testimony Of Fatherhood

SPEAKER_00: All right. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good everything. Welcome to the World Cafe Live Show. How are you doing? I'm fine. Yes, I am. I'm good. I always say this not because it is rhetorical, but that's the truth. You know, sitting each time I sit in front of the camera, looking across and looking into your face, as it were, it gives me so much joy because one of the major reasons why we always come to do this is because of you. Yes, because of you. And it gives us great pleasure. Always gives us great pleasure. How are you? Fine. Ah, we're back into that space. What are we going to be talking about today? So it is something we cannot run away from, is what I'm about to talk about. We we every now and then we talk about it. We kind of you know dwell on it, and sometimes we kind of run away from it. Fatherhood, the good, the bad, and otherwise, that's how I tagged it, fatherhood. But I'm gonna look at it from a perspective that maybe you've not seen it before, but I even should I say it took me a while processing it and all of that, and I'm gonna take it from the story of Abraham. The story of Abraham, you know, when he went to he wanted his son to get married, like get a wife for his son. He told his servant Elizer to go get a wife for him. But there's something he did, in my opinion, that is so so so uh instructive, very instructive, and that is he sent his son, rather, his servant, to go get a wife for his son. But before he did that, he told him to swear to him, and he told the servant to put his hands under his thigh and swear to him. I really sat down and I looked at that for a while. That tradition, the hand under the thigh, and this is how I see it from my uh perspective and position. You know, the male body has its genitiles very close to the thigh. Yeah, and what does the genitile carry? The male uh scrotum, as we want to call it. Just permit my description now, but this is for me to pass across the message the way it has been imprinted on in me, it carries the testicles. And what does the testicles produce at the end of the day? Yes, the male are semen which carries life, in my opinion, and it's true. The word testicles or the word testimony, in my opinion, from this description comes from testicles, and when you look at the word testimony, what does it even really mean? Bearing witness to something, you giving a testimony, you bearing witness. So the male factor carries the testimony of life, bears testimony to life, so he told him to swear to him, and you know when I looked at that, yeah, he did. That's a very private moment. That's the uh his servant, very private moment. He said, Swear to me, and the servant swore to him and did exactly as he swore. But now the male testicles that carry the male's testimony that is what powers life. Yeah, yeah, I understand for the female egg and all of that, but the testimony of life resides in man, in fathers, the testimony of life is carried by the father. So when the father bears witness or bear testimony to the truth, it travels from one generation to the other, and you come to see that societies where you have weak fathers or absent fathers, the testimony of life is distorted. You come to see children following or going following a path that is distorted, they they lose the testimony of life, they cannot relate as they ought to relate, they cannot relate, so it becomes a problem, and that's why you notice that a good number of societies with fatherhood problems, you come to see that life as it ought to be is distorted. You see the children go off tangent, you see the children behave wrongly, and so what what does it what does this speak to? As a father, you carry the testimony of life wherever you go, wherever you are, you carry the testimony of life, and this is one thing you shouldn't play with. This is one thing you shouldn't, as a man, as a father, play with. You think you are nothing, you think you don't matter, you think you're useless. No, you carry the testimony of life. So I was discussing with a friend, you know, and I consider him not just a friend, I consider him as an ally. He was trying to explain to me, a man like me, he was trying to explain to me how he sees fatherhood. He says, I see it as I'm a steward. Yes, I walk with God like a steward, a stewardship. I bear the witness, I am a witness, you know, to the testimony of life. So I am a steward. The children God has put under my care. I am to steward the grace of God, I am to steward the provision, I am to steward the mind of God, I am to steward things that God expects of me. And if you look at the story of Abraham, if you look at it closely, the testimony of Abraham points to one single thing. God even said it, I know he will bring his children up after me. So Abraham bore the testimony of God, he bore witness rather to the things that I mean God had done in his life, and now he is now passing the same message to generations. So for what he passed on to Isaac, Isaac passed on to Jacob, Jacob passed on to Joseph, and it traveled that way. So the male, the male, should I say the male potential carries the weakness of life? I don't know how I'm excited talking about it. It carries the weakness of life. So where you find yourself as a man in that home, listen, you carry the weakness of life. What you do matters a lot. What you do means a lot. So don't take it lightly. The other day I was looking at the report. I don't mean to castigate any uh crime or culture and all of that, but I saw a report about South Africa and that South Africa has 85%, 85% of fatherhood problem, like so many homes, 85 absentee fathers. So you see it now, and it's like okay, somehow begin to see where the problem is coming from. Those who bear testimony, the testimony of life are not there to guide the children, to put them aright, to teach them, and now the society is broken apart. Well, it is very difficult to swallow, but it's from where I stand, it is the truth. It is the truth from where I stand. You bear the testimony of life as a man. I don't know how else to say this, quite humbling, very solemn. I must say, don't play with your role as a man, as a father. Don't play with your role, and again, some of our sisters, our mothers, our wives, remind your husbands, remind the boys who they are and what they carry. Tomorrow is unsure. If those who bear the witness of life are absent, that's the truth. Very unsure. The certainty of tomorrow hinges on the realization of those who bear the testimony or who carry the witness of life when they realize it and they stand up and they take their positions, and things begin to happen. Yep. This is what I came to share with you on the show today. It means a lot to me, I must say. It does, and I want us to look at it, you know, man to man, brother to brother. We are the carriers of the testimony of life, and there's so much, so much, so much expectation upon us. All right, then. This is what I came to do on the show today, and I I hope, I hope this this has opened you up to you know some amazing, amazing thoughts. This is how we do it. Yeah, this is the space where we come in to lean on one another's experience to forge a positive path. Well, we are available on all the social media platforms: LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook. Ah, yes, we even have even on Instagram and we have a YouTube channel. Have you subscribed? I encourage you to do so. Go ahead, subscribe, hit that notification button so that when episodes like this drop, you'll be the first to know. Never lose this testimony because you carry the witness of life until I come your way again. My name is Amakri. Amakri is away. I forgot.