Ephesians 6 1-4

1.Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; 3.That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. 4.And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I have had the opportunity to see several fathers help their daughters understand their true identity in Christ.

One such father has had a unique background as a bodyguard that has provided him with too many first hand stories that have given him a perspective that not many people have had. I have a great deal of respect for his two daughters and thought it would be interesting to have his input as a father of daughters on this site. Here are some of the snippets he provided me. I have broken it down into two sections. The first section works best for parents and the final section is addressed to daughters. Thanks Ron for sharing with us your story and mostly thanks for modeling for your daughters true love from a father. I recently heard from a father that works with my husband that the job of the daddy is to fill the love tank of the daughter so much that she doesn’t go looking for someone to fill her love tank. You are definitely doing that with your daughters!

And without further ado…here’s Ron:

TO PARENTS:

I have, in the past, had the rare honor of working with some of the top recording acts in the history of music; first as a tour manager and then as bodyguard. In both jobs I was charged with the safety and welfare of the acts to which I was entrusted. It was a passion. It was not a hobby and it was one I was forced to put my life on the line for more than once.

When I started I was not saved by Grace and aware of the boundless attributes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I lacked instruction in all areas of life. I lived to be a part of the events that shaped music and I thrived on the vast expression and uniqueness of our time.

When my daughter, Angelique, was born I was Vince Neil, the lead singer of Motley Crue’s, (Voice of the Decade of Decadence) body guard,. and we were on tour with Van Halen (Run’in with the Devil). Every night, in every town their where large crowds of rabid fans willing to do anything to see, touch, talk to, or party with the band. They would go to great lengths to show their admiration like climb through heating and air ducts at the arena s, break into hotel rooms, rush the tour buses and limos–you name it and they would try it. Then there were the more sinister and seedy characters associated with the events. People that were jealous, addicted, thieves and scoundrels of every type; people dangerous to themselves and everyone around them. These same people confront our daughters, in our home communities and will be surrounding them when they leave our homes for college and at the work place.

I used and still use the same three principles of protection, providing understanding and staying strong for my artists as I do for my teenage girls –Vigilance, Instruction, Endurance.

Being a writer I spend a great deal of time researching new words. I even look up words I feel comfortable using but want a clearer understanding of their usage. It is the case with the two words that make up the commands for child rearing in Ephesians 6 both words are important and both set the tone and pattern for raising my teenage daughters

Nurture 1. to feed and protect:. to support and encourage, as during the period of training or development; foster: 3. to bring up; train; educate.

Admonition 1. to caution, advise, or counsel against something. 2. to reprove or scold, esp. in a mild and good-willed manner: 3. to urge to a duty; remind: to admonish them about their obligations.

As a parent of daughters I will endure regardless of the struggle to keep my daughters pure. It may not be popular and you may rail against our authority but in the end you will be glad we cared enough to challenge you into making the right decisions that will allow you to grow with dignity, and respect for yourselves and others and most importantly GOD.

Deuteronomy 6:6-8 6 “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”

Ron continually talks with his daughters about God’s commandments. I asked him to share with us what he would share with his daughters. Here is a snippet he wrote to teenaged daughters everywhere:

TO DAUGHTERS:

Girls if you have seen the movie (chick flick) 27 Dresses (that’s right I have seen it 3 times) there is an amazing GOD moment in it. The heroin is an extraordinary wedding planner who meets the hunky newspaper writer, that is forced to write gooey romanticized articles about marriage for his magazine when in reality he hates the very thought of marriage. When he falls in love with the wedding planner he writes a satirical piece about her 27 theme weddings, that embarrasses her. In the make up scene the writer admits to the wedding planner that there is one part of the wedding ceremony he has always loved, “the moment when the groom looks back at the bride coming down the isle and realizes that is his wife forever.”

GOD paints a similar picture in Isaiah 62:5 As a young man marries a maiden… as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” One of the most beautiful pictures painted for us as believers is the triumphant return of GOD to take to himself his faithful believers in Christ. He looks at us not only as his prize but as HIS for eternity.

The question for us all is obedience. Are we willing to live holy lives set apart from the fallen world? Including how we talk, act, and here’s a big one girls – how we dress. Again the bible set the standard 1 Peter 3:3 beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes (or few cloths at all). 4.Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5.For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.

In the movie “The Producers” Uma Thurman sings a song “If You Got it Flaunt it.” The gist of this comedic ditty is to “put your assets on display.” Listen this lack of discretion bears consequence. First in how you see yourself, how others see you, and finally and most importantly how GOD sees you. According to an intense Kinsey Institute study, the average man forms a thought about sex approximately every two minutes, and that he generally ponders the thought for about a minute, 50 seconds before letting go of it. When my girls were in middle school being taught about appropriate touching their was a song about the “No-No Zones.” Ladies if your No-No Zones have less that 3-5 inches of fabric between them and the great outdoors, factoring in the data of the Kinsey report, than at school, or on the streets, or at the beach you have been visually violated thousands of time a day.

Now imagine GOD is in your High School this afternoon and comes upon you and sees your lack of discretion. Would you be embarrassed? It is not the way GOD intended you to be.

I go through this discussion every month and I will continue to go through it and not be swayed. I know what bad girls look like. As I said they came into my back stage areas every night Not all of them were intending to be bad. But they dressed revealing as much as possible without being arrested, hung out with girlfriends, who themselves may not have been bad people, but in the areas of appropriate behavior felt going for it was– OK. They almost always ended up in compromising, harmful, and even dangerous situations. We are living in the age of STD’s and AIDS and the consequences of turning from GODS intended plan for you young ladies, our daughters, is devastating. As a parent of daughters I will endure regardless of the struggle to keep my daughters pure. It may not be popular and you may rail against our authority but in the end you will be glad we cared enough to challenge you into making the right decisions that will allow you to grow with dignity, and respect for yourselves and others and most importantly GOD.

Thanks Ron for sharing a little of your heart with us.  Ron Camacho has authored and co-authored several books (Chicken soup for the country soul, From the heart of racing, and The Last Dragon: Tear Falle).  He is a great dad and husband and his daughters are a joy to have in our girls ministry.  I hope you have enjoyed hearing from his heart.  We look forward to bringing some more dads into the girlsminister.com conversation.  And if you are a daddy, may you continue to fill up your daughter’s love tank to overflowing so that she learns first from you what a Godly man is and sets her up to look for that in her own marriage relationship.