A Word To Fathers

This is Father’s Day, a time to think about one of the most important tasks in any society. Being a parent, father or mother, is one of the most demanding, draining, frustrating jobs you will ever do. And it also may well be the most fulfilling job you ever do. They say that nobody complains on their death bed that they wished they hadn’t spent so much time with their children. Nobody says that. The perspective of time always looks back and says, being a parent was really important. I hope I did it well.

In our adult class this morning we talked about this amazing statement in the Book of Genesis, that God created us in his very image. We are, in many ways, like God.

God created this beautiful world and put humans on it who are like him. Through parenting, he passed on the blessing that we, like him, can create other beings, who are in our image, who are like us. And it is deep inside us to create a world for them, a world of order and blessing, where it is safe for them to grow to their fullest potential. When we do that we are just being chips off the old block.

But parenting is much more than bringing a life into the world and providing the physical necessities of life. If we will let it, parenting will draw out of our hearts the highest kind of love for our children. Parenting is our best chance to learn a love like God’s love, a self sacrificing love that just loves them because they are ours, not because of anything we get in return, not because they make the honor role in school or they lead their little league team in hits, but a love for them as they are.

To be a parent is incredibly expensive in terms of money. It takes up huge amounts of time. What if you got paid an hourly wage for parenting? We’d all be rich.

Parenting stretches us again and again as we call out to God and anybody who will listen, “What do I do now?” There are days when it wounds us in ways that we wonder if life has come to an end. Perhaps more than anything else, parenting stretches us to grow to be like God, to understand what real love is. It isn’t love until it costs us something. And the more we sacrifice the richer we find ourselves to be. That’s the glorious paradox of being a parent, a father or a mother. When we love like that we find our destiny as children of God.

Unfortunately we get very little training for being parents. In school I learned the proper way to fill out of a check, all the rules of the road for driving, and gazillions of other things, many of which I’ve used many times and some I never will. But who teaches us to be fathers? Where can we turn for help? Some day I’d love to get a group of parents together and pick out a good book on Christian parenting and go through it together. But until that day, the Apostle Paul gives us a brief, but very important word to fathers. Let’s look at that together this morning.

Our text this morning is Ephesians 6:1-4. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother"-- this is the first commandment with a promise: 3 "so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth."

4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

And I see three foundational principles there.

1. Don’t be too hard on them; don’t provoke your children to anger

2. Give them discipline.

3. Give them instruction.

The Apostle Paul lived in a time when it was common for parents and teachers to beat their children. In the short run that’s the quickest way to get them to do what you want, but the damage that does always outweighs any short term advantage. So hear the Apostle Paul warning against that.

Don’t get carried away with controlling. Don’t be provocative with your children. Children need boundaries. Children need to learn to say no to their impulses of the moment. Children need discipline. But each child may need different discipline. Some of us have raised children who often wouldn’t hear a word you said until you really lowered the boom on them. Maybe they needed to be sent to their room or grounded or to be scolded with a strong voice before they heard anything. But that other child is so eager to please and would be deeply wounded by the disciplines the other needs.