This morning we begin a three week series on reclaiming Godly Families, a look at what it takes for Christians to build the kind of home and family that God has called us to, one in which God is proclaimed and glorified and our children are taught, nurtured, and trained in the way they need to go.
Satan has been attacking and destroying families from the beginning of time. He began with Adam and Eve and worked through Cain killing Able to try to turn aside what God has planned for the family. Today, the reality we live in is that 50% of marriages fail, and that number is no different among evangelical Christians. About 50% of our kids will live in a single parent home at some point before they turn 18. Infidelity has risen to new highs and our children and teens in many homes have no boundaries and are out of control. Much has changed in what society considers a family to be and what it says its role should be but God created the family and still gives strength to those who ask and are seeking to build a home that is centered on Him and His Word.
In the passage we are going to look at this morning, that Paul wrote to the Ephesians, we have a great look at the way that God planned for the family to look. Now, I am taking a look at fathers this morning but it is directly applicable to everyone this morning because there are principles and truths that are universal and just as important for a teen, a wife, someone who is single, divorced, or a single parent. The unfortunate reality is that we have fallen far from God’s ideal of family and if you are in a family that lacks a father or is the blending of broken homes, God’s commands and principles are the same for you, He wants our families to glorify and serve Him, no matter what our circumstances are.
That being said, it is the unchanging truth that God has placed a unique and strong call on the lives of men. He placed upon man the responsibility to be the head of a household and to ensure that God and His ways are being loved and taught within the walls of his home. With families falling all around us, it is up to Christian men to stand and reclaim what God has called them to and created them to be. There are certain things we need, in any era or generation, from men. This morning I want to begin our look at the family with what God is calling our Fathers to, what do we need our fathers to be?
Read Ephesians 5:21-6:4
In this passage, Paul gives us three areas in which a man is to excel if he is to be the husband and father God wants him to be.
Ephesians 5:25
1) Lover
The man is to be passionate, one who loves deeply and is able to display and show their feelings for others. Many men today, and I have to fight it on a daily basis, live by an unwritten macho code that says that we have to be tough enough to take whatever life throws at us without letting our emotions show. We need to remain distant and seem unfeeling for the good of those around us.
God created us with a wide range of emotions and each one is a part of who we are and has its place in our lives. One of the biggest gifts God has given us is the ability to love and to be loved and we need to take every opportunity to develop ourselves into the lover that Paul writes about here.
There are three areas that we fathers need to develop in their role as a lover.
We are first and foremost to be a lover of
a. God
Jesus boiled down the entire Old Testament, the law and the prophets in Matthew 22:37. Some Pharisees approached Him and decided to test Jesus, so they asked Him what the greatest commandment of God was.
Christ answered that the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God. Not with a superficial love or with lip-service, but with all of our heart, the center of our emotions, soul, the center of our being, and our mind, the center of our logic and reasoning. We are to love him with everything that is in us. And Jesus also said, we are to love others, the entire law and the writings of the prophets hang on those two things, we are to love.
We need men who love God. Why is this first? Because when you love God with all of your heart and soul and mind, everything else we talk about today, and in the coming weeks will fall into place because your desire will be to please God and to fulfill His purpose and plan in your life. We are driven by what we love and when we love God first, we can become the man and father that He wants us to be.
Two things will happen to us when we fall in love with God.
1) We’ll begin to see things as God sees them
a. Begin to see things through the perspective of eternity and your priorities will begin to change.
2) We’ll begin to see people as God sees them
a. And our love for others will grow deeply as our love for God grows, this will include and be of the most benefit to the way you relate to those in your own family. The way you love your wife and children.
A healthy and pure love for others will grow out of your love and devotion to God.
b. Our Wife
A husband next priority as a lover is to his wife. This is to be a relationship that takes precedence even over that of a father and his children. You took vows on your wedding day to love and cherish your wife and to care for her above all others. The bible says in 1 Corinthians 11 that the woman is the glory of the man! So often, when the children come along, the love of a man for his wife takes a backseat and is no longer nurtured and encouraged to grow.
Children require so much time and energy that many a couple has invested all that they have physically and emotionally into their children and then had no relationship left as a couple when the children were gone.
Things definitely can change rapidly in marriage if you let them. When Erin and I were dating, I was constantly doing things that I thought were romantic, not all of them were, to try to get her to love me more. I would buy flowers often, or steal them from a neighbor’s yard on my way to her house. I would sing to her, buy her gifts, talk to her for hours, take her places, and surprise her with visits from college on her birthday. I was in love and I was aware that she was gorgeous and could have any guy she wanted and I worked hard to show my love for her and never give her a reason to doubt my love.
Two kids and eight years of marriage later, I have to work ever harder at showing my wife I love her. There are so many things that can take my time from my wife, the kids, the teens, my friends, she needs to know that I still love her and in my role as a lover, I don’t do it as often as I should but I try to regularly affirm her and show her she’s still the one I love.
I can remember standing in a store a few months ago and trying to pick out flowers for my wife, in walked one of my teens who had graduated and was recently married. He got this knowing look on his face and asked me what I had done that I had to buy flowers for my wife. That is the mentality of so many men that romance is only to be used as a get out of jail free card.
I told him that I was doing it just to show her I loved her. After convincing him that I wasn’t lying, he reached in and pulled out a bouquet of his own for his wife and said, it probably wouldn’t hurt if my wife knew I loved her too.
Not only will it not hurt, but it will do wonders for your marriage when your wife knows that you are madly in love with her.
Husbands, tell your wife you love her! Don’t make her guess. Help around the house, take her on dates where the two of you can be alone and have time to talk and connect. The Bible tells us in proverbs that we are to rejoice in the wife of our youth. It doesn’t say to suffer in silence and be satisfied with what you got, it says to rejoice! Praise God, Be thankful, thank God for your wife and keep looking for ways to love her.
Love her with the love Paul describes in Ephesians. A love that would lay down our life for the gift God has given us. We are to love her as we love ourselves and as Christ loved the church. This is a love that knows no bounds. It is the love that Paul describes in detail in 1 Corinthians 13, a selfless, others-centered love.
Learning to be a lover of your wife will:
a) Bring stability and vitality to your marriage
b) Provide a sense of stability for the children in your home.
1. Ezzo Illustration – look it up
Your son will learn how to love his future wife by watching you, and your daughter will learn what to expect from a man by watching the way you treat your wife, I don’t know about you other dads but I plan on setting the bar so high my daughter will never find a guy!
Loving your wife is the greatest gift you can give to your children.
c. Our Children
As fathers, we need to be lovers of our children. A study was done in the 70’s of middle class fathers and their interaction with their young, pre-school age children. The study found that the average amount of time per day spent by fathers in direct interaction with their children was 37 seconds. I’ve talked longer with people who had the wrong number! Many fathers feel that working and providing for the family is where the job ends. Our children need their fathers to take an active role in their formation both mentally and more importantly, spiritually.
I remember having a conversation with a young father and he explained to me that he didn’t really like the kids when they were babies and toddlers because they couldn’t do very much, but he assured me that once they were older he would start spending more time with them. Any parent of a teen or pre-teen can tell you that once they get older, they don’t want to do things with you!
It’s the investment you make in the younger years that will pay the biggest dividends later in life. And that man was very selfish in his thinking. There are few people on the planet that do more than a toddler; they are always moving and working, and playing. What that father was saying was that he would spend time with them when they could do things he enjoyed doing.
Loving your children means doing the things that they like to do even if you have a million other things to do. Your children need your time. Did you listen to the video, not one kid said I love my dad because he works a lot and makes lots of money and buys us cool cars and a big house. No, the kids love their dads because he wrestles with them, tickles them, takes them to ball games, buys them ice cream, even picking up sticks in the yard is fun if your dad is with you!
- Play with them. I play baseball with my son and dolls with my daughter. Relate to them where they are and do the things they enjoy doing.
- Read to them.
- Slow down for them, there are so many times that I have to force myself to slow down and go the pace of my children. Instead of saying hurry, I need to slow down and see life through their eyes for awhile. Take the time to see things that they see and find interesting. My kids can look at a leaf or a caterpillar for a long time, things that would normally bore me to tears are fascinating to them. Encourage them and show interest in what they’ve found.
Loving your kids means giving them your time. This is hard and it’s draining. There are many evenings that I would love to go upstairs and read and relax instead of playing with my children, but the sacrifice is worth it.
I walked past my daughters door the other night when she was in bed and a little voice said, “Daddy, come here.” She was half asleep and she wrapped her arms around my neck and said, “I love you” and then closed her eyes and went to sleep. That’s when you realize how worth it any sacrifice of your personal time is to love your children well.
2nd thing we need our fathers to be in our families is a
2) Leader
A father needs to be a lover, he also needs to be a leader. Our families need fathers who are willing to take the responsibility of being a leader in their household. There are many wives and mothers who have to take the leadership role in their family because the husband simply cannot be bothered. So many men lead at work and then try to fade into the background at home. While in some cases it can’t be helped, or there is no father present and then the mother must assume that position, this is not the way that God planned it. He calls the father, the husband to be the leader and to exhibit the characteristics of leadership in the home.
A leader is:
- A Decision-Maker
The father is to be the decision maker in the family, the one that provides vision and direction. When you couple this one with the kind of self-less love we talked about earlier, you have a man who has only the best interests of his family at heart and will do what it takes to make sure that his family thrives.
God calls the father to be the spiritual decision maker as well. When Joshua was confronted with a decision in leading the Israelites, he did not hesitate to make the decision for him and his entire family. He did not wait for a family conference or call for a vote (although those have their place) he stood up and accepted the role God had given him to lead his family and declared in Joshua 24:15, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
This needs to become the battle cry for fathers who follow after God’s heart. No matter what goes on around us, no matter what Satan throws our way, no matter how the world says we should react, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
You making that decision will have a huge and far reaching impact on the spiritual lives of your wife and children.
A leader is also
- A Guide
I’ve been to Haiti twice now and each time I have stayed with the Bensons. The Bensons have a Haitian man that works for them named Fan-Fan. He is one of the greatest men I have ever met. Imagine if our group was expected to simply find the way ourselves when we arrived in Haiti. The streets are often unmarked, there are people everywhere, each area of town looks like the next, an outsider cannot make it on their own. They need a guide. We drive around the city in the back of a caged truck and Fan-Fan serves as our guide. He gets us where we need to be and takes the time to explain what’s going on around us, why things look like they do, or why those people are dressed a certain way. The experience would be wasted without a good guide.
Our children need fathers who will guide them in their life. One who has been there before and can show them the direction they need to go. Teach them how to pray, teach them how to read the word. Do these things together so that they can see the way you do things and learn to follow. The motto of every father in regards to their children ought to be the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:1
1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
Christ was the guide for us, the example of Holy living and of the relationship we are to have with God, as you follow Him, make sure to take your children by the hand and take them along as well.
- The Priority Setter
Yogi commented last week that if church is not important to you than it will be even less important to your children. Fathers, make church, fellowship with believers, teaching of God’s word, a priority in your life and your family will follow.
There are many things that can take up your time, many of them are good ways to spend time but when these things take priority over our time spent together as a church body and in corporate worship, then those things become sin.
Listen to these stats on the influence of a father in the spiritual well-being of their child.
Both parents attend church – 72% of children remain in the faith
Father – 55%
Mother – 15%
The father has an enormous amount of pull when it comes to setting the priorities of his children.
I have found, in our youth ministry, that almost without exception that the kids who are most involved in the leadership roles of our youth ministry have parents that are involved in the ministry of the church as a whole. They are the kids whose parents make church a priority in their lives and the kids see that and learn from it and more importantly they put it into practice in their own lives. Your children also learn from the attitude you go to church with.
I can remember as a child being dragged out to children’s church kicking and screaming, I know that’s hard to imagine, because I didn’t want to leave the comfort of my mother’s side and go do church with the other kids.
Too many men today are being dragged to church kicking and screaming, they don’t want to leave what’s comfortable to them, church is not a priority, they may go but it is grudgingly. And if anything at all comes up that conflicts with it, church is the first thing to go.
They don’t allow God to work in their lives and hearts through the ministry of the church.
Illustration of Sunday School Boy
It’s not enough to show up, your children need to see that God makes a difference in your life through the work of the local church and that you are involved and excited, and that it is a priority in your life. Because when you make it a priority, it will most likely be made a priority for your children as they follow your leadership.
A Father is also called to be a
3) Long-Term Planner
EPH 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
How do we do that? How do we get them from infancy to adulthood and see them reflect the values and morals that we have as a father?
You must have a plan, a strategy. You can’t invest until they’re 5 or 10 or 15 and then stop. You have to have a plan for how you are going to take the responsibility of raising you children to be a man or woman of God seriously.
Story of my Dad planning to take us to Colorado.
- I would probably have winged it
- Not everything went as planned but we got where he wanted to take us.
My father had places he wanted us to go and things he wanted us to see. Fathers, there is nothing more important you can ever show your children than showing them Jesus. There is no more important place you will ever take your child than to heaven. How do you plan to do that?
I was reading a book recently called “Dynamic Dads” In the back of that book he has a ten year plan for the spiritual formation of his children. It includes things like praying with them, having devotions with them, attending church with them, attending athletic events, hugging them, telling them he loves them. He breaks it down in to daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. He knows where he wants to take his children and he has a plan to get there.
In business, you wouldn’t think of not having a vision and a five year plan. If you want to retire well, it takes years and years of planning and investing. The same concept is true with our families. If you want to reap the rewards that God has for you within a family that has chosen to serve God, you have to plan for it.
Now, no plan can be a guaranteed success but we can trust God that he will take our efforts and that they will bear fruit in the lives of our children.
Fathers, it is our responsibility to care for what God has given us. God has called us to be lovers, of him, of our wives, and of our children. He has called us to be leaders, the decision makers, guides, and priority setters of the family. And he has called us to be long-term planners, plotting out the course that will move our families closer to God.
It’s a noble call, it’s a big responsibility, but the survival of the family in today’s society depends on men who will step up and be the fathers they were created to be.
