What We Need From Our Fathers Series

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.