The Power of a Godly Father

Jordan drives to the basket. He dekes right, fakes left, and… SLAM! What an incredible move! He must have been hanging in the air for three seconds. Chicago Stadium goes crazy. Fans in front of their TV sets give each other high fives.

Time out is called. Let’s break for a commercial. The tune catches your attention. “I wanna be… I wanna be like Mike.” Drink Gatorade so you can be like Mike. Another commercial. A tall black man standing all alone in a gym shooting baskets wearing Nike shoes - Air Jordans to be precise. It’s him again. His face is everywhere. Everybody’s talking about him. You open the newspaper, and there he is. You pick up a magazine; his face smiles back at you.

Michael Jordan is a man who is leaving his mark on the world. Very few people have ever received the accolades and the adulation that he has. He’s at the top of his game, at the top of his profession, and at the top of the world. And he’s the secret envy of every man alive.

Because every man wants to be like Mike. Every man wants to make his mark. There’s something within us males that makes us want to achieve lasting recognition - to strive for accomplishment, to do something with our life that will be of enduring significance.

Some men use sports as a vehicle. If they cannot excel at a particular sport, then they make it their business to know more about that sport than anyone else. Other men use money. They give themselves to making it and spending it with flair. Some men look to the world of ideas - they become the thinkers, the philosophers, the scientists of the world. Exploration and discovery is their stock in trade. Still other men become builders - they build not only buildings, but businesses and empires. All in an effort to make a lasting impact.

But I would like to suggest to you that in our search for significance, we men usually overlook the one area where our lives can make the most profound impact of all. That is in the area of fatherhood.

We get very sentimental about Mother’s Day and the love of a mother for her children. But I am persuaded that a father holds within his hands the power to make a far greater, and more lasting impact on the lives of his children than a mother does.

Mother love is almost automatic. Children simply expect their mother to love them. This is not to say that mother-love isn’t beautiful and precious and very special. It is. But most kids don’t worry about whether their mother loves them. They can take it for granted that she does.

But they are not quite so sure about their father. They aren’t quite so sure about where they stand with him. They don’t see as much of him. And he is bigger and stronger and scarier than Mom. He’s not as tender and soft as she is. So winning his attention, his affection, and his acceptance become that much more important to them.

There exists between a father and his son or his daughter an almost mystical relationship that is nine tenths admiration and one tenth fear. To small children, their Daddy is a hero, and they are happiest when they are hero-worshiping him.

How many of you have heard a little child say with awe in his voice, “My Dad knows the answer to everything. He can throw a baseball a mile! He’s so strong, he can lift up a million pounds!”

Proverbs 17:6 says “the glory of children are their fathers.” Children need someone they can look up to and respect and lean on for strength and security, and Daddy is that man.

So you can imagine how devastating it is for a child when Daddy is not there. 70% of the young men who are locked up in the jails and penitentiaries of our nation come from homes where there was no father. 90% of the children referred to Long Island Youth Guidance come from fatherless homes.

Even more devastating is when Daddy is there, but the relationship with him is broken. The world is full of people who are shackled with invisible chains of bitterness, resentment, and insecurity - all because of a dysfunctional relationship with their father. Adult men and women can literally spend their whole lives looking for the affection and approval that they never seemed to find from their father.

Young women who become sexually promiscuous usually have had a dysfunctional relationship with their father. They have deep-seated doubts about their own self-worth, and so they give themselves to whomever comes along in an attempt to find the affection and security they have been lacking.

Young men who become obsessed with success, workaholics, driven to achieve perfection often do so because they are subconsciously trying to earn the approval of a father who never gave it to them. And that father may now be dead. But his disapproving ghost still haunts their lives.

Author Kent Hughes writes to fathers, “We can either grace our children, or damn them with wounds which never seem to heal.”

There is a verse of Scripture which captures the essence of a father’s power to mold and shape the lives of his children.

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

This is a very simple verse. It is divided into two parts: a “do not” part and a “do” part.

- do not exasperate your children

- do bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

The word “exasperate” means simply to make angry, to frustrate, to irritate, to arouse in your children an attitude of resentment because of the way you are using your parental authority. You are not wielding it carefully, but you are using it to bludgeon them into submission.

This is not to say that we are not to discipline our children, or that they might not feel some resentment when we do.

Hebrews 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.

This does not mean that we should withhold discipline.

Proverbs 13:24 He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

What this verse in Ephesians means is that there are certain things that we fathers can do to our children which are guaranteed to exasperate them. What are some of these exasperation-producers?

1. Over-criticizing

Men are especially prone to do this. We want to see things done right, and when our kids don’t measure up, as often happens because they are kids, we get upset. And in our upset, we forget about all the times that we messed up when we were kids.

I go to a lot of little league games. There’s another boy on my son’s team whose Dad is one of the coaches. I have noticed that that father says very little to his son when he makes a good play, as he often does. But when he makes a mistake his father hits the fan.

Just the other day, this boy missed a play at first base. That father leapt up from where he was sitting and started screaming at his son, yelling “That was horrible, just horrible.” The crowd listened in embarrassed silence. And I watched that boy wither under the force of that blast as he was humiliated in front of everyone.

I’m sure that that experience will etch itself into that boy’s memory banks and that he’ll remember it long after his father has forgotten about it. That kind of caustic criticism can scar a child for life.

Author Dan Benson, in his book The Total Man, cites an extensive survey that was taken in a number of homes. The survey found that for every positive statement that was made, there were 10 negatives; a criticism-to-praise ratio of 10 to one!

Constant criticism disheartens children until they become emotional cripples, like a horse whose spirit is broken. They become fearful of trying anything, lest they fail. They begin to despair of ever being good enough to win their father’s praise.

Dads, we need to make a special point of praising our kids instead of criticizing them. We need to determine to reverse that criticism-to-praise ratio in our homes. Kids don’t get a swelled head when they are genuinely praised. They blossom in that environment, and become secure and mature.

2. Overstrictness

Parenting is like holding a bar of wet soap. If you hold it too tight, it shoots right out of your hand. But if you hold it too loosely, it slides away. You need to hold it gently, but firmly.

If you look at children who rebel, they are often rebelling against fathers who are overly strict and controlling. These Dads somehow have gotten the idea that you run a family like you run an army, and they’re determined to be the drill sergeant.

Often, a father who rules with a rod of iron is really covering up for deep insecurities in his own life. Perhaps his father ruled him that way. Or perhaps he is so unsure of himself that he projects a stern, macho image as a way of compensating for his own feelings of inadequacy.

A child brought up in that environment will quietly seethe with resentment until as soon as he is old enough, he explodes. Then, he is out of there. The bridges are burned. The relationship is severed, and that father has no further influence in his child’s life, except as a bad memory.

As fathers, our first impulse with our children is often to say “No.” But perhaps we need to say “Yes” more often, and save our “No’s” for the things that really matter.

3. Irritability and impatience

This is another exasperation-producer. Most of the men I know are stressed out. They are living their lives under a lot of pressure: job pressure, financial pressure, time pressure. When a man gets home at night, he just wants to relax and unwind.

But home is the place where his most important mission begins. A man needs more patience and consideration and emotional strength at home than he ever does at the office. But home is where he slacks off. He lets his fatigue take over his emotions. He loses his temper with his wife and kids like he never would on the job.

As husbands and fathers, it is crucial for us to realize that God wants us to be as nice to our wives as we are to our secretary; as considerate of our children as we are of our customers. And God has spiritual resources for us to call upon to do that.

Sometimes, when I am on my way home from the office, I find that it helps to remind myself “Now I am going home to my most important job. God please give me the strength and patience I need to be an effective husband and father.”

So when Tommy wants to play catch after supper, or Peter needs a hand with his homework, or Carolyn needs help with the dishes, I won’t be hiding behind a newspaper, or hunched in front of the computer, or flat on my back having a nap.

Only God can help us overcome our tendency to be irritable and impatient with the demands of our families.

4. Inconsistency

There is nothing more devastating to a child than to suspect that he can’t trust his father. A father who appears to be one thing in public and another in private may succeed in fooling a lot of people, but he will never fool his wife and children.

This is especially true of Christian fathers. Our kids see us pray in church. Do they ever see us pray at home? Our kids see us being friendly with the folks at church. But do they hear us rip those same people apart with criticism and bitterness at home?

We say that we worship God and believe in Him. But do our children sense that in the day to day life of our family? Is the Lord a part of our daily conversation? Do we invite him to the dinner table and turn to Him for guidance and direction as we face life’s problems?

Chuck Swindoll has a book entitled “Home: Where Life Makes Up It’s Mind.” Our children are in the process of making up their minds about Jesus Christ and what part He’s going to play in their lives. And they are taking their cues from us. If Jesus is just a figure-head in our homes, then he will something even less in our children’s.

Consistency. Your children may not always appreciate your being a man or a woman of God, but at least they’ll know where you stand. And they’ll understand that Christianity is not a religion for phoneys.

Well, let’s get to the positives of this verse. There is a To Do list here, remember?

“Bring your children up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

The verb to “bring them up” means to nurture them, to nourish and care for them the way a gardener would care for a prize rosebush.

What’s involved in nurturing our children?

1. Tenderness:

Our culture has this crazy idea that to be manly, you have to be rough and rude. That’s why there are a lot of Rambos running around out there. The truth is that a man is never more manly than when he is tender and considerate with his family.

Our children need to know that under that strong, masculine exterior, there is a large heart that beats for them. And helping them know that begins with a man’s relationship with his wife. Listen to the wise words of Elton Trueblood:

“A child needs to know that his father and his mother are lovers, quite apart from their relationship to him. It is the father’s responsibility to make the child know that he is deeply in love with the child’s mother. There is no good reason why all evidence of affection should be hidden or carried on in secret. A child who grows up with the realization that his parents are lovers has a wonderful basis of stability.”

In other words, men, the best thing you can do for your kids is to love their mother tenderly. And let that tenderness overflow to your children as well. That means lots of hugs and cuddles from Dad.

2. Loving discipline:

You would be surprised how many fathers in America abrogate the responsibility to discipline their children. They delegate it to their wives. But the Bible teaches that the father is responsible for disciplining his children, and rebukes the man who fails to do it.

Eli was a man who was the high priest in Israel. He had two sons: Hophni and Phinehas. The boys grew up without ever coming to know the Lord. They too became priests, but there was no spiritual reality in their life, like many of the clergy today. These young men conducted themselves in a disgraceful way at the Tabernacle. They dragged the Lord’s name into the mud because of their behavior.

But the root cause of it all was that Eli had failed to discipline them or rebuke them for their wickedness. And there are no more tragic words in Scripture than what we read in…

1 Samuel 3:11-13 And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them.

Proverbs 22:15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.

Dad, the responsibility is yours for the discipline of your children.

3. Instruction:

The word “instruction” here means literally “to place before the mind.” It simply means to keep the principles of Scripture before your children as you live life together. It doesn’t mean to preach to them; it means to talk to them. As things come up in the course of daily life, you can look for teachable moments where your kids need an eternal perspective. Sermons won’t be as effective as a few well-thought-out sentences. Let me give you an example.

There once was a father who had four daughters. Some of them were still in high school, some had gone on to college. But he had been reading something and he wanted to pass it on to them. So he wrote them this letter…

“Dear Daughters of Mine,

I’m enclosing this article I’ve read. It is one of the finest I have seen with regard to pinpointing the necessity for proper family relationships. I am hopeful that it will be worth you time not only to read it but also study and keep it for future use.

The men you girls marry need to fit into the mold of the husband as outlined in this article. I don’t know of the author’s spiritual understanding, but he is using biblical principles in describing the family relationships. Now your heart can play tricks on you with regard to looking for a husband. There is so much romanticism beamed at you from every direction, it is easy to fall prey to the secular version of the husband and happiness.

I am confident that each of you girls will allow the Lord to choose your husband. He will pick a man who fulfills the scriptural mandates for the head of the house.

I love each of you,

Daddy”

There’s a man who knows how to be a leader in his home. Instruction means telling your children, and showing them, that the Lord’s way is the best way.

Do you remember watching the Olympics last year in Barcelona? One of the events was the relay race. Four runners were on each team. Each ran 100 yards carrying the baton and passed it to the next runner.

The most crucial phase of any relay race comes with the passing of the baton. That is usually where the race is won or lost. If there is not a clean exchange between one runner and the next; if the baton is dropped, the race is lost.

Christianity is a lot like a relay race. We pass the baton of faith from generation to generation; from father to son, from mother to daughter. Our most important job as parents in not to make sure our kids have a college education. It is not to make sure they get a shot at the American Dream.

Our most important job as parents is to get the baton of the Gospel safely into the hands of our children. Unless they grasp it and take it and run with it, it doesn’t matter what else we accomplish with our lives.

Men, we have in our hands the power, not only to impact the lives of our children, but to affect their eternal destiny. Let’s not drop the baton.