I have been thinking through the notion of parenting via perfection. It’s not an intentional approach to parenting, but one which many of us practice. None of us walk around evangelizing others through our perfection. We know better, which is why we often say things like: “We are not perfect.” That is an indisputable reality, which I discovered within the first two minutes of our conversation. But I argue that when we make that statement, we are merely echoing a self-deceptive sentiment. After all, no one expects parental perfection, which is why the language is utterly unnecessary and sometimes used to justify stupid acts.
What the Bible demands is parental faithfulness. Now, no parent worth his Deuteronomy will say, “We are not faithful!” We know that faithfulness is the key to the game. Faithfulness turns a father’s heart to a hurting son/daughter. Faithfulness keeps a mother steady in her duty to nurture her children. Faithfulness is the kind of gift that keeps on giving. Faithfulness is the way of the kingdom.
Parents born in the 70’s are now seeing their young adult children enjoy the benefits of “autonomous zones” and self-made victimization. It must be rewarding to such fathers who spent most of their days working long hours in the office away from the family, spending a lot of time with their pals drinking beer and watching football while their new wives were home caring for newborns and keeping the house in some form of stability, establishing himself in his royal throne at home after a long day and keeping the children content with their tablets and unending cycle of entertainment, demanding and protesting when dinner was not served at the right time or the children would not respond politely. How did that work out for you?
Your children have become you! Except, now they have the entire vocabulary of a nation plunged into wokedom, catechized under political correctness, politicized under cool categories like “socialism” and “feel the bern.” Those young adults are the direct descendants of inattentive fathers who chose their own pleasures above the needs of their children and the regular inconveniences they offer us.
A friend of mine was once told: “I would die to have children like yours,” to which he replied, “That’s exactly what I do daily…die.”
God will not judge us, fathers, for the rest we take, the games we watch, or even the late hours we may take occasionally. He will judge us, however, for seeing all these things as noble substitutes for parenting well and faithfully.
So, to those far off, I urge you fathers to grab that prodigal son by the hairs of his baptism and tell him that you love him, pray for him, and confess your failures. Perhaps, and just perhaps, that might be the beginning of a new relationship.
As for the dads dying daily, don’t grow weary in well doing. And never believe for a moment that your children are first and foremost proud of your professionalism; they are proud of a father who kisses them and makes them feel possessed by love.
I sat across the table from a father holding his beautiful five-month-old daughter. On my lap, I have my own infant son and another of mine, a toddler, underfoot. Somewhere in between the prattling about of these tiny humans, we were actually able to get a few complete thoughts out. Through the years, one particular thought has come up in our conversations over and over again, “what can we do to ensure our children stay in the faith?” Neither of us was raised by what we would call Christian fathers. We both came to Christ in high school in the context of a public school Bible club and youth group. Back then, we would lament the milquetoast Christianity of those raised in the church. Perhaps it was “old hat” to them or they had just spent years going through the motions – and now they felt no sense of urgency. Or they didn’t share our sense of urgency.
Now both of us went on to marry virtuous women raised in the church – both of the Reformed tradition. And the Lord has blessed us with Children to lead and guide in the way. I explained to my fellow father, how my wife and I had our son in a Christian School. I shouted to our five-year-old at the other end of the dining table, asking him to recite the scriptures he had been memorizing the week before. As if somehow this answered the question weighing on our hearts. The Christian School will certainly help my children learn scripture, discipline their habits, and train them in a variety of academic disciplines, but it will never replace the single greatest influence on my child’s future trajectory: their father.
A Father’s Lasting Influence
It’s not hard to see how much influence a father has on his child’s future. From a worldly perspective, this is often referred to as the “birth lottery.” Writing for Business Insider, Alison Griswold writes, “the amount of money people make is strongly predicted by what their parents earn…” Even in an age of unprecedented social mobility, a father can significantly determine one’s potential opportunities for education, friends, a spouse, and jobs. What college you end up at or who your wife might be, is nearly predetermined by the circumstances created by your father.
Just as fathers play a significant role in determining the worldly circumstances by which children leave the household and enter society, so to do fathers determine the spiritual circumstances by which children enter the faith. The Book of Proverbs takes this a step further to say that the crown of a father is not his children, but his grandchildren. “Children’s children are the crown of old men,” (Proverbs 17:6). A father’s impact is then not merely on his immediate children, but multigenerational. To be a father is to represent the trajectory of an entire lineage. Certainly, the reader can see that the father is an important role which can either bring forth a series of covenantal blessings or a generational disaster. It is for this reason that every father that calls himself a Christian must be wholly committed to the success of his wife, his children, and his grandchildren.
The Father’s Commitment
This commitment to the success of your family is a discipline and habit. It requires the grace of God and a spirit of humility. God’s grace isn’t infused on passive men but requires men to submit and obey the Lord. Grace is free, but not painless. As Flannery O’Connor rightly quipped, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” This is why St. Paul encourages you to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12) As a father, I have often failed to meet what I understood to be my fatherly obligations. I am often impatient with my wife and children, imprudent with my time, and selfish with my resources. Do not despair. The conviction here is God’s means of renewing his call for you to lead your family. Acknowledge to God and to your family that you have not been the father and leader that our Lord expected you to be. Explain that you truly desire their success. Wives and children need to know that you love and need them.
The Father-Leader Explained
A father-leader must recognize that his family is an essential part of his own salvation. He needs the prayers of his wife and children. He needs their gifts and even their weaknesses. The wife and children the Lord has given you are part of God’s plan of forming you into the image of his Son, therefore the father-leader must recognize where his family is going and be patient. I often remark that my sins are most evident in the sins of my children. Fathers should then look at our sins as a clue to where our children will also struggle. This is why it is so important that Fathers are working out their own issues, so as to avoid their owns sins being, “visited unto the third and fourth generation.” To avoid passing on their sins as their children’s inheritance.
Father-leaders reject that they are fathers by the mere happenstance of biological functions, but see their role as ordained by the sovereign God. Yet this does not mean that he should demand or expect immediate results. A relationship of influence is a privilege that a father must earn, guard, and protect by investing in life-long relationships with each member of his family. This requires time, sacrifice, patience, and humility as you continue to demonstrate your commitment to your family. Your family wants to see in you a certain consistency that they can count on. Commitments must be evident, your wife and children know what it means to be “on your calendar.” They can see how you treat those whom you respect and honor. If raising faithful children is important to you, then you must strive to be more than a sperm-donor and more than a financier of food, lodging, and clothing – you must be a leader demonstrating his commitment to his children by fulfilling his God-given responsibility to lead his family.
About five years ago, I was 35, which is the age my dad was when I was 6. When I was a kid, my dad would take pity on me during the lengthier sermons at church to entertain me. He would tuck his thumb inside his fingers and allow me to attempt to pry his fingers open, thereby freeing his thumb from its bonds. It seems like that could become a raucous game during the sermon, but I guess I knew better, because it never got out of hand. Speaking of out of hand, that was the goal, but I was never able to free his thumb out of hand either. What I did do was spend hours looking at his hand–memorizing his hand. Around the time I turned 35, I looked down and saw my father’s hands attached to the ends of my arms. It was both pleasant and startling. I was pleased because I love my dad and hope that I am becoming like him in more ways than just physically. It was startling because when I was six I thought my dad was pretty old, and there I was with hands showing the signs of 35 years of use.
This morning as I was leaving for work, I stopped in front of the mirror to see if any hairs on my head were sticking up in embarrassing directions, and I used my hands to resituate my hair into a somewhat presentable arrangement. As I wiped down the cowlicks, there stood my dad in the mirror, reorganizing his mop on top before he rushed off to work. It was just plain freaky. Added to the motions of my hands and arms resembling my dad, I realized that my hair lies on my head just as his hair lies on his head. Once again, I’m not complaining, just realizing that as I age I become more and more like him.
This Sunday, I will be ordained a ruling elder at St. Mark Reformed Church in Brentwood, Tennessee. My dad is the pastor of St. Peter Presbyterian in Mendota, Virginia. He is driving in this weekend to lay hands on me as I once again become more like him, as he once again participates in reshaping me into a new man.
For forty years now, my Heavenly Father has been using my earthly father to make me the man that I’ve become. From my father’s genes that make my hands look like his and my cowlick pop up in the same place, to the habits that he’s both intentionally and inadvertently instilled in me over the decades, I am becoming more and more like him.
All this to say, “Thank you, Father,” and to say, “Thank you, father.” I know I am not here by any leverage I have over my own bootstraps. I have been blessed in time and in space by God’s gracious purposes and providences, manifest through the man on whose shoulders I still stand. I am dwelling in houses I did not build and drinking from cisterns that I didn’t dig. May God’s gracious covenant succeed through me to the next generation as it did from my father’s to me that the earth may be covered with Jesus’ glory as the waters cover the sea.<>производство рекламных конструкцийпродвижение а в интернете стоимость
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
It’s not hard to see how much influence a father has on his child’s future. From a worldly perspective, this is often referred to as the “birth lottery.” Writing for 
A father-leader must recognize that his family is an essential part of his own salvation. He needs the prayers of his wife and children. He needs their gifts and even their weaknesses. The wife and children the Lord has given you are part of God’s plan of forming you into the image of his Son, therefore the father-leader must recognize where his family is going and be patient. I often remark that my sins are most evident in the sins of my children. Fathers should then look at our sins as a clue to where our children will also struggle. This is why it is so important that Fathers are working out their own issues, so as to avoid their owns sins being, “visited unto the third and fourth generation.” To avoid passing on their sins as their children’s inheritance.
