Conclusion
Conclusion number one: There is no task under heaven more demanding than that of being an effective father.
The Bible records the competence of Eli as a priest in Israel, but his total incompetence as a father. The Bible records the competence of David as a successful and mighty warrior, as an astute statesman and leader, but he was basically a flop as a father. He could run a nation, but he couldn’t run his own home. And there are corporation presidents whose families are in a shambles. Why? It takes more combined wisdom, grace, diligence, and discipline to be an effective father than it does to be a corporation president. That’s why you’ve got corporation presidents who are making it in the business world who are flops at home. That’s why you can have a David who is mighty in Israel as warrior, as statesman, as singer, as poet, as prophet, but basically a flop as a father.
My friend, as I said last week, to become a father is the act of a moment, to become an effective father is the discipline of a lifetime. Are you willing to pay the price? You young men, listen to me. You’re living in an age that says, “Pamper yourself. Feed your flesh.” You want to have a couple kids, so you can strut around and say, “Here’s my kids” Have somebody look at you and say, “Hey, there’s my old man. He treats me good.” If that’s all you want, may God keep you from ever walking down an aisle and marrying a woman and fathering any children. If you’re not prepared right now, and I’m looking at a collection of young men sitting together, If you’re not prepared right now, then begin to say “No” to your trinkets and toys, and begin to subject yourself to disciplines necessary to become an effective father, you better give up all notions of marriage.
Far better to be irresponsible and say, “The standard is too high, I don’t want it.” That’s a cop-out, but far better that than become a father and blow the job and not do the work that God has assigned you to do. But a better alternative is to say, “I don’t care what the rest of my generation does, by the grace of God I’m going to be molded into a man worthy to be a father of children. I don’t care what my peers say. I don’t care what anybody else thinks about me. I’m determined that I shall become an effective father If I become nothing else in life, by the grace of God, I’m determined to become that!”
And then I want to say secondly by way of conclusion, there are few goals more worthy of your arduous pursuit than that of becoming an effective father. I see young men determined to be effective, well-known, successful businessmen. And I see the price they’re willing to pay. Burn the midnight oil. Take extra courses. Run to seminars. Pay any price to get ahead in the business world. Where are the men saying, “I’m prepared to pay any price to be the father I ought to be”? Where are they? Thank God there are some of them here in this church, and I want you to know that I thank God for some of you.
And I say to you young men who didn’t have any models at home, you want to know what it is to be an effective father? You come to me and say, “Pastor, are there some men that I can go and ask them if I can spend just an afternoon in their home to see what an effective father is?” Thank God there are men in this assembly I could send you to without any reservations of conscience. They’d be the last ones to think that they are effective fathers, but they are. But it’s that very perspective, you see, that makes them effective fathers. They see the standard. They’re pressing toward it with all of their being, and that’s why they feel so painfully conscious of their failures, because they’re taking the standards seriously. O, men amongst us, set this as your goal.
Young women, look for the young man who is subjecting himself to the kind of disciplines that will make him an effective father. And you young women, I say again, when you’re casting your eyes across the available young men, and you’re beginning to have your holy, not unholy, but holy fantasies of which one may be your husband, what are you looking for? You look for the young man who is subjecting himself to the kind of disciplines that will make him an effective father. That’s what you look for. Because if he’ll be an effective father, he’ll be a delight to live with as a husband.
And then I say, finally, there are few tasks to which God is more willing to give his abounding grace than to that task of being an effective father. Are there times when you pray and you wonder, “Lord, do I have any warrant to ask what I’m asking for?” That, to me, is the agony of prayer so much of the time. I don’t know if I have any warrant to ask the thing that I’m asking for. God says, If we ask according to his will, we know that he hears us, and on some things I can’t untangle what may be selfish motives. You have not because ye ask not. You ask and receive not because you ask amiss, so that you might consume it upon your own lusts. And I’m not sure. “Lord, is this a selfish desire? I can’t pray in faith, because I’m not sure that I’m praying out of pure motives.” Do you have that agony? Of course you do, if you’re a Christian and you pray.
But, oh, when you get on your knees as a father and say, “O God, give me all the wisdom I need effectively to mold the life of my child.” You don’t need to pray, “If it be thy will.” You start praying, “Lord, make me wise enough to get a promotion every six months” You will find yourself hard-pressed to find chapter and verse to plead that with confidence before God. God may keep you on the bottom of the totem pole of your company’s executive ladder, because he knows that one wrung higher would kill you spiritually. Thank God for his holy disappointments in which we have been hedged up from things that would have destroyed us.
But when you pray, “O God, give me the wisdom needed to mold my son and my daughter, you don’t need to pray, “If it be thy will.” You can pray in faith that, lacking wisdom in that task, God is willing to make you as wise as a Solomon in the administration of your household. And when you pray for a heart baptized and suffused with sensitive, self-giving, tender love, you don’t need to pray, “If it be thy will,” because when you come to the passage that says, “Fathers, nurture them,” you say, “Lord, that’s my task, and I can’t do it without a love that bears all things. Lord, I can’t take that kind of business from my kids. When I give myself to them, and they turn around and, as it were, spit in my face. Lord, I can’t take it.” But having a heart that bears all things you can take it. The love that believes all things, the love that does not retaliate. The love that is patient. The love that is kind.
O dear fathers, be encouraged, all the wisdom you need is there in Christ. Seek it at the throne of Christ with earnestness and faith. All the love you need is there in Christ. Seek it at the throne of grace in confidence that God will give it. Seek at the throne of grace greater supplies of the spirit of holiness, that you may set an example before your children. Pray for the grace of humility, that when you have sinned, you’ll not be too proud to tell your children what they already know, that you did not exemplify Christian manhood in the way you spoke to your wife, in the way you dealt with them in any given situation. Your kids do not expect perfection, but they expect reality and transparency when you fail. O, dear fathers, don’t be discouraged. Don’t any of you go out of here, as it were, with your tail between your legs and go off in a corner to sulk. O dear fathers, hear me this morning, go to the throne of grace and ask God to give you all you need to be an effective father. And God will delight to answer that prayer.
And you who are not even Christians, you men who have fathered children, but you can’t be effective fathers to those children. Do you see the terrible dilemma you’re in? You may, to a great measure, have been a good father. You have been concerned even for something more than their material needs. You’ve wanted them to become responsible, respectful citizens. You’ve wanted them to honor your wife and to show common decency to others, and I would not demean that at all.
But, my dear man, listen. You’ve not been able to be a father in the most critical areas, because you, yourself, lack those areas. You couldn’t teach your son how to pray, because you don’t pray. You can’t teach him how to pursue the Lord with all holy ambition to be like Christ, because that’s not your ambition. You couldn’t teach him the grace of humility in confessing sin to those against whom he’s sinned because you, yourself, have not set the pattern. O my unconverted father, will you not seek the Lord. Will you not seek him that he would make you his child and then, as his child, make you the father that you ought to be?
And you boys, beginning to have your dream-world of what you want to be in life, O that God will bring back today and last Lord’s Day morning when you heard that among all the ambitions a man and a young man can have there is no more noble ambition than that of being molded into the kind of man who can be an effective father. Welcome your dad’s rebukes and your mom’s gettin’ on your case all the time. Remember, they’ve got a vision for what they want you to be, and they didn’t get that vision from the world, and they didn’t get it out of their own hearts. They got it from this Book.
Some of you don’t know it, but you’re here because your mom and dad prayed, “O God, if it please you, bless our union with children.” And you were conceived in answer to prayer. You were brought safely into the world in answer to prayer, and from the moment you hung upon your mother’s breast, your mom and dad have had a goal and a vision, and they have given themselves. They’ve spent themselves for the realization of that goal, and that goal is that you be the boy or the girl that God created you to be. Is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with that, fellas and girls? You thank God if you’ve got a mom and dad like that. Some of us can thank God, and the older we get the more we bless God for the vision our parents had and the price they were willing to pay to realize that vision.
There are so many things I would like to say, but the time is gone. The morning is warm, and you’ve been patient, and I trust enough has been said to drive us to our knees, to cry to God to raise up a generation of effective fathers.
Let us pray.