real, consistent, practical godliness
Now notice in the second place the behavior pattern essential for effective fatherhood: real, consistent, practical godliness. – continued
Some of you know that we had the privilege of a visit from them a week ago. My father had to come to New York for the celebration of the 55th year since he graduated from the Salvation Army training college. And I told him, if he came to Jersey, I would take him into the city so he wouldn’t have to buck the traffic. So they left early Thursday morning from Lancaster, PA to visit and minister to one of the children and the in-laws, and then to minister to an aging aunt who is in her 90’s in a retirement home down at the shore, and then come and visit with us.
Well, in the course of our talking together about their trip, my dad mentioned that he was up since four o’clock in the morning. Seventy-four years old, up at four in the morning. I said, “Dad, what in the world were you up at four in the morning for?” He said, “Well you know, son, I teach the Sunday School class at the old folks home, and I knew that in visiting with you on Friday and going into the city Saturday morning, driving back to Lancaster Saturday night, I’d be tired, and it would be difficult to get up early enough Sunday morning to prepare my lesson, and I needed the two or three hours before we left to prepare my Sunday School lesson for the folk in the old folks home.”
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A man who has been preaching and teaching for 55 years. He could have thrown something together. How would the old folks know? No, no! A sense of honor, integrity, duty. Seventy-four years old, and he pushes himself out of bed. That’s the example I had, and I’m not ashamed to say I sat in my study that morning and wept like a baby and thanked God for it. And the question came home to me, “If God spares my children and the children of the men of this congregation, will we have sons and daughters that could sit and weep in thankfulness to God for the example we set? Or will their memories be of a spineless, self-centered, indulgent old man that had all his religion on his mouth, but didn’t produce in the crunch?”
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You fathers, can you say to your kids the things we need to say as fathers and make it stick? Can you teach your sons and daughters personal purity and exemplify it, or when you’re driving down the street does your son, who doesn’t miss a trick, see your eyes take a second look at the immodestly dressed woman? And then when you try to teach him about purity, it all comes to naught! Because he knows that you have not made a covenant with your eyes.
You talk to him about purity and he’s found girly magazines that you’ve stashed away in your basement or out in your garage. And he sits and watches you as you watch television, and he sees that, even in the midst of a sports program, when a lecherous ad comes on the television, he notices that you make no effort to turn it off or to look away. He sees you sitting there ogling. And you wonder why you have no credibility when you speak to him about personal purity. Just keep that up, man, and you’ll make a perfect hypocrite out of him, a perfect sinner.
You try to teach him to be sensitive, understanding, loving, selfless, and yet he sees you come home expecting the whole household to bow down before you, the almighty god called “The Provider,” and simply because you put in your eight hours, to treat you like a king who’s come home from a battle. And he knows that your wife has slogged it out all during the day with the kids and the care of the household. Can you make it stick when you talk to him about stewardship, when he knows that you cheat on your tithe, that your priorities are all mixed up that you can always afford to put yourself in hock for a new car when you want to, but you’d never put yourself in hawk for some need of the church of Jesus Christ.
He knows that there’s no consistency in your devotional life. He knows that you cheat on really honoring the Lord on his day. He sees you self-centered and unconcerned for others. He hears the wicked gossip about the table. My dear Christian father, do you hear me this morning? If you’re to be effective as a father, you must be able to say, and I must be able to say with Paul, “You, my children, are witnesses and God also, how holily, righteously, and unblameably I behaved myself among you”.
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I speak to you young men, laboring to become the man that would be worthy of a wife and a family. Some of you, I’ve heard you say, “I can’t wait until I get married and have some kids.” And that’s a noble thought. But listen to me, young men. Fathering a child is the act of a moment, becoming an effective father to a child is the discipline of a lifetime. Did you hear me? Fathering a child is the act of a moment; becoming an effective father to a child is the discipline of a lifetime. And you learn it now! Not then! You will be then what you have been becoming now!
It’s a frightening thing to read that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. Some of you are going to live long enough to see the shoddy areas of your life thrown back into your faces by your own children. There’s nothing in the Bible that says if we do what we ought to do, there is a guarantee that our children will turn out right. There’s nothing in the Bible that absolutely guarantees it. But there is much in the Bible that guarantees that, if you go on in shoddiness, the sins you tolerate will be thrown back in your faces by your own children.
Young women, what are you looking for in a man? A good job? Good looks? One who provokes a romantic fantasy about your Prince Charming who will come, not on his white charger, but in his Toyota? (You don’t want to support anything bigger than that these days.) His Toyota Celica and takes you off into the sunset?
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Young ladies, listen to me. When you start casting your eyes on a young man, look for real, practical, consistent godliness. And pray God to give you holy blinders as to the shape of his nose, the shape of his eyes, and the size of his waist line. You pray God to give you grace to see true character, because it’s that character that will make him cut the mustard with the children you bear. And your handsome Adonis, who lives poorly, will soon become as ugly and grotesque as the hunchback of Notre Dame in your eyes. And you’ll live with it, because you made your choice. You got what you wanted.
And you parents, if God doesn’t deliver you from silly pride, “Well, when I introduce my daughter-in-law and my son-in-law, I want to be proud of them. Listen, if all you can be proud about can be seen by a stranger at an introduction, that’s slim pickings. That’s slim pickings, my dear man, my dear woman! You parents need to have this as the standard that you set before your children.