Closing
Well, in closing, let me seek to draw all of this together.
If the fundamental grace essential for effective fatherhood is sensitive, self-giving love. If the behavior pattern essential for effective fatherhood is real, consistent, practical godliness, do you see, O my dear friends, do you see the impossibility of being a true, effective father without the grace of God? And some of you unsaved fathers, if there is no other motive that would start you to seeking the Lord, I hope this would: You cannot be the father you ought to be without the grace of God, man! You can’t be! You say, “I’ll show ya.” Go ahead and try it.
You try to live a selfless, sensitive life when you’ve got a heart that by nature is selfish and self-centered and insensitive. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”. Proverbs says, “Out of the heart are the issues of life”. Jesus said, “Make the tree good and its fruit good”. Unconverted man, you cannot be the father you ought to be without grace, and what good will it do in the judgment to have your kids rise up and say, “He provided for me, put clothes on my back sent me to college, paid the bills, but then encouraged me to go to hell with him, because he never taught me by precept and example the way of Christ.” You get comfort in the Day of Judgment with that, man, then you can have it! I don’t!
And I say to you men who are in a state of grace, “Do you see the impossibility of being a true and effective father without the disciplines necessary to make you a man of God?” You’ve got to be as much a man of God to be a good father than any man has to be a man of God to be a good preacher. In fact more so, because a preacher can insulate himself from people more effectively than a father can from his children. There are more fake preachers than there are fake fathers. The relationship, of necessity, is too intimate to get away with as much as a lot of preachers get away with. So in one sense you’ve got to be more real as a man of God to be an effective father, than to be an effective preacher. There are a lot of preachers who preach well and live poorly, and it’s only because people don’t know how they live that they can still preach effectively.
Now I ask you fathers, are you willing to pay that price? Are you? What about your career? What about your reputation? You know that you’re going to that 10th reunion of your high school, and all of the hot shot guys are going to be there saying, “I’ve done this for my company. I’ve done that.” Are you willing to be bottom man on the totem pole, if that’s the price you’ve got to pay to be a man of God in your own home? Some of you, if you determine to become men of God, may have to step down from your present job and tighten up your whole life style. You may. Are you prepared for that? Are you? You say, “The price is too high. “ All right, friend, then go on with your false sense of values, but don’t say you weren’t warned.
As I close this morning, I want to ask you something very personal. I want to ask you, (and my own heart has been searched by this question) in a few minutes we’re going to leave this place. And, God willing, we’ll all be taken safely to our homes and we’re going to gather about our Father’s Day meal. I want to ask you something, man, father. Listen to me. Could you ask your wife to lead in prayer to give thanks today with the confidence that she would bow and say, “Holy Father, thank you for the husband and daddy you’ve given me. Holy Father, thank you for a man who, amidst all of his failures and faults, manifests as the bottom line of his life intense, sensitive, self-giving love. Thank you God for such a husband and a father.” Could your wife pray that way without lying?
Come on man, let that question screw itself to your conscience and don’t, don’t, don’t run away from it! Can your wife pray that way within the next half hour? Come on, man. Face the question. Feel uncomfortable? O, may God keep you uncomfortable! Uncomfortable until you’re determined to do something about it!!
And if your children are old enough to pray, could you say to the children, “Now, kiddies, you lead in prayer today, and give thanks to God for anything that’s on your heart.” Would your kids be able to say, “O God, thank you for a daddy who’s got his goals straight. A daddy that loves us enough to spend time with us. Loves us enough to spank us fairly when we’ve needed it. Loves us enough to hear us in our silly little problems. Lord, thank you for a daddy that shows an example of what it is to love Jesus, to walk with Jesus, to love Jesus.” O my Father, if my wife and my kids can’t pray that way, I’d rather die than go on, simply being the biological cause of my children’s existence. I don’t care if the whole world would bow at my feet for whatever reason. If my wife and my kids cannot thank God for a father who manifests the grace of self-giving love and a life of consistent godliness, it would bring me no comfort.
You say, “Pastor, you’ve really flipped your lid. You’ve gone bananas crazy. In your old age, you’re getting fanatical.” My friend, you show me from this Book where I’ve overstated the principles of effective fatherhood. And, if I’ve been true to the principles of this Book, then some of you need to have a judgment day today. You know what’s going to happen? Some of you will go out of here wounded, and before the afternoon’s out you’ll pull out all of the arrows and heal yourself over. And you’ll be exactly the same next Father’s Day that you were today. And that’s enough to make me want to quit the ministry and go home to heaven. To pour out your soul, your tears, and to have men so besotted with ambition and pride and laziness that they’ll sell the souls of their own children, rather than get upset enough to do something! In the name of God, men, will this be a vanishing species—godly fathers? O may God give us a new breed of godly fathers. Let us pray.