Setting specific goals
We have looked at the fundamental grace essential to effective fatherhood and the behavior pattern essential to effective fatherhood. Now let us give our attention to the basic factors which actually constitute effective fatherhood, and there are two.
Basic Factor Number One: Setting specific goals for the development of our children.
The first of these factors is the setting of specific goals for the development of our children. Look at the first letter to the Thessalonians verses eleven and twelve: “as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory”.
Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, says that everything he did as a spiritual father had a self-conscious and specific goal. Look at the language of verse 12: that you would walk worthy of God and the words “to the end” are words describing the goal which Paul and his companions had in all of their labors among the Thessalonians. What they did as spiritual fathers was all pointed towards this one grand goal, namely, the Thessalonians walking worthily of God.
If you were to drop down in a helicopter in Thessalonica and see the Apostle in the wee hours of the morning making tents, and throughout the day preaching in the synagogue, taking individuals aside, and admonishing and exhorting, if you were to see him amidst all of his labors and break in at any point, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Paul, what in the world are you trying to accomplish? What are you doing, burning the midnight oil making tents? What are you doing, preaching like a mad man in the synagogue and risking your own hide in the face of the unbelieving Jews? Why are you spending so much time pouring out your soul on behalf of these Thessalonians?”
Paul would say, “I have a clearly defined goal in view. It is my passion that under God my labors may result in nothing less than these Thessalonians, who once were idol worshipers, as he describes them in chapter one, now so walking in every detail of life as to have a walk that is worthy of the God Who, in grace, has called them into his own kingdom and will ultimately bring them home to glory.” He was not as a man just beating the air, stirring up some spiritual parental dust and merely expending some spiritual energy and working up a spiritual sweat. He had a self-conscious, clearly defined goal in all of his labors. And, in so doing, he sets a marvelous example of what it is to be an effective father after the flesh. And no man is an effective father who does not set specific goals for the development of his children.
Now let me amplify this matter briefly. As to the origin of these goals, they must be goals derived from the Word of God. Where did Paul get his goal for the Thessalonians? Did he go out one day and sit on a log somewhere and scratch his beard and say, “O, well, any man who’s worth his weight in salt has goals, so I better conjure up a goal. Oh, I’ve got an idea! I think a worthy goal would be the goal of having the Thessalonians walk worthily of God.” No, no. That goal was not self-caused, nor created by Paul. It was the goal which God Himself, had revealed in the scheme of redemption. God Himself had revealed in his Word that it was his will for his children to walk worthily of Himself and of their calling.
Well, as Paul in the realm of spiritual fatherhood, so with us in the natural fatherhood. It is absolutely wicked for a father to conjure up goals out of the raw materials of his own notions of what he thinks his children ought to be. It is, furthermore, absolutely wicked to conjure up goals from a consensus of what society says children ought to be. Every father who is anything approaching the biblical model of an effective and godly father, will derive his goals for his children from the Word of the Living God. Why? For the simple reason that the children are not ultimately ours. It is he that has made us, and we are his. And the children entrusted to us are a loan from God, and we have no moral right to mold them into anything other than that which God has established as the goal for the development of those children. As to their origin, then, these specific goals must be derived from the Word of God.
But then, secondly, as to their scope, they must be as comprehensive as Scripture demands. Now perhaps the most succinct statement of the scope of these goals is given to us in the familiar words of Ephesians 6:4: And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them…What is the scope of our goals to be? It is to be no narrower than the nurture of the entire humanity of our children. Nurture them. It doesn’t say, “Nurture merely their bodies, or nurture their minds, or nurture their psyches.” It says, “Nurture them,” and all that makes them “them” is to come within the scope of our goals for their nurture. Therefore our goals in scope must be as comprehensive as Scripture demands.
“Well,” you say, “can you put that into some kind of concrete and tangible expression?” Well, surely, a minimum expression of the scope of those goals is given to us in a passage such as Luke 2:51-52. And I say this is a minimum summary statement, far from exhaustive. It is said of our blessed Lord during the period of his childhood: And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and he was subject unto them. And his mother kept all these things in her heart. And in that framework of trustful, loving submission to Mary and Joseph, (Mary, the one whose womb was the vehicle through which our Lord was brought into the world, Joseph who was not his earthly father, for he had none. He was virgin-conceived, but Joseph was his father in that sense after the flesh or in terms of a fleshly or earthly framework of responsible parenthood) Jesus advanced in wisdom, and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Here we have this beautiful statement of Luke that our Lord matured and developed along these four broad categories of maturation. He advanced in wisdom under the tutelage of Mary and Joseph and the influences to which they exposed our Lord, added to that the influence of his own Father upon his holy mind. He advanced in wisdom. And whatever wisdom is, it is knowledge with its practical bearings upon life in its real circumstances. Our Lord simply did not have an expanding head full of all kinds of facts, while being unable to relate those facts to the nitty-gritty of life. Wisdom is the ability to take the facts of God’s world and relate them to the reality of the circumstances in which we live in God’s world. And Jesus advanced in wisdom.
But then it says there was maturation in stature, and that refers to his physical development. He had an arduous ministry ahead of him. During the three-and-half-years of labor prior to his crucifixion, our Lord would be found in days of prayer and nights of prayer. Days of prayer and fasting. He would be preaching to multitudes without the aid of mechanical amplification. He had to have a well-developed set of stomach muscles. He had to have well-developed lungs. He had to be able to thunder out the words, so that men could hear him. He had to be able to give himself to that arduous task of ministering to the needs of all kinds of humanity’s broken and battered sons and daughters. And it is no little factor in our Lord’s usefulness that in these days there was advancement of stature. Mary and Joseph were concerned about his dietary patterns, his eating patterns. They were concerned about his physical development, for he could only serve his Heavenly Father in the body of his humanity, until that body of humiliation was changed into the body of his glory at the resurrection.
But he also advanced in favor with God. There was spiritual development and maturation, as he went up faithfully to the stated seasons of worship. In the immediately preceding context is a description of Mary and Joseph faithfully going with the family to the appointed feasts, to the appointed times of instruction and public worship, and our Lord is found advancing in favor with God.
But then also with men. This, of course, addresses itself to the whole area of social development. Where did our Lord learn those principles of holy tact that we see in the days of his adulthood? They did not descend upon him in one big bundle in the baptism in Jordan. They did not get dumped on him when the Spirit came upon him to anoint him for service. He was learning them as a child. He had many brothers and sisters, and they were all his younger brothers and sisters, in all likelihood. He learned sensitivity to people when he had to tiptoe into the house when a little one was taking a nap. When everything in him was bursting to say, “Mommy, I’ve got to tell you ….” He learned sensitivity to people.
He learned how to deal with people. He learned how to approach people. He learned those social graces that stand out so beautifully and majestically in the days of his adulthood. Our Lord did not acquire these in any other pattern than that in which you and I acquire them. And that’s the reality of his humanity, and we so seldom think of this. We read the life of our Lord and say, “O well, all those things were his because he is the God-man.” He was the God-man, but these are descriptions of advancement not of God, but of the man. It is the man Christ Jesus who advances in wisdom As God from eternity, he is the fullness of wisdom. He ever has been and ever shall be. This is pointing to the development of his humanity, and therefore it is a bona fide pattern for the development of the humanity of our own children
And the Scripture tells us that this advancement was realized in the context of submission to Mary and to Joseph. And so, with respect to being an effective father, I assert that here must be, on our part as fathers, the setting of specific goals for the development of our children. As to their origin, they must come from the Word of God. As to their scope, they must be as comprehensive as the Scripture demands. What does that mean specifically? It means at least goals pertaining to the maturation of our children in wisdom, in stature, in favor with God, and men.