As moms and dads, the odds of being perfect parents are the same odds of being perfect human beings: nil.

We’re not omniscient. The parent who thinks he has learned all he needs to learn and is finished maturing remains immature. We have much to gain, and our children can be a way for us to grow up. I used to think the sequence was this:

Grow up.
Get married.
Have children.

But no. You get married, grow up a bit, have children, and then grow up lots more. Our children help to raise us.

Home as a School for Parents

A parent taught only by adults possesses an incomplete education. Parents cannot appreciate everything they are told about parenting until they experience children of their own.

When I taught in public schools, one of my colleagues had raised no children of her own, but because of her master’s degree, she considered herself quite knowledgeable in raising them. Sadly, she didn’t know what she didn’t know. The experience of parenting provides an unparalleled school. The tests may seem a bit tough at times, but to become a parent is to enroll.

In normal school, the tests are generally preceded by lessons. In life, including parenting, the tests arrive prior to the lessons and are in fact part of the lessons.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2–4)

Raising children brings a conveyor belt of tests and trials, and as instruments in the hand of God, those tests produce mature parental character.

A Child’s Many Lessons

Becoming a parent, then, is no license to stop learning, and the household is a wonderful, God-given school. What are some of those lessons parents might expect to learn in this school of the family? Consider just a sampling.

Children teach us that life is brief. Childhood goes by in a flash. We are older than we think, closer to the finish line. Even when life may seem to be dragging, it flies by, with less and less sand left in the hourglass. My own children are now middle-aged with their own children becoming adults. How did that happen so fast? Since life is brief, wise parents sort priorities so that main things take precedence, deferring lesser things accordingly.

Children remind us of lessons we are continually forgetting, such as the centrality of enabling grace to do what we ought to do; the need for humble realism, pointing us back to the enabling grace we need; and the bigness of God, who always provides enough of that enabling grace. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

“You get married, grow up a bit, have children, and then grow up lots more. Our children help to raise us.”

Children picture for us (and remind us) what receiving God’s kingdom is like: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15).

Children can model faith, amazement, yearning, and delight. They can teach us that the universe God created is a fascinating place. Alert parents are on the lookout for ways to imitate these living, God-given signposts in our homes. From them we can learn how to try things, to experiment.

Children are also mirrors, reflecting back to us our priorities and our character. Where did that child learn to use that tone of voice? The home serves as an excellent laboratory in which to practice setting a guard at our lips. The mirrors are listening.

As mirrors, children teach us about ourselves, that we (parents and children) are a race of sinners, born with a sinful bent, with none of us fulfilling righteousness — no, not one (Romans 3:10–12). We all tend to be self-centered, making foolish efforts to self-justify. To parent without a conscious awareness of our sin nature is to garden without an awareness of weeds.

Children also have reminded me that mercy covers a multitude of sins. They can be models of forgiveness. Don’t waste the models.

Aiming Bottle Rockets

Over time, children also teach us just how much we depend on God himself to raise our children.

Even though parents are extremely influential in shaping the lives of their kids, if your children don’t eventually disabuse you of the notion that you are responsible for everything they become, then let me relieve you of that unbiblical idea right now.

Once, when I set off a package of “identical” bottle rockets launched from the same pop bottle and aimed the same way, they launched in wildly varied directions, some curling and swirling, some darting straight to the heavens, and a few blowing up before leaving the launching pad. In the providence of God, children vary like bottle rockets. Yes, you can aim them, but you can’t guarantee they’ll end up in the same place. Not all variables are within parents’ control. Children teach us this lesson, illustrated with their lives. The uniqueness of each child (at any age) points us to God’s matchless creativity.

It’s true that some parents do a terrible or indifferent job of “aiming” their little rockets, and the above paragraph is not aimed at soothing their guilt. I’m saying that rockets from the same package, manufactured the same way, aimed by the same aimers, go off in different directions. If parents don’t know this going in, the arrival of actual children provides a field exercise in recalibrating expectations.

Embrace Your Home as a School

Learning from our children depends, in part, on embracing the reality of our deep, ongoing imperfections. Such humble and realistic self-awareness serves healthy and wise parental openness, helping us not run from the painful lessons we see in the mirror of our kids.

I have found it helpful to consciously ask, “How is God refining me by means of his word, these children he has given me, and the circumstances in which I now swim?” In addition to being mightily encouraged by the glimmers of progress that occasionally burst through, I am served by the adversities I encounter as a parent. As messengers of God, the challenges of parenting humble me, point out where repentance is due (or overdue), pull weeds of selfishness and immaturity in my heart, and spread fertilizer on the soil from which grows the fruit of the Spirit.

Parenting challenges prod me to refocus and make not just a home but a life. They spur me to plant seeds and water the seeds planted in my own heart by my God-given children. Lord, make it so.

My wife and I have often told our children, “You raised us.” God be thanked.

Children absorb. They learn their way around the world not only from what others explicitly teach them, but also from the kind of culture or atmosphere in which they live — especially in their home. The old adage “more is caught than taught” applies. By God’s design, children soak up values without even knowing it.

For example, children don’t pick up their mother tongue because someone stands in front of them with a pronunciation flip chart. They pick up their mother tongue simply from hearing it day after day. They breathe it in without conscious awareness. And as with language, so with values. Children are constantly absorbing. Therefore, what happens within the walls of your home will have a disproportionate impact on who they become.

So, how can Christian parents create a Christlike culture in which their children can swim?

Detecting Indifference

A family’s culture is not established in five minutes. Family culture is the sum total of the parents’ relationship with God, with each other, with the children, and with the world. No aspect of life is irrelevant to this enterprise, right down to what you say and how you say it, what you do and how you do it, what you love and how you love it, what you hate and how you hate it. Family culture includes the major events in life, and it includes the seemingly little things that go almost unnoticed, like what you mutter at the stoplight.

“No family can fake a Christian culture — at least, not for long.”

No family can fake a Christian culture — at least, not for long. If parents aren’t wowed by God’s character, attributes, and wonderful deeds, their indifference won’t kindle awe in the hearts of the children. Indifference is reproducible. If the heavens aren’t declaring God’s glory to me (Psalm 19:1), I’m not likely to help my children see the glory the heavens are declaring to them.

Genuine enthusiasm for God’s glory is not empty hype. Children are wired with keen hypocrisy antennae. Flesh can masquerade as Spirit only for so long before they notice the cosmetics wearing off. So, when it comes to establishing a Christian culture, the first step is to be thoroughly entranced by the superiority of Jesus yourself. Jesus is not a pointer, but the point.

Awe Begets Awe

Beware of trying to argue anyone — including your children — into seeing the surpassing beauty of Christ. Though arguments may be necessary in establishing a culture, they are not sufficient. You can’t argue a blind man into seeing the multicolored clouds of the sunset. Therefore, allow children to witness your unsolicited and uncontrived worship — both in planned moments, like worship services, and in unplanned moments of ordinary life. Give them no doubt that family devotions and church services aren’t the only time you personally ponder the Bible and commune with God.

Has Jesus gripped you? Are you deeply impressed with Jesus? When you read Colossians 1:16–18, does awe arise?

By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

The Christian culture we want to foster is more a matter of devotion than devotions. There is a great difference between explaining the importance of something and modeling its importance in your own life, interrupting lesser concerns in order to give front-burner attention to the main priorities.

Creating a Christlike Culture

I don’t know of anyone who has discovered a foolproof checklist for producing Christian kids. Checklists don’t change hearts. But transformed hearts can make good use of checklists as a sort of self-diagnostic or reminder. As you seek to foster a Christian culture in your home, the following suggestions can serve like mirrors to help you see how you’re doing. We’ll consider these suggestions in two groupings: ways and words.

WAYS

The God of means uses habits consistently practiced in a home to elevate and solidify values and identity. “Our family functions this way.” Consider the following.

Model what you expect from your children: Christian courtesy, diligence, punctuality, and scores of Christlike character qualities that blossom in parents who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Avoid giving the impression that you never fail, but own your sins and mistakes. Say out loud, “I was wrong,” and ask forgiveness of each other while keeping short accounts.

In a Christian culture, the parents joyfully sacrifice themselves and do not seek to be put on a pedestal, even while teaching their children obedience. They are able to say, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

Gently touch. Soft and playful touches can convey affection and acceptance, and if the children stiffen or pull away, that bristling may signal a relational wound that needs healing.

Get organized. Orderliness can serve everyone in the household, whereas a cluttered dwelling and cluttered calendar can beget chaos. Start by organizing your decisions, and then branch out from there. A well-placed shelf, or some coat hooks, or a reminder list on the fridge can help strengthen teamwork in the family.

Don’t punish children when nature has already punished them. If your son crashed and skinned his knee when he was clowning around on his bike, you don’t have to add your punishment. The natural universe God established has already applied its own form of correction.

“The Christian culture we want to foster is more a matter of devotion than devotions.”

At the same time, do not fear your child. You are the parent. It can be a fearful experience for a child to discover that his parents have left him in charge of the world. Expect that if you use your God-given parental authority, you will sooner or later offend your children’s grasp at self-rule. Understand the difference between offending them (an inevitable result of godly discipline) and wounding them (an excessive or ill-timed use of discipline). Love God more than your family in order to love your family well.

WORDS

What we say is of course important, and how we say it may be even more important. Tone of voice and facial expression can be life-giving or deadly.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue,     and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21)

When it comes to speaking around children, then, monitor your tone. Do you sound edgy, cranky, whiny — or cheerful, grateful, honoring? Out of the mouths of babes come things parents shouldn’t have said. Tone is so important to household culture. Don’t reward whining, or you will get lots more of it. Beware of practicing sarcasm, for it can toxify a home and the children within it.

Commend the commendable, especially when you observe it in your children’s attitude. Avoid placing more emphasis on physical looks and abilities than on Christlike character.

Say thank you a lot; say thank you to them as well as to others and to God. Keep promises and don’t break them — to your children or to your spouse.

Pray. It is an unspeakable service to your children to pray for them and with them. Talk to Jesus about them before you talk to them about Jesus, and do both regularly.

Sing. Singing has a wonderful effect on the tone of a home, not to mention the long-term benefits of memorizing godly lyrics. You can sing serendipitously, while doing the dishes or driving, and you can gather round and launch together into a song that supports the kind of culture you’re trying to build.

Could we sum it all up — words and ways — in a vision for a Christlike family culture? In all your practices and speech, live so that someday, when your children are asked if they ever knew a true Christian, they would immediately think of you.

Legacies are multigenerational. For good or evil, your influence has the potential to span generations, even eternity, impacting individuals you may or may not meet in your lifetime.

As we’ve learned again and again, it only takes one scandal, one Judas-like betrayal, one failure or gross inconsistency to damage the legacy we leave. And it takes a lifetime of God-enabled faithfulness — a grace he loves to give — to create a beautiful legacy worthy of emulation. Oh, how I thank God for the men and women I’ve known who have lived such lives and left such legacies, which brings me to Ron Wickard.

Ron Wickard humbly pastored the same church out on the remote South Dakota prairie for 42 years, providing one beautiful model of what it means to “dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3). He led his growing congregation longer than Moses led the children of Israel in the wilderness. By grace, he preached to, taught, dedicated, married, and buried a couple of generations, diligently trained his elders in biblical doctrine, and successfully oversaw five building campaigns (funding a fleet of church vehicles for good measure).

Ron was a tenaciously patient leader, both with individual sinners and with the sometimes slow movement of church “politics.” He took the long view. That’s what wisdom does. So, what sustained Pastor Ron on his long road of faithful ministry? His love for the sovereignty and the supremacy of Jesus.

Supremacy Unleashes Love

Ron’s spiritual taste buds savored the Christ-exalting Scriptures. One night, after a meeting between Ron and me, his deep, enthusiastic belief in the God-centeredness of God kept us sitting in his car discussing and reveling in God’s glorious supremacy, considering text after text, until the sun came up the next morning. Over decades, Ron plunged his soul in the river of rich books extolling the absolute preeminence of Jesus. Beholding the character of Jesus in the Bible, he increasingly became what he beheld, and he invited his people to come and see what he saw in the Bible.

This pastor really loved the people of his church. On multiple occasions, I witnessed him drive over three hundred miles to arrive at a board meeting, only to receive a phone call that one tragedy or another had happened back at his home church (a house fire, the death of a baby, some other crisis). He would get right back in his car and drive three hundred miles home to minister to those in need. His endurance and love went hand in hand, always doing what he believed was best for his people, which was often a significant inconvenience to himself.

Over time, I saw that he did all of this for joy. He took pleasure in knowing that he was representing a big God who orchestrates all things for his own glory and that he was pursuing a profound, eternal good for the people he loved. When you do such things at a church for 42 years, you not only minister to one generation, but you minister to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Tenacious Patience

It takes time for trees to produce fruit. The same is true of any healthy church. Some trees, such as plum trees, take just three to five years to produce, while other trees, like almond trees, can take up to twelve years. Growing a healthy church in the middle of the South Dakota pheasant range is sort of like tending an almond tree. It might grow fruit slowly, but the growth does come. And the result is a crop of glad-hearted worshipers who devour the Bible and embrace a big God.

Albert Mohler notes how commonly we “overestimate what can be accomplished in a single year, but underestimate what can be accomplished in a decade” (The Conviction to Lead, 194). Or four decades. Kids I once saw as teenagers in Ron’s church are now elders teaching adult classes. Ron, of course, won’t take any credit for that, but chalks it up to God’s grace. I would add that such grace often flows through the conduit of long-term pastoral faithfulness.

Leadership includes times of leaning into the wind, trudging uphill, and going against the grain of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Hence, leadership is an endurance test. It requires tenacious patience.

Fatigue of Various Kinds

Leader or not, every day requires grace. Some days seem to require more grace than others. During some particularly intense seasons, it can seem like you’re burning through grace at a whirlwind pace. Though there is never(!) a shortage of grace to do what’s right, you can experience various kinds of fatigue.

Perhaps there’s a lengthy controversy still brewing, and you face issue fatigue. Perhaps there’s a gadfly who keeps demanding a disproportionate amount of your time and attention, leading to that-guy fatigue. Or perhaps you’re simply aging, and you feel body fatigue. Maybe you’re at the tail end of a long building campaign, and you have project fatigue. In any case, no matter the variety of fatigue, there is an enabling grace from God to endure in the strength he supplies and to do what ought to be done. Call it leadership for the long haul. And since great leadership serves the people, great leadership is servanthood, so we could also call it servanthood for the long haul.

Meanwhile, merely enduring falls short. There’s something better. Great servants don’t endure merely. They endure by “being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). Patience with joy — that’s what I’ve seen in Ron. When it came to difficulties, Ron wouldn’t merely bear it, but would grin and bear it in the strength God supplies. Because he knew that behind the dark providences was always a smiling divine face.

Steadfast Love

As Ron observed the beauty of Jesus’s fidelity to his bride, the church, Ron inhaled that beauty and reproduced it. I experienced this firsthand. When Vicki and I endured a miscarriage, Ron traveled over 150 miles one way to attend the burial of a child he never met. Sorrowful, yet rejoicing, we together worshiped the God who makes no mistakes and works all things together for the good of those who love him.

Having genuinely and steadfastly loved his people for over four decades, Ron, like Jesus, “loved them to the end” (John 13:1). When he stepped down from his senior pastor role, the wife of his successor told me, “He loves the people. He does what’s best for them.” And by loving that way, Ron was (and still is) an example to his flock (1 Peter 5:3). And to me.

Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Ron Wickard is a humble pastoral leader who factors prominently in my memory, leaving me to consider the outcome of his way of life and longing to imitate his faith — as he imitates Jesus.

We will be most satisfied in God when we know why God himself is most satisfied in God.

If the world is a mess (and it is), and if God is in charge of this mess (and he is), then how is it rational to be satisfied with a God who let things get so messy? If he’s ultimately responsible for all of this, how could we trust in him, much less delight in him?

Several answers come to mind. My own satisfaction with God springs from a number of places, including:

His steadfast love in Christ.
His drawing near to me instead of remaining far off.
His personal acquaintance with my grief and sorrow — in every respect tempted as I am, yet without sin.
His mercies, new every morning, triumphing over judgment and removing his just wrath upon sinners like me.
His ability and willingness to fulfill all his promises, and his appetite for making really pleasant ones to me, despite how little I deserve.

While realities like that are unspeakably savory reasons to delight in God, they’re not the one I uncovered in the sentence above.

Seeing the Universe Through a Sentence

Years ago, I had already embraced the God-centeredness of God — that he does all he does for his glory — but the happiness of God was almost entirely off my radar. Until I read one sentence. I read it thirty years ago now, and I haven’t read the Bible the same ever since:

We will be most satisfied in God when we know why God himself is most satisfied in God. (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, 9)

Could it be true? Could the God I’ve believed in all these years possibly be happy? And not only happy, but the happiest of all?

A sentence like the one I read drives us to ask deeper, simpler questions, like “What is happiness?” It’s not mindless giddiness. God is not drunk or on LSD. Happiness — including God’s happiness — is pleasure in a desirable sense of well-being, a contented joy in all that’s fitting, a delight that seeks expression in pure, unsullied, unblemished, unpolluted, untarnished, unbounded, unrestrained rejoicing.

And if, as Piper claims, my satisfaction in him hinges upon his satisfaction in him, then there’s no more important question than this: “Is God happy?” By setting me on a quest to find what makes God happy, this sentence changed the way I read the Bible and the way I observe everything I observe in the universe. And there’s a lot to observe in this universe. There’s a lot that makes God happy, and his happiness fuels my satisfaction in him.

What Makes God Happy?

The Bible parades a number of God’s pleasures before us. For example (and this is only a small sampling):

He delights in justice (Proverbs 11:1).
He delights in the prayer of the upright (Proverbs 15:8).
He delights in those who hope in his steadfast love (Psalm 147:11).
He delights in choosing a people (Deuteronomy 10:14–15).
He is pleased by all he does (Psalm 115:9).
He is well pleased in his Son (Matthew 17:5).

It’s perfectly reasonable to supremely value the supremely valuable. God is reasonable, supremely so. He is also supremely valuable. So he is perfectly reasonable when he supremely values himself (and he does at all times). God is satisfying to me partly because he is reasonable — consummately reasonable — by supremely valuing the supremely valuable.

To supremely value something that is not supremely valuable is crazy. It is idolatry. But God is not an idolater. Or crazy. Henry Scougal famously wrote, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” What God loves most is worth the most — namely, himself. All of this may lead us to ask, “What makes something more valuable than something else? What things are most valuable?”

“God is maximally happy, because he is maximally glorious — and maximally happy in that gloriousness.”

Deep down, we know good answers. Things with solidity and lasting endurance. Things that won’t evaporate and poof. Things that overcome other things, instead of being subject to factors and forces they cannot control. Things that are never self-contradictory. Things that are substantial, influencing all other things. The thing from which all other things are derived. Something that is so rare there is nothing like it anywhere, and yet it is profoundly and decisively useful in every context without exception. Something that is inexhaustibly self-replenishing.

God is that kind of valuable, gloriously so. God is maximally happy because he is maximally glorious — and maximally happy in that gloriousness.

If God Were Not Happy

What if God were all-powerful, but a grouch? What if the well-known children’s prayer — “God is great, God is good” — were instead “God is great, but he’s not so good, so ya better watch out!”? If so, he could use that almighty power to grind us all into powder and blow us away — far away, a kind of far away called outer darkness.

The God of the Bible, however, does something remarkable because he is something remarkable. Rather than grumble or rage, he delights. God relishes. His highest and deepest gladness is in being God, and so he delights in everything he does. He doesn’t do anything poorly or wrongly. His workmanship is without error, and therefore when he does something — anything — he can step back and say, “That’s good . . . really good. I like it. I’m rightly happy with myself for doing it that way.” Even his wrath ends up pleasing him, for it ultimately carries out perfect justice, thereby glorifying him in his righteousness.

“Each day, I want to move toward becoming as happy about God as God is happy about God.”

What does this happiness mean for me? As the infinitely wise, unchanging, always-happy God, he never regrets anything he does. Therefore, I shouldn’t regret anything he has done, but instead trust him that he is working all things, without exception, for the good of those who love him. And then, beyond trusting him, I thank him, love him, praise him, enjoy him. I delight in who he is and what he’s done, just as he delights in himself. His happiness is not secondary, but primary. Each day, I want to move toward becoming as happy about God as God is happy about God.

God’s Happiness with Messiness

How can the farmer end his long hot day and glance with satisfaction at the sod all torn up by plowing? Here’s how: he’s not done with that field, and he enjoys the plowing in anticipation of the glorious crop to come. It was a good day of dusty, sweaty plowing, though at the moment the land looks like a scarred mess.

Vicki and I experienced the death of two children. To shake the fist at God as though he has failed is to wrongly assume that he is done with those children — or with us. He is not done. Ever.

I took a ceramics class with my middle school daughter. Together we labored for hours over projects that made a dusty clay mess of the studio and our clothes. How could we be satisfied in the toil and trouble? Answer: even though our creations had not yet come out of the kiln, they were on the way to something attractive and useful. God can be pleased with mid-stream projects, because plowed fields, bodily ailments, entirely flooded planets, and this broken, groaning universe are well on their way to glorious outcomes.

God is happy with everything he does because he infallibly produces immeasurable good through everything he does. He never shrugs his shoulders and mutters, “I wish I could have done better.”

His Happiness and My Existence

What difference has it made to me whether God is happy to be who he is and do what he does?

His happiness has differentiated him from man-made gods who are cranky and temperamental, like the human race that invents them. From the capricious and cruel thunderbolts of Zeus, to the unpredictable anger of Poseidon, to the Artemis who demands human sacrifice during the Trojan War, to the abortion-promoting self-deified morality police of today’s cancel culture, man-made gods are unlike the happy God who promises pleasures at his right hand forever.

His happiness has injected all of history with purposefulness. The happy God is not wasting one single event but working all things together for the good of those who love him. That changes the way I read my current circumstances. Through them, God is taking me somewhere good, very good. The happiness of God has also changed the way I read the Bible. His delight in his being and his works is everywhere in the lines and between the lines.

This life-changing happiness of God is a kind of deep happiness without any regrets whatsoever. When the Bible says God regrets or repents (and it does say that, for instance in Genesis 6:6 and 1 Samuel 15:10), it means he laments over the sad belittlement of his glory. But if he had to start all over again, he would act exactly the same way. Everything is going according to his deep plan to bring maximum glory to his Son and maximum pleasure to his people in the end, and he’s happy about that. So am I.

Two weeks before Christmas, my heart stopped.

Seated next to me in a congregational meeting, my wife sees me close my eyes and slump. After a few seconds, the old ticker providentially revives “on its own.” It happens four times during that meeting. Maybe I’m just too inactive, I think. Perhaps if I get up and walk around a bit, I can get the juices flowing, and whatever is going on will clear up.

While I’m pacing in the church lobby, one of the elders says he doesn’t think I look quite right. I call my physician, and he recommends that I get to the emergency room for an evaluation. I’m not to drive myself.

In the emergency room, the surgeon hooks me up to a bunch of wires and asks a whole battery of questions to diagnose what’s going on.

“Are there heart problems in your family?”“Yes, my dad died of a heart attack at 60. So did his dad.”“But do you feel pain?”“None.”“Did you feel dizzy?”“Not really. The room wasn’t spinning. I wasn’t nauseous.”“Did you pass out?”“Not really. I could still hear, sort of.”“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”“I was uninterested in it all, like it was all background noise.”“Did you break into a sweat?”“Nope.”

The surgeon is puzzled. Maybe he is dealing with a hypochondriac.

While he goes off to another room, it happens — another episode. Before I slump into semi-consciousness, I glance at the monitor: my pulse registers a big giant zero; I have flatlined. A few seconds later, as I revive “on my own,” the surgeon comes running in from the other room, thinking he may have to do CPR or call a Code Blue or something. He exclaims, “Your heart completely stopped for about eight seconds!”

I’m not having a heart attack from plugged arteries, causing oxygen-starved muscles to die in pain. It’s just that my internal cardio-electrical circuitry is taking a break. Which it will do five more times that evening in the hospital. Pacemaker, here we come.

Sitting on the gurney, I say to Vicki, my wife, “I might see Jesus before Christmas.” We pray. We cry. She affirms that she knows where all our important documents are. She adds, “If you go, I’ll be right behind you.” In sudden concern, I ask, “Why? Are you having a medical crisis too?” Then she says something untrue, but very endearing: “I can’t live without you.”

When Your Heart Fails

Since the word heart is in our English Bibles over nine hundred times, the heart is, apparently, a big deal. It’s common knowledge that heart has more than one meaning. It’s bad if your physical heart fails, like mine did. It is worse if your spiritual heart fails. What does spiritual heart failure look like, and what can be done when, as several biblical writers experienced, you sense your spiritual heart at zero?

I know this pain (or gloomy numbness, as the case may be). If our heart has failed, it will do no good to deny it. We may as well admit it. And we should expect heart challenges. It’s an unfortunate and painful aspect of life in a fallen world that sometimes our hearts fail — even if you are more stable than most. Even Superman encounters his kryptonite. Heart failure is not novel or strange, so don’t be caught unaware.

Even simply admitting spiritual heart failure is a step in the right direction. As Paul puts it,

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses [like a failed heart], so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses [like a failed heart], insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)

Spiritual heart failure can take several forms. Let’s consider three.

Heart Failure of Discouragement

Hearts can fail when the obstacles seem too impossible. Big adversity puts big holes in our little courage buckets. For example, the heart of Saul’s entire army failed when taunted by a single giant (1 Samuel 17:11, 32). The spies returning from the promised land were discouraged when they thought they seemed like grasshoppers in the eyes of their enemies (Numbers 13:31–33). David’s heart failed when “evils encompassed [him] beyond number” (Psalm 40:12).

Mountains of foreboding discouragement loom large — war, sleeplessness, unfortunate genetics, failed diets, relational pressures, natural disasters, financial burdens, and even ordinary weather. Our hearts are not impervious to such blitzes.

Heart Failure of False Feelings

Doubts send assurance toward the drain, morphing into miserable dread. Like weeds, the seeds of doubt germinate in the thought life and multiply, overtaking one’s feelings, producing a vague sense of nagging guilt and that God has turned against us. Waffling belief and theological confusion can cause me to feel like God is against me. Key word: feel.

Feelings make a bad chief executive, yet they often speak with the loudest voice. They can be, and typically are, shortsighted and short-lived. They demand that gratification be immediate, and once appeased still make more demands. Instead of listening to the siren song of feelings, wise souls listen instead to a more reliable, still small voice: the voice of the Spirit. The failed heart needs faith, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17) — sometimes found in the mouth of a wise Christian friend.

“Ask God for the enabling grace to do what your feelings tell you can’t be done.”

The failed heart is helped by doing what it doesn’t feel like doing. Get up in the morning. Work out (tell your feelings to take a hike — literally). Aim your eyeballs at the pages of the Bible. Ask God for the enabling grace to do what your feelings tell you can’t be done. Then act the miracle. Say with Jesus, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Then be a doer, not a hearer only (James 1:25).

Heart Failure of Exhaustion

When your heart fails, it won’t work for someone to say, “Snap out of it!” Affliction, perplexity, and persecution are tiring, heart-depleting. You are out of gas. The sleepless children have left you downright exhausted. The sun rises, and you sit there, bent over in a motionless lump.

But when your heart is failing, consider Jesus.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted [that is, lose heart]. (Hebrews 12:3)

Look at Jesus (for a model of stoutheartedness), and look to Jesus (for enabling grace to persevere). God has not abandoned you. For example, he has given you sufficient enabling grace to read this sentence. There’s more grace where that came from.

Accordingly, don’t do anything drastic. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t binge on something regrettable. Slow down. Rest where you can. When Elijah despaired of life and asked that he might die, he was helped by some common ordinary sleep (1 Kings 16:5).

Strength of My Heart

When your heart is failing, perform a simple self-inspection. A spiritually failing heart may be evidence that we are treasuring the wrong object. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

“My heart may fail, but God’s heart never does.”

What is it I really love? Am I supremely valuing the supremely valuable? What was I expecting? How biblical are my expectations? Am I perceiving reality realistically?

Whatever the cause, my heart may fail, but God’s heart never does. Asaph put it this way:

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)

God loves his children whether their hearts are thriving or failing. Remind your failing heart that your sins were completely cancelled at the cross, where Jesus took them.

In the emergency room that night, though my physical heart was intermittently failing and reviving, my spiritual heart was raring to go. One day, I expect my ticker to quit ticking altogether. And when my physical heart finally stops completely, I expect my other heart to exult in Jesus, the one who will carry on to completion what he has begun.

My wife and I raised perfect children.

By the time they were ten years old, they had memorized the New Testament. They came each morning to the family breakfast table with cheerful songs on their tongues, the melodies caressing their freshly brushed teeth. At an early age, they volunteered to launder their own clothes and never once complained about their studies.

They never used a whiny tone of voice with their mother, and they affectionately call me “dearest father” to this very day. I can’t recall correcting them. They were thrilled to share their belongings with each other. We never heard a mumbling word.

Yeah, right.

There are no perfect children. Vicki and I didn’t raise any, and my parents didn’t raise any either. Neither did yours. We live on a fallen and cursed planet. You are a sinner, and your children are too. They not only fall short of the glory of God, but they fall short of the expectations of their inglorious dads.

“Don’t give up on fatherhood just because perfection seems continually out of reach.”

But all is not lost. Fathers, don’t give up on fatherhood just because perfection seems continually out of reach. God extends more than enough grace to compensate for our shortcomings as dads. Children of defective parents — your children — can end up relishing God.

When Dreams Hit Reality

Expectations breed strong emotions, and unmet expectations even stronger ones. When our expectations collide with real life, the mismatch can erupt in a whole range of emotions — from dismay to sorrow to fuming anger. Mostly fuming anger. That’s what happens when people do what you don’t expect them to, or don’t do what you do expect them to.

Desires launch assumptions, which are then fueled by narratives we have subtly adopted. Such as:

Unlike other children, my children will never make a big mess or be fussy in church.
I will lose standing in the community if my kids don’t go to college.
My children will replicate only my good traits and not my flaws and sinful attitudes.
My kids will be spiritually advanced for their age.

Acting wisely and avoiding emotional hijacks requires winning the crucial battle — an unceasingly ongoing one — to align your expectations with reality. Those children you love dearly will sin dreadfully. As you have. Observe the one reality you cannot avoid in your parenting: you and your sinful nature. Your children not only live with your sin — they inherit it.

“Those children you love dearly will sin dreadfully. As you have.”

But parenting is not to be dreaded. To dread parenting exposes a misplaced love that you perceive to be in danger — like a love for your reputation if your kids mess up, or a love for your schedule if your kids make a mess when you’re already running late. The steadfast love of God is never in danger, and if your aim in parenting is to draw attention to his love, you have nothing to dread on that score.

Safe Expectations

Some expectations, however, will certainly come to pass.

You can plan on the fact that your parenting will never go exactly according to your plan. Your parenting plan isn’t perfectly wise, because you are not perfectly wise. My wife has a placard that says, “Man plans. God laughs.” In contrast to our plans, God’s plan for your parenting is perfectly wise. You are not sovereign. He is. And in his perfection, he assigned your children their father — namely, you.

Parenting is nevertheless a humbling experience. Your parenting won’t be flawless any more than your marriage has been without disappointments. You will face regret — regret that you weren’t a better parent, that you passed on your imperfections to your children, that you displayed anger at them for being like you, that you didn’t know as much as you had hoped you would.

My kids are now middle-aged themselves, all of them parenting their own unique God-given brood. And one of the disappointments I didn’t expect early on is that they haven’t passed along to their own children some of the lessons I insisted on giving to them.

For example, when my children were still living at home, I led family discussions about everything from Charles Finney’s approach to confessing sin, to how eye traps work (seductive clothing), to the value of singing together. As a grandparent, I don’t hear those lessons emphasized in the same ways in their homes. Meanwhile, they love their children deeply, and point them to Jesus in other ways I never did.

So there’s another side to this expectation coin. God provides occasions when your children exceed your expectations, times when you wish you were like them. Some of our children treat every day as a new day, forgiving yesterday’s offenses. Some are generous to a fault. Some seem impervious to peer pressure.

In a crucial sense, your children grow you. That is, they are God-sent instruments for your growth in maturity, your sanctification, your alignment with God’s plan for your Christlikeness.

Questions for Fathers

With some safe expectations in place, what steps might dads take to remove some of the imperfections from their imperfect parenting?

Fathers who rightly relate to God are on firm footing for rightly relating to their children. So how is your own relationship with your heavenly Father? Do you “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” trusting that “all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33)? Would people who know you best say that you truly want what God wants for your children? Would you say it about yourself? Would God say it about you?

How do you parent today in relation to how you were parented? Are you replicating the errors of your own mom or dad? Are you motivated to avoid repeating the same errors? Once grace enables you to become aware of their errors, that same grace can enable you to break from those errors in your own parenting. Generational sins can be broken: “Now suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise” (Ezekiel 18:14).

Ask God to help you seek his kingdom first in your family, especially in those places where you are tempted to repeat the errors of the past.

Humble Fatherhood

Perhaps most of all, however, we dads need humility. Even if your way of raising children is a good way, beware of concluding your way is the best way, much less the only way. In other words, remain teachable. One day it dawned on me that my small children could teach me a few lessons about my parenting. That was God whispering to me through my children.

Fathers, your offspring won’t admire everything about you. They’ll learn stuff you didn’t teach them. They’ll be better than you at some skills and more developed in certain character qualities. Your personal flaws will exert lingering influence on them. Pray for mercy.

They may or may not follow your preferred career for them. They will not develop uniformly without setbacks, nor be identical to their siblings. Recognize individuality.

Even though you work at it — and you are wise to do so — you will not always have your wife’s enthusiastic support in every aspect of parenting, from bedtimes to how much should be spent on gifts. Be gentle. Be humble. Seek God for more grace. Although not all of your expectations will be fulfilled in fathering, you can continue to grow and step into God’s great privilege of being their dad.