Random Thoughts on Being a Dad
Every now and again I jot down a thought that I’d like to ponder but that I don’t intend to tease out into a full article. Over the past few weeks, I have jotted down a series of thoughts on being a dad. I hope there is something here that benefits you or gets you thinking as well.
Your children will learn from you more than anyone else how a father is meant to treat his children and how a husband is meant to treat his wife. The words you speak about these subjects will pale in comparison to the ways you act. Your children are always watching and always learning. Live accordingly.
One of the great privileges and callings of being a dad is bearing the greatest responsibility for your children’s spiritual development. Yet many dads neglect this to their shame and their children’s peril. This most certainly involves ensuring you are all attending a sound local church and involved with it. And it most certainly involves the close discipleship of knowing their spiritual state and of teaching and training them in the Christian faith. Dad, there are many people and forces eager to disciple them away from the Lord; make it your purpose to disciple them toward him.
Family devotions is a wonderful opportunity to grow in knowledge and obedience together. The benefit is in the habit and the repetition—in committing to many years of sharing this experience together. Dad, take the lead in this best of all habits.
One negative word about your daughter’s boyfriend/fiancé/spouse may prove far more significant than a thousand positives. So be effusive with your praise and cautious with any criticism. Criticism will sink down deep.
It is the jurisdiction of dad, and dad alone, to declare when a bottle of shampoo is empty. Only he has the requisite skill to ensure it has been used to the last drop and only he has the right to declare when a new bottle can be opened.
Sons are especially prone to believe that dad is displeased with them. If it is not true of all sons, it is true of many sons. They need to be assured that they are beginning to become men and to gain the trust and confidence of their father. So be sure to provide plenty of words of encouragement and affirmation. Whatever else your son knows, make sure he knows that you love him and are proud of him.
Our God is lavish with his love and so often surprises us with the abundance of his provision. In just that way, it is the joy of a dad to provide for his children and to give them not only what they need, but also far more. It is a joy and a privilege (and perhaps even a duty) to surprise and delight them.
For all the fatherly joy of giving gifts to his children, what children benefit from even more is their father’s time and approval. Time together is a wonderful gift that reaps many blessings and benefits.
It may be wise to establish a pattern of taking your children out individually, whether for a meal, activity, or event. These special times with dad will display your love for your children and build beautiful memories together.
Being a dad will teach you a lot about the fatherhood of God. It will teach you about your own folly and God’s wisdom; it will teach you about your own sin and God’s forgiveness; it will teach you about your own disobedience and God’s unbreakable love.
One of the best ways to display your love for your children is to love their mother. After all, there is no one on earth they love more than her. Their respect for you will increase according to your love for her.
Don’t take it too hard when your children—tweens or young teens especially—say they dislike or even hate you. They don’t really. They’re just in one of the hardest phases of life and grappling with difficult social, spiritual, and biological realities. Pity them and pray for them.
It ought to ultimately fall to you to be the leading disciplinarian in the family—the one who establishes the situations in which discipline is warranted and the kind of discipline that will be meted out. Yet whenever you discipline and however you do it, ensure you do it in love and self-control. There is never an excuse to overreact to their sin.
When you sin in front of your children, apologize to your children. While it may feel like you are losing their respect by apologizing, you are actually regaining the respect you surrendered when you sinned against them in the first place. There are few better traits you can model before them than the humility that says, “I was wrong. Please, forgive me.”
The love of a daughter for her father is one of the sweetest and most precious loves the world can know. The love of a father for his daughter is one of the fiercest and most gentle loves the world can know.
Tell your girls they are beautiful. Tell them earnestly. Tell them often.
Tell your son you love him. Tell him earnestly. Tell him often. Tell him when looking him dead in the eye.
As you look back on life, you may well find that some of your greatest memories as a dad will be sitting in church beside your family. So learn to enjoy those moments now rather than only in retrospect. These are the halcyon days.
Sometimes, as your children get older, you need to let them make decisions for themselves that you consider poor or unwise. And that is okay (provided they are not utterly depraved decisions). You can be there to help them if and when the decision brings about tough consequences. This is one of the ways they will learn to navigate life.
It is wise to form relationships with dads whose children are farther along than yours and to ask them key questions—questions that may range from matters of discipline to enduring your children’s puberty. You can also give them free rein to speak with you and address any weaknesses they may see in your parenting.
Being a dad gets even better as children grow older. While you may wistfully remember the days when your children were young and in your home, being a father to grown children is a blessing all its own.
-
When We Follow God’s Plan
When I was a child, the maps in my Bible got me through many a sermon. I was rarely interested in listening to the preacher, so I would flip to the back pages of the Bible to study the maps there. I would gaze at the contours of the lands of the Middle East. I would observe how Abraham had obeyed God and left his country and his kindred and his father’s house to journey to the land that God would show him. I would study the ancient world as the Patriarchs knew it. Best of all, I would see how God had miraculously delivered his people from their long captivity in Egypt.
Like just about every Bible, mine had a map that traced the route the Israelites followed after they escaped from Egypt and began to make their way toward the Promised Land. The map had a line in blue that began in Egypt and then traveled south for a time toward the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula. Eventually, it bulged north for a short while before dipping south again. Then finally it turned permanently northward and led the way to Jericho before it terminated on the banks of the Jordan.
The route the Israelites followed is far from straight and hardly looks efficient. Instead of taking a direct approach leading straight from Egypt to Canaan, the route appears to wander and meander, to turn this way and then that, to progress for a time and then bog down. It would be easy enough to look at a map like that and assume that it shows confusion or indecision, a lack of planning, and a lack of strong leadership.
Yet we know that all the while the people were following the Lord’s directives. He is the one who would tell them when to pick up and when to settle down, when to go straight, and when to turn to the left or the right. It was under his direction that they forded this river or turned away from that sea, in obedience to his command that they approached this mountain or avoided that plain. And if that’s the case, then the map does not truly wander and meander at all and does not truly show the least confusion or indecision. To the contrary, the map at the back of our Bibles shows the considered and well-thought-out plan of God, the route that existed in his mind long before he called his people to follow it. Their every step was deliberate and their every move was meaningful, for it was all the fulfillment of God’s good and perfect will.
There are times when it does us good to think back to our own lives and to picture them almost like a map—a map that traces our journey from birth to where we are today. And as we look at our lives so far, we can see how we passed through certain kinds of difficulties and avoided many more, how we scaled some mountains of joy but bypassed others. We can see how we turned this way toward success and that way toward failure. Our path through this life has been winding and twisting, rarely perfectly straight and rarely avoiding every hindrance and every stretch of wilderness.
And just like God was leading the Israelites on their journey, we can have every confidence that he has been leading us on ours. Just like every twist and every turn they took was within the wise providence of God, so too every step we’ve taken forward and every step we’ve taken back. He planned that we would approach mountains and valleys, rivers and seas, and he has used them all for his good purposes. And, just like he promised that his people would safely reach the end of their journey, he has promised we will reach ours. For like them, he is leading us to the Promised Land, the land of peace, the land of rest, the land where we most truly long to be. -
None of Us Will Ever Forget What You Did
The young man had forsaken his father, claimed an early inheritance, and blown it all in reckless living. Having fallen from riches to poverty, this prodigal son was now in the most desperate of straights—working hard, eating little, spiraling ever downward.
But on one brutal day, when he was as low as low could be, a thought suddenly flashed into his mind: “At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and I’m here dying of hunger!” The thought birthed an idea: “I will go home to my father and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.’” He understood that though he was no longer worthy to be considered his father’s son, he would gladly take a place as his father’s slave.
So he set out to return home and at last arrived at the outskirts of his father’s holdings. As his foot hovered beside the boundary marker, he paused for just a moment to run over his plan and rehearse his words. “I have sinned. I am not worthy. Make me your servant. I have sinned. I am not worthy. Make me your servant.” With a whispered prayer, he steeled his gaze and began to shuffle forward.
He had taken only a few steps when suddenly, in the distance ahead, he saw someone approaching, running, almost sprinting in his direction. His arms looked to be open wide in a gesture of embrace. As the form came closer, there was a flash of recognition: his older brother. He must have been overseeing the field servants nearby when he spotted his younger sibling and came running toward him. Now, as he approached, the younger man saw that his brother’s arms were not open in embrace, but open in the universal gesture for “stop.” In just a few moments the two stood face-to-face.
The older spoke first: “What on earth are you doing here? After all you’ve done, how dare you set foot on this land?”
“I know I blew it,” the younger replied meekly. “I know I sinned. But I have nothing left. I’ve come to ask dad if he will let me be his servant.”
“Do you know what you did to dad when you left? Do you know how badly you shamed and embarrassed him in front of the entire community? He wants nothing to do with you.”
“I know he won’t ever take me back into the family. I wouldn’t even ask. But I know that he’s kinder to his slaves than most people are to their sons. I don’t need privileges. I just need kindness.”
“He doesn’t love you anymore. He doesn’t want you anymore. You’re dead to him.”
“I just want to talk to him. I just want to plead with him. I have seen him extend mercy to others—maybe he’ll extend it to me as well.”
“Mercy? To you? You’re an absolute disgrace. You disgust me and you’ll disgust him. You’re filthy. You stink.”
“I know. I know I do. I’ve been sleeping in barns. I’ve been eating with animals. I’m starving. I’m broken. I’m done.”
“I’m the future of this family. I’ve done everything dad has asked of me. I’ve obeyed his every word. It’s me he loves.”
“I know. I know you’re worthy of dad’s love. I know I’m not. But maybe dad has some love for the unworthy. I just want to ask. I just want to beg.”
“Come on! You know how just and fair dad is. He can’t just pretend you didn’t betray him. And he certainly hasn’t forgotten what you did to him. He won’t forget. He can’t forget.”
“I know. I can’t either.”
“None of us will ever forget what you did. None of us will ever forget who you are.”
As a tear cascaded from the young man’s eye, his older brother spoke once more: “Tell you what: You march yourself back up that road. I don’t want you to even think about coming back until you’ve cleaned yourself up, until you don’t stink anymore, until you’ve put on some decent clothes, and until you can reimburse dad every single penny you took from him. Then maybe, just maybe, he’ll be willing to see you.”
“I guess it’s only fair.”
“Go. Get out of here. You’re lost—don’t come back until you’ve found yourself.”
“You’re right. I’ll go. I’ll try to clean myself up. I’ll try to earn it all back. And if I do, I’ll return and prove myself to dad.”
And with that, the younger son turned around. He headed back up the roadway and past the boundary marker, each step extending the distance between himself and his father. His brother stood and watched him go, a satisfied grin on his face.
“I think I’m going to throw myself a little party,” he said. “I deserve it.”
(Author’s note: Have you ever considered what might have happened if the prodigal son met his older brother before his father?) -
Sunday A La Carte
Every now and again I collect so much good material that I can’t fit it all into that week’s A La Carte posts. When that happens I’ve been known to create a Sunday edition—something I am doing today. I hope there’s something here that grabs your attention!
John Piper considers whether hidden sin can bring physical suffering. (He also points out, crucially, that not all physical suffering is caused by hidden sin.)
And, on a somewhat similar note, here’s John Beeson. “The voice of shame is consistent. It catastrophizes and wants us to hide our secrets. Shame begets more shame as we create new secrets to cover up past secrets. It tells us that the pain will be too much, that things will get better over time if we just keep our secret hidden for a little longer.”
Andy Naselli considers why Paul calls love “the greatest of these.” “Love is not a spiritual gift. It is essential for using spiritual gifts, and it is more important than spiritual gifts.”
I appreciate Todd Friel’s handling of the recent controversy related to Alistair Begg. His focus in this video is not the issue itself, but the way it is handled and the fallout from it. And, crucially, it’s on preserving and protecting unity within the church.
So many people have tried to figure out the nature of Abraham Lincoln’s faith. This opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal offers some interesting thoughts on it. “The First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Ill., opened in 1876, but its most famous congregant never crossed the church’s threshold. Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with First Presbyterian dates to an earlier location, across town, and it was by no means an easy connection.”
I really enjoy Chris Martin’s weekly “The Funnies” newsletter. It’s kind of like the weekend comic sections that used to come in a newspaper—just a few good laughs.
And that’s it for today. See you again tomorrow!
