Rev. David Holwick FATHERS DAY
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
June 16, 1996
1 Corinthians 4:12-17
THE 5 P'S OF PATERING
I. Patering, a powerful calling.
A. "Pater" is Greek for father. (Goes with the P's)
1) Typical: mothers are extoled on their day, fathers are
challenged.
2) Dads are often slack.
3) But they can also make a tremendous impact in a way that
moms cannot.
B. Fathers can leave their children a spiritual legacy.
1) We pass on examples, characteristics and experiences
that will last our children a lifetime.
2) Even future generations may be touched by us.
A few years back Daniel Taylor was invited to speak at John
Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.
He didn't know much about John Brown University.
Wanting to know a little about the place and people, he asked
the chaplain to send him some information on the school.
He discovered that John Brown had been a traveling evangelist
on the sawdust trail during the first half of the 20th
century.
Based primarily in the South, he had ranged as far west as
California, saving the lost and admonishing the saved.
At some point, he had started a little school in Arkansas.
Taylor admits he had a flicker of condescension when he read
this sketch of John Brown's life.
He was just old enough to have witnessed a tent meeting or
two.
He also knew something about peculiar institutions dominated
by the personality of an eccentric founder.
Taylor did not make any sweeping judgments, but somewhere in
the back of his mind he prepared himself for the
possibility of a few days in a backwater place with
people not quite as up-to-date as he was.
Shortly before leaving for Arkansas, Taylor was talking on
the phone with his father.
The father asked him what he was up to, and Daniel mentioned
he was going to a place called John Brown University.
The father replied, "Oh yes, John Brown.
Your grandfather Nick was saved under John Brown."
It was one of those moments when God reveals in great
clarity how STUPID you are.
His father then told him a story he had never heard.
His grandfather Nick had left a crowded and troubled home in
Indiana when he was 15 or 16.
It was shortly before World War I, and he had nowhere to go.
So he jumped on a freight train heading west.
He ended up in Los Angeles -- lonely and without direction.
One night he wandered by a revival meeting led by John
Brown.
Nick went in, and there he met God.
And because he became a Christian, in a personal and
life-directing way, he later looked for a Christian woman
to marry.
They chose to raise their only child -- Taylor's father --
as a Christian, and he chose a Christian woman to marry,
and they chose to raise him and his brothers as
believers.
So Daniel Taylor discovered that this man, John Brown, whom
he had safely pigeonholed as someone of no relevance to
his life, was, in fact, an important link in the chain
to his own salvation.
Taylor says this experience reinforced his sense of living
in a logical universe, of belonging to something important
that has stretched over time.
We are a link in a chain -- indebted to many in the past,
mostly unknown to us, and responsible to many in the
future, who likewise will not know who we were.
#3561
C. Five P's of Dadding. #3778
II. A Dad of Prayer.
A. Be a spiritual example. #3781
1) For many, their father is a spiritual stumbling block.
Norman Rockwell has a famous illustration of a prim and
proper mother, dressed in her Sunday best, walking through
the living room on her way to church.
Following her are three kids, in their Sunday best.
She is glaring at a chair in the middle of the room.
The kids look at it with longing.
Because scrunched down in this chair, trying to be invisible,
is a pajama-clad Dad with his coffee and newspaper.
B. Kids need to see that you honor God.
1) Grace before meals.
2) Pray spontaneously with kids for important matters.
3) Live like a Christian: bless instead of cursing, work
hard. 1 Cor 4:12
4) Be a spiritual father to them, better than an angel. 4:15
C. Your spiritual leadership will produce eternal fruit.
III. A Dad of Purpose.
A. "Hands on" participation.
1) Husbands cannot abdicate leadership.
a) Jacob realized his family needed gentle care. Gen 33:13f
b) Keep business and family in proper perspective.
2) Our families need our care.
In the book "Do Yourself a Favor: Love Your Wife," the
author tells about a personal encounter with a little boy.
He asked the boy what his father did.
The boy replied, "He watches."
"You mean that he is a night watchman?"
"Oh, no," the little boy exclaimed. "He just watches."
"Well, what does he watch?"
"I don't know if I can tell you everything," the boy
continued, "but I can name a few things."
"Well, tell me," the author replied.
"He watches TV, he watches Mom do the housework, he watches
for the paperboy, he watches the weather...
And I think he watches girls, too," he said, with an
impish grin on his face.
"He watches the stock market, football games, all the sports,
he watches Mother spank us, and he watches us do our
homework.
He watches us leave to go to church and PTA and shopping.
He watches Mom write letters and me play with my dog.
He watches Mom pay the bills - but mainly he just watches,"
said the little fellow, with a note of sadness in his
voice.
#3755
B. Our lives need to be directed by a clear purpose.
1) There are many demands on our time.
a) We must juggle homelife, job, church, recreation.
b) All of it is important, and Bible says there's a time
for everything under heaven. Eccl 3:1
c) But "Beware of the barrenness of a busy life."
2) Our kids need to see that we have a higher goal in life.
a) Dairy Queen splurges, but also World Hunger checks.
b) Our main purpose should be to honor God in all we do.
IV. A Dad of Patience.
A. Dictators and wimps.
1) Have high expectations for your kids.
2) But don't demand perfection.
B. Gentleness. Isa 40:11
1) Overlook a lot of foolishness.
"A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory
to overlook an offense." Prov 19:11
2) Our reaction is often more disturbing than their infractions.
V. A Dad of Play.
A. Our kids should remember us as dads who were fun.
1) My dad and "Go-go" sessions.
2) ("chink-chinks")
B. Carefree time can be constructive time.
In "The Effective Father", Gordon MacDonald writes about
how fathers often miss the important stuff.
James Boswell was a Scottish writer who gained lasting
fame for his literate biography of Samuel Johnson.
He often referred to a special day in his childhood when
his father took him fishing.
The day was fixed in his mind, and he often reflected upon
many of the things his father had taught him in the
course of their fishing experience together.
After having heard of that particular experience so often,
it occurred to someone much later to check the journal
that Boswell's father kept.
What was the father's perspective?
Turning to that date, the reader found only one sentence
that said:
"Gone fishing today with my son; a day wasted."
#1749
VI. A Dad of Praise.
A. Power of acceptance.
1) Most want to please their fathers.
2) Rejection or hardness from us can embitter them.
3) Paul warns us: "Don't exasperate your children." Eph 6:4
B. Be positive more often than you are negative.
1) Don't complain - it condemned Israel to 40 years of
wandering in the Wilderness.
2) Compliments will energize your kids.
VII. Legacies are forever.
A. Stuff doesn't matter. Our kids do.
1) Stuff can get lost or destroyed.
2) A spiritual legacy lasts for generations.
B. How firm a foundation?
1) Are your kids spiritually secure?
2) Are you??
