Gateway Church's Podcast
The Influence of a Father
A Gateway Sermon
(audience applauding) - Wow, we could just say amen and go home after that. (audience laughing) Well, I want to acknowledge our fathers today. Just, I know Pastor Thomas did during worship, but I want to say to you men, if you are a father today, God bless you. May the Lord bless you as you fulfill your role as a father. I have been praying, pray that this message today will encourage you and bless you in your role, your influential role as a father. And so I just add my encouragement and blessing to you today. If you haven't been blessed already with card or breakfast in bed or something like that, well, I think you ought to go out to lunch today on Pastor Jeff, so. (audience laughing) Just send him the bill and take it as a father's day gift from us. - Thank you. (audience laughing) - Well, I want to speak to you this morning on the subject or the title of this message is The Influence of a Father. And if you brought your Bibles and want to follow along, they're turned to Malachi chapter four and put a mark there and then also look in Luke chapter one. And if you don't have your Bible, it'll come up on the PowerPoint, you can read along with me. While you're turning there, let me just tell you a story, a quick story. One of the great things about being here is I get a chance to be with, we have three married children, two of our married children live here in this area and are a part of Gateway Church. My son, oldest son, Todd is our administrative pastor and he was here before we got here. His daughter, we have three grandchildren and Todd has two of our three grandchildren. His daughter, Olivia, is just a sweetheart. And not long ago, Pastor Brady told this story, Olivia is the same age as Pastor Brady's daughter, Callie, and Olivia had gone over to Callie's house to play. And Callie thought that she was gonna spend the night and so as the day kind of wore on into the evening, well, Olivia either determined she didn't want to stay or it never was planned, I'm not exactly sure, but anyway, Brady loaded the girls up and for the ride back over to Todd and Blinda's house to return Olivia home. And he overheard this conversation in the back seat. Callie was quite upset that Olivia wasn't gonna spend the night and so Olivia says to Callie, are you mad at me? And Callie says no. And she said, Olivia said, then why does your face look like that? (audience laughing) And Callie said, I'm nervous. And Olivia thought for a minute and she said, have you ever felt that way before? And Brady goes, oh my gosh, I'm listening to a counseling session among four-year-olds in the back seat of my car. (audience laughing) It's just great to be around not only the work that God's doing here, but around our grandkids. All right, well, now let's talk about the influence of a father here. Malachi chapter four and verse five. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers or else I will come and strike the land with a curse. Now this prophetic statement is made. It's not been fulfilled yet. The great and dreadful day of the Lord is not come. That's gonna be the day of judgment when each of us are accorded the right or privileges of our entrance into eternity, whether that be an eternity with Christ or without Him, depending on the choices we've made here. That will be a great day or it will be a dreadful day. But that hasn't come. But what Malachi said is, before that day comes, I'm gonna do a work in the heart of fathers to turn their attention toward their children and work in the heart of children to turn their attention to their fathers. Then 400 years, there's no prophetic voice in the nation of Israel. 400 years, the prophetic voice is silent and only to be reawakened with John the Baptist. And that's Luke one, verse 13, let's read there. The angel said to him, this is said to Zacharias, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, "for your prayer is heard and your wife Elizabeth "will bear you a son. "And you shall call his name John, "and you will have joy and gladness, "and many will rejoice at his birth. "For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, "and shall drink neither wine or strong drink. "He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, "even from his mother's womb. "And he will turn away many of the children of Israel "to the Lord their God. "He will also go before him in the spirit "and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers "to the children and the disobedient "to the wisdom of the just, "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Let's pray. Lord, we ask you to minister today. We pray God that you would penetrate our heart beyond our ability to understand, Lord, speak to our heart about the issues that you have for us. Personalize this message, God, to each one here, that we might hear your voice and might receive your ministry. In Jesus' name, amen. These two statements, Malachi and John, I mean in Luke, are book-in statements and reveal something about God's work in our lives. And I believe a pattern of God's work in our life that even is present today. What these two things say is, before God does a work, either a work that ushers in the final judgment or a work that ushers in the coming of the Messiah, he has to do something to prepare the heart of people. And that work is in the foundation. It has, as its foundation, a work in the heart of fathers to their children and in children to their fathers. Now, why do you think that God is so interested in the work of fathers and its impact within the life of children? I suggest to you, there's a couple of things. First of all, your father's had a profound influence on your life. You might say today, I was raised in a great home and my parents loved me and I was encouraged and blessed. Your father still had a profound influence on your life. It's affecting you even today if you're in your adult years. If you grew up in a home where your father was disinterested or distracted or not present in your home, there's a hole or a wound that's in your life and his influence or lack of influence is affecting your life even today. What God wants is for us as fathers to be a reflection of him into the life of our kids. God intends a father to mold character, impart values, define purpose, develop and develop gifts in his children. When we as fathers fail to do that, there's a work of God that is limited because of the full plan or purpose of God has not been fulfilled. When God wants to do a work in the heart of the nation or in the heart of a people, it begins by addressing the issues of fathers to their children and children to their fathers. I wanna ask you this morning, where is your heart, man? As we celebrate fatherhood today, where is your heart? Is it in your business? Is it in your hobbies? Is it in your investment? Is it somewhere other than your home because the important role that God has given you as a father cannot be overestimated? In fact, the power of the influence of a father has multi-generational effect. The role of a father is first of all to transfer or reflect the nature and character of God to his children. Earn a story once about a college professor, Christian University, who really understood the importance of a father, but he just wanted to test it out. And so at the beginning of a semester, he asked his class to take out a piece of paper and he asked the class questions about their father. How did your father express his love toward you? How did your father extend himself and care for you? How did your father discipline you? How did your father take interest in your life? There were about 10 questions that he asked and with one or two sentence answers and then he collected all the papers. And then for the next nine weeks, he spent time biblically imparting principles of fatherhood and God's love and how God cares and how God disciplines and what the nature of God's loving care and purposes for their life. At the end of nine weeks, he asked him to take out a sheet of paper again and then he asked the same questions that he'd asked before. Only he asked it related to God. How does God extend his care for you? How does God show his love for you? How does God take interest in your life? How does God discipline you? And the other six or so questions that were a part of that and then he handed the original paperback so that they can compare notes and what he suspected he found to be true and that is the experience that the students had with their father was a reflection of the way that they saw God. If your father was punitive in the way that he disciplined you, if he was legalistic, if he was distracted or not present in your life, then you saw God as punitive in the way that he disciplines you. That's what he found in the students and that's what I have found as I've talked to people in pastoral ministry over 23 years. Our father is a reflection of God into our life. And so if your dad wasn't present, if your dad was abusive in any way or harsh in any way, he has not reflected the nature of God so you struggle even today as an adult, even a way maybe from your parents. You struggle understanding how God could really, really care about you. The second thing that a father is to do is to transfer the blessings of God and the purpose of God into his children's life. I spoke a couple of years ago at a men's retreat and there was a young man that told me this story. Actually, he was about 30 and I'd been talking about on the subject of fatherhood and he came up to me and said that when he was in his preteens, 12 years old or so, his dad came home one day and announced that he was divorcing his mom. And then he moved two blocks down the street and set up a new family, new wife, new kids and never had another thing to do with this young man. The influence of his dad was gone in his life. The desire that God had for him to transfer values to define purpose never was present in this young man's life and at 30 years old, he still struggled. You see what God wants us to do as fathers is transfer, it's a generational transfer. In fact, in Exodus chapter 20, when the 10 commandments were given to Moses, under the commandment that you shall not have any other gods before me, no graven images, is this statement that's a part of this whole principle. Exodus 20, about verse five. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. The principle here is a principle of transfer. It simply means we will transfer to our kids what we have and live in our own life. So if you have a love for God, if you have an intimacy with God, if you have an understanding of how God works and you're living your life that way, you'll transfer that to your kids. If you're selfish, if you're insensitive, if you have an anger problem, you're gonna transfer that to your kids. It's not the words we speak, it's the life we live that gets transferred to our kids. And what God says, if we don't deal with the tendencies toward our own sin, that's what an iniquity is. It's a bent toward a certain direction. We will transfer that bent three and four generations. It's a spiritual issue. It gets transferred in our life. You might be here today and you look back and you say, my dad had an anger problem, my grandfather had an anger problem, and I'm dealing with an anger problem in my life. It's the truth of this word. God intended for the blessings and purposes of God to be transferred, but because your grandfather didn't deal with an issue and your father didn't deal with an issue, now you're dealing with an issue. We know in a practical sense, physical abuse, verbal abuse transfers from generation to generation to generation. If a father is physically or verbally abusive in one generation, it may skip a generation, but we will see a pattern if we look across generations there's abuse that follows the line of this family heritage or alcoholism or drug abuse. Alcoholism, we say it's a disease, but really it's an iniquity. It's something that gets passed from generation to generation to generation, and it may skip a generation, but it's present because one father didn't deal with the issues in his own life or the abuse in his own life, and so that abuse passes from generation to generation. This truth would be discouraging if it weren't for the fact that the last half of that says, but God shows loving kindness and mercy to a thousand generations to those who love him. You can pass a generational influence that is godly, blessed, encouraging. It's the very thing that God wants, and if it wasn't passed by your father, you can change that today. You can drive a stake in the ground and say, beginning with this day, beginning in this generation, I'm no longer gonna pass the iniquities of my father and grandfather, I am gonna pass the blessing of God and the purpose of God in my life and in my children's life. And regardless, even if your children are raised, if they have children of their own, you can extend an influence multi-generationally by changing the way that you respond today. With each one of our kids, we have four kids, three of our four kids are married, our youngest daughter just finished her sophomore year in college and is home for the summer. And so I can tell a story about each one of them, but because our third child lives in Pensacola, Florida, he's probably the safest to share on, so I'm gonna tell you a story about him. It's my responsibility to help define purpose, not to make them be something, but to help them discover what their gifts are, what their abilities are, and what the purpose of God is in their life. That's what I believe is my role as their father. So our third child, Tyler, when he was his senior in high school, he came to me one day and he said, "Dad, "I know what God wants me to do." And I said, "What's that?" He said, "To be president of the United States." I went, "Really, Tyler? "Really?" Now inside I was thinking, "There ain't no way, Jose." But I said, "Really?" Because see, my dad had done something for me that I now was prepared to transfer to my children. In the strangest times, the most unexpected times, my dad would make a statement like this to me. He'd say, "You know, you're gonna be a success. "Do you know that anything you put your hand to, "you will prosper? "Do you know that God has a huge plan for your life?" It was never around a successor, a failure, that he shared those things. It was a statement. It was calling something out of my life before it even existed. And it created a recording in my life that as I encountered things, even as an adult, things of insecurity, things I'd never experienced before, that this thing would play over in my mind. You know, you're gonna be a success. You know, anything that you put your hand to will prosper. It's because my dad called things out of my life. And so when Tyler, when he said this, I thought, "You know Ty, really? "You think God wants to be president? "You know, we need godly men to lead this country. "And if this is God's plan for you, it will be also." And so I then set out to help him. I said, "You know, if you're gonna be president Ty, "there's only a couple of ways that I see "that you get to be president. "One is if you have pedigree. "If you're a Kennedy or a Rockefeller or somebody like that, "we don't have that." And I said, "Or if you come from a law background." And he said, "That's what I'm gonna do. "Dad, I'm gonna be a lawyer." And I said, "Okay, well, you need to work hard "on your grades and you need to get involved politically." Okay, so after his freshman year of college, he comes home with a 2-6. (audience laughs) And I said, "T, that's not very presidential, buddy. "You're not gonna get there at 2-6. "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, dad. "I'm gonna work on it. "I'm gonna work on it." I said, "Okay, okay, work on the grades, "but now you also need to get involved." So the rest of his college experience, he doesn't get involved in anything. He doesn't run for president of his class. He doesn't do anything on campus or get involved in any political clubs. So he gets to his senior year and I said, "Tie, you still think God's calling you to be president? "Oh, yeah, dad, I'm just so sure of it." And I said, "Tie, I don't think God's calling you "to be president." And he said, "Oh, dad." And I said, "No, no, no, no. "Listen, I think that I think you heard God, "but I'm not sure that you've interpreted it correctly." So what do you mean? And I said, "Well, Ty, you haven't even run "for president of your class." And he said, "Well, dad, my friends told me "if I ran for president of my class that I'd win. "But dad, you gotta give speeches "and you gotta raise money." And I went, "Hello? "What do you think running for president is gonna involve?" And he said, "Why don't I like to do that stuff?" And I said, "That's why you're not gonna be president." I said, "I think God put in your heart "to be an influence, Tyler. "And I think God will give you a platform of influence "that's gonna be great, "but it's not gonna be the president of the United States." You see, God has called us as fathers to help define the purpose, the giftings, to call out of our children's life the plans of God and the purposes of God for their life. And when a father fails to do that because he's disinterested, distracted, or not even present, something that God intended is missing. It's been my experience that in a crowd this size, many will be able to raise their hand. If I ask for a poll, how many of you, your father, spoke into your life, your father called gifts out of your life, your father determined or spoke destiny into your heart, the majority of us would say, "My dad never did that." And see, what I find in this is, when I talk to people about their families, I say, "Well, tell me a little bit about your family." One of the first things that almost everyone says is, "Oh, I grew up in a pretty normal family." And then they go to describe their family and their dad was an axe murderer and their mom's middle name was Jezebel. And you go, "What?" (audience laughing) There is such dysfunction today in our families that when we compare ourselves by ourselves, it's like, well, my family was normal. My family's as normal as your family and we compare the dysfunction among the families and say, "Well, I guess that's just the way that it is." But it's not what God intended. God intended for us to call out purpose and destiny, to pass on generationally, the blessings of God to our kids and our grandkids. When that fails to happen, something takes place in our heart and I believe it's called a father wound. That's why when God first comes and he says, "I need to turn the hearts of fathers to their children. "I need to turn the distractions of their life. "I need to call them out of those distractions "to focus on the important responsibility "that I've given to them as fathers." And then he turns to children and there's every one of us in the auditorium today, our children. We've had an experience with our father and so your experience, there might be a hole in your life because of something that your dad did or didn't do. And the result of that is a wound in your life and in your heart. That young man whose dad came home, announced he was divorcing his mom and then went two blocks away. There's a wound and a hurt in that man's heart that won't go away. I want you to look at the passage in Luke, Luke 1, out of the amplified Bible because it says something about what happens in the heart of a child in this process. So let's read that again, Luke 1, 17. And he, that's John the Baptist, will go before Jesus in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn back the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient and the incredulous and the unpersuatable to the wisdom of the upright. As I talk to you today, if you looked at your heart and you say, well, that's me, I've struggled with rebellion all my life. I hate it when I'm put under somebody's authority and they try and tell me what to do. I will not be bossed. You respond to somebody with an incredulous attitude like who do you think you are? I'm telling you where that comes from is out of a wound in your life that was from your dad. The word disobedient there means unwilling to be persuaded, spurning belief, disobedient. Maybe today you've even struggled in your relationship with God and you've rebelled. Do I get into church, do I not get in church? Do I follow God, do I read my Bible? Do I pray, do I not pray? I don't know if I wanna pray. I don't know if I want the kind of belief that my dad has to be a part of my life. It's the result of a wound because your dad didn't do something that God wanted him to or did something in a way that brought hurt into your life. So God comes to children today and he says, will you allow me to heal the hurt of your life? Will you allow me to touch this area of your life and to bring a healing to the wound that I intended your dad to be or do something different and this wound if you're gonna go deeper with me, if you're gonna go on to the new level of me, if you're gonna break through, you're gonna have to allow me to bring a healing to this hurt. When I was in high school, I was senior year of high school, like every high school student. I got a gift, I got many gifts, but I only remember one gift from my high school year. I graduated in 1970 from high school and the night I graduated, my dad pulled out a business card and on the back of the business card, he wrote this statement, "Dear Tom, I'm your best friend. "I will always be your best friend "if you ever need me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "Call me, love dad." And he gave me the card. I carried that card, my dad passed away in 1989. I carried that card in my bill fold for 19 years and every once in a while when something would go wrong, when I would hurt, when I'd be insecure, when I'd need some stabilizing in my life, I'd pull out that card and I'd read it. My dad's behind me, my dad cares for me, my dad loves me, my dad's my best friend. When I felt alone, I pulled out my dad's card and read the greatest gift that he ever gave to me. If you don't have that today, if your dad has left you a wound rather than transferring a blessing, God wants to change that in your life today. So I want to ask you dads, where's your heart? How can you turn your heart? If God is saying, okay, here's a responsibility but you haven't been fulfilling those responsibilities, what do you need to do? Couple of things, first of all, embrace the responsibility. Acknowledge the fact that God has called you to reflect the nature and character of God to your kids, to transfer the blessing of God multi-generationally and embrace that responsibility and begin to own it in such a way that you really work hard at trying to impart that. That means you'll have to address some issues in your own life. Maybe you need to give less focus to your business. Maybe you need to change some of your hobbies or some of your priorities. Matthew 6, verse 19 says this, do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. The importance of your presence and involvement reveals where your heart is. Where are you spending your time? Where is your heart? Is there an attention to details? Do you know the condition of your family and the well-being of your kids? Do you understand what their needs are? Is there a devotion of time and energy and interest to what might be going on in their life? Proverbs 27, 23 and 24 says this, be sure you know the condition of your flocks. Give careful attention to your herds, for riches do not endure forever and a crown is not secure for all generations. All generations. A father's presence provides security, gives direction, gives an anchor against the winds of wrong influence, it defines abilities and purpose. I can tell you in my life, over the years of my life, I've stayed out of troubles because using this filter, if I got caught, my dad would kill me. My dad's heart and attention was turned toward me and he imparted values and transferred blessings. And as a result, it's multi-generational in its effect. And now I've done that to my children and now they're doing it to my grandchildren. Dad's, will you understand the nature of your investment? It doesn't pay dividends right away. There's years, years of investment with a little return and you think, is it working, are they getting it? Is this really, you know, I have to keep reminding, I have to keep disciplining, I have to take action. Why is it, they're just not getting it? I heard this analogy one time about the phone company, working for the phone company, is like this. Some days you dig holes, some days you plant poles, some days you string wire and some days you connect. In a lot of ways, I believe that's a reflection of the way parenting is. Some days you're digging holes and you're, as a part of digging holes, you're preparing the heart for values and for the work that God wants to do. Some days you're planting poles and you're preparing for days ahead and things that are about to be done. Some days you're stringing that wire and you're building relationship and you're telling your kids it's gonna be okay and helping them walk through issues and one day, boom, the light comes on and it's like, oh my God, thank you. Thank you for the blessings and for the work that you've done in my kid's life. It's beyond what I've done, it's greater than what I've done, but you've taken my effort 'cause no father is perfect. And you've taken my effort, Lord, and done something to it and the investment that I've made is greater than any dollar investment, any money, any tangible thing I could grab a hold of because of the work that you've done in my kid's lives. I wanna speak to you if you're a child today and say, have you forgiven what your dad did to you? Maybe it's that he left your mother. Maybe that he invested all his time in his business thinking that if he just provides you with things, that's enough and there's a hole in your heart because your dad never came to any of your ball games. Never encouraged you in any great way about anything that was taking place in your life 'cause he was always focused on his own. Will you forgive your dad today? Will you allow God to bring a healing to that hurt that's in your life? Have you judged your dad for the way that he acted? And you made a response based on that judgment that says, I will never be like my dad. And because you've made that judgment, you've cast yourself into an imbalanced area of living so that you'll either be exactly like your dad was or you'll be so opposite that there's no balance, no work of God. And what God wants to do is bring a healing to your heart so he can do the very thing that you've wanted in your whole life. You talked to a young man, I don't know, he wasn't even that young, really. He had a family of his own and he was telling me that he grew up in a very abusive home. His dad was dominant and abusive in his life. And so as a result of that, he made a vow, an inner vow that said, I will never be like him. I will never do what he, I will never do to my kids what he did to me. So now he's married, has kids of his own and has no involvement in their life. He's just their buddy, their friend, he's only there for a good time, but he brings no correction and parts, no values, transfers, no blessing into their life. And he allows his wife to do everything in the home and she's frustrated, but he won't act, why? Because he made a judgment against his dad and that judgment controls him and keeps him from being in a place of balance. Ladies, can I say to you today that this message isn't just for men, it's for you too. You might be like the lady that I talked to whose dad was totally distracted and not involved in her life at all. And as a young girl, she said, when I get married, my husband will not be like my dad. My husband will be involved with his kids. My husband will be present in this, in my home. And so the way she related in her marriage was to dominate and control her husband and shove the kids at her husband, make sure that if he wasn't with him, he felt guilty. And as a result, the husband was withdrawing and as he withdrew, this gal who had judged her dad kept forcing in in a greater way. I'm telling you, whether you're a man or a woman, if there's a father wound in your heart today, it needs to be healed. And the question that God has is will you let me do it? Will you forgive your dad? Will you break judgments and vows that you made in response to what your dad did so that I can take you to a new level of intimacy in God? Bow your heads if you wouldn't. Your response today is not a response to me, but it is a response to God into something that he's doing. And if you as a father today would like to be the influential father that God has for you, to impart values, to reflect the nature and character of God to your kids and you haven't done that, today can be the start. If you haven't thought about the fact that you might be imparting blessings to your kids and your grandkids in a multi-generational way, you can do that today by making a response to God. If your heart is hurting today because of something that your dad did, healing can begin today. I talked to a young man last night and he said, I don't even know if I can forgive my dad. And I said, if you'll ask God, he'll help you forgive. Maybe you're there today. (gentle music) Would you forgive your dad, let God bring healing to your heart? Father, I pray today for every person making a response that God, you would supply what is needed, healing to a hurting heart, abilities to a pattern and a model to follow where there hasn't been one so that we could be influential fathers and healed children so that we might break through to new levels in you. God, we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.