Husbands and Fathers—How to Lead Your Family

Husbands and fathers, how to lead your family. Joel Beekie joins us today to discuss that topic right here on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian worldview is a non-profit, listener-supported radio ministry. Our website is thechristianworldview.org and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program.

As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer. From the very beginning, God established husbands and fathers to be leaders in their homes. This is to be a self-sacrificing and love-filled leadership, just as Christ loved and sacrificed for his bride, the Church, the body of believers. As we approach Father's Day, what more important message can a husband and father hear than to embrace his call to lead his family for God's glory?

This doesn't just mean rearing his children, but shepherding his wife as well. Joel Beekie, former president and now chancellor of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary and longtime pastor of Heritage Reform Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, joins us today to discuss his helpful new book, How to Lead Your Family, A Guide for Men Wanting to Be More. The notable framework that Dr. Beekie sets forth in the book is that Christian husbands and fathers share in a limited way Christ's three offices of prophet, priest, and king. Joel will explain how this should play out in the home as the husband and father loves and leads his wife and children. There is much biblical and practical wisdom for husbands and fathers in this short 80-page book, and we will tell you how you can order a copy today for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview.

Let's get straight to the interview with Joel Beekie. Joel, thank you for coming on the Christian Worldview radio program today. Let's talk about your new recent book, How to Lead Your Family. What are the things, Joel, that your father, who he was as a person or what he did, that shaped you to be the husband and father that you are? My father had a huge influence on me, sort of my mother actually. They were both very God-fearing people. My dad perhaps had the biggest influence on me by always talking to us about the things of God, about our soul, about how the Holy Spirit works in the heart, about our need for closing with Christ and living in him, through him, by him, to him, out of him.

Love of the soul is the soul of all love, and my dad had that big time. He was an elder in the church for 40 years. We knew very well as children that church was very a few times we resented that we were young a little bit, but not much. We sensed my dad's passion, and when I got saved at the age of 14, I came to love the church, and from 14 to 20, the years I still had at home, I had just a tremendous relationship with my dad. He would read Pilgrim's Progress to us every Sunday night, all 20 years I was home, but then I was asking him questions. We were talking about the things of God every Sunday night.

We'd stay up to about midnight talking, and we'd talk about Puritan books, and it was great. And then when I became a minister, every Monday morning he would call me, say, son, how did it go yesterday? And we'd talk about the sermons, and then he died. He died on the pulpit.

He had a massive heart attack, went straight from the pulpit to glory when he was the same age I am right now, 72. Wow, what a story, and what a relationship that you had with your dad, and what impact he made on you. You start out early in your book on how to lead your family, saying, in our globalized and technology-saturated age, many Christians lament the past, the simpler and supposedly halcyon days of the nuclear family of suburban America. And you say that's not a good perspective, because the past wasn't necessarily quote-unquote better. There have always been problems and sin and different challenges for being husbands and fathers and leading a home. What are some of the things in any era, Jill, whether it's the 21st century, the 20th century, or going way back?

You actually go back in the time of saying what it was like for the church in Corinth during that time, how debauched, how that was the Las Vegas, the sin city of its day. What are some of the constants for husbands and fathers in leading a wife and children? Some of the challenges, let's say, no matter what the era is. That's a really good question, and there's a lot of things, but let me mention two or three that just really pop up into my mind right away. The first is that when we live with someone every day, we can lose easily in any age the sacredness of that relationship. In other words, how often don't people treat company that they have over in their home better than they treat their spouse or their kids? And that loss of sacredness, which you could also call a loss of calling to be a godly man, a godly husband in your home with every word you say, every thought you think, every action you take, a loss of that makes a kind of taking each other for granted in the home. And then husband and wife become like two ships passing in the night, and the old nature of being selfish and saying she should treat me better than she is begins to take over, but also with the children. When we think we're heads of the home, but we treat them carelessly, taking them for granted, we are abusing the biblical notion of fatherhood. I think the other problem that permeates so many homes that I want to mention here is just sheer worldliness, and we battle in every age that kind of impediment in being a husband and being a father especially, so that if we don't control, especially in our day, the media in our children's lives, they'll be sucked in by all kinds of media, all kinds of worldliness, say in a public school or among ungodly friends. So there's this constant battle against worldliness in a godly family.

Those are all really good constants that you can see over any era, and the fact is we live in the time we're living right now, and God ordained that we would be living right now. So looking back to a previous day may do something to us, but it's not the reality of what we need to deal with to be a good and godly husband and father. Dr. Joel Beekie is our guest today here on the Christian worldview, the pastor of Heritage Reformed congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, also the chancellor and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Now, Joel, you divide your book really into three main sections in how a husband and father should lead in the likeness of how Christ fulfilled the offices of prophet, priest, and king. So a husband is to be a prophet in the home, he's to be a priest in the home, and he is to be a king in the home, those three offices. Now, I'm going to ask you specifically about each of those offices, but let's first ask you just to give an overview to help us better understand how Jesus Christ fulfilled those offices of prophet, priest, and king, and how a Christian man, a husband and father, at least partially shares in these offices as father and head of the family.

Great question, David, and you're getting at the foundation of it all, which is wonderful. As a husband and a father, I am to treat my wife and my children as Christ treats his church, and not only laid out for us in Ephesians 5 in terms of husband-wife relationship, but also spills over into Ephesians 6, how the father should lead his children. So in terms of Jesus Christ, he was a prophet who teaches, obviously, the Gospels are full of that, but also who admonishes, and a loving admonishment is part of the prophetic office.

You can see that in the Old Testament already as well, and so it's interesting that Jesus actually speaks more about hell than all the other prophets combined. So his role as a teacher as well as an admonishing prophet is a dual role, and they overlap. As a priest, in him, the whole Old Testament priesthood could be abolished, but we are to pattern our fatherhood certainly after that, not that we sacrifice our blood for our wife and our children, but boy, do our children ever need to see that we sacrifice for them, and we sacrifice for our wives, and are willing to deny ourselves. And then, of course, we're called to be intercessors like Christ, and praying every day with our wife, for our wife, and individually, just the two of us, and then also praying for the children and with the children, and then we are to bless them, we are to bless them with the blessings of God, encourage him with the word of God. And then finally, Jesus, of course, is king, and as king, he does a lot of things. He defends his people, he guides his people, he controls his people, he just leads them in the ways that they must go, and that too is our role as fathers and husbands. So I try to show in this book that this is our pattern, Jesus Christ. So we're always asking, how can I be more like him in this situation?

Whether it's disappointing our children as a king, whether it's praying for them as a priest, or whether it's just teaching them in family worship as a prophet. We're going to discuss all three of those elements in the rest of the interview today. Dr. Joel Beeke is our guest, and the title of his brand new book is How to Lead Your Family. We're going to tell you how you can get this book coming up.

It's an excellent book to read. Let's start with that first office that you write in the book about a prophet in the home, and this is about speaking the truth of God's word to your wife and children. You write, Joel, your home is to be a little church, a little seminary, in which you are to serve as an instructing prophet, teaching God's precious truth to your wife and children, addressing the mind, the conscience, the heart, and the will of each of your family members. In particular, teach your children Bible stories and Bible doctrines, and apply them to their daily lives with the Spirit's blessing for their proper spiritual, moral, and psychological development. Give us some direction in this particular call for fathers, husbands and fathers, and how it even extends, as you write about in your book, beyond even the spiritual, into the physical with healthy lifestyles.

You mentioned things like sleep and diet and exercise, but give us more direction on this element. First of all, Deuteronomy 6 and 7 tells us that we're to teach our children when we lie down, when we rise up, when we walk by the way, and when we sit down, and that's just a Hebraic idiom that is saying, every day we do these activities, therefore every day teach my truths, and then the word that's used there is diligently, or we could say today passionately, so that as a father, as a husband, you convey that your heart is here, your heart is teaching truth to those to whom God has ascribed you leadership. And that means that we should get far, far more excited about teaching our children the basics of the Gospel, say the substitutionary obedience of Christ and his resurrection and exaltation and intercession, than we do about the score of some Super Bowl ballgame. We should show our children by our example of passion for the things of God in teaching them, because remember, we are God's authorized steward.

This is our primary responsibility. The church can help us, catechism classes, preaching, the Christian school perhaps can help us if we don't homeschool by godly teachers, but they're just assisting us. We as fathers are the primary responsibility figure for this teaching, and the foundation of all teaching in the family certainly resides, as Joshua said in Joshua 24 15, in daily family worship, daily family worship. And one of the greatest tragedies, David, in my opinion, in the Christian life today, is that many fathers have abandoned this, or their fathers abandoned it, and they don't even know they're supposed to do it. They pray a little bit with their kids before a meal for half a minute, but they don't talk to them about the Lord in family worship. They don't read scripture together, then talk to them about those scriptures, and maybe they pray a little bit, but they don't sing. They don't do robust, daily, intentional family worship for a solid 10 to 15, maybe even 20 minutes a day, where the whole family gets recalibrated to the great spiritual realities of life and of the Bible. So this, to me, is the foundational plank of all child rearing, as well as leading your wife. In family worship, if you go through the whole Bible, I also have written with several other guys a book called Family Worship Bible Guide, which takes the two major takeaways from each Bible chapter, spells them out in one paragraph, and ends with a question.

And the idea of that book is that the father would just read that paragraph, ask that question, and then lead the discussion that flows out of the family's answers to that question. And if you read through the whole Bible in family worship, it used to take us about two and a half years, my wife and I still do it just by ourselves now that we're empty nesters, but in those two and a half years, you will end up talking with your children about every subject under the sun, because the Bible talks about every subject under the sun. So family worship is very, very important.

Now, the problem is you can do family worship and act like a devil in your home, and undo, unravel everything you do in your family worship. So family worship isn't the only thing, it's just the foundational thing. And then your teaching by example is absolutely critical in support of that family worship and biblical principles. In our Dutch background, there's a saying that a lot of people have on a plaque, it's kind of a cute thing, it says, but it's very serious, it says, your talk talks, and your walk talks, but your walk talks more than your talk talks. And the idea here is that, boy, you and I, David, we've got to live out each in family worship.

The talking is very important, sharing our struggles to a degree, sharing our joys, sharing how the Lord has led us, just by spiritual conversational integrity and Bible-centeredness, God-centeredness. As we walk by the way, as we sit down, as we rise up, we're bringing our children by our example, by our life, and then by what I'm calling holistic maturity, and that means in every area of life. So I must teach children, I mentioned sports already, I must teach them how to value sports. I must teach them that we don't live life with the levity that we should play sports, and we don't play sports with the seriousness that we should live life.

Yes, we can be competitive, yes, that's fun, but it's not a do-or-die situation in life, whether we win the game or not. So you teach them the right assessment of sports, you teach them the right assessment of entertainment media, you teach them proper manners, you teach them how to interact with other people. It's a holistic maturity that you're aiming for, grounded in the gospel. Jill, that is so good, and I can just say from personal experience within our own family that times of family worship are just integral to being reminded of who God is, what His desire is for us, and so just so concur with what you just said on that first point of a husband and father's role as a prophet in the home. And again, Dr. Joel Beekie is our guest today here on The Christian Worldview. The title of his new book we are discussing is How to Lead Your Family. It's 80 pages, soft cover, and retails for $12. You can order a copy for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. Order at thechristianworldview.org or by calling or writing to us.

Our contact information will be given during this break. Also, unless you have specified otherwise, all Christian Worldview partners will automatically be mailed this book. We have much more coming up with Joel Beekie for husbands and fathers and leading their families. Next is the role of a father as a priest in the home.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is Husbands and Fathers, How to Lead Your Family, and Joel Beakey, Chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan and author of the new book, How to Lead Your Family, is our guest. Joel, the second element in your book is that the father is to be a priest in the home, and you reference the passage in Ephesians chapter 5, which you've already talked about, but let me just read that short passage and then follow up with a quote from your book. You say, it says in Ephesians chapter 5, husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. Verse 28, so husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body. And you say in your book, Joel, loving your wife as a priest means loving her as Christ loved the church from that passage. The most important gift you can give your wife is not money, a house, a car, jewelry, or even yourself.

The best gift you can give her is to bring her to God so that she can glorify him and enjoy him forever, which is the first point of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and what is the purpose of life. So Joel, what does this look like for a husband toward his wife? Even in situations where a husband may not feel like loving his wife as Christ loved the church, it's always been such a high standard to understand how Christ loved his own church, and that's the call for husbands to do so with their wives as well.

Very, very good question. And again, it goes back to living biblical principles rather than just doing what I feel like doing. What the Puritans would say on this would be, it's a matter of getting into the holy habit of loving your wife every day, which involves praying for her, it involves affirming her every day, telling her how much you love her every day, complimenting her, but also sacrificing yourself for her. That does a double effectiveness in the family, because when you treat your wife like she's the treasure that she is, when you treat her the way Christ treats the church, loving her, showing her a godly example, and showing the kids in the process indirectly what a marriage is supposed to be, that is one of the most powerful things you can do for your children as well, that they grew up with a high bar of marriage.

We are blessed. David, I'll be honest with you, I love my wife like crazy, and I have shown that to my kids. I've been, you know, probably a better husband than father, which is, you know, you always have shortcomings, but the point is this. When you love your wife like crazy and you sanctify her with the washing of the water by the word and you follow the biblical example of realistic love, self-sacrificial love, of other person-centered love that you find there in Ephesians 5, it transforms the whole family. And so, as the Puritans used to say, you are to love your wife no matter what her faults may be, no matter if she's not very beautiful, because this is the woman God gave you.

This is your calling. And you're to love her also with the washing of the water by the word as her leader, so that on the day of judgment, she could point to you and that crowd and say, Lord Jesus, I was made far more holy because I was married to this man. And in family worship and daily living, he showed me by his example the love of Christ. So I want to thank thee, Lord Jesus, not only for what thou didst for me, but also for what giving me the husband that you gave me. And he led me as a priest to the throne of grace and his example was priestly blessing me in ways that transformed my life as a wife. Joel Beakey again with us today on The Christian World. You're talking about his brand new book, How to Lead Your Family.

We're going to tell you how you can order a copy of this excellent book coming up here on the program. Joel, if there's one sentence in Scripture for fathers that summarizes the call for a father and what he is to do and be for his children, it's Ephesians 6 verse 4, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And again, this is under the category of the father being a priest in the home. There's a lot I know you could pull out of that verse, what it means to bring them up, to not exasperate them or provoke them and bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Just give us two or three things that are very important to keep in mind with this call for a father to children. On the negative side, we have to be careful not to become angry with our children as we lead them and they don't respond rightly. We must not provoke them to wrath with extreme punishments, extreme anger. Always our discipline must be commensurate with a degree of offense against the law of God that the children have committed. So, for example, if they spill a glass of milk seven days in a row, that two-year-old, you don't spank the two-year-old because spilling a glass of milk is not a sin.

It may be frustrating. So then, on the positive side of Ephesians 6-4, I think we need to understand day by day, teaching, disciplining, guiding our children and the principles of the word, showing them right from wrong, teaching them to live for the glory of God. When children are very young, of course, we must teach them with black and white principles, what's right, what's wrong. As they get to be 11, 12 years old, you begin to teach them more and more to think for themselves.

By the time they're in their early teens, what my dad did, and my dad had only an eighth-grade education, but this was very wise of him, we'd say, Dad, what do you think of this? Can I go do this? Can I go do this?

Can I go watch this movie at my friend's house? And he just wouldn't say yes, no. He'd say, go up into your bedroom, get on your knees, ask God if you can glorify him with what you're about to do. And if you can't, don't do it.

And if you can, you may do it. So he's teaching us a very kingly, priestly principle here of living holy for God, completely dedicated to the glory of God. And the interesting thing is, David, we actually were more conservative on ourselves than my dad would have been in some instances, because our conscience spoke, I really can't do that to the glory of God. So that type of thing is priestly and kingly also nurturing that Ephesians 6-4 calls us to, but also you find that in Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7 and many other places. Well, we've gone, Joel, from the three offices of Christ, from a prophet, priest, and king, and how that applies to the Christian husband and father, from a prophet in the home, to a priest in the home, to finally just a couple questions about the role for a husband and father of a king in the home. And this has to do with leading and loving your wife and children. Now, this role has to do with headship, and this is a very contentious issue. Even within the church today, that a husband should be the head of the home.

That's what God created him to be. What are some things that a Christian husband and father should be keeping in mind with regards to his role as the head of the home, as God created him to be? Well, the first primary issue is to understand that your headship is to be a loving headship.

Love, love, love. Loving your wife, loving your children, is by far the most powerful, the most biblical, the most Christ-like kind of headship you can exercise. And that's why in Ephesians 5, loving your wife is the primary duty that is singled out at the center of marriage. And we must love them spiritually, love our spouse by having spiritual fellowship with them, going to church together, worshiping God together, praying together, searching the scriptures together, walking, talking together about the things of God. So that kind of spiritual fellowship really is bonding in a marriage. My wife and I, just to make sure we have this holy habit down beside the bed, we've done this all our marriage. Just two of us pray. She prays one night, I pray the next night, and we do it lovingly for each other, hand in hand, hand in hand, on our knees.

I would trade that time, David, for all the world. If you gave me $100 million and said you can't pray with your wife anymore, just the two of you alone, I'd say no thank you in a moment. So my point here is you love your wife spiritually as a king. Secondly, you love her superlatively. That means you love her more than you love anybody else. That's your calling. You give her time, you give her touch, you give her tenderness, you give her talk. You find things you can do together and ways you can communicate, whatever it may be.

Some things won't work. I have lots of allergies, so I can go to the garden with my wife, and she loves gardening. I say, honey, I'm never going to garden with you.

I'm miserable. But she loves to bike. I'd rather walk. Okay, many times we bike. But she's learned to love to walk as well.

So now we love biking, we love walking. Build this kind of loving, superlative love where the person you'd like to be with more than anyone else in the world is your wife. And when that's the case, you'll find time to do that.

And you consciously exercise. This is part of self-sacrificial headship, efforts to get into her world and to draw out her feelings and so on. So you have this spiritual love, you have a superlative love, and then you have a sexual love that flows out of a very good relationship.

It's like a cherry on top of a cake. And your sexual love does not depend on how good looking your wife is. It depends on what your relationship is like. And if it's a loving relationship and you're exercising loving leadership, then it is so much easier for your wife to show you respect and reverence and biblical submission. Those are the three words to remember. Spiritual, superlative, and sexual love all really directed towards your wife. Pleasing her, moving her to walk in God's ways, and then the submission, the reverence, will come much more naturally to her. But she will have to work on her end, her responsibility, as well, and not impose her will against your will strongly. But in a good marriage, 99% of the time, when the husband and the wife really love each other and work together and discuss things together, the husband doesn't have to call the shots at the end of the day, because you come to a mutual decision. It's only once in a while that you have to say to your wife in a good marriage, well, honey, I've heard your thoughts and you've heard my thoughts, and in this particular area, I think we should just go forward in the way that I suggest.

But don't worry, sweetheart, I love you immensely. And then my wife would say to me, okay, I respect you, and I accept that. But other times, I would say, you know what, we've talked together, honey, and I really felt this way, and you felt that way, and there's no sin issue involved, so I'm going to choose your way. So when you have a loving husband like that, submission, then, isn't a dirty word. Submission simply means that God has placed man and woman in marriage, not in a hierarchical form so much as a role of different functions. There can only be one leader of the home.

You can have two heads in the home. And so the Bible teaches us the man is the head, and the woman and the man are to get together in love and serve one another and serve God and reflect the relationship of Christ in the church. So the woman responds to her husband the way the church responds to the loving leadership of Christ.

Break. Notice that Joel is not advocating for a closed-fisted patriarchy that leads with authority. It's servant leadership modeled by Jesus Christ, who loves his church and leads like a shepherd, who sacrifices and lays down his life for his bride. We have one more segment coming up, including how a father should navigate spiritual apathy in his children. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio Program. The Christian Worldview Journal is our monthly 12-page full-color print publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. The journal is anchored each month with three columns, including one by Christian geopolitical and prophecy analyst Soren Kern.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter. Order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Our topic today is Husbands and Fathers, How to Lead Your Family, and Joel Beakey, chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and author of the new book, How to Lead Your Family, is our guest.

Joel, I just have two more questions for you, and they're follow-up questions to what we discussed here with these three offices of prophet, priest, and king for the husband and father in the model of Christ. And the first follow-up is, what should a Christian father do with apathy when he sees that in his children? This is a very common thing that you'll hear Christian parents talk about, you know, raise my kids in a Christian home, I took them to church, they went to Christian school, I tried to do family worship at home, but they've been around it so much and they just seem apathetic toward the things of the Lord.

Perhaps you experienced some of this in your own home, maybe, maybe not. How should a Christian father handle apathy? This throws us in dependency upon the Lord, because though there's much we must do, we can't do the main thing. We can't give our children a new heart, which means we must keep, in this sense, the heart of a dependent child upon our God to do for our family and for our children what we cannot do. And here we get comfort from resting in the character of our God, the covenant-keeping character of our Father in heaven. And as a general rule, not that there's no exceptions, but as a general rule, God has said, train up a child the way you should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Doesn't say when he's young he will not depart from it. So it can be that your children will be apathetic, they could even be somewhat rebellious, they could even leave the church, but God's not done with them yet. My dad used to put it this way, he'd say, there comes a time in life when children become apathetic or rebellious, where a father can no longer talk as he would to that grown-up son about God, but he can still talk to God about his son. And the point he was making was, yes, if there's rebellion, there's apathy, you can't be badgering him with religious things and trying to cram them down his throat every single day, it doesn't work, but you can still go in prayer to God.

Now, my mother was a very tender woman. If we started wandering away from God, we would see her in the kitchen doing dishes and the tears would be falling from her eyes, and we'd say, mother, what's wrong? And she'd say, oh, I don't see you walking with God as I desire, and wow, it had profound impact on us. And my dad too, if we didn't seek the things of God, if we showed any signs of apathy, that would really hurt him. So I think the answer here is not to self-impose yourself and bring down the hammer, but the answer is to keep on doing what you're doing, keep on being faithful, keep on teaching as much as will be allowed, but when a child becomes 18, 19, 20, and rejects things and walks his own way, you lovingly warn, but you especially go in secret prayer for that child. And many parents have experienced in this situation that when they gave up, God did not give up, and God came and converted their child and brought that child back. And that is for a Christian parent. There's no greater concern and joy than for a child who would be apathetic or walk away from the faith, and the joy of seeing God bring that child back into walking heartily for the Lord is the greatest joy for a parent and a father.

Now, Jill, final question for you today, and thank you for coming on the program and spending time with us on your trip down under. I can hear perhaps a husband and father listening today saying that this is great things that Dr. Joel Beekie is saying here with regard to a husband and father being a prophet, priest, and a king in his home in the model of Christ, but I am just way too late for applying this. My kids are now grown up, or they're in their teenage years. Things are going lots of different directions in my home. My wife and children would never accept this kind of approach to being a husband and father. So what is your exhortation to that husband and father listening today that says, I've just gotten too far behind the eight ball on this.

I'm not going to be able to move forward in this direction for how to lead my home. Number one, I don't mean this in a selfish way, but I would say get this little 70-page book. I purposely made it very short. A lot of men don't like to read long books and read it prayerfully and lay it before the Lord.

It's simple. I've kept it as short as I could, and then once you have that information with you and you're convicted that you need to make some changes, that's the time to go to your wife, first of all, and say, honey, here's this little book I read, and I have not been doing this right, and I really feel guilty, and I feel bad. I've wasted some years, but the Bible does say the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have eaten, and I want to make a fresh start. Sweetheart, would you help me start doing family worship even three minutes a day, even just reading five verses and praying maybe a full minute instead of 20 seconds before a meal and making my prayers more substantive, more real? I'll use the family worship Bible guide, and I'll try to read that, and we'll try to have even one minute of discussion in the family. Can you join me, please, on that? If she says yes, that's great, and then you go to your children, and you say the same thing to them. Please forgive me.

I've read this book, and I've been failing in some areas, and please cooperate with me. We're going to start just a really short family worship. It won't be long.

You start with three, four minutes. That sets a new trajectory for the home. Now, if the children are out of the home, then your focus is going to be on you trying to have more impact on your grandchildren. I'll tell you, David, one of my favorite things in life is having my grandchildren on my lap, one on one knee, one on the other knee, talking to them about the Lord.

It's just such a joy. It's surprising because kids are so open, and they're so unfiltered that you never know what they're going to come up with, but I think it begins with confessing that you've missed the boat to both your wife and your children. Take it from there and see how the Lord will lead you. Don't just read my little book, but maybe read a couple other similar books, and really study more biblically. Read the Bible most of all.

I mean, the Bible is the marriage textbook, the parenting textbook, the best one on the market ever. Study those biblical passages. Take your calling more seriously, and ask God to help you. It's amazing when you have an attitude change, and you really start taking seriously, loving your wife as Christ loved the church. It's amazing how many wonderful things will fall into place, and how your wife and your kids actually may respond and say, wow, that has changed for the better, and that could impact them, and who can tell what the Lord will do with that? Maybe it'll renovate the whole family, but don't give up.

Begin with awareness, and then confession, and then implement changes. That's just such great advice, Joel, and God is a God of second chances, and when we turn to Him in humility and faith and going forward in His way, He blesses that, He blesses that, and He'll do great things within a family. So thank you for encouraging us in that way for someone who hasn't done some of these things for a lot of the time.

They've been a husband and father. But, Joel, thank you for taking time on your long trip away from home to spend some time with us on the Christian worldview and talking about your new book, How to Lead Your Family, and thank you again for taking the time to come on the program today. All of God's best and grace to you and your wonderful wife, Mary, and your family. Thank you so much, David.

Great to be with you. We have links to Joel Beakey on our website, thechristianworldview.org. What I like about Joel is not just his biblical soundness, but the joy he has in his Christian walk and preaching. Now, perhaps you didn't grow up seeing this kind of husband and father in your home, or if you did, perhaps the distractions of life have kept you from being the husband and father that God calls you to be.

We all can, as Scripture says, excel still more. This is why we wanted to feature Joel in this book at this time of year during Father's Day month. And you can order the book, How to Lead Your Family, for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview.

To order, go to our website or call us or write to us, and our contact information will be given immediately following today's program. Now, the Christian worldview journal, our monthly print publication, is typically sent to Christian worldview partners only, but this month in June, it is being sent to our entire mailing list because it's Father's Day month. And an excerpt of Joel's book is going to appear in the journal, which we think is very important for everyone to read. The June issue is already off to the printer and should arrive in your mailbox around Father's Day. When you become a Christian worldview partner, you will receive the journal every month.

Other articles on the June issue are by managing editor Soren Kern on Trump's trip to the Middle East, and also one by Tim Challies on the discovery of slanderous social media accounts by G3 founder and president Josh Byce. One final quote from Joel Beekie's book. He says, If you are not a Christian, that is, if you have not experienced the new birth of the Holy Spirit, genuine repentance for your sin, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation, then the biblical instructions in this manual, this book, will only confuse and condemn you. The thoughts about servant leadership in this book will confuse you, because biblical family life does not make sense apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The thoughts in this little book will also condemn you, for they will show how far short you fall in loving God and loving your neighbor, which are the two greatest commandments." The good news today is that God is calling you, if you haven't been, to be born again. Like Jesus said in his conversation with Nicodemus, you must be born again.

He said it three times. Salvation is the starting point of everything, including being a godly husband and father. This is exactly how the Overcomer Course for Young Adults starts. The first session is, believing God's gospel is the gateway to being an overcomer. You can't understand the Word, how to live the Christian life.

You don't have the power. You don't have the Holy Spirit in you unless you've been born again. We're less than two weeks away now from the Overcomer Course, and we would ask for your prayer that the Course impacts those young adults who come. There's still time to register, and you can find out details at our website, thechristianworldview.org. Thank you for joining us today on The Christian Worldview and for your support of this non-profit radio ministry. Let's remember that Jesus Christ and His Word are the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported non-profit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, order resources, become a Christian Worldview partner, sign up for our weekly email or The Christian Worldview Journal monthly print publication, or to contact us, go to thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.