The impact that godly leadership has in the home. Next, on Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. We all know that any athletic team that has no strong leadership loses.
Any business that has a murky and a hazy line of authority will go under. Any church that does not have compassionate and decisive leadership is it in disintegration and in disarray. So it is in the home where the husband is called by God to exercise leadership in the home. Welcome to the Valentine's Day edition of Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. He is committed to passionately proclaiming the uncompromising truth of God's word at home and around the world.
On this Valentine's Day, hopefully you've honored or you're planning to honor your Valentine in a special way. Up next, God's Mandate for Christian Husbands and Wives. The continuation of a message series from Dr. Youssef that's geared toward families. Now, this message especially directed to dads regarding the responsibilities of guiding and growing the future generations in the light of God's word. Do remember, Leading the Way is listener supported. Dr. Youssef relies on God's provision through your generosity to enable this far-reaching medium ministry to touch souls with the gospel.
Learn how to stand with Dr. Youssef at ltw.org. Right now on Leading the Way, practical biblical words for your family. Just as the man is called upon to love his wife as Christ loves the church, just as the man is called upon to model his relationship with his wife on the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ's love for the believers, so it is for the fathers in modeling our Heavenly Father in their relationship to their children. None of us can claim to be perfect fathers.
Nobody probably more conscious of this than I am. And therefore, I want you to know that I am challenging us rather than correcting you. For I believe the second most important responsibility for the father, the second most important role for the man who is a father of children, is to be the leader, the governor, the head of his children. Fatherhood is more than just mere biological connection. It's more than mere biological function. It is more than just a process.
It is a process of affecting leadership in the home. Fatherhood requires the creating of the opportunity for children to reach their full potential and to do so spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. And I put them exactly in this order. For many of us wish our children great success in the world. That has to come third.
Many of us wish our children great academic success. That has to come third. But first, it has to be spiritually. Secondly, it has to be emotionally.
And thirdly, it is intellectually. And a father lead by example. You cannot lead by words alone. And you can imagine for a father like me who preaches here and try to go home and not live up to his sermons, I'd be reminded of that every hour on the hour. In fact, I remember the story that I've read some time ago of the father who went with his son to mountain climbing. And they climbed the distance in the mountains. And then the father all of a sudden stopped because he realized that the section after this is very dangerous, is a treacherous section. And as he stopped and began to look around for trail that he could follow that's easier because his son is right behind him.
He heard the boy's voice saying, Choose the good path, Daddy. I'm coming right behind you. So we lead by example. And we all know that any athletic team that has no strong leadership loses. Any business that has a murky and a hazy line of authority will go under.
Any group of people who have no effective spokesman, they'll become a mob. Any church that does not have compassionate and decisive leadership is in disintegration and in disarray. So it is in the home where the husband is called by God to exercise leadership in the home. Now, to be sure, the responsibility of raising children, of helping children to grow and nurture in every way, it's a shared responsibility.
It is shared with the mother and with the wife. But somehow the scripture, in a unique way, calls upon the men, the fathers, to take the responsibility. Calls upon the men to be the governors of the homes. God calls upon the man to be accountable before God for the spiritual well-being of his children as well as the rest of their well-being. God calls upon men to provide for their family every opportunity in which they experience all that the creator wanted them to experience. And when the leadership of the father is evident in the home, there is a sense of order.
There is a sense of poise in the family. Turn with me, if you have your Bibles, to Deuteronomy chapter 6. I'm going to read from verse 4, Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Moses comes in out of Egypt, out of the land of the slavery, and he comes in and he realizes that he's got a big task on his hand. But he knew in his heart that Israel's life as a nation is going to be dependent on the effectiveness of the fathers in that kingdom. And therefore he links the fatherhood of God with the earthly fathers.
And he calls the people together and he says to them, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit down in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up, and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be frontal between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your gate. You see, this is the greatest passage in the scripture about fathers dealing with their children. Moses knew that the best leadership the fathers can give to the children is to teach them and to talk to them, to teach them the laws of God and to talk to them about the love of God. And here is his counsel to the fathers in this passage. It is threefold. First of all, for the men, for the fathers to love God.
That's the first thing. And the second thing he said, you have to make that love for God in your life to be high profile priority in your home. You can't say, well, my religion is private. My faith is private. I can't tell my kids about it.
I can't tell people about it. Moses is saying that your kids and your family have to know your love for God by the way you live. And thirdly, he said, use every moment of your relationship with your children to be an opportunity to instruct them, to teach them that love that you have for God. Now, if you look at the passage carefully, you notice that Moses is saying that this is to be a 24-hour affair, not just a minute or two in the middle of the day.
It is when you're sitting down, it is when you're walking, it is when you're rising up, it is when you're lying down. And the tying of that commandment on your hand, it is our modern way of saying, put a string around your finger so you don't forget. Do whatever it takes in order to remind yourself, in order to keep that at the forefront of your mind, the responsibility of teaching your children and instructing them in the Word of God. But the two most important words in this passage, as I looked at it again and again, teach and talk. Moses apparently feels that there are times when the fathers are to instruct their children systematically, when they deliberately choose a time to tell them about the love of God in their lives.
And the father is the one to instruct in the truth. Now men, listen. I know how busy we all are. I know that. And none of us can claim that we have done a perfect job.
I'm the first one. But we cannot leave all of the job of instructing of our children, of teaching our children about the great truth of God, about the love of God, about the salvation of God to our wives. Let me tell you something. They do a better job anyhow, just in case you think that we are indispensable.
They do a far better job than we do. Let me tell you. I know that also firsthand. Now, I know that some women are given the heavy burden of bringing the children on their own.
I know that. And no one more conscious of that than I've seen it in the midst of our congregation. And as a pastor, I have a heart of compassion. But as a prophet of the Word of God, I know that if you pray to the Lord, he will give you a double measure of grace to be the father and the mother.
But nonetheless, that does not let those of us who are fathers off the hook, as it were. There is teaching, Moses said, but then he said there is talking. What is this talking? He said, talk to them. Now, this talking takes place in the context of ordinary routine life, in the ordinary events in life. Moses is telling the fathers to carry on a running commentary with their children on the whys and the wherefores of the events that face them in life. In other words, they are to be the interpreters of that doctrine that they will teach them in the events of life itself to apply this doctrine to the events in life.
Let me illustrate. When the situation arises that normally paves the way for the flare and the blow up of temper, it is a great opportunity, it's a time to point out to the child the wisdom of self-control, the importance of self-control and how it is achieved, providing you're working on it yourself. A moment with financial decisions, these are great opportunities. They pave the way to talk with our children about the advantage of economic restraint, of discipline in that area.
I think in this culture we all live up to our eyeballs with credit. It is a talking time about the values, the real values in life. It is an opportunity to talk about the priorities in life. It is a time to talk about the process of sound judgment, of reaching a sound decision. And Moses' method in my estimation is the best educational method.
I wish our educational system would learn from it. Instead of only filling the child's head with principles and doctrines, that too, but it's not only that, he is saying to us that we must take every opportunity to apply these truths, to apply these doctrines in everyday life. Show your children the doctrine in action. Let them see how you honor God in your life with your time. Show them how you honor God with your pocketbook. Show them how you honor God by trusting him to answer your prayers.
And watch for God to answer these prayers so that he builds up the faith of your children. Training is as every bit as important as instructing. Talking is taking them through the event step by step and show them God in the process. Moses, to him, it was both instruction and the application of that instruction. And he knew that this is vitally important to the future of Israel. He knew how important it is that when they get into Canaan, that when they get into the affluence of the promised land, that when they get into the land of competition of different religious systems, when they get into the land of immorality with the worship of Baal, when they get into the land of heavy challenge to the religious faith and their belief system, when they get into all this, they will be ready and prepared to deal with them and make the right decisions and stand up for God.
Amen belongs here. You see, we fathers have to accept the fact that our leadership is a privilege, not a chore. It's enormous privilege to have an opportunity to mold and shape the lives of our children. Our children, not really ours, they belong to God and God entrusted us to be managers. It's like the story of the medieval legend about the sidewalk superintendent who asked three stonemasons working on a construction site. He asked them what they were doing and the first one said, he said, I'm a bricklayer. He asked the second man and the second man said, I'm building a wall. And then he went to the third man and he said, what are you doing in there? The third man have esteem, have respect, felt the sense of privilege of what he's doing and he said, I'm raising a cathedral.
And you and I are raising precious children. It is like the sculpture at work. The sculptor takes this raw piece of material and he chisels away and he cuts and he chips.
He's tender and he's gentle until he presents a beautiful object of art. And we fathers are to be the spiritual artists in our home. We are to produce people with deep and inner spiritual wisdom. You see, the spiritual wisdom is not natural. We are not born with spiritual wisdom.
It is something that we learn and exercise. And the child who learns from his father or her father spiritual wisdom will learn self-control. He or she will learn to make decisions based upon the long range perspective, upon the eternal perspective. He or she will learn to be sensitive to the real issues in life, to relationships, earthly relationships, heavenly relationship with God. He or she will understand what the purpose in life is and they won't suffer from identity crisis because they will know who they are in Jesus Christ. He or she will be aware of their own weaknesses and acknowledge it, not be embarrassed about it.
They know that they can be exploited in this area so they learn to be careful and to avoid that possibility. That is spiritual wisdom. Finally, they will learn from their father how to relate to the heavenly father because that's the image of father that they're going to see. Somebody is going to say, I did not know the Lord when my kids were growing up. And consequently, I tried to do the best I know how, but I never introduced them to the Lord Jesus as I know him now, as I walk with him now in my older years, in my later years in life.
And that is probably, in what I'm saying, all I'm saying, one of the most important things that I want you to listen carefully. Because the last thing I want to do is heap guilt, never send you on a guilt trip. The Scripture speaks to this issue because the Christian faith came and began to sweep on the pagan Gentile world. And a husband will become a Christian or a wife become a Christian and the rest of the family have not come to the Lord. And Paul addresses this question to the Corinthians. And he said that you must continue praying for your unbelieving children. And God somehow in his infinite wisdom, in his infinite mercy, sees that the unbelieving child will be a believing child. Because the unbelieving spouse or the unbelieving child is going to be sanctified, as Paul said, in the believing parent, in the believing spouse. And to me that means that somehow, somewhere, God is going to honor your prayers. Somehow, somewhere, God is going to bring these children to himself. You see, our God is a covenant-making God and he makes the covenant with the whole family. It runs right through the Scripture. And Peter interprets the prophecy of Joel that the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of salvation is to you and your children. It's a family covenant and we must not be discouraged. We must not give up praying or interceding for our children because God in his economy has a special place for the children of the believers. Our timing is not God's timing.
I wish it was many times. So on God's own schedule, he's going to bring them. You pray. You intercede.
And you trust them to God who gave them to you to begin with, a gift from him that he will bring them to his kingdom. The Lord knows where your heart is. He knows the deep pain and the deep agony of your soul and the Holy Spirit who is present is speaking with you right now. There are other voices that are trying to crowd him out, but he's speaking to you and he's saying, Young fathers, learn this lesson. All the fathers, if you feel that you have not exercised your responsibility of leadership, God is ready to forgive you. He's ready to turn the whole situation around, that he's ready to bring good out of the wrong.
He can turn it around. Your responsibility is to repent. Your responsibility is to confess. My responsibility is to say, Lord, I'm sorry. I have not done a job as I wanted to do.
I have not exercised my leadership responsibility that your word gave me. But somehow in the infinite wisdom of God, turn this around and God is ready to answer the prayer of the penitent. John said if we confess our sins, he is merciful and just to forgive us our sins. Those of us children who might have a negative relationship with our fathers, let's remember that they did the best they know how under the circumstances. You might have a grudge against your father that you have never really forgiven him about something. Today, I believe the Holy Spirit is calling you to do that.
Confess it to God and forgive. And as soon as you get out, you call him and ask him for forgiveness and if he has gone to be with the Lord like my own father, then the Lord knows your heart. He will heal you and he'll forgive you. He will strengthen you. A challenge for men to face and accept the responsibility to be a godly husband, father, stepdad, grandfather or other male influencer in the lives of the next generations.
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