A Father's Long Shadow Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We all know that fathers are normally the family breadwinners, but in the Bible, fathers are also responsible for the spiritual well-being of their wives and children. Today, we explore the power of a dad's example for good or ill. Stay with us.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, is it true that we feel the impact of our fathers long after they have passed away? David, not only is it true, we should emphasize the fact that yes, we feel the impact of our fathers. And Dave, I can't help but think that we are talking to many people today who perhaps grew up without a father, but they need to understand that even they are still feeling the impact of an absent father in their own lives. The role of the father is absolutely critical. Recently, I was in on a discussion regarding the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children, and we emphasized the fact that those kinds of curses and bad influences can be broken in Christ. But the role of the father is critical. And if there are people out there who are longing for a father, let them remember that they have a heavenly father who loves them, who cares about them, and who replaces their own dad. I want to thank the many of you who give us the opportunity of sharing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in 20 different countries in three different languages.

I especially feel a great sense of gratitude, the fact that throughout the Middle East, running to win is heard in Arabic. Thanks for helping us. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner?

That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. When you're there, click on the endurance partner button. That's rtwoffer.com.

Click on the endurance partner button or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And now let us listen to God's word about the role of the father in the home. Today I want you to hear the cry of 20 million children who are living without a father in the home.

These are lyrics by David Meese about his own fatherless home. Sometimes at night I lie awake longing inside for my father's embrace. Sometimes at night I wander downstairs pray he'll return but no one was there.

Oh how I cried. A child all alone waiting for him to come home. My father's chair sat in an empty room. My father's chair covered with sheets of gloom. My father's chair through all the years and all the tears I cried in vain.

No one was there in my father's chair. Today I'm going to preach a message which I wish were heard throughout the world. A father's long shadow. You and I are impacted by our father much more than we realize. Fathers can bless us, fathers can encourage us, fathers can diminish us, and fathers can curse us.

They have it all within their power. Today my text is taken from the book of Malachi. Malachi, an Old Testament prophet, the last book of the Old Testament.

Find the place where the Old and the New Testament meet and it is pronounced Malachi, not Malachi like an Italian friend of mine thought it was. Because this message is so serious and so necessary and so life transforming, before we read the text I would like to pray one more time asking God to do what no man can. Would you join me as we pray? Our father we ask in Jesus' name that this for many will be a transforming moment. For fathers who are listening, we ask that you will open their hearts, go where no man can deep within their souls. For all of the children, and that's all of us of fathers, we pray that we might be reconciled to our fathers to break the impasse, the curses of fathers who have done us harm and not good. We pray today that as we speak about reclaiming the family that this will be a powerful step in that direction for everyone who is listening.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Malachi chapter 4 verse 5. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction or as some translations put it unless I come and strike the land with a curse. When God ends the Old Testament, he ends with a warning and the warning is that if the hearts of fathers are not turned toward the children and the children toward the fathers, if there is not reconciliation within the home, judgment is coming. That's God's last word to fathers in the Old Testament. You open up the New Testament and you find in Luke chapter 1 that when John the Baptist is born, the prophecy says he will go forth in the power and the spirit of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward the children. The Old Testament opens with an emphasis on reconciliation within the home.

The New Testament opens with an emphasis in the same direction. God says it is important for restoration and reconciliation within the home. Why is the role of the father so critical? Yes, of course mothers have a great influence, but God holds the father accountable for his wife and for his children. First of all, because the father is the mirror of the home. As children try to find out who in the world they really are and find out their identity, try to find out whether they are valuable or valueless, find out whether they are worth anything, they look to the father to find out how valuable they are. That's why fathers can diminish their children by belittling them, by criticizing them, by telling them things that they should never be told, by striking at their hearts. Like the father who told his adopted son in a moment of anger, you are nothing but the product of a one-night stand. The father knew that to kill the boy would mean that the father would go to jail, so he wouldn't do that.

What he wanted to do is to destroy the boy's soul, and he did it through terrible, terrifying words. So who are you? You're growing up, you're trying to figure that out. It's dad who reflects back to you who you are because you see yourself through his eyes. He's not only the mirror in the home, he's also the thermostat in the home.

He's the one who's going to set the temperature. Are we going to have a home with harmony and with respect among the siblings? Is that what we're going to have? Or are we going to have a home where everyone can say whatever they like, they can swear, they can cut others down, and they can do practically anything in disrespect to one another. The father determines that. This past week my wife and I were talking to a couple and they were telling us about a home that they were acquainted with where they said every disagreement ended in an argument and every argument ended in a fight.

We're going to duke it out. The father determines whether it's going to be that kind of a home or a home where there is optimism, encouragement, strength, belief, and joy. Dad, it's up to you. He's also the compass in the home, determines what direction the home is going to go.

Are we just going to keep going year after year the way things are and never better ourselves, never try to improve ourselves, sit around, watch television, maybe read a newspaper, live from paycheck to paycheck with no goals, no initiative? It's the dad who sets that tone and that direction. Well, what happens when there isn't a dad in the home? Well, the power of the father extends over the family whether he is there or not.

And when he's not there, his power is limitless. Girls growing up without a dad don't know whether they are sexually attractive. They don't know whether or not they have value. They need the affirmation of a man and dad isn't there. So they begin to test the waters, begin to find others with whom they can have a relationship and pretty soon fall into the arms of young men who abuse them and use them and then toss them away and tell them they're worthless and the cycle begins all over again. Young boys wrestling in their spirits between being aggressive as young men are and also needing self-restraint, they don't know where the boundaries are. So what they're going to do is to look to other men to try to affirm them, to try to find out about masculinity and almost inevitably they will choose those who will use them, who will mistreat them, and who will do them harm at the latter end.

And that's what happens. Mike Singletary, whose name is known here in Chicago because of the fame that he achieved playing on the Chicago Bears, said that he grew up without a father and when he goes to prisons he always asks the men as he speaks to them, how many of you have had a good relationship with your father, raise your hand. Singletary says that up until now not a single hand has ever been raised. The curse of fatherlessness. My outline today is rather simple. We're going to learn first of all how a father can turn his heart toward his child to win his child's heart and then we're going to talk about making peace with our fathers whether they are dead or alive.

That's the agenda. First of all, how does a father take a child who is turned off, a child whose heart is closed, how does he get the child to open his heart? The child has a clenched fist as it were and the question is you can pry his fingers open but they will always go back. Or you can win the child's heart so that he will open his hand on his own. How do you win a child's heart?

Four requirements. Fathers, you know that you are God to your child. That's why so many people who struggle with fatherlessness or their relationship with their father end up having so many problems with God as their father because you represent him like it or not. Good father, bad father, indifferent father.

You represent God and God will hold you personally, individually accountable. First, we as fathers need to initiate communication. We need to initiate communication.

We need to connect and we can only do that by making sure that the lines of communication are open. For some that means that you have to go to your children and ask their forgiveness. You have to say please, please forgive me for my harshness, for my indifference, for my inconsistent discipline. I love to tell the story of that man who attended a church service, came in a Saturday morning after playing golf and there were 200 men in the church on their knees repenting of their sins and he sat at the back of the auditorium and took his fist and put it into his hand and said, God, you will never get me. You'll never get me. But I always like to point out that God got him. God got him. Why was he so stubborn? Well, it's because he had five children and a hot temper and he had rules in his house.

We've got rules here and if you violate the rules, you know how that goes. And he had turned his children off and he knew he had to humble himself and go on to ask their forgiveness if communication is to be restored. But if you're a young father and your children are young and they're still in the home, how do you establish that communication by the questions that you ask? Find out what is going on in their lives. Enter into their world. So you don't like the music that they listen to. What parent has ever liked the music that his teenagers have listened to? Try to find out why he likes it.

Ask him questions about school. Because at the end, what you and I must do is to make sure that our children know one thing, and that is that they are highly prized. They are highly prized.

Jesus prizes you and says, of such are the kingdom of heaven and I prize you as a gift from Jesus to me. So you establish communication. Dad talk. Say something. Something good. Something helpful. That's the first thing we as fathers need to do.

Something we're not very good at actually. Start it. Second, be the lawgiver. Yes, that's what God is going to hold you accountable for is being the lawgiver, but also the grace giver. The grace giver.

So you make the rules in the home and you put down the law, but your home just isn't a place of laws. It's also a place of grace. It's a place where you model forgiveness personally by your attitude and then what you can do is you can begin to see that kind of an attitude develop on the part of your children. Children will misbehave.

You need proof. Jog your memory as to what you did when you were a child. Why are you holding your children to a higher standard than you lived up to?

May I ask? Well, I hope that you hold them up to a higher standard than you lived up to, but do so with a sense of humility knowing that, you know, evil is bound up in a child, but you administer grace. According to Josh McDowell, in a survey that was taken and teenagers were asked, who can you go to when you have a crisis in your life?

Dad was number 48 on the list. I can't talk to my dad. He isn't going to listen to me.

I wish I could take time to tell you the stories of kids who have written the completion of this sentence. If I could change my mom and dad, I would. So many of them say, I wish that he would listen to me. I might have something important to say.

I wish that he would spend time with me. Yes, there is law, but there is also grace. Dads, hear it. Your children will never be kept from sins and crimes because of your rules. They do not have the power to do that. They do not have the power to transform and to keep a child.

The rules are necessary, yes, but it isn't rules that will do it. It is relationships that will do it. That's what is transforming for your children, is the relationship. Third, be the protector. Be the protector.

The Bible says regarding God, Lord, you are my refuge and my fortress, and that's what children need in today's world, a refuge and a fortress. So you protect them from the enemies of the family, namely drugs and morality, pornography, crimes, sexual predators. You talk to them about these things and you discuss them. Let them express their opinions even if their opinion is different from yours. Hear them out.

Hear them out, but stand in for them. A father in this church, a very good father, talked to me the other day about movies that are being shown in the school that show marriage as diverse to men, to women. That also is a marriage. That also is a, quote, family. How old do you think his daughter is who's supposed to look at these movies?

Six years old. And there's a father who's standing in for his daughter, keeping tabs on what she sees in school and discussing it with the principal, involved in her life. So you're the protector. Be the mentor in humility, in patience, in servant love. Be a mentor. You don't have to know a lot about the Bible.

That's what I'm not talking about, though the more you know the better, but it's the modeling of it. My parents could have taught us faith, and I'm sure they did, but to me the greatest lesson of faith was when Hale consumed every blade of wheat on our farm, and they got on their knees in the old farmhouse and thanked God for his mercies and for all that he meant to them in the midst of their devastation. Children don't forget that. You say, well, there's something in my life, there's a reason why I can't be a mentor. I have unconquered sin in my life. If that's the case with you, my dear father, would you join a small group? Would you go for help?

Would you seek God? Would you do whatever needs to be done to get rid of what it is that stands in the way of you entering into your child's world? That's the way we can fulfill this admonition. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Father, today, turn your heart to your needy, crying children at great personal cost. It was Seneca who said years ago, Seneca said, no man can consider himself a success if his children are a failure.

That's very sobering, isn't it? The fact is the impact that we as fathers have is much greater than we realize. And that's why it is that we need to walk carefully and give our children a wonderful example. And my friend today, if you didn't have that in your life, all is not lost.

There are people in your church in your life that can minister to you, and God, of course, becomes your heavenly Father when you receive Christ as Savior. The reason I'm so excited about the ministry of running to win is that it touches so many lives. In my hands, I'm holding a letter from someone who said that he wanted justice for everything. Everything had to be fair. Well, you have learned, and he learned, that life isn't fair. So he's filled with vengeance.

But he said he was listening to one of the sermons of running to win and realized that vengeance belonged to God. Suddenly, I had an epiphany. I feel free. It's the best birthday gift I have ever had. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, that's one letter among many. Would you consider helping us in this ministry? Would you consider becoming an endurance partner, someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts? Go to RTWOffer.com. Of course, RTWOffer is all one word. RTWOffer.com.

Click on the endurance partner button, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. Thanks in advance for helping us get the gospel around the world. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago. Next time, more on how dads can and must protect their families from the onslaughts of a pagan culture. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.