What Kind of Dad will your Children Remember? - Father's Day Message

You know, a few years ago I was flying out to Denver on my way to a pastor's conference and I was sitting on the airplane, I was working on my computer and I was listening to one of the music channels. And all of a sudden I heard the host, a fellow named John Brainy, tell a true story that really caught my attention. He told about an incident years ago where he was conducting auditions for a new recording artist in Los Angeles.

And into his studio walks this middle-aged man who identified himself as Mr. Warren. And Mr. Warren said, he said, you know, he said, I have a 12-year-old daughter who loves to write music. He said, and I've listened to her music and I think she's pretty good, but then again, I'm her father. So he said, I brought some of her music along and I want you guys to look at it and I want you to tell me, does she really have talent or doesn't she? Because Mr. Warren said, if she has talent, I want to get behind her and support her. And if she doesn't have talent, I want to encourage her to forget about it and move on to something else.

Well, this young lady had talent and her father did get behind her and support her even though almost no one else supported her. And today, Diane Warren is one of the most talented and one of the most successful songwriters in all of pop music. She's won four Grammys, she's been nominated for 10, she's won six Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, she's been nominated for.

Actually, she was nominated for six Academy Awards, she didn't win them all. And some of her songs, you'll recognize them, are How Do I Live, sung by Trish Yearwood, Unbreak My Heart, sung by Toni Braxton, Don't Take Away My Heaven, sung by Aaron Neville, Don't Want to Miss a Thing, sung by Aerosmith. So the narrator on this plane goes on to say how in 1995, Diane Warren wrote a song dedicated to her father. Celine Dion recorded it. In 1996, it spent six weeks at number one on the charts.

It spent a record 19 weeks in the top 10. It won her, Diane Warren, a Grammy in 1996. And then they played on the airplane this song that she wrote to her father. I want you to hear part of it. Here it is, sung by Celine Dion.

For all those times you stood behind me For all the truth that you made me see For all the joy you brought to my life For all the wrong that you made right For every dream you made the truth For all the love I found in you I'll be your ever man, baby You're the one who held me up, never let me fall You're the one who saw me through, through it all You were my strength when I was weak You were my voice when I couldn't speak You were my eyes when I couldn't see You saw the face that was in me Lifting me up when I couldn't reach You gave me faith cause you believed I'm everything I am Because you loved me, ooh You gave me wings and made me fly You touched my head, I could touch the sky I lost my faith, you gave it back to me You said no star was out of reach You stood by me and asked of toll I had your love, I had it all I'm grateful for each day you gave me Baby, I don't know that much But I know this much is true I was blessed because I was loved by you You were my strength when I was weak You were my voice when I couldn't speak You were my eyes when I couldn't see You saw the face that was in me Lifting me up when I couldn't reach You gave me faith cause you believed I'm everything I am Because you loved me, ooh You were always there for me The tender wings that carried me Light in the dark shining your love into my mind You've been my inspiration Through the lies you were true My world is a better place because of you You were my strength when I was weak You were my strength And so there I was at 32,000 feet, bawling like a baby. I mean, I had tears rolling down my face, dripping off my chin, I'm wiping my eyes and my sleeves, I'm sniveling. The guy next to me turned to me, looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I mean, I was an absolute utter wreck on this airplane and made a complete fool out of myself. And when I finally pulled myself together enough, I thought, you know what?

Here's an interesting thought. When my boys grow up and they become adults and they look back, if they were to write a song about me as their dad, I wonder what they'd write in the song. I wonder what I'd want them to write about me in a song. And so I took out a piece of paper on the airplane and I started making a list of what I would really like my boys to remember about me when they look back in the years to come, the things I'd love for them to put in a song about me. And since this is Father's Day, I thought I'd share three of those things with you today.

Here we go. Number one, I want my children, first of all, to remember me as a godly man. Proverbs 20 verse 7 says, a godly man who walks in his integrity, how blessed are his children after him.

And this is my great passion for my children. I want them to remember me as that godly man. I want them to remember me as a man who put Jesus Christ first in his life, a man who loved God with all of his heart, a man who obeyed God regardless of the cost, a man who modeled for them what it really means to authentically walk with the living God here on this earth. I want my children to remember the time that I prayed with them and led them to Christ, the times I encouraged them in their walks with God. I want them to remember the time that I took too much money back to the cashier, the times I gave tracts to the delivery person or to the waiter, the times I told the truth to my own disadvantage, the times I made decisions for our family that were based on walking by faith and not walking by sight. I want my children to remember how I was faithful to my wife and I was faithful to my family and I was faithful to the call of God on my life.

You see gentlemen, I believe that the greatest legacy that any father can leave his children is the example of a godly lifestyle lived out in action before their young eyes every day, every day, every day. Number two, I want my children to remember me as a praying man, a man of prayer. I want them to remember me lying down with them every night in their bed and praying with them and for them when they're little about the issues of the day. I want my school-aged children to remember me as the man who sat in the car at the bus stop waiting for the bus to come or at the stoplight on the way taking them to school and prayed for them as they were about to enter combat for that day. And I want my teenagers to remember my getting up early in the morning and put my arm around them before they left to go drive themselves to school and praying for them as they were about to enter the toughest venue in Washington DC public high school in this town.

I want my children to remember that I was a man of prayer for them. Anybody here recognize the names Aaron and Hur? You say, yeah, they sound vaguely familiar.

Well, duh, they should. We just talked about them a few months ago here in church. In Exodus chapter 17, you'll remember there was a fight between the Israelites and the Amalekites and Moses went up on the mountain overlooking the battle. And the Bible says that every time he held his staff up in prayer, the Israelites prevailed and whenever his arms got tired and he dropped his staff, the Amalekites prevailed and finally his arms got so tired he couldn't hold him up anymore. So Exodus 17 12, Moses sat on a rock and Aaron and Hur, these two men who had gone up there with him, held Moses' hands up, one on one side of Moses and one on the other. Thus Moses' hands were steady until sunset and so the Israelites defeated the Amalekites.

Here were these two men as a visual picture of supporting Moses and holding Moses up in prayer himself. And you know, this story has become a living motif in my family. I say to my boys all the time, hey, I am Aaron and Hur for you and don't you ever forget it.

When you're out there taking that test at school, when you're facing some issue in your personal life, when you're out there looking for the right partner in life, I don't care what challenge you're facing. I am on my knees praying for you in intercessory prayer. I'm holding your arms up like Aaron and Hur. I say to my older son Jamie, who's an anesthesiologist in the Navy, every day I say to him, when you're in that operating room and you have another human being's life in your hands, I want you to know that I'm being Aaron and Hur for you at home.

I'm on my knees praying for you that day that God will guide you. I want my middle son Justin, who's a lawyer in Chicago, to know that when he's working on that deal where you just can't make a mistake, that his father is home being Aaron and Hur for him, holding his arms up in prayer and interceding for him before God. And I want my youngest son, John, to know that when he's out on the college baseball field facing sliders and curveballs and trying to keep his grades up at a tough school like Hopkins, that his father is Aaron and Hur for him, holding him up every day in prayer.

This is how I want my boys to remember me. You know, Howard Hendricks at Dallas Seminary tells the story about a student he had one year who stood head and shoulders above every other student he had that year in any of his classes in terms of this kid's walk with Christ. And he went to him one day, Dr. Hendricks did, and he said, Tell me, he said, I'm impressed with your spiritual walk.

Who? Who was the great mentor that you had? Who was the greatest inspiration you had? And the young man said it was my father. And so Howard Hendricks said to him, All right, he said, Tell me the one thing that was the most impressive, the most memorable about your father. And the young man said, What I most remember was my dad on his knees every morning in his room, praying my name out loud before God.

He said, As a little boy, I would sneak over and I would hide outside his room when he didn't know I was there. And I would listen as he lifted my name up to God in prayer. Wow, what an amazing inheritance, gentlemen, to leave your children, a dad on his knees being a prayer warrior for his children. That's how I want my children to remember me.

In fact, the most commonly repeated phrase in my family that I say to my boys all the time, whether it's in person or on the telephone. It might surprise you that phrase is not so what the phrase is, let me pray for you. Let me pray for you.

Let me pray for you. And whether they're on the telephone or whether they're in person where I can throw my arm around them, you know what I launch, I launch I start praying for them. Right then and there, because this is what I believe a godly dad should do. And this is how I want to be remembered by my children. And this is what I want them to copy and do with their children.

Number three, and finally, I want my children to remember me as a man who blessed their lives. You know, lots of dads make a lasting impact on their children. It's just that they make a bad impact on their children. They're not a blessing.

They're a curse to their children. Now that was my dad. My dad was not a bad man.

My dad was just a bad father. He was emotionally absent. He was physically absent. He was detached and neglectful. He was never involved in any of the details of my life.

I live my life alone. I didn't really even have a dad except in name only. And folks, I want you to know that I still bear the scars to this day of having a dad like that. He was a curse to me as a father. Well, you know what, in 1971, when I came to faith in Jesus Christ at the age of 22, and I'll save you the trouble, I'm 58.

So there. But when I did, I made up my mind that by the grace of God, and with the help of God, I was not going to be a curse to my children in the way that my father had been a curse to me. I made up my mind that by the grace of God, I was going to reverse the curse in the Solomon family, that by the grace of God, and with the help of God, I was going to institute a new cycle in the Solomon family, a cycle of blessing that my children could pass to their children and their children's children. The problem is, I didn't know how to do this. The problem is I had no working model.

I had no example. And so I went to the Bible saying, Is there a blueprint anywhere in the Bible as to how you become a blessing to your children as a father? And I found one in spades. Listen, First Thessalonians chapter two, verse 10, you are witnesses Paul wrote to the believers in Thessalonica, of how holy and uprightly and blameless Lee, we behave towards you who believe Paul said we were a blessing to you people. And the way we did it, Paul goes on to say, is by using the same tactics that a good father uses to be a blessing to his children. Watch this verse 11, for we dealt with each one of you just as a good father deals with his children. And then Paul lays out three things that a good father does to be a blessing to his children. Number one, we exhorted you. Number two, we comforted you. And number three, we charged you to live lives worthy of God. And I said, Wow, look at this. Here is my blueprint for how to be a blessing to my children. This is the blueprint I need to follow.

What is it? Well, first of all, Paul said, Number one, we exhorted you. The Greek word here literally means to admonish, to warn, to comfort, to confront rather to correct. And I became obvious to me that God was saying correction is a major way that a father becomes a blessing to his children. Proverbs 23 verse 13 says, Do not withhold correction from your child, even though you punish him with the paddle, he shall not die. Now he may sound like he's dying, but he's not dying.

And she may want you to think that she's dying, but she's not dying. The next verse says, If you punish your child with the paddle, you will save their soul from death. When my youngest son was now 22, John was about nine, we were sitting at the table one evening and we were talking about a friend of John's whose behavior was outrageous. It was horrible. It was disgraceful.

It was self-destructive. And we knew a little bit about the family. And I made the comment that the reason for this is because the little boy's dad came in the house, never engaged with him, never corrected him, never spanked him, just went and sat and read the newspaper. And my son John at nine years old asked me an incredibly intelligent question. He said, Why doesn't that dad do something about his child's behavior like you do about mine? I said, John, that's a really good question.

I said, let me tell you the answer. The answer is because it takes a lot of energy to discipline a child. Disciplining a child is stressful and it's exhausting and it's demanding as you have proven, my son, my son. And a lot of dads just aren't willing to put out that kind of energy.

It's just that simple. You know what, folks, here in First Thessalonians chapter two, God says, if we want to bless our children's lives, we must put out that kind of energy. We must get involved in their lives and correct their lives and discipline their lives. And so wanting to be a blessing to my children, I became a sincere disciplinarian for my children, something that was not done to me growing up.

And you know what? To this day, I'm glad I did it. Number two, Paul said, We were a blessing to you because second, we comforted you.

The Greek word literally means to encourage, to cheer up, to console, to lift a person's spirits. Dads who bless their children's lives, my friends, are dads who believe in their children when no one else will, who stand with their children when no one else does, who encourage their children when no one else will do that, who comfort their children when everyone else is ripping them down, and who inspire their children to rise up and seek to achieve the God given call on their life the way Diane Warren's father did for her. But gentlemen, we cannot do this if we are not emotionally connected to our children.

We can't do this in a vacuum. My dad didn't do this for me because he knew nothing about my life. He knew nothing about my dreams, my hopes, my struggles, my problems.

He didn't ask and he wasn't interested. And I decided that if I was going to be this kind of dad, I had to be involved and connected and a participant in my children's life, that I had to go to their piano recitals, and I had to help coach their ball teams. And I had to lie down with them at night and let them unburden their hearts and talk about their dreams and talk about their problems. And I needed to listen because only by being a participant in their life could I comfort them and encourage them the way a good father does. Now that took a lot of time.

It would have been much easier to be on the golf course or doing something else. But if you want to bless your children's lives, fellas, this is what you have to do. Finally, number three, Paul said, We blessed your lives the way a good father does because we charged you to live lives worthy of God.

The word to charge here means to motivate, to stimulate, to arouse, to challenge. And this is where points number one and two from earlier in the sermon come back around, being a godly man, being a praying man, because you see, as dads, folks, we cannot talk our children into living lives worthy of God. We cannot command our children to live lives worthy of God. We cannot guilt our children into living lives worthy of God. The only real weapons we have, the only two sources of power and influence we have are number one, our godly lifestyle lived out in front of our children and number two, our prayer life for our children. Listen, children have a cheese meter as big as this auditorium.

They can smell a fraud and a fake a mile away. And gentlemen, if we think that with a puny prayer life and with an inauthentic Christian lifestyle that we as dads are going to be able to stimulate our children to rise up and live lives worthy of God, we are kidding ourselves. These children will write us off as hypocrites and frauds and fakes and pay no attention to our verbal appeals.

In fact, they'll go the other direction. As dads, gentlemen, it's all about our personal example and our prayer life. I think many of you guys here know the name Jim Dobson. You know, my my wife and I have had the wonderful privilege of becoming fairly good friends with Jim and Shirley over the years.

And I will say this. Jim Dobson is one of the most godly men I've ever met in my life. Jim Dobson lives one of the most consistent lifestyles for Christ I have ever seen. And if you ask Jim Dobson why he lives like he does, he will tell you it was the influence of his father. His father died in Kansas City in a hospital after a heart attack a few years ago. Jim got to see him before he died.

And here is a well, part of the account. And I want you to listen as I read this to the impact that this father made on his son and how he did it. He did it through lifestyle, his own example. That's how he that's how he motivated Jim Dobson to rise up and want to live for Christ.

Listen. And I quote, Jim says, I stood by his bed in that intensive care unit there amidst the beeping oscilloscopes and the bottles of glucose. I patted those hands that I have loved since my earliest awareness. I told him how I had watched him at home throughout my childhood where it was impossible for him to hide his true nature.

But never once did I see him compromise with evil or abandon the faith by which he lived. I told him that his character had been like a beacon for me, illuminating my way and steering me past the snares that had entrapped so many of my friends. Thank you, Dad, I said with deep emotion. He smiled knowingly and I slipped out of his room, though the months have passed and he's gone now.

That conversation lingers on. Now, listen, my father, Jim Dobson says, exemplified what I believe to be God's concept of a godly man. It made me want to be like that man, to choose his values as my values, his dreams as my dreams, his God as my God. Dobson concludes and says he was a great man.

My father, not because he was president or because he'll be remembered in the history books. He was great because of his uncompromising dedication to Jesus Christ. And if I can be half the father to my children that he was to me, they will be fortunate children indeed. My oh my, you talk about a man leaving a blessing to his child. You talk about a man inspiring his child to rise up and walk worthy of Christ. And this is how I want my children to remember me as a man who stimulated them and motivated them to walk with God.

So let's summarize, gentlemen. I've told you at least three ways I want my children to remember me. Number one, as a godly man. Number two is a praying man. And number three is a man who blessed their lives by correcting them, by comforting them and by inspiring them to live lives worthy of God. And now what I want to do, fellas, is I want to go from preaching to meddling.

Can I do that? Well, I'm going to because I'm the one up here. So I'm going from preaching to meddling. And what I want to say now is that if you're here and you're a father, this is exactly how God wants your children to remember you. If you're here and you're a grandfather, this is exactly how God wants your grandchildren to remember you. And if you're here and you're a future father, gentlemen, this is the target you're going to try to hit when you become a father.

Start working towards it right now. And this is not going to happen by coincidence. This is not going to happen by accident. Gentlemen, we're not just going to wake up one day and somebody sprinkled wiffle dust on us and all of a sudden we're these kind of men making this kind of impact on our children.

Never happen. The kind of dads who are remembered this way are men of intentionality. They make intentional decisions to live in the way that allows them to have this positive influence on their children. First of all, they make an intentional decision to entrust their life to Jesus Christ, to accept Him as their Lord and Savior and surrender their life to Him.

Because, gentlemen, you cannot give something to your children that you don't have yourself. And then after they come to Christ, the men who live like this are men who make intentional decisions about the use of their time and the use of their energy, about the choices they make in life, about the lifestyles they live and the behaviors that they practice and the values that they hold to. These are spiritual decisions that men make to bring their life into conformity with the values and the patterns of the Word of God. And instead of living for the way the world tells us to live or the way we feel like living. So on Father's Day, 2007, my challenge to you, gentlemen, is for you to rise up and for you to make these decisions in your life so that the memories your children have of you will be memories that are blessed memories, good memories.

So that when they write a song about you, it'll bring tears to your eyes, but tears of gratitude instead of sadness that you let them down. And let me just say in closing that, gentlemen, we only get one chance at this. I mean, there are so many things in life that if you mess up, we can try it again. I mean, if you mess up the tee shot, you can pull another ball out and hit another one. I mean, if we mess up a career, we can start another career, fellas. If we mess up a stock choice, we can sell it and we can buy another piece of stock. But you know what? When it comes to raising children, we don't get a second chance.

This is it. And we got to get it right to the best of our ability. We dare not mess it up because of selfishness. We dare not mess it up because of laziness.

And we dare not mess it up because of spiritual sloppiness in our lives. The stakes are too high, fellas. And I want to call on some of us here who need radical surgery in our role as dads. I want to call on you to make that commitment, make that decision. With God's help, you can do it.

If you want to, you can do it. Make that one hundred and eighty degree turn and become the kind of father that somebody will write a song about you like Diane Warren wrote about her dad. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, you know it's hard to be a dad today. Not only does our culture demean the role of fatherhood, but everything in our culture tells us that the way the Bible says to do it is wrong. That we need to do it some other way. Well, I'll stick with the Bible. I'll stick with doing it the way you say to do it. And Lord, I pray you would motivate every man here to make that same choice. And that you would motivate us to rise up above our selfishness, to rise up above our laziness, to rise up above our spiritual sloppiness, and for the sake of our children and our children's children, to make the decisions and the choices that allow us to make a blessed influence on our children. Lord, help us each, every man here, be responsible for a cycle of blessing in their families. Father, change our life because we were here today. And cause us to be the dads that you have challenged us and called us to be. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, what did you say? Amen. Amen.