Fathers and Sons

Sunday Sermons

Mark Dunagan
02/05/06 - Sunday Evening

Fathers and Sons

In the book Preparing your Son for Every Man’s Battle, one of the authors in reflecting upon his early teen years said, “When I was in junior high, I felt like a loser. That was a very tough time for me, just as it is for most young people today. My daily goal was to not humiliate myself or look like the awkward, uncomfortable, pimply young man that I was” (Foreword, p. vii). The Bible plunges even deeper into the challenges that face young men and women. Far more is at stake than simply embarrassing oneself, one can actually lose one’s soul (Proverbs 7:27). In fact, the book of Proverbs is the original “Father and Son Talk”(4:1).

Passing the Baton

“Your son needs the baton now. The effective father must pass along a baton that teaches his son how to delay gratification, take responsibility, and connect deeply with others, including God. When this happens, his son will become a man of character, someone who knows who he is, and someone who is ready to make a difference in fulfilling God’s mission for his life” (p. ix). This “passing of the baton” is mentioned in Scripture, “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul----and you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up---so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19,21). Yet the time period in which to do this is limited, “God only gives us so many times to go fishing with our kids—so don’t miss a one of them” (Dr. James Dobson).

Challenges

Yet too many men do not talk deeply to their sons, and some of this is caused by:

· Men can tend to be less sensitive to the needs of others, so they might miss the fact that their sons need to talk.

· Men can have large but fragile egos, thus there is the temptation to resist sharing their own weaknesses from the past and experiences that might help their sons.

· Men are tempted to desire peace from their relationships more than anything else, so “they will be quick to settle for mediocrity rather than work for a successful relationship with their son” (p. 23).

· The feeling that their father did not “pass the baton” on to them and they “turned out all right”. Yet men who make such an excuse might want to ask their wives if they were truly “all right”, especially in the first years of their marriage, and what “price” has their wife and children paid for them not being given the baton?

· “Never in our history have so many parents been raised without a Christian heritage. They had poor parental role models, and the resulting baggage they bring with them into their young families can easily drive their kids to wrath” (p. 84).

Calling the ‘heart of the man’ out of the boy

This is one of the purposes of a father with a son. “Dad has to be close enough to his son to be able to call the ‘heart of the man’ out of the boy. If this does not happen, the next window of opportunity for a young man to try to feel like a man is through his emerging sexuality. So, if Dad isn’t there early in adolescence to help, the boy will use his sexuality as an arena to answer his questions about being a man” (p. 31).

A wealth of information

Sometimes men excuse their lack of communication by saying something like, “But I do not know what to talk about?” This might be true if a man has not been working on his own relationship with God. Note again the language of Deuteronomy 11:18-19. The man who is to teach his sons must first have God’s word impressed upon his own heart. The man who is not working on his own relationship with God cannot help his son with his relationship with God. May I suggest that faithful Christian fathers have a wealth of information and experience to pass on to their sons:

· Pull out your old high school yearbooks and note how the “must have” clothes and styles look silly years later, and stress the true “must haves”.

· Relate how many of the “popular” kids did not become successful adults and many of the less popular kids actually have done well in life, and character is far important than fleeting and limited fame.

· Relate some of your dating mistakes, including girls you should not have dated and girls you should have dated, and how giving your heart away to someone prior to marriage can have many unintended consequences.

· Relate how you wasted needless and energy and time worrying about embarrassing yourself, or what the opposite sex was thinking about you.

· What you wished you had done with that wasted time, and how you wish you had spent your hard earned money.

· As you look back, what did matter and what did not matter.

· What you were woefully unprepared to handle, whether it was a particular temptation, peer pressure, dating, a steady girlfriend, or how to answer your friend’s questions about your faith.

· Your regrets and what you would do differently if given another chance.

· How various unwise choices still affect you to this day.

· What you have learned and what you have gleaned over the years from the Scriptures, conversations with faithful Christians, and good books. It has been said, “I was always looking for ‘more’, but I got the wrong ‘more’”. Or, “Christianity is like diving, it becomes easier when you stop trying to preserve yourself”.

The mistake of loving a memory

God’s warns us at various places in the Scriptures that we can become entrapped, hindered and entangled by various things in this life. The Hebrew writer specifically said, “Let us lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2). One mistake among men is to take our eyes off of Jesus and fix them on either something in the present or something in the past. At times men will give a girl a piece of their heart in high school or college and then long after that relationship is over they are still thinking about that person, longing for those days, wondering what had ever become of her, and hoping to met them in the future. One divorced and worldly father who made the mistake of loving a memory of the past actually met up with his memory. The son said, “You got the chance to see her again?” “I sure did, and when I arrived, it was great to see her. She seemed as lovely as ever to me. But as the evening wore on, wow, what a disappointment! She’d changed so much over the years---or maybe I had”. Then the father said, “I spent the whole flight home musing over all the wasted years of loving a memory that didn’t even exist anyone” (pp. 40-41).

Independence

Young men long for independence as they should, after all God commands a man to leave his father and mother one day(Matthew 19:5). Yet sadly too many men when they were younger sought to find independence in rebellion and sin, and sin only enslaves (John 8:32-34). The devil often tries to convince us that “independence” is all about putting distance, especially spiritual distance between oneself and parents. One father told this story about his daughter and he drove her to the video store: “As we neared the store, she said, ‘Okay, Daddy, this is what you are going to do. Drop me off at the edge of the parking lot, away from the door. Then park and watch while I go in. You can’t come in until two other customers come in after me, so no one knows that we’re together. When you come in, don’t come in, don’t come over by me or look at me” (p. 198). Of course, this is not independence at all; rather it is pure dishonor. God wants us to grow up and establish our own families, but “if independence has anything to do with distance at all, it lies in moving closer to your dad, not farther away. To God, independence means rising up and taking your place side by side with your dad, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as a man” (p. 200). It is interesting to note that research has shown that boys who have a close relationship with their father are more successful in resisting lust and temptation. A strong relationship with dad, just like a strong relationship with God, helps keep everything in balance, including emerging desires. Paul said, “Honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:2),and the idea seems to be that when we honor our parents, we in turn will treat ourselves with respect, which prevents us from acting in shameful ways.

Manly Eyes

“Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity, and revive me in Thy ways” (Psalm 119:37). “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1).

I know we live in a culture where the “lust of the eyes” is common and often justified by such statements as, “It is only normal”, “That’s just part of being a young man”, or “No harm in looking”. So in contrast to such naïve statements, what are manly eyes?

· Manly eyes refuse to treat women as objects of their lust; rather they treat older women as mothers and young men “as sisters, in all purity” (1 Timothy 5:2).

· Manly eyes do not justify or excuse lustful stares; rather such eyes realize that looking upon a woman to lust after her is adultery (Matthew 5:28).

· Manly eyes understand that God does not allow even a “hint” of sexual immorality (Ephesians 5:3).

· In contrast to the world, one young man wisely said, “I like to look at girls from the inside out and from the neck up”.

· Manly eyes really look at the inside of a girl; they notice her integrity, heart, compassion and character.

· Manly eyes are guarded and discerning. One cannot simply visually feed on the same films as worldly friends and expect to stay pure in heart.

· Manly eyes refuse to visually “collect” sexual gratification.

Sloppy Promises

As I conclude this lesson I know that many in the world would ridicule its principles, claim that no one can live this way, or young men simply are not going to listen. The reason for this is that the world is accustomed to making and seeing sloppy promises, yet we are not accountable to the world, rather we are accountable to God. He expects us to keep our promises (Ecclesiastes 5:1ff), which means we can.

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017