My Father's Blessings (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12)

I am thankful that that is the truth today. I love how you said that, Sister Amber. We all, no matter our earthly situation, we all have access to a heavenly father who loves us, who keeps us, who sustains us, who walks with us, who shows us how to live life in appropriate manner. And we all benefit from that. Something that I am thankful and I know that this church is thankful for that the Lord is with us. I was asked to to speak as well on on my father's blessings and I had the same struggle, sister Amber. It's not what to talk about, but what not to talk about whenever you have a good earthly example and your father. And so I had to narrow it down. I had to narrow it down along similar lines along similar lines of sister Amber speaking about the role of a father to train to bring up to teach us and lead us towards Jesus. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2 11-12. He says, "For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children. encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom and glory. Paul here in this text of scripture, he uses the picture, the image of a good father to describe his own ministry. And he says that a good father should encourage, a good father should comfort, and a good father should urge godly living. All while highlighting the call of God on each child's life to know the one who created them and the one who loves them. And while we could focus on encouragement and comfort and certainly those are going to be tied up in my comments, I I do I want to settle in on father's roles to role to urge godly living to point children to the one who created them and the one who loves them. Now, as many of you know, uh my uh own father has recently had some struggles with his health, even to the point of being hospitalized for a few days while the doctors were trying to figure some stuff out. And during this time, he was up at Mercy South. And so, I I went to visit him and my mom while they were waiting on some more information to come back. And three things from that visit, three things from that trip stuck in my mind. Number one was the ungodly amount of snacks and candy my dad had eaten while in the hospital. He had this little side table and it was covered and wrappers and Twizzlers. He loves Twizzlers. All this stuff. I mean, he was even slurring his words, not because medicine or anything, but because he had so much candy, I think, caked in his teeth, he's having a hard time talking. And and so he he had and he's not known for his appetite uh lately. And they gave him something to help him eat and all this stuff. And and it worked. Okay. He just he ate a lot. So that stuck out as soon as I walked in. He He just had some food going down. Number two though, I I noticed that he had one of his Scofield study Bibles. Anybody know what a Scoffield study Bible is? Old school right there. Come on. See, it's Some people don't even know. That's crazy to me. All right. My dad had one of his maroon colored Scoffield study Bibles on the table next to him amidst the the mountain of snack wrappers and all those things. So, priorities. So, he had his Bible next to him. That's number two. And then number three, I noticed and I had planned to, but he made certain he made sure that I prayed for him and with him before I left that day. He wanted to make sure that we had a time of prayer. And reflecting on this, looking back on it, I realized that even in sickness and even in uncertainty and trouble, my dad blessed me with lessons about life. The first one is that when times are tough, snacks are important. Food really does make things better. That's number one. But number two is that the word of God and prayer, relationship with God, are things that we always have to hold on to, especially in times of uncertainty. We need the Lord. As we sat and talked that day, he he brought up a lot of things. We went down memory lane. He's he's sharing stuff I've heard, stuff I haven't heard. My mom's laughing in the corner because apparently he's done this with multiple visitors and the nurses, and he's inviting people to church. It's wonderful. But as we talked, he did focus for a bit on one thing. He had been listening to a sermon again that brother Carton had preached some years ago about making it to the other side of a storm to Jesus. And as he recounted this story, uh, his voice broke in the middle of it. You could tell that he was feeling the emotional pull of the story and the impact it had on him. But his voice breaking it, it wasn't meant to signal that he was weak or fearful. No weakness was in it. It was to signal this commitment, this consecration, this trust that my father had and the God that saved him decades ago from a life of drugs and brokenness. I think the break in his voice was confidence that he was going to make it to the other side and he was going to see Jesus. And even in his own comments, he even said even really his implication was even if this would take me, I'm going to see Jesus on the other side. He voiced that confidence to me. Now, this moment of trust in Christ, it it wasn't the only moment that I've ever been blessed by my father with these lessons. It was simply a one moment in a string of moments that have fueled my own devotion for what it looks like to trust God, to walk with Jesus as we go through life. I began to reflect some more on on fatherhood. And I'm new, y'all. This is only my second Father's Day. All right? I'm new to it. But I began to reflect on fatherhood and begin to think about it biblically and begin to talk to the Lord about it. And I realized something really awesome about it. And that is that fatherhood is one of the greatest honors that God can bestow on a man because it is God trusting that man with one of his own images saying, "This is my image and I trust you to raise and to train that child." Scripture reminds us that children are a heritage from the Lord, an offspring. offspring, a reward from him. Then it gives this really neat image says like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. In other words, fathers, God trusts us to set the trajectory of those little imagebearers. We have one job, dads, to train our child to know and love God, whether our earthly fathers did or not. Please hear this truth. generational covenant keep covenant keepers or children that love the Lord. They are not accidents. They are well- aimed arrows. If your children love the Lord, that didn't happen by happen stance. God was at work and leadership in their life was at work. It was a well- aimed arrow. But thankfully, thankfully, we're not alone in this because parenting is hard. We're not alone. Many of us have access to men who have fought this fight before us. Men who can help steady our hands and guide our aim. But more than that, we have access to a heavenly father. The one of whom David sang, "Praise be to the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, and whom I take refuge." Dads, we have got to rely on him. We have got to lean on godly men in our lives and godly examples that can show us how it's done. We've got to seek out wisdom all while being humble and compassionate with ourselves and our spouses because parenting is hard and getting it quote unquote right takes time. It takes patience. It takes a teachable spirit and a whole host of other things that Tres and I are still learning. But as hard as parenting can be in God's kindness, he has given us each a starting point. It's this. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. This stage of life, I'll just speak for myself. This stage of life is different than any other stage that has come before. It's wild. It's different. It's amazing. It's awesome. But the answer to life's questions has been and will always be the same. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding and in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight. The Lord can help us father our children, parent our children, lead our children. Well, some of you have heard this story from me perhaps before, but growing up I I lived in a two-story home. It was a shotgun style house. Does everybody know what that means? It's sort of this long skinny house that shoots back as soon as you walk in. You would enter into a living room and you'd make a right into a long hallway and as you venture down that hallway, it contained a dining room/computer room. Uh uh the one bathroom in the entire house with with the 75 children that we had there. So the one bathroom was on the left as you continued. Then you you'd go further in and there'd be a kitchen and then a back bedroom. Now storage room now that all the kids are gone. There's I don't even know what's in there. It's like Narnia. You just enter and it's a whole new world. My room was upstairs, which I normally shared with at least one brother most of my life, sometimes two or three. All right, we just shared the rooms and all the bedrooms were upstairs. So, in the morning when I would come down to get ready for school, um, and it and it was early when when you've got 75 kids to get ready, you got to get up early to make sure we all get showers and and we're ready, we're dressed, and we don't look crazy. So I come down in the morning, it'd be early in the morning, and and more often times than not, I was confronted with a scene that lives forever etched onto the walls of my imagination. It was this. My father would be kneled over a computer chair with his head and his hands over a Bible or in a Bible, and he'd be calling out to the God that saved him. Now, there were times whenever I heard what he was praying, you could hear that he was praying for his family, his lost family. There were times you could hear him praying for provision. Again, 75 kids takes a lot of money to buy enough food and clothing for them. So, he's praying for provision. Absolutely. He needed the Lord. But there were times that as scripture says, he he would slip slip into groans and utterances that no one could understand. He began to pray in the spirit to the Lord for his strength. But whatever the content whatever the content of his consistent prayers, the message to this young boy was clear that time with God mattered. A reliance on the Lord was essential. He gave me a model to live into. He set an example for me to follow a pattern of eternal consequence. My My dad was was and is far from perfect. He would tell you that himself. He he might even be upset that I'm even talking about him today, but he's not here today. He's recovering from some sickness, so he can't do anything. So, he's far from perfect. But he did the most important thing, right? He pointed me to a heavenly father that would sustain me all of my days. He did what the scripture commands fathers to do to bring children up in the training and instruction of the Lord. He taught me that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. The greatest blessing that my father ever bestowed on me as a young man was a posture of submission to my heavenly father that loves me and cares for me. And it is this blessing, this dependence on my heavenly father. It is this relationship that my father introduced me to that has led me to every other blessing that my life has ever encountered. For it is true when the scripture says every good and every perfect gift is coming down from the father of heavenly lights. It is from above. There is no change like shifting shadows in him. Every blessing, every good thing that our life will ever encounter is from our heavenly father who loves and waits upon us. The truth is this. My earthly father was a signpost to that father, to our father, the one who can teach us everything we need to know about life and who can sustain us through every valley, through every storm, through every nonsense that we would go through here on this side of eternity. We can trust and rely on him. It is the same father, the father my dad pointed me to. It's the same father that is in this room that has already visited with us that has offered his goodness and his love and his kindness over and over again. Not just today, but in all of our yesterdays. And if there's one thing that I can offer, what my dad taught me, I want to teach today. We can turn to him and he can carry us. He can carry us. I want to do a certain type of prayer here at the end and and