I Am Not Ashamed to Be a Dad! – Part 5

This year I had the honor of speaking at a Men’s Conference at my home church. The 2013 Why Me? Men’s Conference; was August 9th & 10th and I was speaking on something near and dear to my heart, being a dad. The title of my talk those two days was “I Am Not Ashamed to be a Dad!” There are many things that I am to a lot of people. However I place the title of “Dad” above all but “Husband” and “Child of God”. I was posting the points that I was covering in the class and as the class passed I never finished the points here.  So here is the final points to why “I Am Not Ashamed to be a Dad!”

Hands on Training

John 13:12 ~ When Jesus had washed their feet and put on His robe, He reclined again and said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you?”

Jesus didn’t meet with the disciples once a week and give them an outline to fill in blanks.  The most effective way to teach is by modeling. Parents have to model Cristian living for their children.

  • Your little children’s will love to sing in church if they see your lips moving and your eyes awake.
  • Your kids will be generous toward the poor if they go on mission trips with you and watch you serve poverty stricken people.
  • Your kids will pray great prayers as they hear your praying heartfelt prayers over them.
  • Your kids will be respectful of authority if they see you speaks kindly of your supervisor.

Jesus taught us how to teach.  He taught us that deep spiritual living comes through modeling and through hands-on training. This is where I think youth groups and Christian schools can kill us. So many parents believe that they can pass off their children to a charismatic youth leader.  These kind of parents try to do the “drop off discipleship” and they kick their kids out of the car and say “Have a good time and learn something”.  They’re shocked when they have invested $100,000 in a private school and their child is rebellious.

Dads are good about showing their boys how to change the oil in a car or how to put a worm on a hook.  They understand the importance of training when it comes to auto maintenance or fishing. But how many of us are teaching our kids how to share the gospel with a stranger, or how to study the Bible verse by verse, or how to get down on your knees and beg for the Holy Spirit to help in solving problems?  We have to show them, like Jesus showed his disciples.  He washed their feet and then he said, “Do you understand what I just modeled?”  That’s discipleship.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *