Fathers Day 2017

Good morning. Happy Father's Day. All right, with me you get a little bit of history. My iPad will cooperate.

I'm going to talk to you today about Father's Day and being a father. I want to let you know this is not exhaustive. As I went through this material, one of the things I came up with is we could probably do a whole summer just on what it is to be a good father and what it is to have a heavenly father who loves us as much as he does. I was a little worried Miranda was gonna steal all my thunder with what she was going through. It's the Holy Spirit.

I'll give you a little bit of history about Father's Day. Sonora Dodd of Washington first had the idea of a Father's Day. She thought of the idea for Father's Day while listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909. Sonora wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, who was a Civil War veteran. He was widowed when his wife died while giving birth to their sixth child.

Mr. Smart was left to raise the newborn and his other five children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state. After Sonora became an adult, she realized the selflessness her father had shown in raising his children as a single parent. It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was, in the eyes of his daughter, a courageous, selfless, and loving man. Sonora's father was born in June, so she chose to hold the first Father's Day celebration in Spokane, Washington, on the 19th of June, 1910.

President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 supported the idea of a National Father's Day. Then in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. President Richard Nixon signed the law, which finally made it permanent in 1972. I think it's interesting. I think we need to take time to, of course, we honor our mothers in May, honor the fathers in June, and I think it's important because the, like Miranda mentioned earlier, the responsibility, it's a huge responsibility to be a parent and to do it right and to strive for what God wants us to be as parents.

When I was a kid, I loved to wear hats. You also get props. You also get props when you get me. So, from the early time of wearing sports hats to support the team that I like, go Sox. And not to, not to be confused, go Cowboys.

All right. All right. To places I like to visit, go Mickey. All right. To teams that I played soft, like softball for.

Oh, doesn't fit right. I must look at this to Hannah. Back when I, back when I played softball. But the favorite hat that I ever got to wear was this one here. I don't know if you can read that.

It says, Mark and Hannah's dad. There is, there is no more favorite hat than I've, I've been able to wear. I take it as a tremendous responsibility to be a father. And before we can even really look to be, to start at what it really takes to be a good father, we need to know what does it take just to be a good man? How about honesty?

You know, honesty is one of those things where it used to be taken for granted. You, you, you spoke to someone and you understood what they were saying was the truth. And my gosh, if anything, the last presidential elections can tell you is we don't, we can't even tell the truth anymore. We can't even figure out what the truth is sometimes. The truth is a blurred line.

It used to be black and white. There was truth and there wasn't. And Proverbs 12, 22 puts it real clearly for us. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are his delight. It doesn't say the Lord, he doesn't care for lying.

It's an abomination. That's, that's, that's strong word. I don't know about you, I'd rather be delighting the Lord than be participating in abomination. I, I try to be honest and everything gets me in trouble because sometimes you can't be honest. Um, and sometimes we're, we're asked, we're asked maybe in our, in our work environment to be dishonest.

And that's a challenge. Now it's, what are you going to do? You're supposed, you're supposed to be honest. You know, the Lord wants you to be honest, but now you're put in a position where, you know, you can't tell the customer the truth because this is, you know, this is what's going on. And that's, that's a real struggle.

I tell you, that's, you know, if you have ever had to deal with that, it's just, it's one of those things you're just going to have to kind of come to grips with on your own and seek, seek out the Lord in that. Um, I know people have had to move on from, from jobs because that's what their job was. Their job consisted of lying to the customer, of lying all day long. Um, so that's one thing you really have to search your own heart for and search, you know, seek out the Lord's guidance with. How about integrity or just taking responsibility for one's actions?

Um, the last, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 years, really when anybody does anything wrong now, they seem they, they just want to place the blame on someone else. Well, I did this because, you know, I had lousy parents or I did this because, uh, this happened or I did this because this happened. Let me tell you, I was, uh, I mentioned I played softball. I used to play softball and I was honestly a little too competitive with it. And, uh, I remember one time, uh, guy I played with, he, he kind of gave up on a play he shouldn't have and he, I thought he, I thought he kind of dogged it a little.

And I gave him a hard time about that in front of everybody. And I tore him up. I wasn't even a coach. And I tore him up. And, you know, who did that make really look bad?

Did that make him look bad? No, it made me look like an idiot. Sorry. That's the plain simple terms. Made me look bad.

Now here, I could have just gone to him and apologized and said, I shouldn't have said that to you. So on and so forth. I felt though, since I kind of embarrassed him in front of everybody, I need to publicly, uh, apologize and make sure the whole team heard it. If I, I figure if they could hear what I said to them, they should be able to hear my apology and hear me take responsibility. I shouldn't have done that.

I shouldn't have said that. Um, and that's sometimes we, you know, we have trouble sometimes in today's society just saying, I messed up. That was on me. That wasn't your fault. It wasn't because you did this.

I still shouldn't have reacted that way. I still shouldn't have done that. We know better. We know what the Lord wants of us. And sometimes we still, you know, we still get into that blame game.

Um, thing I hear people say quite a bit is, oh, that wasn't me. The devil made me do it. The devil made me do it. The devil made me. That's a crutch.

That is a crutch. Let me tell you something. Make it easier on some folks who may not understand this. The devil won't make you do anything. He may put these traps and he may put these traps in front of you, but it's up to you whether you're going to walk into that and you're going to step into that.

Are you going to say, I see what's going on here. I'm not going to be led this way. I'm not going to behave in that manner. I'm not going to do whatever. It is.

And I think I think that's important. We need to take responsibility. Let's stop giving the devil so much credit. Yeah, I think that's important. Proverbs 10 9.

He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known. It goes back to what I said. When you when you walk with your integrity, you know, suddenly you become you might be caught in a situation where, well, you know, I heard this about John. I heard that was going on. Somebody else said, you know, I know John.

That's not him. And I can think of times in my life. There's a time I had to be out for extended sicknesses. I worked for the federal government had to be out for extended sicknesses. I didn't have to produce any paperwork for that.

You're supposed to have to do that. I have a guy who a couple of guys I work with and they're out three days and they got to come in with a doctor's note. Why do why would have I been given that not just you know, it's not because my boss likes me better than them, but he knows that if I say something, it's the truth. And that's important. You want you want to be able to have that integrity about you that the around you are going to know.

He's he's speaking truth here. I can I can trust what he's saying. If if he tells me something and says this is what happened, I believe that to be true. Can we go through the I can't see the screens. Oh, there we go.

Can we put the photos of the dads up? Lots of dads have been celebrated. You can just flip through them. Lots of dads have been celebrated on TV. One of my faves.

Oh, I know. Wrong show. Wrong show. One of the things we were talking about this. One of the things that on the way the television really did it when you looked at the old TV dads, you can just cut them off.

When you look at the old TV dads, there was it was a wisdom there. There was, you know, if you want to go back to the old first television shows, dad was sitting there in the newspaper wearing the tie. And he had all this wisdom. And, you know, even Mr. Cunningham, Tom Bosley on from Happy Days, he was he was a really good dad.

But then we look at what television has presented us with in the last 20 years or so. We've got bumblers and liars and guys who are just trying to scam and do whatever they can lying to their their family to get what they want. That's some that's some bad selfishness that's being taught. You know, we don't think, well, television is not a teaching tool, but it's I'm sorry. That's what is getting bombarded into our family's lives.

That's what they're hearing that. Well, if you want to do something, if you want to if you want to do what you want to do, then maybe you're going to come up with some kind of scam. You know that that's just that's just so sad that that's that's what it's what it's kind of become. It's become good entertainment to have a lot. I'm not talking about just a dad who's a little selfish.

I'm talking about outright lying to his wife. And I know it's just television, but this is the things that we take in as a society. And it becomes a norm that the dad's pretty much an idiot and the wife is all all knowing and she sometimes gets scammed. So maybe she's a little bit of an idiot sometimes, too. And it's kind of sad that we've gotten there as a society where, you know, that we have this idea.

And that's what that's not what what dads are. And so, you know, it's so funny. And some of these are even what we consider the more positive family friendly shows. The dads still kind of like that. And that's it's not like the, you know, look at some of the shows there.

You really want to watch them with your kids. I always I always believed in putting family first. That's kind of become a foreign concept. We heard for years we're hearing, well, it's not about your your quantity time. It's about your quality time.

I don't know. I really believe that you prioritize. You make time for what's important in your life. You put you build your life in such a way. And I'm not saying if there's there's you know, there are things happen.

Things happen. And, you know, maybe things have some things have to be, you know, cut short or we have to make adjustments. But for the most part, we make time for what's important. When my son was two, I heard the story of how he would be crying at the window because I worked a job that I was getting home at about 730, 8 o'clock, 830 every night. And it was a great job.

I loved the job. But it was it's the hours it demanded. I'd barely just be able to get home to put him to bed. And I had to decide, well, did I want to be that dad? And again, I wasn't out carousing.

I wasn't out. Oh, I'm going, you know, going out for drinks after work with the boys. I was working. And it wasn't like I honestly, trust me, I would have liked to have left early, but I couldn't. So I had to make a decision.

What was I going to do? So I started looking around for another job, which was tough because I loved what I did. I love the people I worked with. I had seniority. I had a pretty good position of prestige.

So I looked for a job and actually found one at Regent University that was going to give me nine to five hours. And I was like, wow, that's a concept I couldn't understand. I remember getting home at 515, 520. And I'm like, what do I do now? But in order to go through that, I would have to take like a 20% pay cut and start over.

You go from a position of seniority to the new guy. And, you know, I prayed about that for about a week. And I was praying for it. And I would talk to my friends. I said, you know, I need the Lord to give me a sign.

And they'd say, oh, well, you know, all this Christian. No, no. I said, I need a sign. I need a big sign with neon flashing lights because I didn't know what to do. And I went over this and I prayed about this over and over.

And then finally I realized, you know, why should I be so torn with this decision? Because quite honestly, what does the world tell you? Well, if you can make more money, you're going to be able to provide for your family. If you're in a position of seniority, you have less likelihood of anything happening to that job. But, you know, it still came down to the money could not compensate me for the time I was losing as my son was growing up.

So I left that job. It was a tough call. I kid you not. I cried like a baby the day I left because I loved those people so much. And I loved what I did.

And they were so good to me. But it was one of the smartest decisions I made. I didn't make it on my own. The Lord guided me. I really felt it was one of those things where the Lord puts you in a position where it's like, Look, this is on you.

You're going to make this call. You know what's right. And he guided me to make a great decision. I actually ended up losing that job about four years later. Because if you work for Regent, that's a temp job.

And I loved Regent. Don't get me wrong. But in that time, my daughter was born. So I got to spend time that I would have struggled with going through the same thing with my son. I would have had to do with my daughter.

I didn't have to do that. I was home. And it was great. Because you know, what's that old saying? You never hear anyone on their deathbed saying that they wish they had spent more time at the office.

And it's so true. I mean, it's difficult because as men, what are we taught to do? You're the provider. That's your job. You're supposed to provide.

Very often, the man is the major breadwinner of the family. But you get to temper that with being able to spend time with your family and being able to be there. And there's so much more teaching that can be than just bringing home a paycheck. Yeah. And one time, I kind of get emotional when I think about this, I remember talking with my son when he was, I gotta say about four years old, because I think it was before my daughter was born, and I said to him, I said, Mark, what are you, what are you gonna want to do when you get older?

And four years old says to me, I'm gonna want to spend time with my family. I must have been doing something, right? Four-year-old kid saying that? I could not believe that. That was, that was one of those, that's right.

That's right. That's right. It was one of those moments. So what is the state of today's family, and what does today's father really looks like? You know, most of the time, guys are just trying to get by.

A lot of times, they don't have the, they're not equipped, they haven't been equipped to be a good father. That doesn't come with, naturally to everybody, because maybe their dad was a very poor dad. It's one of those, it can be very cyclical. Some people have either a poor father figure, or they have no father figure. I managed to do both.

My parents were divorced when I was three years old. My dad was an alcoholic, so I always concerned myself with alcoholism and everything throughout my life. And my mother remarried, had a stepdad, who was a very poor husband and very poor stepdad. Very selfish. And let me tell you, selfish does not work well in the family.

I don't blame him for his poor parenting skills, because I will bet you, if we could look back at what he grew up with, he probably had poor examples, too, and didn't know any better. Unfortunately, that's what happens. A lot of people, they just don't know any better. We're just, we're just kind of struggling. Sometimes guys are doing the best we can, but we just don't, you know, we just don't get it.

So those are my examples. And alcoholic father, somebody who was selfish and wanted to do his own thing, he was perfectly content with playing golf on Saturdays and fishing on Sundays, or to change it up, fishing on Saturdays, playing golf on Sundays. And not being spending time with the family. And I had to make a decision. I'm going to look at what my examples, and I'm going to do, not do that.

I'm going to break that cycle. I'm going to do whatever I can to be the best that I can. I want to let you know, I ain't there yet. I've been to dad for 21 years, and I still mess up, and I wish I didn't. It's one of those things that we say in our Christian walk.

It's a journey. It's not a destination. We try to do the best we can. But I didn't want to have my life consumed with the things that I wanted to do at the cost of my family, my kids. Because, you know, you look at, you look at kids, I'm not jumping ahead.

Let me not jump ahead. Sorry. Bring up Ephesians 5, if you would. If we want to be good fathers, we need to look to the Bible for the blueprint, first to be a good husband. Ephesians 5, 22 says, Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is savior of the body.

A lot of guys just like to leave it there. Well, when you've got to submit to me, it says it right there in the Bible. Let's move on now. Let me save myself here. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Here's the kicker, guys. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. How did Christ love the church? He died for the church. So we, as men, we need to die to ourselves in some regards.

I tell you, I've known some folks, some good men, who you would say, these are good men, but they're so consumed by the things that they want to do that they're shortchanging their family. I've known some, I'll be honest, I've known some pastors who've kind of done that. They're so into their hunting, and that they'll want to go, and, you know, nothing wrong with these things. Don't get me wrong, whatever your hobbies are, you know, obviously we have big surf people in here, but when you're doing it so much that it's compromising time with your family, you really need to examine that. So men today, some of them, you know, you look at them, and they're not even worthy of our respect, let alone their wife's submission.

So guys, we need to kind of step up into that so that you can be that man that your wife would be like, I'm behind him. Because I know if I'm behind him and supporting him, he's going to lead me the right way. He's going to lead me and the family into the way the Lord wants us to go. So how do you prioritize your life? You could put the priorities up there.

These are your priorities in life. You kind of stick to these, you're in pretty good shape. Your relationship with God needs to be number one. A lot of times that one gets out of whack. We think, well, you know, I've got to worry about my family.

You can't worry about your family unless your relationship with God is good and strong. And you're listening to the Lord. You're speaking to the Lord. You're bringing your needs to the Lord. You're bringing your family's needs to the Lord.

You're praying for your children. You have all that. And then now what happens? Number two, your relationship with your spouse. That needs to be solid.

Guess what? The kids look at that. If you're kind of being nasty with your wife, kids are learning that. That's a learned behavior. You can say all day long, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that.

But then you turn around and you're being nasty and you're being ugly or you're being considerate or whatever that negative behavior might be. Well, that's what's going to be learned more than what you say. Relationship with your children. That's what I said. You need to have time.

You need to spend time. Good time. Doing, quite honestly, sometimes going to be doing what they want to do. I played video games with my son when he was young and he was humiliating when he started beating me as bad as he did. But that's what it's all about.

Have that relationship with your children. Listen to them. Talk to them. It's one of the really great things about being a parent. And honestly, sometimes my daughter will come home, she'll tell us what's going on in school and we'll be like, wow, things have changed.

But we need to know that. We need to know that what happens in schools. And honestly, from, you know, I graduated high school in the mid-80s and I look at some of the things that go on now and I'm like, you got to be kidding me. But we need to know that. And how am I going to know that if she doesn't tell me?

You know, duty to the church family, I have seen pastors mess this one up. I've known pastors and out of brokenness tell you how sometimes they'll spend so much time on the church, which is, that's a good thing, right? It's a good thing to be, you know, pouring into the church. But, you know, Pastor Leon, if he's pouring all his time into the church and letting his relationship with Miranda go, letting his relationship with his children go, he's not doing us any good. He is not doing us any good.

And I know he's got, he even told me one time, no, Saturday's a family day, Saturday's a family day. So that's important. And we need to respect that. We need to support him in that. I tell him all the time, you need to get away.

You need to get away. Feel good about going away. It's not that I don't want him here, but I know as a, as a pastor, you need that time of just being away. We got this. We got some great folks here.

But again, I've seen pastors do that, where somebody on vacation, they're pastors on vacation and somebody, the church calls and such and such is going on. And it's not even big things. But, you know, I, I, I kid you not, I literally heard one time on a, Late on a Sunday night, somebody in the church wanted the pastor to come over because, are you ready for this, she had an ingrown toenail. I kid you not, I kid you not, Bishop Burt told me that when he was a pastor, that somebody wanted him to come to his house on a Sunday evening when he's sitting there just having time with his wife, and she said, nope. And, of course, duty to the unbeliever goes hand in hand with duty to the church family, but again, it's that same reaching out and being available, but it's, again, in order, in order.

We get these things out of order as men and women, it's not just to the man that goes to both, but I look at it also when you're in leadership, in leadership of church. So, what makes a good father? And again, this is not an exhausting list. Proverbs 22 says, Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. What should we train them in?

I believe there are several areas that are sorely lacking in society today. They used to be taken for granted, but they're nearly forgotten. How about teaching God's Word at home? When we teach God's Word at home, I'm going to go back to this. Teaching the Word, they're here for a couple hours on Sunday.

This is not only the feeding they're getting. They're going to starve to death. But it's not only in the direct teaching of just the Word, but it's, again, that example, because this is going to absorb differently. I'm one of those people, you can teach me something on paper and I'll be like, oh, okay. But if I get to do it, I get to put my hands on it, I'm going to learn it.

I'm going to understand it. And that's what it is. It's our examples. Again, it goes back to what I said a minute ago. What do they see modeled for them?

Do they see, you know, I can remember times, silly things. Coming out of a Walmart one time, putting the bags in, and there was a product in the bottom of the cart that I hadn't paid for. It just got mislaid in there. Well, I could be like, hey, free stuff. No, I walked back in there.

This, you know, this was not paid for. It's hysterical to watch the people when you do that, because they're like, you brought it back? Yeah, I brought it back because I didn't pay for it. It's not mine. It's the equivalent of just pocketing something, you know, whether it was just a mistake or not.

But they see examples like that. It catches the world off guard though, because they're just not used to that anymore. Because again, people so many times are just trying to get over, you know. What was it? Last year, we were traveling down to Florida and went in and paid cash for something.

And the girl's giving me change back as if I'd given her like a 20. I gave her a 10. And I just, you have that wrong there. And she's thinking, oh, she needed to give me more money. I said, no.

And she's like, oh, thank you, thank you. Because again, that'd be some, you know, little 17-year-old girl who had to come up with another 10 bucks out of her pocket because her cash register was short. Again, well, some people would be like, yeah, let me get an extra 10 bucks or whatever. We can't do that. And the kids see this kind of stuff.

And they kind of know, okay, I shouldn't do that. And it becomes ingrained in them to the point where they won't even question it. They won't even, it won't even be like, should I or shouldn't I? It's just going to be ingrained in them. That's the teaching that they need to see day in and day out.

I'm not discounting teaching of the word and praying and understanding things like that. But day-to-day things. When I first heard I was going to be a dad, I was thrilled. Right after I had the hysterical laughter. Because it was like, you're going to be a father now.

And it was like, wow, oh my gosh. It was scary. It was scary at first. I wanted to be the best dad I could be. My son was born five years before my daughter.

So it was just him for a while. And he came everywhere. We were one of those families that he was always there. And we enjoyed it. We had a good time.

We weren't looking to always, you know, get rid of him on a babysitter. Probably should have done more of that. That is something. Date night. Stepping aside from my subject.

Date night. Highly recommended. Definitely say you need to do it. There are babysitters in the church. But I have always found it important to make family time priority.

And we don't have to do these huge things to have family time. It can be watching a movie. It can be going out and playing in the yard. Sitting around in the backyard. Going for a walk.

Heck, you know, sometimes just when you have crummy weather, just walk around the mall as a family. Get a little Chick-fil-A lemonade. I love the Chick-fil-A lemonade. But we need to prioritize. I can tell you, I went to my daughter's talent shows.

And I love watching my daughter perform. But I tell you, it's a little bit of a struggle watching the other 30 kids go through. But we need to, that needs to be a priority. And so she would, she would always think that, well, you don't want to go, you don't want to see you. Oh, I want to see you.

Do I have to see everybody else? Can I leave right after you're done? But that's, these are the things we need to do as parents, really. And it's, it's not, you know, it's, you see some of these, and some are good. Some are less than good.

Because not all kids are as talented as mine. That's just the way it is. But you know, kids, they're, they're a gift from God. They really are. I truly believe that.

Years ago, I was doing a, a VBS skit. And I was in, I was in, I wasn't wearing a hat. I was in all costume. And we stayed in character after the skits. The skits opened.

And then kids would go to their classrooms. And I stayed, we stayed in character. And we would visit the classrooms. And I looked at this little boy, five, six years old. And I said, because it was, the subject really was being a gift from God.

And I said to him, do you know you're a gift from God? And he looked at me and said, no. That hit, that hit me. You know, this kid didn't, this little kid, beautiful little boy. Didn't know he was a gift from God.

Let me tell you folks, if you haven't heard it yet, we're all gifts from God. We are gifts to whoever is in our lives. And that is what, that is what we really need to rejoice in. Because sometimes we don't feel like a gift. We feel like a curse.

But we need to make sure the kids, our kids know that they are a gift from God. And we love them for that. It's just so, it's so important. It's something that's just kind of forgotten. Of just celebrating that, how much we're glad that our kids are in our lives.

Because it goes back to that self-worth thing. Kids don't have, a lot of kids don't have a good self-worth. That's why some of these problems come out. Some of that comes out, again, I'm going to go back to. You know, I had a single mom who raised me, did a heck of a job.

But that's not God's design. Because that's a lot of work. You know, I became a single parent at one point in my life. Suddenly it's like, ooh, that becomes difficult. Because it's not God's design.

But it still means that we have to make sure, make time. Say it a lot, you know. Our kids are a gift from God. So that they can have that healthy self-worth. Ephesians 6, if you would.

And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. And my notes, it looks like I just... Our kids see what, what they, they understand what is modeled in front of them. As fathers, the example we lead is to our sons, our sons look at us as the father that they will probably become. Our daughters are going to look to us as how they should be treated.

So we need to make sure we treat our daughters well with respect and let them know that this is the way you're supposed to be treated. You're not supposed to be treated like that boy wants to treat you and talk nasty to you. That's not acceptable. We need to be that, again, this is that example, modeling day in and day out so that our kids just, they get a healthier understanding. And that, again, goes back to that self-worth.

Years ago, our, I can remember the pastor at a church I served at, when he did baby dedications, he charged the parents with that. He would say, you are an example for what I just said, for who, as a dad, who your son wants to grow up to be like. And as for the girls, who, who your daughter wants to marry. That kind of personality. And that's so important.

That's, that's a responsibility, guys. That is not something to be taken lightly. That is something we need to understand day in and day out. A few years ago, Charles Barkley, professional basketball player, kind of got upset because people were saying something about his behavior and they said, well, you know, you're a role model. He said, you know, I'm not a role model.

I'm a basketball player. The role models should be the parents, not the, not the sports folks. And as somebody who, I love sports, I follow different sports and everything like that. When I was growing up, the biggest scandal we had is if somebody had too much pine tar on their bat. Now we have folks who are getting arrested for drug use, getting arrested for domestic violence.

That's, that's, I tell you, it's amazing the last two years, how many different arrests I've seen in domestic violence and gladly they're getting suspended now. But that's not the example. You know, again, you saw that. I was, again, a Dallas Cowboy fan in the, in the nineties was tough because they were getting arrested left and right. And that was, that was kind of, that's disgusting.

That's that type of behavior. So they are, they are not our role models. I'm sorry. They're not our role models. We might want to, I wish I could play ball like so-and-so.

I wish I could do this like so-and-so. But so many of them are going to fall short. And I don't know them personally, you know, personally, who's a Christian, what their heart is or anything like that. But our, the role models need to come from within the home, not from outside the home. Best case scenario.

However, leading me to my next point, sometimes that's not possible. My son was young. He had a friend across the street who had a poor family life, had no idea what healthy family life looked like. He hung out with us a lot, took him to church for the first time. You know, and I can only hope that some of that stuck, that some of that stuck with him.

Because we need to remember that same principle in the church. We're going to need, sometimes we're going to need to step up and be the father or the mother to someone, to those that come into this church. Many people are going to grow up without any kind of positive role model. They really need to know what to, what to model their lives like. Because again, if I don't have a positive role model, then I'm not going to have anything to kind of build on.

Unless I look, you know, obviously as a Christian, we need to look to the Lord also. I mentioned before that I was raised by a single mom. And one of the things I was asked a lot when I was growing up, do you miss having a dad? And I said, I said, no, I really, I really didn't. My mother, she worked hard.

She was a good woman. She taught me a lot about being a single parent. But it wasn't until my first wife died of cancer that I felt that void in my life. And I just wanted a dad in my life to come around, put his arms around me so I could just cry like a child. But you know what?

I do have a father. I have a heavenly father. We have a heavenly father that loves us with perfect love. It's so much better than I can ever love my children, my wife, anybody else. It's perfect.

I kind of cut short here. I wanted to read the parable about the father who, the prodigal son, basically. I really wanted to get into that. But just know that real quick, short answer, when the father saw his son coming, returning, he ran to him. And this was in a time when that would have been highly undignified for a man to run that way after his son.

And he looked at him and just skipping, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring out the best robe and put it on him. And put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.

And bring the fatted calf here and kill it. And let us eat and be merry. For my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.

That's the kind of love that our Lord has for us. No matter what we've done. No matter the mistakes we've made. Where we think that God doesn't want us to be part of his world anymore. His dominion.

No. We have a Lord who loves us so much that regardless of what you've done. He's going to kiss you and hug you and love you. And all you've got to do is call your dad. Call on him.

Be willing to submit yourself to him. Say, Lord, I was wrong. I love you. 1 John 3 says, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us. That we should be called children of God.

Folks, we're children of God. We're the best father in the world. Loves us unconditionally. Doesn't matter. Like I said before, it doesn't matter what we've done.

All we've got to do is call him. Call on him. Say, Lord, I love you. I need you. In everything that we do.

So many times as men, we think, well, we've got to be strong. We've got to handle this on our own. No, the Lord wants us to submit to him. To look for his guidance in things. If we were to leave everything up to ourselves, we'd probably make a big mess of things.

We need to submit ourselves to the Lord. And we can do that. Then we're going to find his blessings on us and our family and our lives. Everything. We can have every head bowed, every eye closed.

I want to ask you, have you called your dad? Dad, that's what he wants you to do. Call out his name. Ask for forgiveness. Tell him that we love him.

That he is our father. We don't need to give him a tie for Father's Day. All we need to do is call out to him and let him know that we love him. Because death is certain and eternity is long. And if you'd like to make Jesus your savior, Today, with every head bowed again, every eye closed, slip your hand up.

Is there one? Thank you. Put your hand down. Amen. Is there another?

Let's all say this prayer together. Speed after me. Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and I need a savior. I know that you died on the cross for my sins. I repent for my sins.

I ask you to come into my heart and be my savior. Amen. Amen. Praise God. Thank you.

If you said what Chris would normally say of this situation, if you said that prayer, welcome to the family. I stole his thunder for once. Amen.