The Father Nobody Expected-Aaron McRae

What makes someone a great father? Biology is just the beginning.
On Father's Day, Pastor Aaron McRae explores one of the most surprising ideas in Scripture — that spiritual fatherhood isn't reserved for dads. It's a calling for anyone willing to lead someone toward Jesus and walk alongside them.

Drawing from 1 Corinthians 4, this message unpacks what it looks like to warn without shame, love without condition, set an example worth following, and point people back to who they already are in Christ.

Whether you had a great dad, a complicated one, or no father at all — this one's for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So, one more time, I want to say happy Father's Day to all the dads. If you've got a Bible, grab that, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. And I'm going to be in verse 14 in just a moment, quickly. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 14. For for many of us, this is a day of celebration. We're going to eat way too much food, watch too much World Cup. Who knows? We're going to do Father's Day type things. I don't know what that is. For others of us, this is a day that's really pretty heavy. There's loss, there's disappointment, there's just a lot to navigate. And we want to be able to come to Scripture today to say, beyond our own experience, uh and beyond what's going on in our culture, we believe God invites us to participate, to be a part of something that is a God-sized kind of thing. For a lot of us, even as fathers, um, like there's guilt, there's regret, there's, I wish I'd have done it differently. And so there's, again, no perfect father. There's nobody who does it perfectly. But we want to talk about what does it mean to be a spiritual father? So before you write me off, let me just say this. It could be a spiritual uh friend, a spiritual mother, a spiritual influence, but it's Father's Day. So I want to talk specifically to dads about what does it mean to be a spiritual father? What does it mean to lead someone towards Christ and then journey with them to become more wholehearted followers of Jesus? What does that look like? And we want to wrestle with that. And a reminder for us in the room it's never too early to start preparing to influence people for Jesus. It's never too early. And it's never too late to trust that God can redeem time that has been lost. And so we all have a place where we can enter in on this. Uh, I'm gonna read 1 Corinthians 4. Uh, I'm gonna read through it once and then we'll spend the rest of the message going verse by verse through it. But the Apostle Paul writes this, and starting in verse 14, he says, I am writing this not to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children. Even if you had 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I have sent you Timothy, my son, whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere and every church. So the Apostle Paul starts out with this metaphor of being a father. There's all kinds of different metaphors in Scripture to talk about spiritual influence or making a difference in somebody's life. There's domestic metaphors like a teacher or a servant. There's agricultural metaphors like a farmer, like being a farmer who faithfully sows and then reaps the harvest. There's political metaphors like an ambassador. We are ambassadors for Christ. Yet, father is probably the most commonly used metaphor, especially by the apostle Paul, that we can be what he calls spiritual fathers. But here's what's interesting: he was never married, and we don't think he ever had like anybody that he was married to, nor did he have any children. He never had biological children, and yet the Apostle Paul talks about being a father and fatherhood more than maybe anybody else in all of Scripture. So we're not just talking about something that has a spiritual kind of an undertone to it. We're talking about something that any of us can enter into. And Paul, as one who has no had no children of his own, um, he died as an unmarried man. He's a frontier missionary, meaning he is bold and courageous, taking ground for God, a restless church planter. He was stoned once, and I don't mean the smoke and stuff, I mean like the rocks kind of stuff. He almost died three times in a shipwreck and was floating in sea. He was beaten, lashes were given to him because he was preaching the gospel at least five times that we know of. This is a courageous man. This is a faithful man, and one of the best fathers that scripture has to offer, and yet he had no biological children. We find nobody else associated with fatherhood as much as Paul. And we live in this day just where there are all kinds of different idioms about what it means to be a father. There's uh a father-in-law, there's a stepfather, there's a biological dad, there's a baby daddy. There's an absentee father, there's a sugar daddy. In the 90s, we had Mac Daddies. In the 2000s, dad bods were cool. That's not true anymore, but dad shoes are still cool today. There's all kinds of things about dad and fatherhood around. Then there's a whole other area called the manosphere of society. Anybody familiar with the manosphere? This, like not many of you. Okay, that's good. Let me warn you about this thing real quick. Um, I just sort of Googled it. Here's a term that AI came up with. The manosphere is an umbrella term for a loosely connected network of online communities, websites, blogs, forums, and social media channels. I just realized you may not have raised your hand that you know what the manosphere is because you're ashamed to say you know what it is. That's okay, no shame. But in the manosphere, this is what it says, promotes aggressive traditional definitions of masculinity. Key word being aggressive. These groups are largely united by a shared resentment of feminism and a belief that men are disadvantaged in modern society. And here's what's crazy: some of you could pay attention to a lot of that and say, but I agree with a lot of it. Well, we'll talk about that. Then there's another area. There's a professor from New York University, Scott Galloway, uh, prof G, is sort of his tag. He's on a lot of um political news channels, a lot of people's podcasts, very, very, very well known in this world. He has what he calls the a mnemonic device for remembering. He calls it scapha, S-C A F A, for what he calls young men to. He says, you need to sweat, meaning work out, uh, clean eating, abstinence, family, and affection. And he's making a big deal about these things. You need to do this, and he's gaining a popular audience. And part of the reason he does is because he presents compelling data that males in our society need to hear this. Here's a few things he says. The percentage of young men aged 20 to 25 who are not in school or working has tripled since 1980. He says, I'm just trying to think which ones should I give. 45% of men 18 to 25 years old have never approached a woman in person. No wonder they're single. Men are twice as likely, and I won't even do that one, men are three times more likely to overdose, four times more likely to die by suicide, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated. And so Prof. G, Scott Galloway, has made a name for himself, just calling out young men to a higher standard. He talks about this idea that he took from someone else called creating surplus value. In his book, Notes on Being a Man, this is what he says about surplus value. It means you give more than you get. For men, this means providing more love to others than was given to you. Becoming a better son, friend, a brother, friend, or employer to your people. Your job, if you become a father, is to create surplus value as measured by being a better dad than your dad was to you. Interesting? Is it biblical? Maybe. Some of it? And then there's other things like John Tyson, the intentional father, a practical guide to raise sons of courage and character, that are really getting a name for themselves in the Christian world, calling us to be the kinds of fathers that that would be worth imitating. In this book, he talks about there's five types of fathers. Look at this list. He says that first of all, there are irresponsible fathers, one who has zero involvement with his kids and they don't even know him and he doesn't know them. There are ignorant fathers. They have he has no idea what he's doing, and he wreaks havoc on kids and he doesn't even try to improve. There's the inconsistent father, torn by personal ambition, could be better, but keeps on prioritizing work and hobbies over kids. There's the involved father. This father shows up, gets a lot of things right, but because of busyness and a failure to ask the right questions, never seeks to actually understand his kids. He's noble, but he's haunted by a sense of just missing it. And then there's the intentional father who is deeply involved in discovering who his children are and how to help them reach their full potential in Christ. Sees fathering as a God-given gift, responsibility, and priority. This is the intentional father by John Tyson. Any dads with young sons in here? Raise your hand, real high. Don't be ashamed. Any dads with young sons who need a book called Intentional Fathers? All right, here we go. I'm just gonna throw it to you. Sorry. It's still in good shape. I didn't want to um but the question is, what does the Bible say about being the kind of father that can be emulated? What does the Bible say about being the kind of spiritual friend or spiritual mother that could be emulated? That makes the right kind of difference. What does it say about the people who influence us in our lives? Are we sure we're being influenced by the right people? So let's break down 1 Corinthians 4. Um, but I'm gonna mess some of you up because I'm not going to go in order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I'm going to go out of order 3, 1, 2, 4, 5. I'm telling you that ahead of time so that when I do it, some of you are like, oh my gosh, he went from three to one. This is okay. I'm doing three, one, two, four, five. Okay? We good with that? Okay. Because I got to start in the middle. It's sort of the key hinge passage of this whole entire thing. So look with me again, 1 Corinthians 4, verse 15. Paul writes this even if you had 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. That word guardian is really interesting, and it's it's sort of a cultural thing back in the ancient world, where they would have a servant, an employer of the home, maybe, like think Nanny, who would help to raise the kid. But they wouldn't just help to raise the kid, they would raise the kid. This person, this guardian, was responsible to make sure a kid woke up in the morning, was fed, got uh to school, uh, did their homework. The guardian would walk the kid to school. They were right there with them to support them in any way possible. And Paul says, you could have 10,000 guardians caring for you, but not have fathers who care for you. A guardian was a hired person, and if they didn't work out, guess what you would do? Find somebody else. Go on indeed and get the next person, and check their LinkedIn profile and get the next guardian and just on to the next one, but you you you don't have a father who is committed to you. And Paul says, so point number one, which is point number three, you know what I'm doing, right? Out of order. A spiritual father is one who conceives through the gospel, conceives through the gospel, because that word that is important here says, Paul says, I became your father. I became your father. Became is uh a word sometimes translated begotten, as as in Jesus is the one and only begotten Son of God. It's it's a unique word. It can sometimes, like probably here, means birth, not physically but spiritually. And Paul's like, I led you to Christ. I'm your spiritual father. Not like, oh, I'm your father, but like I'm I'm your spiritual father, and that I led you to Christ and I have responsibility to help you grow. He says, You were conceived through this work. I became your father, conceived through the gospel. Paul's not saying, I did this, look at me. He's like, God used my voice with the good news of the gospel to help you understand Jesus to then be transformed by him. Paul's like, I've done this for you. God has allowed me this privilege in your life. It's like a modern version of this would be you could listen to a dozen podcasts a week. Read all the good Christian books and play worship music 24-7, and still miss the immeasurable benefit of having a spiritual father who actually knows you, loves you, and cares for you. You can have a coach, you can have a therapist, you can hire a consultant, or you can ask AI to do all of that for you. And still miss someone who really knows you, is in proximity to you, and loves you like a father or a mother. We need spiritual fathers, we need spiritual mothers, we need spiritual friends to step up and to step out in being the influence that we need in our lives. So just pause for a moment. Who is influencing you spiritually in this season of life? Another question. Who are you influencing spiritually in this season of life? That's a broad question because what I want to do is now caveat and say it to be more like Jesus, to love more like Jesus, to serve more like Jesus. Conceiving through the gospel is giving birth to, but it's helping them to live and to thrive. And so Paul says, as a spiritual father, I conceived you through the gospel. Look at verse 14. Paul says, I'm I'm writing this not to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children. Not to shame you, but to warn you. The first, so we went three now one. A spiritual father warns. Warn. They don't shame, they warn. To shame is like turn you in on yourself. And Paul's like, I'm not trying to do that. I'm not trying to turn you in on yourself to feel bad. I'm trying to turn you to God. Shame is a way to motivate somebody to get something done, right? Some of you are like, I am a master of shame. I can get the job done by making somebody feel horrible about themselves, but it will never change their heart or their attitude. And Paul's like, I'm not writing it to shame you. I'm writing this to warn you. I'm trying to help you understand. I'm trying to help you learn. In Ephesians 6, Paul writes this to us as fathers and says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Exasperate means to arouse them in anger, to provoke them. You know just what button to push. And Paul says, Don't do that. And some of you are like, but I'm so good at it. I'm like gifted at exasperating my children. And Paul says, no, no, no, that's that's not the way to parent. Even if that's the way you were parented. There's got to be a change. Instead, bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord. So a warning here that Paul's talking about, it literally means to put it into your mind. It means that you're helping to shape the mind, the thinking, the understanding. It's to caution, even to gently correct. It's a word to say, like, there needs to be people in our lives who are helping us learn but also unlearn things, right? When our kids are really, really young, warning is a massive part of parenting. Don't touch that, it's hot. Don't don't run out into the road or the parking lot without looking a few times each way. Or just don't do that until I'm with you. Or when they get a little bit older. This is a really tough one to understand. I'll help you understand it because I'm trying to understand it. Don't spend money you don't have on things you don't need. There's a warning. This is sort of extra, but if you are a father of a child in one of our ministries here, especially children's ministry, but also student ministry, one of the best ways you can learn and help to get things in the mind of the child and in your own mind is by serving in the ministry your child is in. That'd been a great place for an amen for some of you children's volunteers who need more children volunteers. Because what happens is you begin, as you serve, to get the messages in your own head that you can reinforce in those of your children. You learn what it means to be a part of this kind of culture to invest spiritually in somebody else. Because as Frederick Douglass said, look at this famous statement. Frederick Douglass said, It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. And we want to be the kind of people who are investing in the next generation. We want to be the kind of people who are warning in the sense of helping kids, helping the next generation, helping others, those of us who are new to following Jesus, helping us to learn. It's true. Bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord. Bring them up in God's ways. Look at verse 14, one more time. I'm writing this not to shame you, but to warn you. Now I want you to focus on the last phrase. As my dear children. As my dear children. That word dear is probably better translated beloved. As my beloved children. It's not like a brotherly love, like, hey, I love you, man. It's like a sacrificial, a committed, a deep nurturing kind of love. It's a costly kind of love. So Paul says, I love you, I warn you as my dear children. So here's what we take away from this. A spiritual father loves. A spiritual father loves, like loves his children. But what kind of love and what does that look like is important. It's not just the kind of love that says, I love you, that's why I work hard and put a roof over your head. Okay. Well, you can do that out of other motives than just purely love. I love you. How? It's a love that is number one, committed. It prioritizes. It doesn't just give leftover time and energy, it prioritizes. It's a love that is committed to another. It's a love that is sacrificial, puts others ahead of ourselves over and over and over again. It's sacrificial, not in a one-time heroic moment, but in daily living. Consistently, loving sacrificially. And it's a love that is nurturing. It's bringing out the best in another, whether that's your child or somebody else that you're mentoring, it's bringing out the best in another, what God has put in them, not helping them become more like you, but helping them become who God wants them to become. Look at this passage in 1 Thessalonians 2, starting in verse 7. This is Paul, same Paul, and he writes, Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. So that's not the most masculine metaphor, is it? Paul says, Here's what you need to know. Love has the strength, and love has the commitment, and love has the sacrifice, but this love has the nurturing as well. He says, just as a nursing mother would care for her children, so we cared for you. That word cared is it refers to a tender kind of love. Tough and tender. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well. Again, what Paul says is, what I'm doing, it's out of the gospel of Jesus. It's out of the good news of who Jesus is. It's not me trying to be like just like culturally relevant and get kids to be quote unquote successful in the world's eyes. I'm trying to get you rooted and grounded in the love of God found in Jesus Christ. That never changes, that that never uh moves on in our life. See, he said, so we shared with you the gospel, but look what he says. But we shared with you our lives. That means he's disrupted for their sake. He's interrupted for their sake. It means as fathers or as spiritual friends or spiritual mothers, it means that yes, we've got to sacrifice, but it also means we've got to speak truth. If we love, look at what Paul is saying. You can read it everywhere. He's not bashful in saying, I want you to know this, church, I love you. Couldn't you make the argument? Well, couldn't you just see in Paul's actions that he loved him? No, no, no. He says actions that aren't enough. It's not just actions, it's also in words. I love you. And Paul says it, and he means it, and he says it over and over again. It's seen in the words that we we we share with somebody, like from our heart to their. Hey, I just want you to know God loves you. Can I just remind you of what Jesus has done? Because you are a masterpiece of his creation. And we're speaking words that lift up and build up and call them to the identity that God has for them. Look at verse 16. Paul continues and he says, Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. That's that's an interesting phrase. I urge you to imitate me. Um, so Paul is as a spiritual father, he sets an example. That's our fourth point. As a spiritual father, Paul sets the example. Now, here's what he says, and I just wonder do you wrestle with that? Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. Are any of you confident enough in this season of life as you follow Jesus to say to your kids or somebody else, hey, here's what I want you to do. Just look, look at me. Everybody look at me. Here's what I want you to do. Follow me. Anybody confident enough to do that? Well, maybe that's overconfidence. But but Paul literally says, Here's what I want you to do. Follow me. Now that could sound arrogant, right? So let's put it in Context. First Corinthians chapter 11. Here's how Paul says it. Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1. Here's how Paul says it. Follow God's example, therefore his dearly loved children. So here's what's important. Paul is not saying, I want all of you to follow me and become like me. Paul is saying, I want all of you to follow me as I follow Christ, so we all together can become more like Jesus. Paul's not the model, he's not the exemplar. He's saying, I'm trying to point you to Jesus, and I'm trying to follow Jesus myself. So follow me as I follow Christ. That Ephesians 5. Follow God's example, therefore, his dearly loved children, and walk in the way of love. There's a lifestyle, there's habits, there's patterns, there's priorities, there's a transformation of old ways of living into new ways of living. And walk in the way of love just as Christ, just as, like follow the model of Jesus, just as Christ loved us, and he gave himself up as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. For us, he's like, follow me as I follow Jesus, so we can become more like Jesus. And it's literally like imitate me, mimic me, is sort of the where we get the English word from this Greek word, to mimic me. When um our son Will was probably about six or seven years old, he would walk around swinging keys, my keys, he would steal my keys from me. I forgot to say that. He'd steal my keys from me, which I forgot my keys, they're over there. He'd steal my keys from me, and he'd walk through church swinging the keys, and he would say, There's a new pastor in town. And he's six years old. There's a new pastor in town. And everybody who heard him say that are like, Oh my gosh, he's just like his father. I wouldn't say there's a pastor in town, but just unconsciously, I'm always twirling the keys. They're all when I'm at the office, I'm always twirling my keys. And you know, we mimic or imitate the models we pay attention to. So who are we becoming like? And and and again, there's no perfect example, but we're being asked to follow Christ and to set an example for others to follow as well. In Arizona, many, many years ago, like 16, 17 years ago, I met a pastor there who was at that time older and has now passed away. And he had a saying that the first time I heard it, I was like, I'm never gonna forget that saying. Our kids were young. And he said, A parent's job is to help their children become completely independent of them and totally dependent on God. So let's let's go through that. A parent's job is to help their children become completely independent of them. So, parents, your job is to raise kids that don't need you when they get of a certain age. And you're like, wait a minute, I like them being dependent upon me. Well, that's not good for them. To be completely independent of you and yet totally dependent on God. That God is their ultimate father, perfect father, that Jesus is their savior, not you or me. That they're trusting God, they're they're trusting his word, not just because we told them to, but but because they saw us do that. They saw the example and they and they heard the words, and and he would say, You just need to remember you got to help your child become completely independent of you. So be careful with anything that makes them dependent upon you and help them be totally dependent on God. So the question then is, are we totally dependent on God? To lead them, to lead another to be in that place. Because the goal is union with God, being so close, so intimate with him that his healing is working its way through us, and his mission is becoming our purpose in this world as we follow him. Look at verse 17. Paul says, For this reason, I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love. See, he calls Timothy a son. And again, this is just a reminder. We are all in this together. It's not just Paul to those people, it's Paul, it's Timothy, it's all these other people. And he says, My son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord, this is important. He will, what's the word? Remind. That's the word. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus. He doesn't say he will remind you of all the great things that I taught you. He's like he's gonna remind you of the way I lived. And then he says, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. So isn't that important? He'll remind you of my lifestyle, which accords with the things I said. My life and my words match up. Timothy will remind you of that. That that word could also be not just remind, but admonish. A spiritual father reminds, a spiritual mother, a spiritual friend reminds or or admonishes. It literally means to call to mind, like you get it in your mind, so you start to think differently. You weigh and consider things well and and with wisdom, and and the repetition starts to help it sink in. At a certain age, my kids needed repetition. My son needed to hear this. Clean your room. And then two hours later, remember what I said two hours ago, clean your room. Because there's something about, I mean, maybe I was a bad dad, and that's part of it. There's something about repetition that gets what's needed. Well, whether good or bad, it gets in us. So we need the right kind of repetition, the right kind of reminding. It may need to desperately move from repetition of clean your room to repetition of I'm so proud of you. I love you. Again, God loves you. Repetition of what is true and what is right and what is noble and what is holy, to counter other narratives that try to sneak into our minds. To hear and to receive what is truly helpful. I'm so proud of you. I love you. I trust you. You got this. A number of years ago, um, I found myself in the middle of Colorado at a dude ranch. Now, look at me. What do what why would I need to be at a dude ranch? With about 50 or 60 other Christian pastors, entrepreneurs, business people, social media influence, uh, artists of all kinds, uh, trying to talk about what does it mean to finish well as men of God, all men, at this retreat. And all of a sudden, um, this spiritual author, counselor, guy that most of all of us knew pretty well, John Eldridge walks into the room and we're all sort of surprised, like, oh my gosh, John Eldridge is here. We all knew who he was. And I don't really know how to explain it, except for it was one of those rare moments in life that just it felt like we were on holy ground and there was some kind of deep, deep connection. John Eldridge had written a lot of books at that time and he didn't have any books with him. He didn't have any notes with him. He just started saying, Hey, what do you want to talk about? And we would ask a question and he would talk for 30 or 40 minutes and just drop wisdom, and we were all like, what I learned was some of the wisdom that he was dropping on us was from a book called Fathered by God, Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You. Isn't that a great title? Fathered by God. Learning what your dad could never teach you. And in this book, and what he did for us is he just rattled them off like that. And we were hanging on his every word. He said, there's six stages of a masculine journey that you need to know about. So I just want to talk about, it's Father's Day. Let's talk about these different stages of a journey. First of all, there's a beloved son, there's the boyhood stage. This is a foundational stage where a young boy needs to experience safety, wonder, and unconditional delight of his father. Here's what a young boy, Father's Day, we'll get here in a moment, needs to note Am I loved, really loved, and do I have what it takes? Some of us are 50, 60, 70, and we're still asking, Am I loved? And do I have what it takes? We need to get that. Uh a cowboy, a ranger stage in the adolescence is a time of adventure, risk-taking, hard work. It's a time of breaking away, exploration beyond home. This is a time where a young male needs to identify where is his fear and his insecurity. There's a warrior stage, the late teens and the twenties. Actually, he combines warrior and lover stage in the book, part one, part two of a stage. But the warrior is the awakening, the desire to fight for a cause, to protect others, to discover he does have what it takes to overcome challenges. Here's the thing: it's courage, but not courage, like, look at what I did for my own self. That's like being risky. This is courage for the good of others. That's distinct. The lover is the awakening of the heart. The heart comes alive. Where a man develops a deep appreciation for beauty, poetry, music, romance, where they learn to love well, be faithful, and fight for what is right, not fight for what is selfish. Eldridge was talking to us, and he says, it's like when you take the report card that people have of you, whether that's success or grades, and you take it away from people and you give the report card to God and say, Am I being faithful? And God's like, You're loved. I love you. You don't have anything to prove. You don't have anybody to impress. God says, I love you. Then there's the king stage in your 40s and 60s through the 60s, a period where a man's character is mature enough to be entrusted with power, wealth, influence, requiring him to lead and bless others. This is a time to be trusted, but I thought it was so brilliant. He said this: if you want to know the test of a king, don't look at the king, look at the people around him. Are they loved? Are they cared for? Don't look at his robe and his rings and like, oh, he's an awesome king. Are the people cherished around him? And then a sage, the 60s and beyond, is a season stepping back from the burdens of leadership to offer wisdom, counsel, and blessing to the next generation. He says, This for this age group, some of you in here, it may feel like your kingdom is shrinking, but it's not if used wisely. It's the time of greatest influence. And here's what he notes on those stages. Would you mind putting those stages back up one more time, real quick, real quick on this one? On those stages, some men are stuck in a stage, and some men skipped certain stages, and you always live with a wound. And so God wants to lead us through, lead us back, help us redeem, recover, and lead us to the next thing that He has for us. Um then there's this quote in Fathered by God, where um Eldridge writes, You are the son of a kind, strong, engaged father. God is not an absentee father, he's close. A father wise enough to guide you in the way, generous enough to provide for your journey, offering to walk with you every step. This is perhaps the hardest thing for us to believe. Really believe deep down in our hearts that God loves us, that he's with us, so that it changes us forever and it changes the way we approach each day. On Father's Day. What I wish that you could know beyond anything, dads, is how much God loves you, how he is for you, and how he wants to work in your life to be to be to be a blessing for you, but also to get for you to be a blessing to others. Because it's never too early to start preparing for this, but it's also never too late to trust that God can redeem time that's been lost. So, where do we start? For some of us, maybe step one is an honest confession. A confession to somebody or a confession to God, it may be, I've I've really messed up. I'm not a perfect dad. Can I just tell you, if I were to sit my kids down and say, kids gather around me, I just need you to know something. I'm not a perfect father, they would be like, Really? We didn't know that. Nobody's going to be surprised at that reality, but they may be shocked by your willingness to admit it. It starts with, I don't have it all together. It starts with, I've made some mistakes. It may be, God, please forgive me. Or it may need to be to somebody else. I'm so sorry for what I did. Or I, here's one. I'm so sorry that I wasn't there like I wish I should have been. It's owning the stuff before God because you're loved. You're you're loved by God. You have a freedom to own this stuff. How do you do this? Whether you're going to be the person who's influencing or the person who needs influence, like I just want to plead with you. Start in prayer, start in prayer. If you're a person who's like, I don't have anybody who's a spiritual influence on me to encourage me, start in prayer. God, would you please give me godly people, a spiritual father, a spiritual mother, a spiritual friend who could pour into me. God, I don't have anybody. Start and stay in prayer. Or if it's you saying, I'm ready to pour out someone else on someone else, I'm ready to invest. God, would you give me the right kind of person that I could invest spiritually in? Start and stay in prayer. Seek Jesus consistently by immersing yourself in Scripture. I've said it's been a while. Um there's study after study that have shown there is one spiritual activity that deepens our relationship and our trust in God more than any other spiritual activity, and it is our personal engagement in Scripture. We can't grow to be mature Christians without engaging in God's word. So start there. Immerse yourself in scripture and say, God, would you shape me and lead me? Devote time and attention to a relationship of spiritual father and spiritual mother and being a friend. Devote time and attention, which means you're gonna have to stop doing some other things. I couldn't think of a better way of saying it. You're going to take time away from some other things to devote time and attention to that. And then the last step that I would recommend is repeat all the above steps over and over and over and over and over again. But here's my question for you especially dads. Is there just one takeaway? Is there just one thing that you could say? Okay, one thing out of everything we just talked about that this week, if God will help you, you'll do it. One thing that you'll say, I'm not, I'm I'm not perfect, but but but I'm willing to try. God, with your help, I'll take one step forward in this area. Would you pray with me? God, I want to pray for the men, but I want to pray for everybody in here. Just simply this would you work in our lives as only you can. There are some people here who they do not know you, Jesus, as personal Lord and Savior. I pray today would be a day of salvation. That they would turn from their sin, turn from their self, and turn to you, Jesus. There's others who maybe today is a reality check kind of a moment. That we've been spending so much time or energy and attention in other places we've neglected this great area of opportunity. And we would say, no, we want to reclaim some days. We want to get honest and get committed to pouring out into someone else. I'm just reminded of Robert Maholland's definition of spiritual formation. It's becoming like Jesus. Something like that, but becoming like Jesus. Here's the caveat. For the sake of others. For the sake of another. So for those of us who are longing for a spiritual father or mother in our life, God, would you somehow supernaturally connect us to someone? For others of us who it's a season to step into being that example. Would you give us courage, faith, to trust you? Turn our eyes to you, the perfect, faithful Father in heaven, who loves us, who sent his son Jesus on a rescue mission for us. We want to live our lives out of your grace and your goodness for your glory. In your name Jesus, we pray. Amen.