A Father's Calling

Gateway, Gateway Church Rapid Seat.

Welcome to everyone joining us at all of our campuses today, all of our prison campuses, and everyone joining us online.

We love you and we're so glad you're here with us.

And how excited am I to be back in Texas and to be a Gateway Church.

There's no place like this place, amen?

And I want to thank Pastor Robert and Debbie for inviting us and James and Bridget and uh for Steve and Melanie who are hosting me this weekend.

And when I get a chance to come here, it's like a holiday for me because I get to come to Texas.

I just love Texas.

Praise God.

Well, we all remember how it was like in the midst of the COVID crisis.

And I don't know what happened here in Texas, but in Florida, no one was allowed to go into the hospitals with your family or loved ones during that time.

I was that that way here in Texas too, during the height of the of the of that pandemic.

And so our daughter had to have major surgery.

And so the night before she was getting ready to go to the hospital, and we had to just drive her and drop her literally off at the front door, could not go in with her.

And she was uh very anxious about this.

And my wife came to me and and she and when she talks in these tones, I know I have to respond immediately.

I've been married 58 years.

I can read, listen, I can read the tone and the body language.

Okay, you know what I'm talking about?

So, and so she said, Tom, your daughter needs her father right now.

Boom.

I dropped what I was doing.

I went to see my daughter.

I went in and she said, Daddy, I'm just really fearful about the surgery.

And she goes on and on and on.

And I said, Honey, listen, I want to remind you of three truths that you already know, but I'm gonna remind you of them, and so I shared them with her and I prayed with her.

And I says, No, baby, as soon as a glimpse of anxiety begins to come up, raise its ugly head against you, you remind yourself of these three truths.

Remind yourself of them and hold on to them, and you're gonna be okay.

So we take her up to the hospital, we drop her off the front door, and my wife says, Now you know we're gonna sit here in the parking lot all day for her surgery.

I said, Well, baby, I'm not sitting here all day in the parking lot.

You you can sit here you want to.

I said, I we've got telephones now, they're called telephones, and I can go home.

And when they call us that she's out of surgery, we can't even see her.

They're gonna keep her for several days in the hospital.

I said, So why are we sitting in the parking lot?

God can hear our prayers at home, plus there was a game on.

Anyways, um, Father, forgive me for I have sinned.

Anyways, so finally she she comes out of surgery, she gets out of recovery, she's back in her room, and we get our first text from her.

And and she says, she says in the text, Daddy, I made it.

I said, Well, praise God, honey, you made it.

And and then we finally got a phone call.

And we said, honey, how'd you do?

She said, Dad, you won't believe it.

He says, I wasn't fearful at all.

And says, Do you remember the the three things you told me?

He says, I wrote them down.

And she said, matter of fact, I wrote them on my hand.

I said, really?

And she said, I was showing them to people all through the hospital.

One nurse came up and said, Oh, when I explained to her what they were, she said, What is this?

You know, I explained to her what they were.

She said, Oh, I may get that tattooed on me.

And I don't even believe in tattoos.

And she said, I showed them to the surgeon, I showed them in the operating room, everywhere I've been, all the nurses coming in to treat me post-surgery.

I've been showing them my hand and explaining to them what it means.

She said, Daddy, I can't tell you how much those three things you told me helped me through this time.

And I realize these are three eternal truths that we have to, as fathers, it's absolutely essential that our children grasp this.

Matter of fact, I've called the message today a father's calling.

And our calling as fathers and grandfathers are to instill these three truths into our children and grandchildren.

And we have to constantly be reinforcing it in their lives because it will truly equip them for life.

So, do you want to see what was on her hand?

Is anybody curious to know what the three words on their hand?

You may already know what they are, but I don't know if you want to see them or not.

But let me show them today.

This is what she wrote in her hand.

This is what kept her strong.

Can you see it?

It says, called, loved, and kept.

Where does that come from?

That comes from the book of Jude, the 65th book of our Bible.

And Jude says it like this, speaking to the early believers in the church.

He was James's brother.

He writes in Jude 1.1, to those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father, and kept by Jesus Christ.

To the called, to the loved, and to the kept.

He addressed the early saints.

That was a part of who they were and their true identity.

And Jude was reminding them of that.

I love the second verse in Jude 2.

It goes on and say, Mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.

And it was amazing when I walked into a room that night before surgery, the Lord brought Jude 1 to my mind.

And I realized, honey, I want you to know something.

You're called.

And because you're called, God will be with you in every situation you face.

So you have nothing to fear.

Because he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion.

You have a calling upon your life, and nothing can stop you from fulfilling the calling that God has upon your life.

Nothing can stop that.

You keep your life surrendered and submitted unto the Lord and His will and seeking His desire to honor Him, He will be there to honor you and fulfill that calling.

So let's jump into this.

I want to jump into this day, especially with the men and the grandfathers here, fathers and grandfathers, but this is true for all of us.

Every one of us can embrace this message because we need to be identified as the called, the loved, and the kept of God.

That's who we are.

So here we go.

So number one, Father's calling is to help his children understand their calling.

Our kids are called.

Look what it says in the Word of God.

We were created by Him and for Him, Paul says in the book of Colisas.

I love this verse in Ephesians 4.

It says, Therefore, I urge you lead a life worthy of your calling.

For you have been called by God.

Sometimes we think that, you know, Pastor Robert, Pastor James, the other pastors, they have a calling on their life.

Well, listen, they do, just like you.

You have a calling upon your life.

It may not be to quote pastor a church, but you have a calling as a son and daughter of God to reflect the glory of God, to be the light of the world, to be on mission, to fulfill and be a part of the ministry of reconciliation that's calling a lost world back to a living God that wants to speak life into them.

And every one of us have that call on our lives.

I'm thankful that I was raised in a church that that was reinforced to me.

It was reinforced in my church family and my Sunday school and my grandfather and my grandfather used to say to me all the time, he called me Tommy.

He said, Tommy, God has a calling on your life.

Always live your life to honor God and honor the calling that God has on your life.

That was drilled into me.

My Sunday school teachers would tell me, Tommy, God has a calling on your life.

I grew up with a sense of calling on my life that I knew that I was to live a life that made a difference for God.

Now here's what I love.

Because of that, I was secure in my identity of who I was.

And we live in a culture today that is literally trying to rip the true identity away from our children.

And we live with such a crisis, an identity crisis today.

It is amazing.

And we look and say, how in the world do we ever get here?

Well, I'll tell you how we got here.

The enemy of our soul is trying to rob our children of their true identity so he can rob them of their purpose and their mission for Christ.

That's what's going on.

It's a spiritual battle that we're facing.

That's why it's so essential that our children is instilled in them as early as it can be.

And that's why, parents, you need to have your kids in church every week, having that reinforce the calling that's upon their life and their sense of a true identity that they find in Christ.

I love this passage of scripture that is found in Ephesians 1.11.

Look at this.

It says, It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we're living for.

It is Christ.

That's where it is.

You know, people say, Oh, look within yourself and discover yourself.

Give me a break.

We find ourselves when we realize that we were created by God and for God, and when we embrace his son Jesus as our personal Savior, and he comes to indwell our spirit, at that moment there is a revelation that breaks forth from the inside of us out, and we're identifying ourselves as sons and daughters of God.

Called and directed by Him and given this sense of purpose.

And here's what I know when you live with a sense of purpose, it changes everything about your direction of your life and your desires of your life.

And by as my grandfather said, Tommy, always live to honor God.

Seek to honor God because when you seek to honor God, he will honor you.

And as we get into the Word of God and the principles of God and the precepts of God and the values of God, they become our principles, they become our truths, they become our values.

We don't value what the culture values and celebrates.

We value what God values and celebrates.

Amen?

That's what we celebrate.

That's where our true identity truly lies with those principles.

When I was a teenage boy, it saved my life.

I was 16 years old.

I was hanging out with a bunch of guys at a local, like drive-thru restaurant that people would drive through and just show off the cars and stuff.

And I don't know, 48 Plymouth.

I hid that thing in an alley and I went up there and was leaning on a 56 Shivvy.

I mean, those things are sweet.

They were sweet in 56, and they're sweet right now.

Do I have an amen from the men of God?

Come on, amen, amen.

And suddenly here's some guys pull up and they're driving a 56 Chevy.

And three of my friends were in the car, and a guy I played football with lived right down the street from me, was another running back.

He was in the back seat, and they said, Come on, Mona's, go hang with us.

Well, I started to get in the car.

As I started getting a car, I actually had one foot in the back floorboard.

I noticed all three of them had a bottle of beer.

And suddenly I had a decision to make.

And they were saying, Come on, come on, man, get in, get on, come on, get in.

Am I gonna get in this car with those guys drinking and try to hang out with them and look cool?

Or what am I gonna do?

Because right now I'm under a pressure to get in here.

But see, here's what I learned.

When you live by principle, you do not yield to the pressure of the world or the culture we live in.

We stand on principle.

And right then, that moment hit me.

I've got to make a stand on principle here.

This is not God honoring, so I got out of the car.

I backed out of the car.

They said some choice things to me why I didn't get in, and they left me.

Later that night, I'm driving home out of Hamilton, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio, where I grew up.

I saw this burst of light.

I'm going, what in the world was that?

I came up around the road and there was a car totally engulfed in flames.

The car that I almost got into, they went out, got in a drag race, traveling over 100 miles an hour, lost control, hit an embankment, the car exploded, threw all three of them out of the car.

Two of them were in critical condition, unconscious, and we couldn't find my friend in the back.

I arrived on the scene, other cars arrived suddenly.

Then now the police are there, now the amuses are there.

We're still searching in the dark of that night on this country road.

Where is my friend?

We couldn't find him.

So I'm walking down a drainage ditch behind the car, probably about 20, 30, 40 feet behind the car, and my foot hit his body.

I reached down, I screamed for help.

They came.

We lifted him up.

I helped lift him up out of that ditch, put him on a gurney, and he was pronounced dead on the scene.

I never forget when they zipped that black bag up over him.

It just traumatized my life.

And I remember going home that night.

I went into my room and I looked and I had his blood on my hands.

I didn't know what to do or what to say, but as I reflected back on that, praise God, that night, I did not get in that back seat of that car and yield to that pressure.

And I realized what kept me out was a principle that had been drilled into me that there is a higher calling, there is a higher purpose, there are higher principles, there are higher values.

Don't let anything distract you from God's perfect call and will on your life.

We must help our children understand that to such a degree that they will desire to live with purpose.

They'll desire to live with honor.

They'll desire to make the priorities of God become their priorities.

But see, here's the thing, fathers and grandfathers, we have to model it for them.

We have to model that the priorities of God are our priorities.

Praise God, I had that model in a grandfather who modeled a life of integrity.

He modeled a life of passion for the things of God and the people of God.

And I caught all of his passions.

His love for God, his love for the church, and his love for the outdoors.

My wife thinks they've gotten a little out of balance lately, but praise God.

Anyways, I I've caught all those passions.

Our kids catch our passions, fathers, grandfathers.

We need to live out a life of calling so they can see it and understand it, and then with integrity, we can call it out of them.

Here's what I also love in this scripture.

When our kids begin to live according to the principles and precepts of God, and they begin to live out their calling every day with a sense of real purpose.

You know what we do?

We're helping position them for the favor of God to rest upon them.

Look what the scripture says in Proverbs 3.

My son, do not forget my teachings, but keep my commands in your heart.

Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.

So here's my challenge.

No matter what career path we choose, our children choose.

We must realize it's all there to support our callings.

When I was a football coach, I understood that.

I was passionate about the game, passionate about my players, passionate about winning.

But I also knew there was something higher in my calling to be a godly influence to my team.

We won a lot of games.

I was blessed to be a winning coach at every level.

But I'm gonna tell you what, my greatest victories came, and the boys I helped lead to Jesus Christ.

Some of the young men do I help them make a life-changing decision to surrender their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and recognize that there was a higher calling upon their lives.

Okay, so men we're called to help our children understand they are called.

Do I have an amen?

Amen.

That was weak.

Do I have an amen?

Amen.

Now see, that's how you're supposed to, amen.

Come on.

Robert's taught you better than this.

Here's the second thing I know that we're called to do.

We're to help our children embrace God's love.

They are loved.

And we have to demonstrate that love.

It's wired in our DNA, emotionally and spiritually, to be loved, to be affirmed.

And fathers, I believe it's our responsibility to model the love of God to our children.

Because if we can model his love to our children, they will be more open and receptive to the divine love of their heavenly father when they really are experiencing the genuine love of their earthly father.

We minister to so many kids.

We have a children's home that's in the last 20 years, we've probably seen over 30,000 children come through our children's home.

We have been so blessed to touch so many lives, but there's one common thread among every child that comes to our home.

They are lacking the love of their earthly fathers.

And they're devastated by it.

We try to substitute the best we can with our house parents and our house fathers and house mothers and all the care that we give and all the love we give, but there's this void in there because of that.

And then we have to help them understand their heavenly father will never desert them, their heavenly father will never abandon them, their heavenly father will never abuse them, their heavenly father loves them unconditionally.

And therefore, we have to try our very best to model that before our children so they can embrace that.

My dad, bless his heart, was a good man, a hard-working man, but his family never expressed love, never expressed affection.

They didn't know how to do it.

My dad just was raised in that way.

Praise God from mama's grandfather, her father, my grandfather, they were just the opposite.

They were affirming and loving and and affectionate.

And of course, I gravitated to that.

I mean, my dad, bless his heart, he he couldn't hardly tell me, good game.

I told you this before, I was playing a game, I ran for five touchdowns, scored and ran for 276 yards.

That's a pretty good game.

Five touchdowns, 276 yards, one game.

I came off the field like a little puppy dog.

Want dad to pet me and say, good game, son.

And he started pointing out things that I missed, tackles I missed, a run I should have made, a pass I dropped.

I said, Come on, Dad, give me a break.

I know we were playing Rosarian School for the Blind, but I had a good game.

Come on, I had a good game.

Come on.

The only time, Pastor Steve, I remember dad saying anything in a near positive way about me was one night when I was playing, I ran in, I got my nose broken, my four front teeth knocked out in the first half, never missed a play.

They drug me off the field, I was unconscious, took ammonia capsules, broke them in my nose.

You old guys that played know about the ammonia capsules, broke those ammonia capsules, woke me up, got me a new helmet, stuffed cotton in my nose, cotton in my mouth, put me back in the game.

Well, at halftime, I've come running off by my dad, my face is all swollen from one side, I couldn't see, but out of one eye, my nose is all over here, blood all over my face, all over my jersey.

And I went running by my dad, and I heard him say, That's my boy.

That was it.

That's my boy! You remember when Jesus went down to be baptized by John the Baptist?

Remember when the dove descended and the voice from heaven was heard?

And remember what God the Father said about his son?

This is my son, whom I love and am well pleased.

Now, if Jesus needed affirmation from his heavenly father, how much more do our children need the affirmation from their earthly fathers?

It's our responsibility, men, to speak love over our children.

And I don't want to hear some lame excuse that you never had it spoken over you.

Well, quit whining about it and sucking your thumb and let's man up and start honoring your children and loving them the way you know they should be loved.

Come on.

I don't think I've ever said it quite like that, Pastor Steve.

You can strike the sucking of the thumb thing part out of it, but come on, men.

We got to lead by example.

We we got to be so passionate our kids want to follow us.

And finally, in a father's calling, is to help your children understand that they are kept.

They are kept by Christ.

There's a spirit of anxiety that's at loose, and you know it.

Everywhere I turn, people are battling with anxiety.

It's horrible, it's ugly.

It's spirit, it's a spirit.

And our kids are struggling with it.

And I'll tell you one thing, I I I reinforced my daughter.

I said, honey, remember, Jesus said, I'll never leave you, nor will I forsake you.

Honey, remember that if God be forced, what can stand against us?

Honey, greater is he that is within you than he that is within the world.

And because God will never leave or forsake you, he'll be with you every step of the way.

He will guide the surgeons, he'll guide the nurses, he'll guide the anesthesiologist, he'll guide everybody because you're his daughter.

You're called of God.

There's a calling on your life.

You're loved by him.

You think he's going to anything happen to you in that hospital?

No way.

People are going to be drawn to you like bugs to a lamp at night because they know there's something different about you because the Spirit of Christ is in you, honey.

And you have these strange three words on your hand.

I'm called, I'm loved, and I'm kept.

I want you to be secure in that because here's what happens: when we recognize that we are kept by Christ, I have goodness and mercy following me all the days of my life.

I have the power and the spirit of the Holy Spirit within me and surrounding me to guide me and to bless me and to protect me and to strengthen me.

And we realize that God's not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and a love and that of what?

A sound mind, self-control.

So we rebuke that spirit of fear and we claim the Spirit of God on our lives.

And we can say with Paul, I can do all things through Christ.

It strengthens me.

So, honey, you have nothing to be concerned about.

I was uh this past Christmas, I was in my office, and we're having a whole, just like you do a gateway, a ton of different Christmas Eve services and things.

And and and one of the football players in our church, uh a young man who plays Division I football, asked if he could see me after one of those services.

I said, Of course.

So he came in the office, we sit down and we started chatting a bit, and I'm asking, How are you doing?

How's the season?

Uh, how was your season?

How's the postseason looking for you?

And we're just going through all this stuff.

I know he's built like Atlas.

I mean, he's just, you know, like I used to look like.

Anyways, um, so I did used to be pretty good.

I mean, at one time, I was just, you know, I think for 85 I'm doing pretty good.

85.

I'm not 85, but anyways, um.

Hello.

So I I I I I I said, son, what's going on?

And he started explaining to me his battle with anxiety and how it was just so dark and so so so black around him, and and the fear and the and and and and all he was dealing with, it was almost, he said, there are times I don't think I can hardly function.

I'm going, and I'm going, wait a minute.

Here's a kid in Division I football on scholarship, athletic, talented, gifted kid, and he's dealing with anxiety.

Oh my goodness it was like a wake-up call for me.

So I immediately went into my little message here.

Son, do you realize your call to God?

Son, do you realize you're love to the Father?

He's not letting anything happen to you.

And son, by the way, you're kept by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is keeping you.

You have nothing to fear.

You need to stand up and rebuke that thing.

Bust it in the mouth.

In Jesus' name.

So I prayed with him, and I said, Now I want you to go back to your dorm room and I want you to post these three words.

I'm called, I'm loved, and I'm kept.

It was a uh a little bit after this that he sent me this picture.

Let's show this picture.

Here he is with his college roommate.

Will you read that with me?

It says, I'm called, I'm loved, I'm kept.

Oh, by the way, can you see the bottom?

Can you read that very bottom?

They wrote, do not erase.

I love it.

He put it up in their room and he got his roommate on, and he says, I'm called, I'm loved, and I'm kept.

Say it with me again.

I'm called, I'm loved, I'm kept.

That's who you are.

That's who you are.

So, fathers and grandfathers, here's my message.

We have to teach it, we have to mollow it, and we have to speak it over our children and grandchildren.

So there's no doubt.

They know beyond all doubt they are called, they are loved, and they are kept.

I want to pray two prayers today for us.

I want to pray a prayer of blessing over the fathers and grandfathers that are joining us at all of our campuses.

Those joining us in our prison campuses, those joining us online, I want to pray a special prayer of blessing over the fathers and grandfathers.

But before I pray that prayer, I want to also give an opportunity for our fathers and grandfathers and for all who are joining us today that everything starts with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Remember, it's in Christ we discover who we are and what we're truly living for.

It is only in Christ that this happens.

It is only through the power and grace of Christ can we be the fathers and the grandfathers we're called to be.

Because it starts with us understanding that there is a call of heaven on our lives to yield our lives to Christ and to walk in his ways and to become his ambassador and to become his light and then to become a channel of his love and then to become a channel of his spirit.

That's the call that's on our lives.

And for us to call out the calling on our children's lives, we must make sure we are walking in the calling that God has on our lives.

So let's bow our heads as we pray.

Father, I pray today for especially our fathers and grandfathers, for the men that we would recognize the calling that's upon our lives.

And it starts with our relationship with Jesus.

So, Father, if there's anyone here, not just the men and and here, but the women that are here, the students that are here, the children that are here, that if we've never fully surrendered our lives to Christ, that we will make this moment that decision.

Because we want to embrace the fullness of our calling.

We want to embrace the fullness of your love.

We want to embrace all of your spirit that comes in to give us the confidence that's the winning edge in life.

We want all you have for us in our lives.

So we're going to pray this simple prayer where we are right now in our own hearts, dear Lord Jesus, come into my heart and fill my life with your spirit.

Forgive me of all my sins.

And from this day forward, I commit to live for you and to serve you with all my heart.

And I'm going to embrace my calling.

I'm going to receive your love.

And I'm going to walk in the security of your Holy Spirit.

I pray all this in Jesus' name.

Father, I pray right now for the fathers and grandfathers for a special blessing and anointing upon their lives.

And Father, we may not have gotten this right the way we know we should have, but God, from this point forward, we commit to live a called life filled with your love and secure in your Holy Spirit.

And we will call out the calling on our children and grandchildren.

And I pray your blessing over us as we do this.

Because we are called, we are loved, and we are kept in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Gateway Church, I love you.