Father that Follows

Wow.

I mean, just to be in the presence of Jesus and to sing the name of Jesus.

Would you just say the name Jesus with me?

That's that.

That's all we need.

It's everything we need.

I mean, it is the power to change.

I'm going to be in 2 Timothy chapter 2 today as we talk about intentional fathering, but I want to share something with the church.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

That involves me and my wife and our family going into this summer.

Beginning Memorial Day weekend, the elders and leaders of Church at the Grove have agreed to send me on a sabbatical that would go through the end of July.

Our elders have approved a sabbatical policy for our staff.

And to be quite honest, it comes in a season where it's desperately needed.

Over the past year, three out of five pastors have seriously considered leaving the ministry.

I am not one of them.

Don't worry.

Nothing's wrong.

I'm not leaving, and I'm not considering leaving.

I do not feel like my time in ministry is done.

The concept of a sabbatical is rooted in this biblical idea of Sabbath, which God modeled and commanded throughout Scripture.

In Leviticus 25, 1 through 7, the Lord says that after the sixth year, the people were not supposed to sow the fields or harvest the crop.

The land was allowed to rest, and therefore so were the people.

Sabbaticals have often been used in church and academia to provide a time of rest, recovery, renewal, and re-education for the individual staff member.

We believe that our pastors, it's coming from the elders and leadership, and our ministry staff should model God's design for Sabbath rest.

We believe that a time of sabbatical is important both in sharpening and renewing the pastor or minister and in turn the health and strength of the church.

And so the sabbatical is for the pursuit of activities approved by the governing council or board or our elder team of the church.

The intent is to further ministry objectives of the church, to enhance the personal ministry of the pastor, and provide for some physical, spiritual, and recreational or relational renewal and refreshment.

And so here's personally how I will be using my sabbatical.

It'll be for several areas of growth, refreshment, and really focusing on a few.

I have completed, and I don't talk about this a lot, this might be brand new news for some of you.

I have completed all my classwork over the past four years toward a doctorate of ministry degree, but still have a doctoral dissertation to be written.

I have written just over 25 pages of probably what will probably be 200 to 225 pages on a work focused on missional discipleship that I think will add value to me personally and to our church.

And so a lot of my focus will be on that.

And I'm just going to be flat honest with you.

I have worked hard on trying to get that done, and it's just about impossible in the midst of ministry.

And so I need to sit, put my rear end in a chair, and just go at it.

So Jill and I will leave June 5th for a 10-day journey.

This is also part of our sabbatical.

We'll leave for a 10-day journey to Israel where we will be discipled and invested in while we travel to the Holy Land.

During this sabbatical, my desire is as much for my wife to be refreshed as it is for me.

Jill and I will strategically spend time in worship with some friends and churches that will be for personal refreshing and professional growth.

I will intentionally spend some time with some of these leaders one-on-one for learning and growth.

I have a stack of books that I will be reading over this summer for personal and professional growth and for just some personal enjoyment.

Some I have chosen and others have been chosen for me.

I will spend some time with my family and intentionally with each one of my three children, hoping to put into practice what I'm about to preach this morning.

One of my goals during the sabbatical is to learn to play pickleball with my brother who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

I love my church family.

And I don't think I quite understand it yet, but this will probably be one of the toughest several weeks in my ministry.

Not being here on Sundays.

But I do believe it's a season that we're all going to experience growth, renewal, and refreshing.

Some of you would not even notice if I hadn't shared this.

Because I usually take three or four weeks off in a row preaching.

A lot of you aren't here in the summer or all summer or part of the summer.

But here's what I believe.

I believe the best is yet to come.

And so I wanted I wanted to share that with you.

I'm going to share it again next week.

Some of you are watching online.

I'm excited about it.

Now, let me tell you, I'm going to know whether you're here or not, okay?

Don't you dare check out on Church at the Grove.

We have been through one of the best, most exciting seasons since last fall.

It's been absolutely amazing to see what God has done and what he's doing.

So don't you dare check out.

And I'm telling you, you know how long my sermons are if I take a Sunday or two off.

So you wait till just wait till August.

It's going to be a lot of fun when I come back in the pulpit.

Alright.

So here we go.

Second Timothy chapter 2.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

Everybody good with everybody good?

Everybody?

I hope that's not a downer.

That's a positive thing.

Sorry, I got a little emotional.

Talking about fathering, a lot of times I give my dad a bad rap.

I loved my dad.

He passed away in 1997.

And I'm thankful for how he provided for our family.

And I truly think that he did the best with what he had been given.

And so if you've been around Church at the Grove, you've heard me talk about my desire to reverse the curse in our family and to change the narrative in our family.

And where there was brokenness, teach and lead my children to walk with Jesus and to follow Jesus and his will.

And so as I look back over the 24 years, I wish I could have a lot of do-overs with with life.

I wish I could go back and recapture some of the time that has gone by.

And so I think most of us would probably often say the same thing.

And so I want us to lean into what the Holy Spirit would say to us, especially about fatherhood.

It's one of the most overlooked issues and crucial issues in our culture today.

John Tyson states this.

When a father is present, emotionally healthy and involved in his child's life, the child has a tremendous advantage in the world to navigate its complexities and challenges with joy and confidence.

And so fathers need to be intentional.

Jill and I don't take for granted being parents in large part because Jill has a context uh she has a connective tissue disease that's lupus-like.

And so when she was a teenager, she was told she would never be able to have children.

And so when she and I met and I saw her and I liked her and I was attracted to her, and I began to pursue her, I mean it wasn't very long before she said, I need to tell you something.

And you need to know this before we fall in love or get serious and move forward.

She said, I probably will never be able to have children.

And so that began a conversation with us back and forward, and I just felt like you know, this is something that we need to put in God's hands.

And who when you get married to somebody, you never know what's going to happen with fertility issues.

You just don't know.

And so I felt led to move forward in pursuing her.

And she she tried as as hard as she could to get away from me, uh, but I won, and we got married.

And so uh uh early in our pregnancy, early in our life, you know, we pursued um uh fertility visits, and and and there was pregnancy, then there was um a miscarriage, and then finally um we were blessed with Josiah being born.

And of course, after a child is born, things are pretty basic when they're a baby.

And I and I say that it's easy for me as a dad to say that, isn't it?

It's pretty basic.

Um and I know that's easy for me to say, but but you you feed them, you change a diaper, and and you know, make sure you don't leave them anywhere.

I mean, I mean, you know, those are kind of the that that one's probably more for me, but but you watch them grow, you cuddle them, you cuddle them, and you, and there's oohs and there's ahs, and then they talk, and you want them to talk, and then they start talking, and then they don't stop, and they um, and depending on whether you have a boy and a girl, and and and there's disciplining when they get older, uh, there's school and sports and activities, but what's the plan for their emotional and spiritual growth?

What is their plan?

Is there a plan?

Most of us don't have a plan.

We kind of go with the flow.

Now, some of us do.

We just say, well, I'm gonna have them in church, I'm gonna teach them between right and wrong.

I'm gonna, we're we're gonna have something, but I want to I want to I want to encourage you, fathers, to take it to another level.

And and and if you're you know, if your kids are already raised, this you can invest in your in your sons and your daughters and how they raise their kids.

See, the concept of raising a child comes to us from an intense tradition rooted in ancient Roman culture.

Children were presented before the head of the household, and if the father wanted the child, he would lift the baby up in his arms and hold him or her scoward, literally raising the child.

What does this make you think of?

Simba, Lion King, right?

And so this meant the baby was welcome into the home.

But if the man didn't want the child, he would not raise him or her.

He would leave the baby there on the ground.

Then someone in the family would take the baby out into the woods and leave it.

It was called exposure, and it was the ancient form of abortion.

And the baby would be left there to die.

And so we take this for granted, this raising of a child.

But it is a heavy issue, is it not?

When we say we're raising a child, what we're actually communicating based on the history of this idea is this.

We're saying that child, I want you.

I want you in my life.

I'm going to take responsibility for you.

I'm going to give you everything I can to help you grow up and mature into the best person you can be.

And so the father who follows Jesus is called to lead his children to do the same.

The father who follows Jesus is called to lead his children to live like Jesus.

That's the big idea for today.

And so at the heart of this idea is our culture.

Our culture has this inability to raise children into adulthood.

There's this epidemic of fatherlessness.

The absence of fathers in society.

Children without fathers are four times more likely to live in poverty.

They're more likely to suffer emotional and behavioral problems.

They're more likely to have higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born into married homes.

They have two times the risk of infant mortality.

They are more likely to go to prison.

Only one in five prison inmates grew up with a fatherless present.

And they are fatherless children are twice as likely to be involved in early sexual activity.

So what do we do?

What do we do to lean into scripture?

I'm going to read out of a passage, 2 Timothy chapter 2.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

And I've got several passages I could have picked from, but I had to save one for next week.

And so 2 Timothy 2 is a passage where the Apostle Paul is speaking to Timothy.

He's writing to Timothy, who is not his biological son.

But he's writing to him as a son.

And so 2 Timothy 2, 1 through 7, he says, Timothy, Paul is writing to Timothy.

The Apostle Paul is writing to his son in the Lord, his son in the ministry.

He says, Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus.

You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses.

Now teach these troops to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.

Endure suffering along with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

Soldiers don't get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them.

And athletes cannot win the prize unless they follow the rules.

And hardworking farmers should be the first to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

Think about what I am saying.

The Lord will help you understand all these things.

Now one of the things I want you to see is he's saying, What you've heard me teach.

So Paul is writing to Timothy.

And he's saying, Timothy, what you've heard me teach, I want you to teach these to others.

Who will in turn teach them to others?

Four generations impacted just by those couple of statements.

Paul, Timothy, next generation, fourth generation.

And so Paul's writing from a prison cell in Rome to his young son in the Lord.

Not biological, but he takes the initiative to initiate Timothy into this grown-up life of following and obeying Jesus, becoming a leader, taking responsibility for his life.

It's in contrast to what we see today in our culture.

Paul is conveying the importance to multiply himself and pass on the gospel and the message to pass on Jesus and the way of Jesus, how to follow Jesus, the practices of the follower of Jesus.

All to Timothy, and then he says, Timothy, pass it on to the other trustworthy people who will in turn pass it on to others.

And he gives these three images.

He says, be like a good soldier.

Being a good soldier, especially in antiquity, a Roman soldier was not allowed to be married when he entered into service.

He was full-time.

It was an obligation to give your whole life to it, complete devotion.

So soldiers didn't have the luxury of getting caught up in the civilian way of life, the complexities of life.

And so sadly, in our world as fathers, we've lost sight of the devotion that it takes to invest and raise our kids with intention and plans.

And we get distracted.

I don't know about you, but I get distracted.

I can't tell you the conviction of working on this message the last two weeks that I have experienced.

I am preaching this.

I mean, I to myself.

He says, be a soldier.

He says, be an athlete.

Athletes are people who are trained.

They devote their lives.

We need to be people.

We need to be fathers that have the depth of commitment and character.

Athletes have to work hard at their task.

They have to stay qualified.

They can't be disqualified.

So fathers have been given a great responsibility.

However, most men in our culture walk around without any plan or purpose or way about how they live.

Especially young men.

We've already looked at some of the statistics, but simply most men live their lives and lifestyles in a way that disqualifies them from really being the godly parents that God's called them to be.

So he says, soldier, be like a soldier.

Don't get caught up in civilian affairs.

Be an athlete.

Train.

Be intentional.

Work at it.

Don't be disqualified.

Then he says, farmer, it's like a farmer.

See, here's what I've learned about farmers.

My wife's dad was a farmer.

Farmers play the long game.

It's a long game.

There's no short-term satisfaction.

You go out and you work and you till the ground and then you plant seeds and then you wait.

And then you wait some more and then you wait some more.

And then you go pull some weeds and you wait some more.

It's a long game.

We live in an instant society where we don't have, we don't have to wait for anything, but the farmer doesn't have that luxury.

When he plants a seed, there's a lot of work that goes in to see a harvest.

The harvest takes time.

He doesn't always have control over it.

As parents, we we we have limited control.

We can be intentional, but at the end of the day, we're we're really not sure.

We're in the long game.

Raise up your children in the way they should go.

When they are old, they won't depart from it.

Hallelujah.

Praise God for that verse for some of us.

I would like for it to happen before I'm old, before I'm gone.

For competent fathers, there must be a commitment to the long game, a vision for the future for your children of what you want them to become.

This is not going to happen overnight.

It's going to be long, it's going to be arduous, it's going to be difficult.

And all listen to this in almost every other culture in the world, there is a codified, intentional, intense pathway to develop adolescence into adults.

But in Western society and the US culture, there's almost nothing.

Almost nothing.

John Tyson goes on to write, he says this, but Ronald Rollhauser goes on to ask an important question.

Do you know what's really killing our young people today?

The answer is self-initiation.

When there's no older generation intentionally ushering boys into manhood, when there's no tribe of mentors or fathers taking their sons along a predetermined path, many of our young men try to establish it themselves, attempting to go out through the wilderness of adolescence with the hope that somehow they'll find their way into adulthood on their own.

There's five types of fathers in our culture today.

Number one is a responsible father.

This is a father who has literally zero involvement with his kids, is somebody who completely bails on them.

Some of you know people, some of you have people like that in your family, some of you are products of a home where that's the case.

Sometimes they don't even know who the father is, but the father takes no responsibility, no child support, contributes no meaningful support in the lives of his children.

He simply is a sperm donor.

The second is the ignorant father.

This type of father has no idea what he's doing.

Continually, he wreaks havoc in the lives of his children without even realizing it.

He doesn't know anything about being a father.

He doesn't try to learn or improve.

Because of this, he ends up projecting his own brokenness into the lives of his children.

He might show up in their life for a brief time and then he disappears.

There's no systematic and there's nothing intentional.

The third kind of father is the inconsistent father.

He's torn by his personal ambition.

Now, as I'm writing this part, it's starting to sting a little bit.

Because I'm like, hey, first two, I don't think they really apply to me that much.

But the inconsistent father, he's torn by his personal ambition.

He has the capability of doing better at the fathering thing, but instead he prioritizes his own job, career, and hobbies.

These binges of selfishness are often followed by guilt and feeble attempts to fix everything.

But there's no stable sense of security or identity passed down to his children.

The fourth, it gets better, it's the involved father.

That's probably where a lot of us find ourselves.

Some of us might be convicted by the inconsistent father.

Some it's the involved father.

This type of father shows up at all the sporting events, takes time to put porn filters on his kids' devices.

He gets a lot of things right, but because of the busyness of life and the failure to ask the right questions, he never seeks to understand specifically who his children are and why God gave them to him.

This is a noble dad, but one haunted by the sense that there is something more, another layer or another level of parenting.

And so here's number five: the intentional father.

This father is deeply invested in discovering who his children are and how he can help them reach their redemptive potential.

He seeks to understand the children that God has given him, and he wants to form them into young people, young persons who can fulfill their purpose.

He sees parenting as central to his call before God, and he works at it and does it with all his might.

This kind of father leaves multi-generational blessing in the lives of his family and his children.

And so the Apostle Paul is teaching Timothy in this passage.

Live with intentionality.

You've heard me teach.

Now teach it to others who will in turn teach it to others and in turn teach it to others.

I am parenting you, Timothy.

I'm discipling you, Timothy, so you can impact generations for Jesus.

It will not be easy, it will be hard.

Richard Rohrer writes about the five rules of manhood.

And I know we're we're I don't not leaving out the girls here, but he writes about the five rules of manhood.

And here's how they go.

Real simple.

Number one, life is hard.

Number two, you're not important.

Number three, your life is not about you.

Number four, you are not in control.

Number five, you're going to die.

Okay?

Alright, but now I'm going to shift these with the help of John Tyson.

He takes these rules and expands them a little bit.

Here's what he says, and I think this will be on the screen for you.

Adulthood is a shift from easy to difficult.

Adulthood is a shift from easy to difficult.

So we we sometimes we're busy with life, and we forget to tell our kids it's not gonna be easy.

It's gonna be tough.

Number two, children care about themselves, but adults care about others.

Number three, you're part of the story, but you're not the whole story.

Number four, life is a shift from control to surrender.

And number five, life is a shift from temporary to eternal.

So what can we walk away with today?

If we're spending thirty, thirty-five Russes preaching maybe forty minutes.

What can you walk away with?

Here's what I want you fathers to hear.

Father with vision.

Father with vision.

Begin with the end in mind.

Begin with the end in mind.

And you say, Russ, I'm on the inside.

You know what?

Whatever time you have left is valuable time that God has given you.

Whether they are in diapers or they are having their own children, God has given you time.

Begin with the end in mind.

Ask these questions.

What do you want your child to know about God?

What do you want your child to know about their self?

And what do you want them to know about life?

I'm telling you, this is important.

What do you want your child to be?

And I'm not talking about a job.

Who do you want them to be?

Character is not developed by accident.

What skills do you want your child to have?

Money management, work ethic, changing attire, reading the Bible.

That probably should have been first.

Writing a thank you note.

And a thank you note is a piece of paper that you would write with your hand and say thank you for the graduation gift.

We've kind of forgotten that art, right?

What formational experiences do you want them to have?

Jill and I talked early on as parents, we said we're gonna take every one of our kids on a trip by themselves and going into adolescence.

And we did, and it, you know, it did the timing wasn't always the same.

I took Josiah to Washington, D.C.

Um, Jill took Abigail to England.

You know.

I think she got the best end of the deal.

She knows she's the favorite, right?

But then I took Caleb to Disney World.

I mean, it was so much fun.

And and it was the experience and the conversation and the investment.

And so what I'm saying is don't go with the flow.

Be intentional about it.

Number two, father and community.

Number one, it's father with vision.

Begin with the end in mind.

Number two, father and community.

Don't go it alone.

You can't, you just can't parent alone.

That's why we need the church.

That's why we need community.

That's why you need to be invested in a community group with people where you can say, would you please pray for our child?

Would you, would you invest in them?

Craig and Tanya Calhoun are not in this service.

They might be in the next service.

But they we would not have, Josiah wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Craig and Tanya Calhoun because I would have killed him.

And I'm joking.

Kind of.

But they just had poured into his life in a tough season.

And we we could not do, we couldn't do life.

I think of what Katie Landris, the investment she makes in the lives of your children.

I think of Jonah.

And I think of people like Caleb Burgess and many others who are pouring their life into Caleb right now as he is a high school student.

And here I want to emphasize this.

If you're a single parent, you're a hero.

You're my hero.

You you you are you are, I mean, what you do is amazing.

You are heroes.

And so our role in the church is to be a father to the fatherless.

Our role in the church is to take care of the widows and the orphans.

Our role in the church, why we do children's ministry, why we do student ministry is to fill in the gaps where there needs to be filling in.

We're to show and demonstrate the love of the Heavenly Father to these children that may or may not have an active father in their life.

And then the third, so father with vision, father in community, and the third, initiate blessing.

Initiate blessing.

It could be a ceremony, it could be a trip, but something for your child that almost ceremonially shows blessing, but it's continual.

It's continual.

I think of the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25, where Esau sells the birthright, he sells the blessing to Jacob.

And I'm telling you, Jacob had made up his mind, I'm gonna get that blessing.

Now that story is full of deceit and dishonesty, but it shows me how desperate children are for a blessing.

Last summer, my daughter Abigail, she turned 21 this past week.

And so last summer she worked at our kids have all gone to a camp called Strong Rock Camp up in outside of Cleveland, Georgia.

Um all of them have gone to that camp, you know, in their adolescent uh years, and and and Abigail went back to work as like a head counselor last summer.

And it was a hard summer for her.

There was this particular couple of weeks where she had to initiate two counselors being sent home, basically being fired.

Can you imagine the pressure for a 20-year-old girl who's never been in charge?

I mean, I when I say that, she has been in charge.

She leads, you know, worship teams and things, she's done some things, but to have that level of responsibility, and if I told you what, why these counselors were sit home, you would even understand the level of darkness that she was around.

And so I was told later, I I uh my wife and I have always just written notes during the summer.

We writ write multiple notes over the summer.

Our kids is there at camp.

It's usually a two-week session.

And so I was told later that Abigail, I just written her a note.

I'm I, sweetie, I love you.

I am praying for you.

I am so proud of you.

And she opened that note at a time where she desperately needed it.

And she went to the office to the girl that she was accountable to, and she's bawling her eyes out, and she says, Read this, read this, read this, read this.

Her daddy had initiated some blessing in her life, and it just emotionally tore her up.

Josiah is 24, just graduated last week from college.

I mean, there's times that he'll just text me.

Probably about six months ago, he texted me.

This is his text.

Are you proud of me?

That's all the text was.

I thought my heart was broken that he had to ask.

I said, Yes, I am proud of you.

I am so proud of you.

And I've since then I'm like, man, I I mean, regularly, I'm sexy, man.

I'm proud of you.

You you are you're a hard worker.

Man, I'm I'm I'm I just I'm I'm so amazed at how God has blessed you with the gifts that He's given you.

Caleb, 17 years old, constantly initiating blessing.

God, you've got, son, you've got the world at your fingertips.

There's no telling what God wants to do with you.

Initiate blessing.

And the Father who follows Jesus is called to lead his children to do the same.

And here's what I want to ask you.

What do you think it would mean for our church if dads got this and started putting this into practice in their life?

Imagine what it would do for the life of our church.

What do you think would happen in our children's ministry?

What do you think would happen in our student ministry?

What do you think would happen as we as a church, as we love the fatherless, as we father with vision, as we understand how parenting has to be done in community and we initiate blessing.

I'm telling you, you want renewal, you want revival, you want to see God pour down the blessing of the Holy Spirit, you want to see the name of Jesus go forward.

You take healthy families that aren't always in need of recovery and healing from brokenness.

Now he can take brokenness and healing, and he can do amazing things through that.

But if we could get this on the front end, we would put all of our energy into taking the gospel into the community and ministering to the broken, to the fatherless, to those that need the blessing from healthy families.

So he's calling us really to lay a foundation.

Fathering basically is a foundation.

It is.

And you can't last week, you know, we honored moms.

Moms are, I mean, you can't raise a child without a mother.

I mean, it's just I'm telling you, if fathers could understand their role, and be intentional.

It changes.

Listen, it doesn't just change a community, it begins to turn a nation back to the Lord.

And I'm telling you, y'all have been getting a bunch of text messages, you've been getting a bunch of cards in the mail saying vote for so-and-so.

Have anybody got been anybody tired of election stuff yet?

Let me tell you, ballots and bullets, they're not going to change the world.

It's fathers who love Jesus and lead their children to do the same.

Let's pray together.

Father, God, I pray for the individuals here this morning that, Father, they simply need Jesus.

They need to say yes to Jesus for the first time in their life.

Understand this good news that Jesus came and he lived and he died and he rose again.

And he did all that for us, so not so we could keep it to ourselves, but that we could be like Timothy and how Paul invested in him, that we would take it and we would um God, we would be entrusted to share it with others who then would be entrusted to share it with others.

Lord, I pray for fathers to have vision.

I pray for fathers to be connected in community, and I pray for fathers to initiate blessing in the lives of their children.

God, would you change individuals this morning?

And as a result, God, would you change an entire family?

And so, Father, as you change a family, would you change a church?

And so, God, as you change a church, would you change a generation and a community?

And Father, as you change a generation and a community, God, would you change a nation?

And Father, as you change a nation, would you fulfill your mission to share the good news with the entire world?

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.