A Quick Note: This article is adapted from a post I wrote last year for Providence Church. You can read the original article here.
Like so many dads, I will never forget the first time I held my son. I had dreamed of the moment for so long. I had always wondered what it would feel like to finally meet Caleb. Then, suddenly, a nurse wrapped up my baby boy, handed him over to me, and exclaimed, “Here you go, Daddy!”
I was terrified.
It was the first moment I truly felt the weight of fatherhood. I quickly realized how dependent this 7 pound, 3 ounce child was on my ability to provide for him. He was helpless, and he was looking to me for everything.
Beyond feeding him, keeping a roof over his head, and changing his diapers, there was a spiritual weight, too. If God is our Heavenly Father, Caleb’s relationship with me would be his first impression of God’s love for him. I felt this pressure to be a perfect picture of God’s love in the way I care for Caleb, discipline him, and push him to become a man after God’s heart. I determined that I would never fail at this task.
Fast forward 12 years and much has changed. Caleb is in middle school, his little brother is in kindergarten, and I often fight feelings of guilt and regret.
When Caleb was little, I used to take him out every Tuesday night to eat dinner and play on the playground. But after a while, I became less consistent with those times. He became a preschooler and developed his own personality. Like every child, that personality came with some rough edges and I wouldn’t always respond lovingly to them. As he went into kindergarten, I took a job that began to encroach on my time with the family. After a while, I was coming home right before the boys’ bedtimes, often tired, stressed, and barely there.
If I had set out to be a perfect picture of God’s fatherly love, I was doing a pretty terrible job. Every Father’s Day, I could only see how undeserving I was of any praise. I saw all the missed opportunities to be intentional. All the moments I responded in anger. All the times I failed to model Christlike love.
What Your Kids Really Need
It’s hard to be a dad and not feel like this sometimes. The habits we form over time often fail to meet the standards we set out to meet. We come home from long days at work and check out instead of engaging. We respond to whining in anger instead of thoughtful correction. And then we come to a day like Father’s Day, hear the typical sermon about how important our role is, and immediately wonder if any changes we might make now are simply too little, too late.
But dads, your kids don’t need your perfection. They need your honest, daily response to the gospel. You will never be a perfect picture of God’s fatherly love for your kids but you can be a beautiful picture of the gospel at work.
You are more like the child you are trying to disciple than the Creator you are trying to point him towards. Like your infant, you’re completely dependent on the one who created you. Like your toddler, you throw fits when you don’t get your way. Like your teenager, you instinctively act selfishly.
You can’t perfectly model Christlike love, but you can model a gospel-centric response to failure. More than anything else, the best thing you can offer your child is an authentic picture of faith in action.
Model It
In Deuteronomy 6, God commands the Israelites,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Notice the bolded line: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.”
It’s not enough to simply surround our kids with spiritual content. They have to see what it looks like for the truths of God’s Word to penetrate hearts. That can’t be explained. It has to be modeled. Nothing you ever do to disciple your kids will land deeper than showing how your relationship with the Lord intersects with your daily life.
As a result, I’ve learned to stop hiding or defending my imperfections from my boys. Instead, I’ve learned to use them as teaching moments. After a recent outburst with Caleb, I came to his room and simply told him, “You were out of line. It was inexcusable. But you deserved more from your dad than you got from me tonight. I’m very sorry.”
His defensiveness about his own disrespect immediately melted away as he confessed his wrongdoing back to me. By showing him that I’m a spiritual child in need of forgiveness and grace, he was able to admit the same. This realization has brought a new dimension to my relationship with my boys. Moments like these have even led to conversations about idolatry and the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives as we explore the heart issues underneath our behavior.
Recently, Caleb asked me about what led us to our church. I was able to share how I had allowed my ministry to take priority over the family, how that wasn’t okay, and how it wasn’t possible for me to correct that where I had been serving. For that reason, alongside others, we saw a change was necessary. God opened the door for me to come on staff at Providence, recalibrate my priorities, and make the family my first ministry once again.
Take Heart
Dad, if you look back on your performance with a sense of regret or shame, be encouraged. You serve a sovereign God who can redeem even your failures and wasted opportunities. It isn’t your job to model perfect love with no room for error. Your job is to model honest faith. Let the gospel shape your relationship with your kids in the same way it shapes any other relationship. Confess where confession is needed. Show your children what true repentance looks like as you pursue Christ. When you fail, model for them how a man after God’s heart moves forward.
Show them how these commands are written on your heart so they can see what it looks like to be written on their hearts.
