Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Crema Chaj Podcast.
[00:00:06] Wow.
[00:00:08] Happy Father's Day. If you are a father, it actually should be Men's Day. Okay?
[00:00:16] Ladies have Mother's Day and Ladies Day.
[00:00:20] So from this day forth, let it be known that Father's Day and Men's Day. Okay. In Cromer Church. So I trust you're having a good day. I actually. I saw someone post something made me laugh, and it said, and when you ask me what I'm doing today, if I say nothing, that does not mean I'm free.
[00:00:45] That means I'm doing nothing. Okay? So on Wednesday, be. Feel free to do nothing.
[00:00:53] And if you can get away with it.
[00:00:57] Now, we often have this idyllic view of family life.
[00:01:04] The mother is always beautiful with hair flowing, never a hair out of place. I know. Obviously that's true for every lady here. The father is playing with the children, and the children are just running around laughing. There's no mud because mud never gets on their clothes. And the kids are perfect.
[00:01:24] This is not real life.
[00:01:27] That's Hollywood, okay? That's what we see on the films. Families go through stuff, and the ones that survive have a good foundation. Jesus says, the wise man built his house upon the rock of Jesus Christ. So that's what I. That's what I want to talk about. And I want to read. I want to read three sets of scriptures for you this morning. So why don't you stand again? We're going to read and find your Bibles. Find Joshua, find Joshua, chapter 24.
[00:02:01] And we're going to go from verse 14.
[00:02:04] Okay?
[00:02:07] Now, therefore, fear the Lord. Serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.
[00:02:19] Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
[00:02:42] So the people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. And for the Lord our God is he who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went among the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites who dwelt in the land. We also Will serve the Lord, for he is our God.
[00:03:17] And then flip over a few a number of pages to Proverbs, Proverbs 5.
[00:03:23] And we're going to read from verse 18.
[00:03:29] Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth as a loving deer and a graceful doe. Let her breast satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love.
[00:03:45] And then we're going to flip over into Matthew and we're going to read Matthew, chapter 6, verse 33.
[00:03:56] But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.
[00:04:09] Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
[00:04:13] Amen. Take a seat.
[00:04:15] Okay, here we go.
[00:04:19] Can I first make a confession? I never really wanted to be a father.
[00:04:26] I wanted a wife, but I didn't really want to go with all the responsibilities that go with it. I felt that children, on the whole, would be way too much work.
[00:04:37] In fact. I know, it's shocking, isn't it? I'm just being transparent, right? I know there's no other man in this room that felt the same. In fact, one of our first arguments that Juliet and I had actually just before we got married was I said, well, I don't really want kids. And she said, what?
[00:04:54] What do you mean? So she renegotiated and we renegotiated that we would. We would get married and, and we would wait five years before we had children. Unfortunately, she didn't read the small print and it was five minutes.
[00:05:09] Because Joel was conceived within the first month of marriage, okay? And I was in shock.
[00:05:18] And actually, that is the story of our married life. I've spent most of our married life just in shock, just trying to keep up with everything that's going on.
[00:05:31] They all think I'm kidding, right?
[00:05:33] You see, being married and indeed being a father has dealt with my selfishness, my self centeredness.
[00:05:45] You see, I was perfect until I got married, okay? Because I was king of my castle.
[00:05:53] Now I have no castle. And.
[00:05:55] And then I had to live with someone else and think of someone else.
[00:06:03] And then when children came, it was even worse because we both had to lay down our lives to raise the children.
[00:06:10] Now, what do you have to understand is this has always been God's plan as a man and woman come together and as they have children, he would use this whole journey and experience to transform us from being egocentric to being God centric, to deal with our selfishness and to move us to an absolute reliance upon him.
[00:06:38] Now, let me just correct myself. Let me just say I absolutely have loved being a father. It has been the best thing ever.
[00:06:48] I just didn't know I would.
[00:06:51] And the truth is, I wasn't even sure if I was going to be a good one.
[00:06:56] But what I have found is that being a father, the biggest difficulty is the multitasking of being a good husband and a good father. Because when I'm concentrating on being a good husband, I would forget the children.
[00:07:15] And there was. I mean, there was again, I'm just confessing some of the things that happened. I remember getting back from church one day, and there was a bang on the door. And it was our neighbor, and she said, I think your daughter is locked in your car.
[00:07:28] And what we'd done is, we got back from church, we were all in a hurry. I'd pressed the lock button, and she actually hadn't got out yet. So she's banging on the window, you know, oh, you know, oh, what kind of parents am I? You know, or I would have all my attention on the children. You know, one of the greatest things, you know, when the children just start getting a little bigger, and you have a buggy, and you have a buggy for the little one, and then there's a skateboard that you can get that fits on the back of the buggy for a slightly bigger one. Now, what happens is, if you're on a hill and you, as the dad, stands on the skateboard as well, we are going, I can still hear today Juliet yelling at me. You are so irresponsible.
[00:08:11] And she was in the distant future, as I completely forgot about her. And me and the kids were having a great fight.
[00:08:17] It's the multitasking that's the problem.
[00:08:20] And I learned really early on in married life that men and women are very, very different, okay? And anyone that tells you they're not just not telling you the truth, right? And I learned this while I was watching tv, because I'd come in and we were actually newly married. And as I said, you know, five minutes had gone past, so Joel was on the way, and we'd be sitting in front of the tv, and Juliet would ask me, what are you thinking?
[00:08:49] To which I would answer, nothing.
[00:08:52] And she'd go, don't be so ridiculous. You must be thinking something. Just tell me. Tell me. And she was getting quite agitated. And I'm going, no, you don't understand. Right at this moment, the lights are on, but no one is home, okay? My head is completely Empty. And she's going, no, really, I'm saying, really, I'm not thinking about the kids. You know, what we're going to feed the kids or what we're going to do with anything. My head is completely empty. I am at peace.
[00:09:20] Leave me alone.
[00:09:22] See, we are very, very different, right?
[00:09:28] But my biggest fear as a father was, will I be a good one?
[00:09:32] You know, I mean, and you hear it all the time, don't you? People talking about good fathers and bad fathers.
[00:09:38] But I don't think there's such a thing as good fathers and bad fathers, just fathers. Okay? This is fathers and children. And, you know, you can be a good father and have bad children.
[00:09:48] Yeah, you see, you can have children. We never talk about that. Children can be up the wall. You know, some of David's kids you read about, some of David's kids are completely crazy.
[00:09:58] That's why Paul tells children, obey your parents in all things, for it's well and pleasing to the Lord.
[00:10:05] See, we're just fathers. We're just doing our best. And some, you know, you have different circumstances, different lives, and you're learning to walk with the Lord. And, you know, I'm probably going to offend a few things I say today, but what's new, most of the people are going to get offended, have gone.
[00:10:24] You see, I believe that men need to be more masculine, that women need to be more feminine, and the children need to be more innocent in this age because God is redefining family life.
[00:10:42] And I'm saying it again, there's no such thing as a good or bad father, just fathers. And what I want to really quickly say is that as I look back, and I can look back now on being a father and a husband, I think there are three things that are really, really important. The first one is, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua tells us to choose who we're going to serve, the gods of this land or the Lord who led you out of Egypt. And Egypt always means a freedom from slavery whenever the. The Bible talks about that. And so right at the beginning, Julia and I made a decision. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord no matter what it means.
[00:11:25] We would honor his ways and be in his presence. And when difficult decisions come, we would inquire of the Lord. In fact, when any decision comes, we would inquire of the Lord. We do nothing without inquiring of the Lord, expecting to hear him speak to us or a prophetic word to confirm, because we want to serve him, we want to do what he wants. We have never bought a house or changed our job or made a financial plan without inquiring of the Lord.
[00:11:57] And his church has always been central to where we live. I have always lived where his church is, not where my job is.
[00:12:07] That has always governed my life. I want to be where his people and where he's called me to worship. And that was before I led a church because obviously I have to live here now, but I chose where I lived by his church.
[00:12:21] But I want you to notice what Joshua says. As for me and my house, it's never an individual decision.
[00:12:27] It is the house that serves the Lord. Which means that I as the husband and the father need to be present. Now look, you will. If you've been around here anytime, you'll joke, you'll hear me joke, you know that. You know, I make all the big decisions in our marriage and Juliet makes all the little decisions in our marriage. It's just we haven't had any big decisions yet, you know.
[00:12:48] But I'm just kidding, right?
[00:12:52] What I really mean is we make the decisions together of our household. You see, to serve the Lord, I need to be present. And it's really tempting for dads and husbands to go, oh, just sort the children out.
[00:13:12] You just do that and I'll do this, but it isn't us thing.
[00:13:17] We need a present. And you know, when fathers are present, children do much better at school because both parents. Children are less likely to get into trouble when fathers are present.
[00:13:31] You know, girls marry good men because their fathers tell them they're beautiful and they don't have to go elsewhere to look for affirmation.
[00:13:39] Boys find purpose because they see destiny in their father's life.
[00:13:44] You know, they see you love your wife, so they get a good understanding of how men honor and love women.
[00:13:51] They worship Jesus because they see you worshiping Jesus, the head of the household.
[00:13:59] You know, it's so easy to let the Bible reading, you know, and the prayers before bed, your bedtime with kids go. One of the best things we found was the Lions children's Bible. I took a picture, they've got it in the kids. As you can see, this is a well used one and we had it on tape. Now some of you don't even know what tape is, but my hunch is you can download it. But I remember our kids going to bed listening to the Bible stories and they have all different age ranges of this and we would just go through and tell the stories and the pictures are probably not Cool. But they're the stories of the Bible about the heroes in the Bible. And we would read it and talk to them about it. And I want to really encourage you. And you know, look, you might go, well, we've never done that. Well, start this, start now. And you go, well, they're teenagers. We'll just get a bigger Bible. You know, you start wherever you are. You don't use that one.
[00:14:57] Okay. But just start to start to do something together. Talking about the Lord and sharing as a household.
[00:15:11] You see, it's really important that our children see us loving Jesus. They get a good work ethic because they see their dad tired. Now, remember, it's man's day today. I'm talking to men. And you go, what do you mean? Well, in Genesis 3:19, in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. You know, it's really good for kids to see sweat in your face, to see that. Actually, sometimes we have to work really hard just to put the bread on the table.
[00:15:40] And they learn from that. And then discipline is shared. You know, your father is coming home and oh, okay.
[00:15:50] Because why? Because discipline is shared in the household. Fathers, the greatest gift you can give your family is being put present.
[00:15:59] Now, you may be here today and you go, yeah, but the father's already gone.
[00:16:05] Well, the wonderful thing about the community of the church is there are fathers in the church.
[00:16:11] And God has a way of healing that. And what I've seen again and again is families kind of uniting with other families and the fathers speaking in those families. But I'm speaking like this not to make you feel bad, but to all you young guys that are going to become fathers, be present.
[00:16:34] It's the greatest gift you can give your family. The second thing I want to say is rejoice in the wife of your youth. You see, the multitasking is so important. We are fathers and husbands. You cannot separate the job description. The temptation for men is to do one or the other. You know, guilty as charged. But for me, it felt more like a pendulum swinging. It felt more like a rhythm. I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a husband. And what I've seen the devil try to do is to break a rhythm.
[00:17:08] And when he breaks the rhythm, you're in one or the other instead of this. This is where I live. I mean, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a husband. And you're walking with that. And you know, one of the ways he breaks men's rhythm is he takes their honor from them.
[00:17:27] You see, men respond to honor.
[00:17:31] And, you know, one of the reasons. And again, don't throw anything at me. But one of the reasons the Bible says to women, don't nag, don't nag your husband is because it doesn't work.
[00:17:43] How many of you tried nagging?
[00:17:45] Does it work? Has it ever worked? It's like, you know, it's like the definition of insanity. Keep doing the same thing, expecting to get a different outcome, you know, but men actually respond to honour. And look on so many levels. I'm a terrible husband and father. You know, I'm not a new man. I'm a dinosaur. I didn't want to be in the delivery room. I wanted. I was, you know, I mean, who would want to be in there?
[00:18:21] I mean, I know it's really cool, you know, I'm gonna be with my wife and we're gonna see this.
[00:18:26] It was horrible.
[00:18:29] Horrible. I remember the nurse saying to me, I don't think she's gonna. She's gonna be a while. You can go home. You never see them get home so quick. And at 6:00 clock next morning, I've got this really cross. Juliet. I know.
[00:18:41] Get here now.
[00:18:43] I'm just having a good night's sleep. I've been up all night.
[00:18:47] So I'm a dinosaur, okay?
[00:18:51] I don't like doing the washing up, so I got a dishwasher. I don't, you know, I don't mean her.
[00:18:57] Just to be clear. I don't like. I'm not very good at. I'm not very good at cleaning.
[00:19:02] I don't cook meals. I don't think I've ever cooked a meal. I think we did once. You know, I hate shopping. I'm not very tidy. I slept through the children crying at night. It was amazing. This sleep would come over me and they could be screaming and I'm like, lord, I love you.
[00:19:19] I've never had so much communion with the Lord and I often forget to buy Juliet flowers. I'm a dinosaur. But help me here, because I may not get out of here alive.
[00:19:37] I work really hard and there's often sweat on my brow.
[00:19:43] There is no porn in my life.
[00:19:46] I love my wife. My wives do not wander.
[00:19:50] I have been faithful. I love Jesus with a passion. I will do anything for my children and I will lead my household humbly in the ways of the Lord.
[00:20:03] Now, listen, everyone's looking for the perfect man.
[00:20:08] He wakes up at 5am every day, exercises daily Makes his own bed, cleans his room, does not indulge in any kind of nightlife, works sincerely, does not touch alcohol, helps in the kitchen, is always punctual, prays daily, reads books and goes to bed at 9pm sharp. Do you know where you find those men? In jail.
[00:20:46] But rather husbands and fathers.
[00:20:53] Be the kind of man your wife and children can honour.
[00:20:59] I said at the beginning, it's time to return a masculinity where men lead in the ways of the Lord.
[00:21:07] They are courageous in faith and they're never scared to lift up holy hands before the Lord. Then your wives will obey you and your children will honor you. Not because you demand it, but because you carry it.
[00:21:22] It's the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And then finally, 3. Seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness. And all these things shall be added to you. You know, I think as a father and husband, the biggest pressure I've had on my life has been finance. How do I take care of my family? How do I carry this burden?
[00:21:41] These are just a few things I've learned. All right? My presence is better than money.
[00:21:46] Every single time.
[00:21:49] When I get my giving right, the Lord provides.
[00:21:54] So when I'm. I. When. When my. My focus is on him and I got my giving right to him, the provision of God kicks in. We're going to talk a little bit about this over the summer. I think I. Because I think the Lord wants to not only provide houses, but do some financial miracles. We make decisions together and are not scared to take risks. We call that faith.
[00:22:20] Okay? So we're not fearful in our family life. We take risks together, but we've made the decisions.
[00:22:31] We don't live beyond our means, okay? So we always live within our means.
[00:22:38] If things go wrong, we brush ourselves down and start again, learning from our mistakes, but aware there is still a miracle to come that is only just around the corner. And we don't blame each other. We just. Things don't work out, we've taken a risk, we've given it a go. Just brush ourselves down. Get up. We're going to go for it again.
[00:23:01] And we don't seek money. Money seeks us.
[00:23:05] Because Jesus leads us into abundant life.
[00:23:09] So the focus of our family is not finance, it's Him.
[00:23:14] When our focus is him, money seeks us.
[00:23:19] Now some of you are just starting out and you've got young children and the bills are all coming in and the car's breaking down and all those things, you're going to go, ah, this is the School of the Holy Spirit. This is life. You see, if this doesn't work and he can't work in real life, then it's not true.
[00:23:41] So he wants to lead us and teach us. And he does that as a family unit. He doesn't teach the father on his own. He doesn't teach the mother on his own. He doesn't teach the children on his own. He takes us as a family. It was always his plan from the beginning. And we learn the ways of God. You see, it is better to be present and seek the Lord than to go after money.
[00:24:04] Because the Lord is our provider.
[00:24:07] And we are called to. Men are called to be husbands and fathers. And as we walk with him in faith, he will release the provision. And he wants to teach us how to walk in his provision.
[00:24:23] So what am I saying to you this morning?
[00:24:27] Fathers, husbands, lead your household in the ways of the Lord.
[00:24:32] Learn them yourself and lead them in his ways and do it together. Rejoice in the wife of your youth, not letting the devil break your rhythm of being a father and a husband. You can't be one or the other. You have to be both. And if you feel your rhythm is broken, run to the Lord to restore that rhythm.
[00:24:55] When you seek first the kingdom, all these things you need will be added unto you.
[00:25:01] And the Bible says the fruit of this lifestyle is that your wife will honor you and your children will obey you.
[00:25:10] You see, I'm pleased for Father's Day because every year we can remind ourselves what we are about.
[00:25:19] And remember, men and women are very different.
[00:25:23] But a man who leads his house in the ways of the Lord is due honor.
[00:25:30] So we get to celebrate. Men, husbands, fathers, to say, you know, every dad here.
[00:25:48] I want you to go away from this place hearing the voice of the Lord. Well done, son.
[00:25:56] I am well pleased with you. And if you go. Yeah, but you don't. I messed up here and I messed up here. Just remember, there are just fathers.
[00:26:07] And you know what, sons?
[00:26:10] One day you're going to be a father.
[00:26:13] And your dad may not have met your expectations. Daughters, your dad might not have always met your expectations.
[00:26:22] I want to really encourage you to forgive them.
[00:26:27] But be determined that you will walk in the ways of the Lord and you will know the ways of the Lord.
[00:26:37] And men, there is a return to biblical masculinity where you are not scared to stand at the front of church and lift up holy hands in prayer to the Lord. Because when you do that, heaven hears. I'm not decry. Yeah, I mean, I'm not decrying you, ladies. This is Men's Day, remember? We'll do you a Mother's Day. But there is something special that when men lift up their hands before the Lord and pray, heaven hears.
[00:27:14] Thanks for listening to the Cromer Charge Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.
