Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and I've been talking about parenting, starting with the last episode and how to begin with the right foundation. Now, in this series, I promised to cover a biblical framework. I did that already. If you haven't listened, go back. First episode will do that. Today we're talking about the importance of strong fathers. Then we're going to talk about the impact of godly mothers, also why gentle parenting is a total failure, how to discipline your children biblically in love and more. Now, I don't promise all your kids are going to be perfect if we do all of these things, because no parents and no kids are perfect. But I do promise you are, because this series, going to feel more equipped, more encouraged, and sharpened in the high calling of raising up the next generation. My wife and I, we have six kids. We're in the trenches with you. And I'll tell you this all of us need God's word, and all of us need God's grace. So let's talk about how to be a strong father and in that the kind of father children need that God has called you to be. A fatherhood is one of the most weighty callings that God entrusts to a man of God. Scripture does not ever treat children as neutral, like they'll just kind of make it, or they're self-guided beings. They just need time to grow and then they'll automatically turn out okay. They're souls in need of shepherding. They are hearts bent towards folly. We talked about that a little bit last time, laid the foundation. They're sinners and we need to point them to the Savior. And their lives are profoundly shaped by the authority and the affection of their fathers. That's strength, authority, and affection, both truth and love. There was a study done several years ago that found obviously two-parent households have the best success rate and they'll have children not involved with crime, leading generally healthy lives. But there was this finding about fathers that was really fascinating. Again, two-parent households, higher percentage of them are going to not end up in crime or prison. They're going to have pretty decent lives. This study, though, found that single-father households did nearly as well as the two-parent ones. And they did vastly better than single mother households. Why? Certainly not a knock on single moms. There's so many single moms out there who have been left, abused, and abandoned by men who weren't rising to the calling that God had given them. And so now they are those we need to minister to in the church. But just brass tacks of this. Fatherhood is a key factor in the world. And by the way, most Christian single mothers who have been abandoned by a man who wasn't being a man of God will tell you the same thing. They need, they desire a father for their children. Now, our wives are incredible. You moms, you're a gift. But God has ordained fathers to be a kind of X factor in a home. Therefore, you see scripture put a premium on fatherhood and God calling fathers to take an active role in the lives of their children. God doesn't just command fathers to go make money or just kind of manage the behavior of the children, or since we, you know, we've we've made our children materially cared for and bought them the things, you know, that that's I've done my job. No. A father is called to shape worship, cultivate wisdom, and aim their children like an arrow being fired out of the quiver toward the fear of the Lord. Fathers are responsible for forming the spiritual climate of the home. Around our parts, I lead a men's Bible study every Tuesday out here at our church at 6 a.m. Every Tuesday, you know, 80 to 100 men gather together. And we always use this illustration for our time together. Men are the thermostat, women are the thermometer. Fathers in a home are the thermostat. The children and the wife, they're the thermometer. The thermometer is merely revealing the temperature set in the home by the thermostat. Fathers, you are the influencer of your children in a remarkable way. How do we do that? Every word, every moment of discipline, even your silence is teaching them something. Biblical fatherhood is about careful, intentional shepherding, where you, as a man of God, are under God's authority and then you're ministering to your children. John MacArthur once said this: the father is to be the spiritual leader in the home, not by intimidation or anger, but by godly example, loving instruction, and consistent discipline. Early church father John Chrysostom wrote about the importance of strong fathers and the priority of godliness in our fathers, saying this: let everything take second place to our care of our children, our bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So fathers are pivotal. Now I want to keep us in Deuteronomy like the last episode, but apply this to fathers with just a few key points that you can take away and apply today. This is what our children need. Number one, a father who knows the Lord. A father who knows the Lord. Deuteronomy chapter chapter six, verses four to five says, Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one. And then you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. Just stop right there. Before Moses ever addresses children, he addresses the heart of the parent. And no doubt speaking to fathers. The command to love God is not first given to kids. It's given to the covenant community led by men who were responsible for their households. So that establishes a very critical truth. You cannot shepherd children towards a God you don't first love. So it starts with your relationship with God. And so shepherding is about discipleship and discipling children to know and love the God you love. Children are disciples and students, and fathers are teachers by their actions far more than their words. I remember a mentor of ours often saying, it's not do as I say, Costi, it's not going to be that. It's going to be do as you do. They're going to follow and learn by watching you. And so dads got to ask themselves, okay, what moves me? What angers me? What excites me? What do they see me sacrificing for? Where does my time and my money and my energy go? That's what they'll say is a priority. And so if God and the kingdom of God is a peripheral in the father's life, he will be optional in the child's life. If God is central and weighty and he's treasured, children might wrestle with these things, but they will never mistake what dad truly values. Biblical fatherhood then does not begin with the metrics of the world and techniques and what you give and what you make and how you are and what kind of car you drive and how you roll up. And it's like, yeah, I'm the man. Look what I've provided. No, no, no. It begins with your relationship with God. If you are a 10 in the bank, but a zero when it comes to the things of God, you are failing, Christian Father. You need to hear that. So do I. And it doesn't matter for me as a pastor if I've got a big church and a bunch of people showing up and we're reaching lots of people online and I'm not discipling my children. I'm bankrupt. It doesn't matter. And so I think sometimes as men, we use these external metrics and it makes us feel good and it kind of feeds the ego. And it's this thing we use to really make up for what's not happening in the home. Well, I'm somebody out there. Well, listen, if you're not faithful in there, like in the home, you're missing it completely. Your children need a father who loves God. Number two, a father who internalizes the truth. A father who internalizes the truth. Where am I getting that from? Well, in Deuteronomy chapter 6, you've got verse 6. It says, These words which I'm commanding you today shall be on your heart. You gotta notice the order. The words must be on the father's heart before it can ever be pressed into the child's mind. Fathers set the tone. You are the resident theologian, you're the pastor of the home, you're the shepherd of the family flock. If you teach your sons about Bitcoin and baseball and how to flip real estate homes and how to be this and how to be that and what to do with this, but you do not teach them the word of God, you have not given them the most important investment you ever can. They've not got the inheritance that can't be stolen from this world. And God never commands fathers to outsource the spiritual formation of the home. He commands fathers to embody it. These words I'm commanding you, they'll be on your heart. Now, I want to say something here and I want to answer an important question. How do you navigate being behind the curve? I know I've been there. Lots of men in my life, my friends, our church, guys that I roll with, we we've all been there, and some guys are there. And we just get really honest together and go, all right, my wife is outpacing me. She's ahead of me. Uh, my children need something from me that I don't think I can give them. I don't know theology. I don't know the Bible. I know these other things. And that's good, brother. I'm glad you're passing them on important life skills. But here's the deal: you got to grow. And so, what are some ways that you can begin to increase your pace? Number one, outsourcing your own discipleship and growth so you can fill up to pour out. You're gonna need to go get help. You're gonna need to talk to your pastor. You're gonna need to get discipled. You're gonna need to join a Bible study. You're gonna need to spend as much time, like if you're into some aspect of business, and you know how you are, I'm the same way. You go all in on something and you just obsess. It's like tunnel vision, boom, and you want to become an expert on it. Well, you're gonna need to do that spiritually because the investment into your children is even more important than the investment into your 401k, the market, real estate, or anything else. Your children are your legacy. That's what you leave behind. Money will come and go. The spiritual deposit, that's eternal. Number two, you need to leverage the local church as a supplement for your kids. And so that helps to bridge the gap while you grow. People ask, you know, why do you have a children's ministry and a church? I think we should all be in the sanctuary together and family integrated, and the kids should be in there too. Absolutely. We're all for that. We have a lot of families that come to the main service with their children. We also have families, and I do the same thing. My kids will go to both, and people's children will go to a children's ministry to help the children grow as well and learn things, but it also gives mom and dad an opportunity to lock in without distraction because it is go time. It's like bringing your child to the gym. And the difference is, you know, having them with you for your training session is going to require you to pay a little more attention to them. You can't get as full or as hard of a lift as if you maybe leave them with your husband or wife and you guys take turns or you check them into the little, you know, play area at the gym in the same way, but at the church is not no play area, at least at our church. You're not checking them into Disneyland to goof around for an hour while you get the word, they're gonna get what you're getting, but in an age-appropriate way. So there's nothing wrong with that. In today's culture, we don't have just a perfectly mature church world. A children's ministry, done right biblically, can be a great place to add a little bit of supplementation to come alongside parents while the family grows up. And all of a sudden, one day, it's not that children's ministry is essential and the church has to get your kid to heaven. No, it became a kind of injection, you know, a spiritual TRT that gave you what you needed during that time where you were more depleted and a little behind the curve. Third, you got to embrace your need to grow rather than hiding it. You got to get honest. And I would get honest with my kids. I would do the same thing. And I have, by the way, even as a pastor, I'm not perfect. I'm not on some pedestal. I've sat down with my kids before and my wife and said, guys, you know, we need to talk as a family. These are these areas, these are the areas dad needs to grow in. This is what I'm working on and what I need Christ's help with, because you're modeling that you need the gospel that you preach to them. And so, brother, it's okay to say to your family, hey, we've been in a really shallow church for the last like five or six years. Dad's playing some catch up. Hey, I didn't know what I didn't know, but now I do. And so, game on, guys. I want to grow. So will you be praying for me and encouraging me and I want to do the same for you? And you're modeling for them even what it looks like to catch up spiritually. And God will honor that. The bottom line is a man cannot give what he does not possess. And so if you don't know the word of God, you can't lead by the word of God. A father that goes through religious motions without religious affections, as Jonathan Edwards often called them, he will raise children who see faith as just a performance, not an actual reality. And so you're going to need to shepherd your children. This requires some things. Number one, regular exposure to scripture. Number two, personal repentance. Number three, visible obedience. They actually see you doing it too. And number four, a living example of submission to the word of God. Your children will be blessed by a father who says, I am under the authority of God's word. They don't need a perfect father. They just need an earthly father who is repentant and word-governed and submissive to his heavenly father. Finally, number three, they need a father who fosters lifestyle discipleship. Your children and mine need a father who fosters lifestyle discipleship. Verses seven to nine, you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and you'll talk of them, these commands. Remember what God says. When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, you will bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You know what this is? It's life-on-life discipleship. God's design is not occasional moments of spirituality that's reserved for Sunday. It's not just church. It's consistently providing a spiritual atmosphere as a lifestyle. And so, as men of God, this teaching that your kids need happens at the table, in the car, at the store, on the camping trip, during times of discipline, in the daily conversations, on the field, in the gym, on the golf course, in the pool, in the hot tub, on the patio, in the yard. It's everywhere. Stop compartmentalizing your discipleship with your children. It's all of life together. So discipleship conversations are just a pattern. You could be watching a movie and hit pause and go, you know, this reminds me of something. Is anybody else kind of picking this up? What do you think this? And all of a sudden you're using a moment in a movie that maybe you don't want to pause the movie. Good, talk after. You could do that over everything. You could see somebody doing something that's really foolish or unwise. And instead of being a family, it's like, what is that guy doing? What a clown. Or some other pejorative. You could say, huh? Wow. And the kids are like, what are they doing? And you go, what do you think about what's happening right now? You know, as you think about God's word, you know, why might that not be something that we want to go and copy? And all of a sudden, instead of judging that person, they're assessing why they live the way they do. And then you might even say, you know, how would you talk to that person if they were your friend? Or if you were right now doing that, how would you think we ought to approach you? Discipleship conversations. That should be normal, not a novelty. A child should never say, Yeah, my dad and I, we don't really talk about those things. Sheparding children means you're interpreting life through the lens of God's truth. Everything is filtered through that lens. You and I, we help our children see why obedience matters, why sin is dangerous, why grace is so good and so necessary, why God is worthy of our trust, why we marry a certain type of woman. I already talked to my sons about this. They're going to be 12 and 8 this year. And we talk about the kind of woman we marry. We talk about why dad married mom. What kind of woman is Christine Hinn? And what are the qualities in woman? What's like a non-starter? Like we're not, I don't care how beautiful she is, how pretty she is, how in shape she is, fellas. Boys, if she acts like this, this, this, and this, we ain't even dealing with it. And I'm already talking to the boys about these things. I don't care if she's pretty, if she's poison. I don't care if she's got the look, if she's a diva. I don't want that for a daughter-in-law. And we have these conversations, same thing with the girls. We talk about why we handle money a certain way, why we do this, why we do that, why we go to war against sin. As the kids age up, you're going to talk about greed and lust and sin and fighting the good fight in today's world, which is loaded and saturated with explicit media. We talk about why the local church is so amazing and why it's an anchor for our spiritual lives and why we love to serve and why we love the people of God. All of that, lifestyle discipleship, they will know who they are. It's about identity. The imagery of binding words to hands and forehead and doorposts, as he goes on in verse 9, you'll write them on your doorposts of your house and your gates, all of that. It emphasizes visibility and centrality. God's truth shapes this city. God's truth shapes this home, this church, this family, his decisions, his thoughts, his will, his direction. That's ours. We're doing what he says. And so that kind of fatherhood is intentional. And so, dads, go ahead and work hard to provide. Yes and amen. Teach your son sports, science, math. Help them excel. Guide your daughters in the way that they should go. Enjoy sports and competition, music, living room cuddles, uh, living room wrestling matches, if you're in our house these days, story time, father-daughter dates, rounds of golf together, long family drives, road trips, chopping wood, shooting stuff, and all of it. Enjoy everything that every life stage affords you. But in all of these glorious moments and memories we're making, remember this: you are called to make disciples. You and I were raising kids who belong to the king so that they will become adults who live for his glory. Take your orders from Christ and be the kind of father your children need. Next episode, I want to talk about the pivotal role that godly mothers play in the life of children. Can't wait to keep going with you. Thanks as always for listening, for watching. Thank you for giving to for the gospel. We are 100% donor-supported. Ministry, by the grace of God, is reaching millions of people every month, and that's in multiple languages as well, including Spanish, all because of faithful friends like you. Your giving is wind in the sails of our working and our labor. So thank you so much. And above all else, thank you for praying. We genuinely believe that prayer is the power source behind all effective gospel ministry. To learn more about for the gospel or to partner with us one time financially or monthly as a gospel patron, and we provide reports for all of that. You can go to forthegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.