"Daddy Tried" (I)

select quotes from Tim Bayly's 

Daddy Tried: 

Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood

“We have not been glorified yet. We are being sanctified. We are being made holy, but it’s a long and winding and painful road. That’s the nature of the life of faith. A Christian is a man who, by faith, has committed himself to failing in the right direction.”

“God faulted Adam for listening to his wife and following her into sin (Gn 3:17). Adam was the head of his wife, but their relationship got flipped upside down when Eve led and Adam followed. Eve’s superior became her subordinate. He listened to her voice and followed her into sin. God’s progression is straightforward: God commands Adam. Then Adam himself obeys and leads his wife into obedience. Together they honor the Father through obedience to His Word, and thus Satan is defeated.”

“Fathers who despise God’s Fatherhood inevitably abdicate their responsibilities: they do not provide, they fail to protect, they do not lead their wives and children into the safety of righteousness, and what happens? Women pick up the pieces. Yet it’s hard for woman to do the work and bear the responsibility God delegated to man. By divine design, woman is unsuited to the authority and responsibility God placed in man by His order of creation.”

“When we love as fathers, our love must be like the love of God. We are not to wait to love our wife, sons, and daughters until they prove their love for us. If we did this, we would be lying about the character of our heavenly Father. ‘But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Rom 5:8)… Don’t make your love for your wife and kids conditional on their love for you. Love them like God has loved you, while you were still His enemy.”

“Fathers are to love their wives and children with tenderness. We are to take into account the weakness of our wives since they are the ‘weaker vessel’ and tend toward ‘fear’… A tender husband does not make fun of his wife’s weaknesses or fears. He doesn’t dwell on failures that are the result of her weakness as if each of those failures is the result of a lack of submission or respect for her husband. He doesn’t ask her to lift the other side of the refrigerator or crawl under the lawn mower with him. He doesn’t ask her to be the one to call and haggle with the cable company over the increase in the bill. He doesn’t ask her to picket the abortuary to satisfy his conscience without dirtying his own hands. He doesn’t ask her to write the letter to the pastor asking him to shore up the biblical content or applications in his sermons. He doesn’t spend all the family’s money and demand she work to keep them solvent. He doesn’t leave her alone among pagans at the dinner table of the family reunion while he goes to the bedroom and reads a book. He doesn’t demand sexual intimacy during that time of month or late in pregnancy.”

“Discipline without tenderness is intolerable and will drive your sons and daughters to exasperation, bitterness, sarcasm, cynicism, and despair. You must not do that, and to protect against it you must spend more time with your sons and daughters. More time doesn’t mean sitting in front of the computer screen or television with them. It means time listening. It means holding them in your arms and scratching their back and tousling their hair and wrestling with them on the floor. It means taking walks with them and asking them what they’re looking forward to—and if it’s something you promised you would do with them, it means doing what you promised, and not delaying it.”

“The jealousy of God is a wonderful truth, but why spend time on it in a book on fatherhood? Because God commands us to put no idol before Him and one of the biggest idols in the Christian church today is the family. Of course, the Word of God commands husbands to love their wives and wives their husbands, fathers and mothers to love their children and children to love and obey their fathers and mothers; and so on. Still, we are not fully biblical until we face and obey God’s command that we never put our wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, or daughters in the place of God. It’s impossible to misunderstand Jesus on this. He put it bluntly [in Luke 14:26] and it’s as difficult for us to listen to His words today as it was for His disciples two thousand years ago… God will not tolerate us putting our sons and daughters above Him in our honor and love.”

“As a father you must teach your children that only God is God. You, their beloved father, most certainly are not God. Nor are you ever to displace God in their love, allegiance, and obedience. How to teach this precious truth? Well, there’s no better way than to confess your own sins to your family and ask their forgiveness. Pop the balloon of your great dignity as their Christian father. Or maybe more to the point, pop the myth your dear wife has inculcated in your children, that Daddy is the best daddy in the world and they should adore him. Bunk, and double bunk!”

“To make a Christian home, it’s not enough to simply put a man and a woman together—rather than, say, two homosexual men or two lesbian women. It’s not enough to stay faithful to your wife and not abandon her for younger flesh. It’s not enough to belong to a conservative Christian church and have your children in a Christian school or home-school them. It’s not enough to read the Bible in the morning and do devotions at night. To have your children in a Wednesday night Awana program. It’s not enough for your children to know the Westminster Shorter Catechism. A Christian home is made by a father who teaches his children, ‘the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and we must love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our might’ (Dt 6:4-5).”