Welcome to the inspirational media podcast, Timeless Voices for Today's World. We bring you powerful Bible-based messages from our library of over 300 speakers, offering hope, truth, and encouragement for everyday life. In this episode, John and Paula Sanford explore the profound impact of a father's love, drawing from personal experiences and scriptural insights. They discuss how the presence or absence of a father's affection can shape a person's life often in unseen ways and they highlight the importance of understanding God as our heavenly father. The discussion moves into practical areas such as how forgiveness and healing from past hurts can free us to love others well and how recognizing God's fatherhood can restore our sense of identity and belonging. This conversation offers hope and practical steps for those seeking to understand their own family dynamics or to find healing in relationships. Listen in to discover how embracing the fatherhood of God can bring wholeness and restore broken bonds, making it possible to extend love and grace within our own families and beyond. Let's dive in and hear about some faith that's fresh, wisdom that lasts. Begin of sentence.
Holy Spirit of the Living God, we thank thee for the awesome responsibility placed in our hands of very dear children unto our father God. We confess that in our culture and in our day we have seen the destruction of the father's role in so many ways. We would now see thee, oh Lord, restore from thy word the picture of what the father is. And I thank thee for the many fathers all over the world who are trying with everything that is in them to raise their sons for thee. We pray then that the Holy Spirit may bless them as they listen in Jesus' name. Amen. In previous lectures I stressed very strongly that our children are not our own that they belong to God that they were given to us by God. I also stress strongly that it is not our task to make our children moral. I want to restate that but to qualify it a little. It is not our task to make our children moral for that's God's task. Nevertheless, it is our task to provide the millu in which God can do that. I believe that God holds us responsible to present to our children the kind of environment in which their souls can thrive. I want therefore to read to you something which I think is exceptionally beautiful. This is not in the Bible. It is from the prophet by Khalil Gabbron. This is page 17 and I think it says what I mean in poignant words. And the woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of children." And he said, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may Build them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might, that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness. For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves the bow that is stable. Isn't that a beautiful way of putting it? A basic text for father sons and daughters is from Ephesians 6. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long upon the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Today, we have Sunday schools and we have public schools. I'm glad that we do. But families have too much surrendered to institutions. One thing we should not have. What we have given up is the pilgrim idea that fathers are to train their own children. Too much fathers have been called away from or have abdicated their task. In Bible lands and times, it was always viewed as the father's task to instruct the child in the way of God. It was the mother's task For the first 6 years, when she taught the child as she slept alongside of the child at night, as the child went to sleep, she would instruct the child. The child was not considered weaned until he was 6 years old, because by then, though he was weaned physically at two, by then he would be able to stand on his own feet before God, having been taught by the mother until he was six. Then it became the father's tough from six on up until manhood. to teach the child. Listen to what the word of God says. In each case, this is a father speaking. We begin with the third chapter of Proverbs. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments for length of days and years of life and abundant welfare they give you. The 11th verse of the third chapter. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof. For the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights. Fourth chapter, first verse. Hear, O son, a father's instruction, and be attentive that you may gain insight. For I give thee good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he caught me and said to me, "Let your heart hold fast my words and keep my commandments and live. Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. We see throughout the Bible that it was the task of the fathers to train the children. Well, then let us look at what we can do in this present age. How can fathers again take up what it is to raise their sons mindful of the need for a nurture of the whole being, mind, emotions, and soul? You see what has happened? I began in these lectures by saying that in our culture we have turned to materialism. What has happened is that in too many cases the father's mind and heart have been trained that his task is only to be the bacon bringinger. Consequently, when he brings home the money for the TV and the car, he has no or few handles in his mind to take hold, to give to children any more than mere things. He sees little value in what he believes and thinks. He has in his spirit the hunch that there ought to be more that he is to do. He knows that he ought to be teaching his children something of the Lord. But the Bible is taught in Sunday school or parochial school and there in public school the child is taught to read and write. So he thinks what do I have to teach? The culture has taken away from him the sense that he himself has an eternal soul and a spirit which needs his care and that his son has a soul and a spirit which needs his training. Everything that we are going to be saying in this talk about fathers, sons and daughters has behind it the thought that everything that the father does with the son and with the daughter is itself an implantation from the father to the sons and daughters from his spirit and soul to their spirit and soul. In fact, the strongest thing I could say is that a child will become not what we say but what we are. I watched my father discipline when I was a kid and at the time I thought it was bad. Actually, it was a pretty good way of disciplining. But then as a kid, I didn't like it. So, I made up in my mind a picture that I would not discipline like my father disciplined. I've built in my mind a picture picture. I dreamed up a way I planned to discipline my children. Guess how I disciplined? Just like my father. That's because that is what was written on me. Again and again, I deal in counseling with people who have grown up in broken homes where the way the father treated the mother and the way the father treated the daughters and sons, the way that he treated the entire family became what had been written on the heart of the child. The child then thinks that when he grows up, I am going to live a certain way and he builds a beautiful picture of the way he is going to live with his wife and his children. So does the daughter. She builds a beautiful picture that she is going to live with her husband this way and raise her children that way. She does not do it and he does not do it. What do we do? We do what we have become by living. With our parents, we become what they are. The very most important thing that we can learn about the raising and the nurturing of children is that the real teaching goes on in every moment of our life with them. We are the teaching. You are the medium. You are the teaching. What you do, say, and feel, how you live life is is the teaching not what you or someone else tells or instructs in words. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He meant that he embodied truth. He lived truth for us. He himself is the teaching and the life. By living with him, we become what he is. That is exactly God's plan for fathers and sons. So many People pour words out that a father may think I have nothing to teach. But he is teaching. You are the teaching. Therefore, death of self until the life of Christ in us sets the example for our sons is the key to child raising. Let me show you how this happens in life. Let's begin with fathers and sons and then later we will speak of fathers and daughters. When a child is first conceived, a father Unfortunately, in our non-spiritual culture thinks, now for 9 months, the baby is my wife's business. I got it started. Now, the baby is being formed apart from me in there, and I don't know if it is a boy or if it is a girl. When it comes out, then I can do something about it. Maybe. You see, in our non-spiritual culture, he thinks he has no more to do with the baby until it is born. And that is not So we now know from psychology and from studies of primitive tribes that the baby is affected by the father even while the baby is in the womb. Did you know that in primitive societies and I think this is kind of comical in one culture when the wife knows she's pregnant she goes out into the fields to work. He goes into a hut and stays there quite a while. He believes that he is building his child's temperament by meditation and prayer. Some of us thought that was a superstitious practice. But do you know we have found in debt psychology and many psychiatrists can tell you this that the fetus is very affected by the presence of the father with the mother. The father's presence, his voice near the mother, his cruelty or kindness, sexual advances in Insensitivity or tenderness already affect the baby in the spirit. In a previous lecture, I read to you that scripture in which John the Baptist in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy when Mary came in and in her was Jesus already conceived. How did John the Baptist know that Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb? The Holy Spirit told him, of course. With what mind did John receive? receive that knowledge. John's spirit perceived. The spirit knows and has intelligence within the womb. Thus, the father's presence with the mother is already basic and important. We will have more to say about this and more to tell when we talk about the mother's first months during pregnancy. Suffice it to say that psychologists were not at all crazy when they said that the father's sexual advances and presence in general affect the baby in the womb. Let each father think of what this means, what he should be doing to help form his child in the mother's womb, like gentleness, appreciation, tenderness toward the mother, etc. How his temper and voice may already affect his child in the womb. When the child is born, that child, as I have said in a previous lecture, has already been wounded. He has come out of light into that womb. He has been encased in the darkness of that womb for 9 months. And he has become accustomed to warmth and love inside there. And then in the trauma of pain and blood, he is cast out of that warm womb. And his first breath is a spanking. So he has already been wounded. What has happened is that many fathers say or think, "I have no business with that child." They think the baby doesn't need me. E, they are sometimes embarrassed to change a diaper, you know, embarrassed to hold the child, afraid of the tininess and fragility of the child, afraid they will drop it, feeling clumsy and awkward. Nevertheless, the child needs the father's arms. Already in the first weeks after birth, the child needs the sense of the father's comforting strength. The child sensing the father's presence is learning already in it. first hours relationship to a man. A boy is already learning in deep levels what it is to be a man. In deep hidden ways inside his psyche, he is being evoked, called forth to be a man. He needs the father's presence. He needs to spend time on his father's lap. He needs his father to change his diapers, too. He needs for the father sometimes to feed him. Not to completely take the mother's role in these things. but to be a participant now and then. It is very important in the child's earliest years of learning to have the father's strong hands and gentle touch. His spirit is being developed in those experiences. Then as a child grows up further in the next few months, he needs the father. Again, the father tends to think that those first 12 months are the mother's business. She'll teach him to walk. She'll teach him to talk. Sometimes father Others will have that misunderstanding. Not all fathers. Some fathers think those first months of training are solely the mother's business. But that child needs to relate to the father. When he is first crawling, he needs to feel the father's approval. He needs to feel that the father is proud of him. Believe me, babies verilely sense a father's feelings and react to them. Already are being shaped by those reactions. The baby cannot, of course, translate it into his words. His mind isn't developed, but his spirit knows and he senses. In the very first instances of toddling, he needs to feel the father's pride in him. Here, in the very first experiences, there enters whether the father is living for his own image of what it is to be a father, and whether his defenses about that are self-centered, or whether he has come to Jesus and died to self. For example, here's a party and the father is proud of his son. His son is learning to walk and he brings the son out. Maybe the little son doesn't feel like walking right then. Or maybe he isn't willing to walk right then. If the father becomes embarrassed, angry, and uptight, his tension grows into the child. Perhaps he even beats on the child. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. The harshness already is enough to wound the child. But also being built into the child is an unreasoning fear of the father. Fear of being exposed, of being asked to perform in public because the father was not sensitive. Now this is only one instance. Multiply by a thousand examples. The angry feelings a father may have while walking the floor at night with the child. in his arms, the fear or calmness when a child takes his first injury, the way the father treats the mother day in and day out, etc. You see how important it is for the father to be the head of the house by giving his life in surrender to Jesus Christ so that the Lord's own sensitivity and gentle touch is in the father with his son. You can see how this goes on through life. As the child begins to go out and encounter painful experiences, if the father is there to comfort, if the father is there to strengthen and to discipline, the son is strengthened. If the father is harsh and insensitive, brutal and undisiplined emotionally and mentally by the word of God, then in all of these things, in the very first years, he is already shattering his son's capacities. You see how important it is for the father in the first six years to be with the son in the gentleness and strength of Jesus Christ. Let us now speak of the next age. The age 6 to 10 or 12 is the gang age for boys. Boys undergo a kind of pilgrimage. They begin to move out from the home. They begin to test themselves with other people. In the gang age, the gang becomes important. And for the first time, the son has has loyalties and belongings which are very important and perhaps contrasting or conflicting to what he is learning in the home. So for the first time he enters a wrestle between loyalties, the gang on one side and the father on the other. Hear it again. At this time especially certain things are definitely needed in the father. The son needs to have seen the kind of loyalties and principles which are in his father, operating in his father, not to hear them from him, not shouted at him. He needs to see how the father lives his principles. Not only is the father able to live what is noble, but is he free to understand his son and give the son balance of freedom and understanding and necessary discipline. Now, here's an example. Suppose the father is driving his car down the street. The policeman hails him, pulls him over, and the father is saying to the policeman, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir." While the boy is there in the car, perhaps the boy is 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10. Now they drive off. All of a sudden, the father is cursing and saying, "Man, I told him where to get off. He had no right to pull me over." That man is shooting down before his son his own authority, his own respect. Now, his verbal teaching is going to come come across as something different than who he is. Multiply this instance by a thousand. You see the necessity for the discipline of Jesus Christ to be in the father's life every moment. In the gang age, a boy's loyalties and ideas of what he wants to do are going to be tested. What the father and mother have said is right will be challenged and he will need his father. Then the boy is going to have to make decisions. Sometimes he's going to go with the gang and sometimes he will decide to stand by the principles of his father and mother. If he decides to do as the mother and father have said, sometimes that means conformity out of fear. Sometimes that is not good. Sometimes, on the other hand, it means he has received real strength from watching the father. He has strength enough to say no to the gang. But if he says no to the parents and does wrong, wrong. That child comes home needing a father who has both the understanding to know that his son must experiment, must differentiate and become his own person. And the father must also discipline firmly and strongly so that the son knows both that he is free to make his own mistakes and not free to escape their consequences. Here is where a father who has learned the skills of understanding, compassion, and discipline and forgiveness is most especially needed. Suppose a boy goes out with a gang and they throw a rock through Tom Jones grocery. Now he comes running home. Maybe if he has enough conscience, he says, "Daddy, daddy, I did something awful." A wise father says, "Oh, what did you do?" And he asks for details. I did something awful. I did something awful. What did you do? And finally, the boy says, "I threw a rock through the window." The father has a decision to make. He can react to the wounding of his own image as a father and blow up at his boy, demonstrating his self-centered inability to be concerned for his son's sake. If he does react and discipline out of his own disappointment in himself as a father, his son's inner spirit will know it, and perhaps his mind as well. That is not Christian discipline. That tells the son, "My concern for you is my concern for myself. You are only an extension of me, not a person in your own right. And how could you have dared to act as though you were your own person?" But the father can make another choice. Christian discipline involves understanding. Therefore, he talks with the son. Shows him both that he knows that he is guilty and that he understands and forgives and he says, "All right, now let's go and talk with the man." Together they go and talk with the man and arrange for restitution to be made. When they return, he says, "All right, you're forgiven." Or he also may apply further discipline if he deems it necessary. At this point, I want to plead the case for physical discipline. The best place to use the psychology book is over the rear end. Some psychologists have said that you should never spank the child or you will give him a complex. I don't think they understand. I disagree with them. You may give the child a complex if you don't spank. When a child comes home and he has done something wrong, that child has anxiety, fear, and guilt. Now he comes into his father's presence. If the father is determined to be only sweetly reasonable, that father is actually repressing his feelings. He is not being very honest. So the father comes to the son and he talks only sweet reasonleness and does not discipline the son. And that is extremely confusing to the son because the son is still sensing and feeling what is in the father no matter what he says. Children live by what they sense behind our words more than the logic of them. The father is now coming at him in extreme of understanding and big abstract words. So the son thinks I can I can't understand what he is saying but I sense my daddy is mad at me. The boy now has anxiety rolling around in him that did not come to a resolution. It did not come to a completion. It did not come to a head and be done with. Children can sense and feel that physical discipline brings things to definite objective measurable pain. When the physical discipline comes against their body, that pain brings to a resolution the things that are roing around inside them. It becomes something objective which can be dealt with. Anxiety unnamed and unfaced cannot be dealt with. Guilt unresolved turns in and destroys the self. Physical pain tells the being that punishment has been accomplished. The guilt is over and done with. There are dozens of places in the Bible, especially Proverbs, where the Bible expressly calls for physical discipline. God built us. He is the one who has called for physical discipline. And let fathers relearn this truth. I remember our son Loen when he was a little boy used to look at what he wanted to do. And knowing it was wrong, he'd look at us and you could see him measuring the pain. If it was worth it, he went ahead and did it and he got his spanking. But you see it was objective. It could be dealt with. Do you know who is the person who will have the most difficult time understanding himself? That is the person whose father never disciplined physically. His feelings will not come clear. He can't get life clear. His father seemed so good. He never realized he had any bad feelings toward him. Therefore, he could not for give him because he didn't know he was mad at him. Some something didn't come up true and real. And the son lacks real banks for the river of his feelings. My father was tenderhearted, but he had a temper, and he had hands like the side of a ham. And in a flash, whoosh, that hand was up against your face, and you went reeling across the room. But then he had a tender heart, and we could all almost count the time when he would we would hear his step coming up the stairs and he'd come into the room and take us on his lap and say, "You know, that hurt me more than it did you." And we'd think, "Oh, yeah." But we knew what he meant. We knew his heart really did care. And then he would hug us and hold us and he would say, "I forgive you. Do you forgive me?" And it was all healed. That's more fun for the making up. That kind of discipline is important in the family. Very important. Not only in this gang age, but in every year of the child's life. It is important also for the son to see the father bowing his head and saying the grace, vowing to say a prayer at night over the kids, taking them to church. For them to see him humbling himself before God writes faith upon the child's heart. I hear so often when children get into trouble the parents saying, "Oh, I don't understand. We gave them everything." And then we check to see what they gave them. And they gave them everything and nothing else. The children didn't see them in church. They didn't see them bowing in prayer. They didn't hear them reading the Bible. They didn't really receive real affection and discipline. The important things for the soul, they didn't get it all and then the parents can't understand what went wrong with the child. The truth usually comes out that the parents do know what's wrong and they are afraid to admit it. Couldn't he be real? I've even had women come in and give me what seems to be the opposite side of it. Women come in and say, "The trouble with my husband is he compliments me for every meal." Now, can you figure out what's wrong with that? Now let's go to the teenage time because for a boy this is the most important time. When a boy comes to teenage that boy has to do what is called internalization. It can also be called individualization. The boy takes everything that has been taught to him whatever knowledges moral and precepts which have been handed to him from outside himself down upon him as it were from some exterior force and trained upon him. him and examine it for himself. He has to take all that which has been trained into him and test it. He must stand over against it and then it belongs to him. It has become his own. Boys particularly need a teenage rebellion time. A father has to do a side step at the point of teenage and this is where counselors most often have to bring healing with fathers and sons because neither father nor son understands what kind of process has been entered into. The boy must internalize. That does not mean that the father entirely lets go of the reigns. He still has to hold the reigns but loosely in his hand. There have to remain firm lines beyond which discipline comes. But the father must step out of the way. The enterprise of the son's behavior must become his own, not the father's. becoming moral should become the teenager's own. As I said, it needed to be that way all along. But now there comes a transfer point at which the child takes responsibility to become his own moral agent. If the father is still parenting the enterprise, you see making the child moral with his own hand, then the teenager's own budding life is denied. For example, the boy because he wants to is about to pick up the water bucket and go out and wipe and wash the car. The father comes and says, "Son, go wash the car." That has now become the last thing the son wants to do because the enterprise of doing that thing has been taken away from him. The father did not trust that he wanted to do it. Sometimes you have to say, "Son, would you please wash the card?" However, what I'm talking about here is probably best called sensitivity. If the father sees that the son is about to go out on his first date and takes him aside and instructs him as though the son knew nothing, he has taken away the enterprise from his son of becoming moral. He has said to the son, "I don't trust that you have learned anything. Therefore, I'm going to hammer it home again." That puts down the son and denies his need to the trusted to learn on his own. Do you see? You have to trust at this point that he already has it in him. The father has to let the son learn for himself. I want you to notice in the parable of the prodigal son that the father did not go after the prodigal son. He sat at home. He sat at home and waited. The trust that a father needs at this point is this. He must be saying to to his son in one way or another. Son, I now trust you to the point that though I do not believe that you are always going to do what I want, in fact, I know you are going to stumble and burn your fingers and maybe hurt your heart. Nevertheless, I trust you to the point that I know you will learn to make it on your own. You will learn from your mistakes and I set you free to make them. That kind of trust is what The father needs to give to the son. The father needs to be affirming and complimenting all the way up through. At this point, it is very important that the son know that he has a father who is going to understand. And the rule is simple. The more the father understands and sets the son free to heir, the less he has to rebel to find himself. The tighter the father holds the reigns, the more he insists and demands that the son live just as he the father is taught, the more sinfully the son must rebel in order to become his own person. Again, death of self in Christ and understanding love of the other for the other's sake is the key to successful family living. Let us now speak of fathers and daughters. It is important that we understand what fathers are to daughters. Here again, if we go back to the very beginning, we shall see that the materialistic view has greatly damaged the father's understanding of the role. He so often fails to see himself as a sor, a son of God, raising another of God's children. So often a father feels as though he is unimportant. He is replaceable. Somebody else could do that. He's a little embarrassed by that little doll. A little bit afraid of her. And to most men, the child is so defenseless, so beautiful, so lovely that the child crushes the father in the heart. So he's afraid, he backs off. Whereas the most cogent truth is that the daughter needs the father's arms in the very first 6 months. If the father is there holding and comforting her already in the first months of her life, her capacity to relate to a man later is being awakened. She is going to be able to melt into the arms of a man later. If he is there and begins to awaken her capacity, then she learns to let go and relax in the arms of a man. More than that, to relish pouring her being into him. If he is not there, if she only stays in the crib or only women hold her, then there is a vacuum. That part of her spirit is not turned on. It is not awakened. Her soul is not developed in that area. Again, Again and again and again I deal with women who have been raised by drunkard, insensitive, loud, braggard, harsh fathers. The daughter later on in life cannot give to her husband nor let him fulfill her wants and needs and she can't understand why she can't. The reason is that the father destroyed the capacity in her and she needs the healing of the Lord Jesus Christ deep in her sight. to be able to be a full woman to her man. She is like some potatoes, throw round and beautiful on the outside, but inside there's a blighted area. Part of her is dormant, unal alive. Praise God that prayer for healing of the memories can still set her free to be a whole woman. It is so important for fathers to be there for daughters. The same things apply for the girl that I said for the son coming up through those first six years. From the father, she deres the definition of life which actually operates in her life. From him comes discipline and example, security, strength and the real life with God. Now the girl has her own kind of gang age in which she may become secretive and snippy, become claky in her gang. I repeat, the gang age is roughly 6 to 12 and it can continue beyond that age. Sometimes she needs during that time from 6 to 12 especially to be able to have a crush on her own daddy. Boys, I forgot to say also need to have a little bit of hero worship for their dad. They need that kind of respect. They need to be able to respect the dad. And I've already said how important it is for us to respect to honor the father and the mother that it may be well with you. So the girl needs to have a crush on her own bed. Let me show you what happens in a girl as the hormones begin to start in her, say 10, 11, 12, 13, as she begins to turn on a little bit to become what a woman is, which begins to happen, by the way, even at 6. She is already dressed up for Sunday school looking pretty. I'll tell you the mistake I make. And I make it again and again. Mama buys Andrea a nice dress and she tries it on. How do I look? She says with her heart in her throat. Okay, fine. I should be saying you look wonderful, beautiful. Because my response is already forming in Andrea a response to men, a confidence in herself and expectancy about the way her man will respond to her later and Andrea is only four years old. There was a woman that I dealt with in counseling. Her husband was philandering. You know what that means? Wandering around after other women. She came to me about that. I asked her how she related to her father. Well, her father died when she was six. Her brother became a substitute father. Then he died when she was nine. And then another brother brother went away when she was 11. Then she had dates and they left her. She had a succession of men in her life who disappointed her, who left, who were gone. She had wounds in her psyche, and those wounds built an expectancy in her that the man would always leave her. That expectancy was what she was beaming out to her husband all unawares. On the one side, side she was being come beaming come here come here come here love me love me love me and on the other side of her she was beaming out you're going to go away all men go away so the husband gives in do you know that u we husbands relate to you women that way we sense what you want and then we come and give it sometimes if we're not contankerous So the man senses, "Come here and love me." And he also senses, "Go away, go away, go away." Pretty soon her husband obeyed that. He didn't really want to go out and see other women. The wife and he didn't have many other problems. Basically, he just left. So we prayed for that memory to be healed, for that expectancy that he would go away to be healed. A few weeks later, she called me up. Oh, it's glorious. My husband has even sent the children away for the weekend. He just wants to be with me and we're having a second honeymoon. You see, there was nothing in her any longer from her life with her father and her brothers so that the husband would go away. Do you see that from the life with the father is built into the daughter a kind of expectancy which will later enable or disequip her for marriage. That was only one instance. In thousands of little ways, the girl's heart is being formed in relation to men. by the way she relates to her father. The girl needs to try out her womanly war wears on her father. She dresses. She pirouetses in front of him. She turns his eyes on her with pride. She feels like she's worth something. She knows she has power to attract a man. The father is supposed to be a safe place to practice feminine allurements. A woman came into my office. who was actually a beauty queen. She was just gloriously beautiful. I asked her a question. Are you beautiful? No. Are you lovely? No, I'm ugly. Then a woman came in who was physically speaking simply ugly. And I asked, "Are you beautiful?" "Yes." "Are you lovely?" "Yes." Because she thought she was beautiful, she was. Beauty radiates. from her. What was the difference? Her father was there to compliment her. If the girl can influence her father, then the father is building into her a confidence in who she is. That kind of confidence which will enable her to feed her husband with her love. It is very important for the woman to know her beauty. That is a given, not a thing of conceit. And when it is humbly but strongly there, that feeds and nurtures the husband. In one town in America, listening and counseling hour after hour, five straight hours, five women in a row came in and their father or their grandfather or brother or uncle whom they were when they were in that age in which they needed to act out their womanly wares did not understand. The father, grandfather, uncle or cousin molested the girl. You'd be surp surprised how commonly that happens and that is tragic. That is destroying the trust a woman needs. Unless Jesus heals that, she will not be able to cuddle up completely and warmly into her man and nurture him. And that's a tragic thing. That was the healing these women needed. Fathers need to understand that the girls are only doing that little thing. They are just trying out their wares and they need to. And there have been In cases where mothers have come between fathers and daughters, jealous for afraid that the daughter and the husband were doing something wrong. They don't understand what is going on and they think it's dirty sex. The father should give affection and compliments but not touch sexual areas or kiss on the lips. If he holds her on the lap or hugs her, what they do is holy and needful to the girl to become A woman, a girl in teenage goes through her own kind of revolt. Not quite like boys. It's a little more subtle. But inside her, she tests and flaunts and does all kinds of things. She flips back and forth from being mature to being a child, much as a boy does. Parents must sense where she is. It is a very important thing that the girl have a father who can understand. She needs to be able to come home and talk. to him. If he can't understand, at least he can try. What happens again if the father is not dead to self is that the girl comes home and tries to tell him something, she puts herself in a bad light because she wants to get this thing out and she needs to feel a little naughty. If the father is overconcerned about his own image as a father and not really able to get with her, if he has not died to self, he says something like, "Now listen, no daughter of mine is going to act like that. Now you straighten yourself out and I don't want to ever hear of you doing a thing like that again. And he is so proud of himself. He thinks he has really been a beautiful father. What he has done is to destroy the bridge of communication. He has said, "I'm not going to be with you. I'm going to be over against you. You can't tell me anything because I am not going to hear you. I am only going to hear my own need." This is what he said. Again, the important thing is for a father who is sensitive through Jesus Christ to the daughter to hear the daughter because she needs to be able to come and unbburden herself to him and then hug him. His manner needs to tell her that he can let her experience let her find out and trust her not to go too far and to love her and forgive her wherein she stumbles. Our daughter Amy we used to call the love bank the love bank or the hug blanket. She's standing in there. Many in our church have seen how she acts after church services. She would come up and hug and hold me for a while and when she gets enough love and affection that way, then away she goes. Then after a while, it would be as though she would run out of gas, so she comes back in and hugs me again. That is the way a daughter should be. That is what a father should be to a daughter. And that is so so important. She needs to be free to try things with the knowledge that her dad could hear her and haul her up short if need be. Girls are a little different than boys at that point. Amy would come in and by her manner tell me to draw a line. When I did, then she could relax and say a no to some guy who was getting out of line. Christian sensitivity, death of self, concern for the other should rule the father's mind and heart for his daughter. Discipline needs to be there, but you can't have physical discipline in the same way at that age with the girl. The discipline needs to be in terms of look, here is the line. You're on your own, but you know, if you break the line, you're the one who made the choice, and here are the penalties, and they have to be lived up to. A girl really wants to test her ability to twist men around her finger against her dad. And there are battles she must not win. because if she does, she is going to do that way with a man in her life later. They will then be on a manipulating basis. A father needs to be strong in the discipline of the Lord, but sensitive to her. In all of these things, it is the life of Jesus Christ showing through the father to bring discipline and sensitivity. The very first thing a father must have is that so life with Jesus if he would impart it to his children. Do you see that there is no palming off of the teaching ministry of a father to his children? He will teach them by who and what he is. Every man must make his own peace with God or his children will feel the lack in every area of their formation. That is why the Old Testament closes with such powerful words. Malachi 4:5 and 6. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers lest I come and smite the land with a curse. Let us bow in prayer. Heavenly Lord Jesus, we thank thee for those fathers who through thee are called to be what they are. We pray that fathers might be restored to what it is to be a father, to be sensitive to their children, to be with them in real love. love and affection to know thee as Lord and Savior that you may rule in the house that there may be peace. We bless thee and praise thee, oh Lord, that wherever we have gone wrong, you will heal. We thank thee that it is never too late because you can always transcend our times and heal our hearts and restore the ill-formed hearts of our children. So we bless you and we praise you, O Lord. We invite you into every home and into the depth of every life there to find where we ourselves were broken and hurt and left unattended to heal and to fulfill. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen.
I believe bathe in the bride of Christ.
Anyone who has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior has been transferred out of the kingdom. of darkness into light. Now, as he is being purged and cleansed more and more, he comes more and more into that light and the darkness can get into him and bother him less. But I don't want to talk about what's the bride of Christ as opposed to something else. I just don't know about that. All I know is anybody who's accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior belongs to him.
Well, apart from in relationship the factor he is raising up a cert.
Okay. The elect people are special servants to stand during the tribulation. Scripture says, "If it had not been for the elect. If God had not shortened the days for the sake of the elect, no one would have survived." Speaking of the tribulation, that's what the elect are being raised up for, to know how to stand and praise God in the middle of the tribulation and be an island of light in the middle of the tribulation. And God is raising him up now. I wish I had time to give you a whole series of lectures on that cuz that's really what's going on. Any other questions? Um that would be a situation where uh the wife is overcontrolling doineering. Where where is the imbalance in the animal there?
Well, you've probably already answered it. She's probably gone up too much into the animus. I'll tell you there's another dynamic that happens and that is that there is a balance. principle it goes on between a man and a wife. Like I always used to be over risky, over courageous. My wife was very very timid. Well, you see, she was more timid to counterbalance my riskiness. When I stopped being so over courageous and foolhardy, then she didn't have to be as timid. And when she stopped being as timid, then I didn't have to be as over courageous. She used to say to me as I'd go out the door, "You aren't going to say something foolish today, are you? And of course, that's what I had to do then. See, uh, if I don't discipline the children, my wife becomes overd disciplinary. It's just a balanced principle that works between man and wife. See, and if the man will take up his position in the house, the woman relinquishes being so authoritarian.
I've heard a lot of teaching geared to women. through uh Christian sources. It's really what I hear them saying is it up to the wife, up to the woman to submit herself to the man and almost the emphasis being that that that the key to the whole the whole program is she will properly commit that that everything else will fall into into place.
And uh somehow I mean I accept the scripture teaching on that but somehow it it doesn't exactly witness to me that that can that the woman can be the key to the whole show.
I'll tell you the answer another man gave I think it was Judson Cornwell or else it was um Ernest Gruin at this point. What he said was that he asked the Lord about that very thing. How come the Lord's always addressing the remarks at the woman telling the what the woman what to do? He thought he thought therefore that God was picking on the woman and telling the woman she's more rebellious so he's telling her what to do until the Lord spoke to him and revealed it wasn't that way at all. The woman was less rebellious. She'd listened, so he told her.
It's the man who is the rebellious. I like that.
And that's true, brothers, whether we like it or not. It's who is abdicated more than the woman. It is. It's the man who has been destroyed in his role more than the woman. It's the man who's not taking up the headship of the house. And therefore, the woman becomes distraught. And so God speaks to the woman because she'll listen. But the man in his stubbornness won't. So he has to begin somewhere. Is it not true that this is a fact from the very foundation of the earth when Adam was in the garden with the Lord and the Lord was talking to Adam and this but poor woman was ever on the scene when Adam was diplomatically into the Lord. So this is holding a continuity from the creation. to where we are today.
I don't know. Um first thing Adam did was say it was that woman you gave me she did it you know and a woman says but it was the serpent he did it first instances of buck passing. Um I don't know whether you can that's a chicken and egg question who got off first. Um St. Paul does tell you the woman was deceived first not the man. Um I I don't know that we'd have any real fruit in in fariting that out. Um so it was just say that we both fell and that it's a spiral. We cause each other to fall more. So God is restoring. Whichever one he can get to listen, he will.
You know, Captain Coleman said this and when we heard it the very thing that you've said that, she said, "I do not believe that I was the first person that right, she knew I believe I was a second person God called. I think God called men who refused to do this."
So then he called me. I heard her say that I was in in that audience.
Yeah. She said, "I wouldn't be doing this if some man had heard him." Yeah. I really think this is a judgment on us men.
Regarding the headship thing, Dr. Robert Frost believes there seems to be, at least according to one article that I read, that there's a very basic principle that you cannot have headship until you have submission.
Mhm. That's true. It's said in the scriptures, wherever Jesus Christ is not the head. There will be every sort of selfish ambition and disorderly conduct. You look in your home and see if that isn't so observation in my own where uh women have come to the Lord before their husbands and then when their husbands come tomorrow uh the Lord moves quicker in their in the life. Yes.
And and he soon had more knowledge and more uh be and the wife
he soon outstrips many of the women of my church who learned this being submissive and then their husbands did come who are one without a word by the behavior of their wives have just been astounded and they say my goodness I struggled for two years to learn that thing and my husband learned it the first week. It's true. in the east part of the eastern culture is that they believe that God brings his light through the man that he gives to man the light. Now you can see that because of logic, structure, idea, principle and authority. He brings it through the man and therefore by the way if a woman if a baby girl is born they have no celebration. But if a boy is born they celebrate because they believe that God sends a light through the man and they believe that The man must have the woman and the woman must have the man. Kind of beautiful. Thanks for listening to the Inspirational Media podcast, Timeless Voices for Today's World. To explore more messages and resources, visit us at inspirational.org.nz. See you next time.