Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 78, emphasizing the importance of passing down faith to future generations. He highlights that fathers have a responsibility to communicate God's word, celebrate His works, confront sin, and model forgiveness. The sermon encourages fathers to be present, consistent, transparent, and intentional in their spiritual leadership, ensuring their children know God personally and understand His commands. Ultimately, the message calls for a legacy of faith that shapes not only families but also eternity.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Amen. Well, thank you for worshiping with us this morning. If you have a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that is available for you at this time. We'll be in Psalms chapter 78 this morning.
If you're flipping there, you may notice that Psalm 78 is a long psalm. It's got 72 verses in it.
We're not going to preach all 72 verses this morning. Don't think you're going to be here all day. We're just going to look really at the main, the first eight verses, and that's all we're going to read this morning. Psalm 78, the first eight verses.
In traveling from Texas to Tennessee, we stopped in Arkansas and now back in North Carolina. As you can tell, the weather changes, the atmosphere changes, and going from the mountains back and forth.
And so be praying for our voice this morning. It is a little weak, so we'll try to get through it. It is good to have Johnny here today. He's our AMS from our association. He recently took over, and he recently retired from Elkin Valley Baptist.
And so glad to have him here this morning. Honored to have him as well. So if you have your place there, we'll stand out of the reading of God's word. Psalm 78, verses one through eight this morning. Says, my people, hear my instructions.
Listen to the words from my mouth. I will declare wise sayings.
I will speak mysteries from the past. Things that you have heard and known about our ancestors that have passed down to us. We will not hide them from our children, but will tell a future generation the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, his might, and his wondrous works he has performed.
He established a testimony in Jacob and set up a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so that future generation children yet to be born might know.
They were to rise and tell their children, so that they might put their confidence in God and not forget God's works, but keep his commands. Then they would not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not loyal to whose spirit was not faithful to God.
Father, we love you this morning. We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for the wonderful worship. Thank you for the choir singing, the congregational singing, lifting up your name. Pray that you'll be with your word as it was read this morning. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
Amen. As I was studying for this message this past week, I came across a story of a guy named George.
Legacy of Faith in Families
And George, when he was 12 years old, was rummaging through some things in his father, grandfather's house and was looking through the attic. And while he was up there, he saw beneath some blankets and some war medals, dusty and forgotten piece of furniture that was there.
And he opened this chest up. And as he looked inside, he saw an old leather bound Bible that his grandfather had had. Curiosity got the best of him. He began looking through this.
He was sort of timid. Do I touch this? I don't really know what it is. And he began flipping through the pages that were yellowed and curled. And as he opened up the cover, he saw inside the cover shaky handwriting that were four generation names.
His great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. George began to run his finger over the dates, wondering what kind of men these men might have been.
He noticed something else. Beside each of their names was a verse that was highlighted, circled, and underlined. Scribbled in the margins were prayers that the great-grandfather and the great-great-grandfather had written down.
They were faint, and yet they were stained. And there was one that he was looking at that even resembled some type of maybe tears that were on it. That night at dinner, George, in the dinner table, looked up at his dad and asks his dad about it. And his dad said, oh, yes,
that was your great-grandfather's. And I think he read it every day of his life. And he asked, did Grandpa read it too? His dad shrugged shoulders.
Maybe. He didn't really talk about that stuff much. George never forgot that box. He went back to it often. And as a teenager, he began to find himself more and more going back to that Bible and reading those verses and reading the prayers of his grandfather and great-grandfather.
And it became more than just ink on paper. It became a path that he would follow, a legacy that he would begin to leave himself. Years later, as George became a father himself, he wrote this down.
He said, I bought a new Bible for my son. And in the front of it, I wrote my son's name, and I wrote this verse, Psalm 78, verse 4. He will not hide from them, from their children, but will tell to them, the coming generations, a glorious deed of the Lord.
And this is what he said as he wrote that down as someone was asking him about this. He said, I want my kids to know who God is. Not just from church,
not from YouTube, not from some influencer, or not from some Christian school, but I want them to know who God is from me. Psalm 78 is this father's chapter.
Passing on Our Faith
It's a legacy that we can look at of fathers of faith and how we can not just believe in the Lord, but pass on to the next generation. A legacy of not just wealth, not just a reputation, but pass on to them our faith.
Fathers and grandfathers and spiritual fathers in the room today, our job is not just to provide or protect. We've been that as a huge responsibility for us this morning, but our job is to proclaim the greatness of God to those who will come after us. There's a generation coming up behind us that,
as Claude said just a minute ago, that don't know the Lord, that don't know who God is. And we have an opportunity to share, as we talked about in Sunday school, a life that is stepping out by faith, where people will look at us and say, they're doing something radically different than me.
And I want to know what that is. And I want to find out how they're living a life that is radically different than the way I'm doing. And so as we dissect this passage this morning, I want to look at three main things. The first is,
as fathers of faith, what do we do? What is it that we do with our life? And I put a sub-point here, our responsibility as fathers of faith.
What is the responsibility that we have this morning, men specifically in the room? And women, you can apply these to yourself as well. But specifically on Father's Day, I want to preach to the fathers here this morning. And Psalm 78 is a historic psalm.
And what that simply means is it brings to us to call to remembrance. It would be like you sitting in history class and your history teacher, your social studies teacher would open up and say, we're going to learn about the Revolutionary War today.
And they would begin to expound on the things of the Revolutionary War, how it happened, what happened in those events. This is what a historical psalm would be.
This would be the history book of the Old Testament. This would be the history of the Jewish generations here. And he's telling them Asaph is the writer and he's reminding Israel not just to reflect, but to relay what's going on.
It's one thing to reflect and sit there and meditate as you're outside and you begin to think about, oh, what has God done in my life? And man, I can remember when God worked in this situation and when God worked in these areas. But he's saying, don't just reflect on them.
Go and tell someone else. Relay this information to someone else. It's good to have it in your mind, but sit down with your sons and your daughters and tell them what God has done.
Importance of Teaching Scripture
Tell them the greatness of who God is and tell our children those things.
It is a task that we must do or will fail as fathers of faith. So what do we do? What are some four ways we'll look through? The first one is to communicate the scriptures.
Fathers, this morning, I think it is our job in here to tell our children about the scriptures, to tell our children about what God has done through our lives. Verses 4 through 8 specifically talk about this.
And it says this, We will not hide from them, from their children, but tell the coming generation of the glorious deeds of the Lord. God has given us his word.
I believe it's infallible. I believe it's perfect. I believe it's preserved for our generation and forward. It's been passed down from generation to generation. And I would hate for me to be the generation that fails to pass it down to the next generation.
And God will look down and say, For 2,000 years,
the word of the Lord, my word has been passed on from generation to generation. But there was a generation in 2025. And that generation in 2025 decided that it wasn't worth passing it on.
And you failed to pass on the word of God to the next generation. What a travesty that would be for us this morning for the Lord to look down on us and say, I thought I could trust you. I gave you the word. I gave you the gospel.
And yet you failed to communicate the scriptures. Every morning a Jewish person would wake up and they would quote these verses. Now I want us to think about them this morning. It's Deuteronomy 6 verses 6 and 7. I put them on the screen for you. You may want to write it down. And this is what it says.
These are the words that I'm giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children.
Talk about them when you sit down in your house and when you walk along the road and while you lie down and when you get up. It continues on.
I didn't put these on there. But bind them as a sign in your hands and a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the door host post of your house and on your city gates. And this is what we should be doing. Verse 4. Listen, O Israel.
The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These are the words that we're talking about. Are we communicating scripture that we love the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
As I was writing through this, I didn't put these in your notes because I put these notes for Brenda a couple weeks ago.
Communicating Who God Is
And the Lord gave me, as I was studying through this, three simple ways that we can communicate scripture. The first is this. We teach who God is.
We look at our children. We look at our grandchildren. And we say, this is who God is. God is the one who begins and ends with everything. He created the world. He created us. And everything that we have begins and ends with Him.
When we talk about God, we're talking about His holiness. We're talking about His love. We're talking about His power.
We're talking about the character of who God is this morning. And church, when we begin to think and we begin to teach these to our children, they'll begin to run to God themselves.
They'll begin to say, I want that same faith. I want the faith that my father had. I want the faith that my grandfather had.
I want to be able to step into a storm of life that I don't know what's going to happen on the other side, but just believe and trust that the Lord is going to bring me through it. We begin to teach them who God is.
But not only do we teach them who He is, but what God has done. The Bible says in verse 4, the wondrous works of the Lord. From creation to the cross, what God has done. He created us perfect in the garden and we failed to uphold His perfectness.
And yet He didn't just dispose of us and throw us away.
No, He said, I've got an end in sight that I'm going to send my own son to come and to die on a cross for your sins so that you can be redeemed back to the Lord. It's not only who He is, but what He's done for us.
From the creation to the cross and as we look at our life and we look at the life of Israel to our own personal story.
How God chose Abraham and Isaac and He chose Israel and yet now we can look at our life and we can see that God grafted us into His plan.
The Gentile nation was brought in as we've been looking through Acts over these last couple of months, how He brought this church of Gentiles and brought them into the church of Jesus Christ. And we get to worship Him this morning through the gospel.
So it's not only who God is and what God has done, but what God has said. Communicate what God has said, His commands, His promises,
His warnings that He tells us. Think of the scripture this morning as someone who's running a relay race. I think there was a school here recently that won the 4x400 and they got to have dinner with Eddie Settle or got to go to...
What school was that? East. So East got to go and they got to... There was a marathon that they once stayed in and they got to sit down with the senator and there were other teams that tried on that same thing and other teams didn't pass the baton off perfectly. Other teams had prepared.
They had planned their life. They had planned this race that was going to happen. It was the state championship race. This is what they had lived their life for. And yet some teams, when they went to hand the baton off to the team in front of them, they missed the baton.
They went to grab it. And as they went to grab it, they fumbled it. And in fumbling it, they didn't come in first place. But East, as is shown, they ran it well. They began to do well. They passed the baton perfectly.
They continued on in that journey. This is our faith journey.
When we step out with that baton of faith and we're handing it to our next generation, are we fumbling the baton? Or are we giving the baton off with purpose, with integrity, where they say, yes, I understand this. Yes, I understand what you're doing.
I understand what God has done in your life. I understand what he says. And now I'm ready to continue on in my journey of life. Do your kids ever see you and know what you believe about God? Do you ever have that conversation, dads?
Do they ever see you open your Bible? Do they ever see you quote scripture? Do they ever see you live it out and live out scripture the way God says for you to live? I was at John's house, my buddy John's house, this past week.
And we're sitting around, I think it was like midnight.
Anytime you start talking at midnight, you never know what's going to come out of your mouth.
And we're sitting there and John, he's having some struggle in ministry and I love him, but he just, he holds on to things a lot.
And so we're sitting there and his wife told me the next day at breakfast, she said, I'm thankful that you made John laugh. It's been a while since he's laughed like that.
I told him, I said, anytime we get together, my goal is for you to laugh so hard that your cheeks are hurting. I want to just try to get you to laugh. And so we're talking about some different movies and shows to watch.
And he mentioned one about a lady that went for a run in her cul-de-sac and she was taken from her run.
And 22 days later, she showed back up and was beaten. And they were like, is this true? Is it not?
And as he's saying this, he leans over to his wife and he says, she was running. His wife likes to run and run the cul-de-sac and run where they're at. He said, I don't want that to happen to you. And I said, well, John,
you never have to worry that out with me because the Bible says you should never run unless you're being chased. And people don't chase me often, so therefore I'm not going to run often. Whatever was said there at midnight, John rolled laughing for a solid 10 or 15 minutes.
Every time, I mean, he would come back and I'd say something and he'd just go off laughing again. But it's scripture, right? We're talking through scripture. We're enjoying scripture. Is this part of our everyday conversation?
Is this part of when you get together with your buddies at dinner and at lunch and you're out and about? Are we bringing up scripture the way we would bring up the football team or about some sport event that we love? Are we telling others what God has said to us?
Not only do we that, but we need to celebrate the stories. The majority of my message are going to be on these first four points. To celebrate the stories.
Verses 10, verses 13 through 16, verses 22 through 31, verses 38. This entire time is a history book of the story of Israel. Asaph is saying this. Fathers, we must be storytellers.
We must be people who are able to tell not fantasies, but stories of faith. Be able to tell stories of God's power and God's provision in our life and the discipline that God gave us, but also yet the mercy that God gives us.
As I said at the beginning, this is the longest historical psalm in the book of the Bible. Especially in the book of Psalms, but it's the longest historical book, period. And it goes like this. He gives the law in verse 10. He parts the Red Sea in verse 13.
God's guidance through the wilderness in verse 14. He talks about God's provision as they're in the wilderness in verses 15 and 16. He talks about God's judgment of sin in verse 30 and 31. And then he talks about God's mercy in verses 38 and 39. He talks about God's signs and wonders in verse 44 through 51.
And then he begins to talk about God's victories in verse 55. And the victories that God has done, the victories that God has proven in our life. And then in verse 59 through 64, he talks about how God rejects sinful people.
And he's saying, listen, you need to tell these things. Tell these things to our children. But then he gets to the wonderful story of God choosing David in verses 67 through 72.
When we pass our stories of our faith, are we showing our children and our grandchildren that God is faithful through all these generations and yet he's still faithful today? He's still faithful to save. He's still powerful. He's still the God of all great gods.
And he's still the God who is going to tell us how to live our life. One of my favorite things to do is just to sit there.
And if I don't get to see him in person, I'll listen to him online. But a couple of years ago at my wife's school, they had a World War II veteran that was actually at Normandy where Don and Latricia just were at.
And he got to stand up. He was the clerk of court and he had served his country. And they brought him in on that, near the end of the chaplain.
He just told his story of storming the beaches of Normandy. My wife, she said, hey, you've got to be here this day. He's going to come. You're a history guy. You've got to listen to this.
And I sat there in awe for 45 minutes as this man stood up and shared his war story of the planes that were coming in, the boats that were landing, the makeshift boat ramps that they were making as
the jeeps were coming off onto the water, as they stormed the beaches, as they stormed the mountain, as thousands upon thousands of men on both sides of the war died. And I sat there in awe. Man, this guy lived what I love to read.
And it made that story not only a story, but a reality.
It's not just something that I read in a history book somewhere, but this is actual people who did something amazing in our history. And when we hear those stories, we latch on and we listen.
And yet, fathers, are we that type of storytellers where we're able to sit down with our children and say,
let me tell you about a time where I was struggling, where God stepped in and he worked in my life in a way that I did not even see fit or see that God was gracious and merciful enough to me.
A couple of questions I want to ask you dads this morning. Do your children know your personal testimony? Do your children know the time where you came to know Christ? Have they heard you talk about how God has provided to answers of prayers?
Where you prayed and you said, God, I'm struggling here. I need you to work in my life. And yet, God answered those prayers and you shared those with your children.
How many times do we do that, dads? And we tell our children who God is and what he's done. But also as dads, we can't just communicate scripture and celebrate stories. Sometimes, dads, this is the hard part. We have to confront sin. Verses 10 through 11, 17 through 18,
verse 32, 36 through 37, 40 through 42, and 56 through 58.
If you didn't get all those, go back and listen to the live stream because I don't have a lot of time right now. But we must warn our children of the dangers of sin. We must tell them the dangers of not believing in Jesus.
We must tell them the dangers of idolatry when we have misplaced priorities in our life.
And Psalm 78 lays out example after example of how the Lord turns away his mercy and his grace from those who turn away from him and live in sin. And they ultimately paid the price.
I've heard this statement many, many times. When you play dumb games, you get dumb prizes.
And oftentimes in the life of our life of legacy, when we live our life for Christ, if we're not going to play the right games with God and do the right thing, and this thing with God is not a game. It's a life.
It's a legacy that we're living. It's a, oh, eventually there's going to be a judgment seat that we stand before God and we give an account for everything we've done. And if we don't be men who stand up and confront our children when they do wrong, we are failing our children.
Last night, we drove for many hours. 14 days is the longest that I've been away from any church. I've never taken 14 days away. We get home last night at five o'clock. I mow. It's raining. I'm trying to get everything done. I'm exhausted after driving. We get done. It's bedtime.
The kids aren't listening. Dad, at the moment there in the physical body, I lost my temper.
And I confronted my sins. I yelled at my kids. I've been vulnerable here this morning. I confronted their wrongdoings.
But then that night after I was praying with them, I had to confront my wrongdoings. You see, when we confront sin, it corrects us, but it also corrects those.
And if we never correct sin, if I never tell my children what is right and what is wrong, my children are going to grow up and never be able to discern what is right and what is wrong.
Cultural Influence on Children
And so therefore, dads, we must not let culture dictate for our children what is right and what is wrong. We must be the example and we must tell them what sin is and we must tell them what God condemns as sin.
And ultimately, what that's going to do is it's going to drive them to the Lord for God's grace and mercy. Because when we're confronted with sin, God's merciful.
God's graceful to forgive us of our sins. And yet we get to lead our children in how to see that grace and mercy. And then we get to celebrate the Savior. Verses 38 and 39 and verses 67 through 72, we get to see God being glorified.
Even when the people failed, and we are going to fail, we are not perfect. If you're perfect, you're probably at the wrong church because you're under a pastor who's not perfect, who's going to make mistakes,
who's going to fail you. But I'm so thankful that we serve a God who is faithful, a God who is perfect, and a God who raised up David, a shepherd boy, to point people to Christ. Who in and of himself was an imperfect leader.
And yet he led them to the good shepherd. He led them to the God who was faithful, who was there for them. And in verse 38, he says, Yet he, been compassionate, atoned for their iniquity.
God forgives us of our sins. God forgives us of our failures, if yet we'll come to him. And God remains faithful.
His love isn't based on our perfection. His love is based on who he is. And he is perfect. And therefore, his love never fails. As we looked at a couple of months ago in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. So, fathers this morning, do you model forgiveness in your home?
Do you model what forgiveness looks like? And how we should forgive others? Are we forgiving the way Christ forgives? Are we loving the way Christ loves? And do your family know the difference between being a moral person, someone who's upright, and yet a person who has been redeemed by the glory of God? We celebrate the Savior.
Number two. That was just my first point. The next one's going to go a lot faster. I promise you. Okay. Number two.
What we hope. Right? I haven't preached in two weeks, guys. This has been great. So, I got a little preach in me. I hope you're okay with it. What we hope. Our vision for the next generation.
Verses six and seven. My daughter's been saying six, seven nonstop. And she looked at the notes. She said, dad, six, seven. Right here it is. All my older generation didn't know.
Apparently, that's a new thing right now on TikTok and social media. Six, seven.
We've been saying six, seven since before time began. But apparently now six, seven is something big. And so, verses six and seven reveals our desire for the next generation.
That they would know about God. That they wouldn't just know about God, but they would truly know who he is. It's about, it's like this. It's like looking at a history book. And reading about the stories of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
And you can read about them. But then, somehow by God's miraculous events, you walk into a room.
And there sits George Washington in the flesh. And you sit down and you begin to have a conversation with him. Man, how do things go? And you begin to talk to our first president. You begin to talk about the history and about the knowledge.
All of a sudden, you're going from someone who knows about him. To someone who knows him intimately.
And this is what we must have a vision for our next generation. Is that our children don't just know about who God is. But have a relationship and a walk with the Lord themselves. So that when times get tough,
they know who to go to. They know that there's a God who loves them. A God that cares for him. And I'm going to go to that God because I know him personally. And so, what are our desires? The first one is this. That they will know God in their minds.
Everything we do starts in our minds. We think about it. It permeates our heart and they begin to live that way. And so, how they know God in their minds. Verses 7 says this. That they should set their hope in God.
Our anchor of our hope is that we truly know him in our minds. Who is shaping the worldview of our children?
Who is the thing or the person that is shaping who and what your children believe? Is it the internet? Is it social media? Is it a teacher at school? Or parents, is it you? Is it us that is developing who and what our children believe and know? They know God in their minds.
The second one. That they would trust God in their hearts. Since my children were born. From the moment they were born. Before they were born. I would sit there as they were laying in the crib. And I would pray a prayer from their head to their toes. God bless their minds.
God bless their mouth. As they go through this life. That they would have a mouth that is speaking truth.
God bless their ears. Help them as they absorb things in their life. Bless their hands, Lord. As they go through life. When they begin to interact with other people. That their hands would do the work of the Lord. Bless their feet.
That when they would walk for you. That they would go the right way. God bless their heart.
Help them to trust you at a young age. And follow you just as I did as a five year old boy. Who accepted Jesus in Salisbury.
The Lord bless their heart as they begin to go through this. And I would pray this every single night. I would pray through their head. From their head to their toes. Before they could speak. Before they could walk. I'm praying this prayer for them.
Because I don't want them to forget the works of God. I don't want them to just have God as an information tool.
I want them to have God as someone who is affectionate. And someone they can trust.
Even when the times are tough. You see I have no affection toward my history books. And I've got a whole shelf of history books in here. They're just history books to me.
But when I read God's history. When I read God's word. It's more than just a history book. Because it forms my life. And it transforms my life. It transforms my mind. It transforms my heart. So that we can trust him. Ultimately this morning.
Have your kids seen you trust God. When things are hard.
The third thing is. That they will obey God. In their lives. Verse 7c. Oh this is all basically verse 7. That they would keep his commands. Faith doesn't just affect our behavior. But it affects every single area of our life. Real faith affects everything that we do.
Because all of a sudden. The way we live. The way we go. Everything that we do. Is focused and faced on Jesus Christ.
Are we obeying God in our life? Think about a tree that's planted by water. It begins to grow. It doesn't just exist there. It grows and it bears fruit. And the Bible says in Psalms. That it bears much fruit. Because it's planted by water.
Children are the same way. They're planted by a stream of something. And they're going to produce some type of fruit. Fruit. What are we streaming into their lives?
Hopefully it's not just Netflix and YouTube. Hopefully we're streaming something. The word of God in their lives. So that when they step out in faith. And they begin to produce fruit. That they're producing God honoring fruit. For the followers of Jesus Christ. That would love him. And would serve him.
Practical Steps for Fathers
And ultimately fathers this morning. This is where the earth meets the road. How are we walking this morning? Number three.
Practical steps for you this morning. I'm going to go through these very quickly. Four practical steps for faithful fathers.
Four things that we can look at. As we look at the entire chapter of Psalm chapter 78. And I hope you go back and you read all of them. Because time did not allow me to. But I promise you it will be beneficial to you. As fathers this week.
To really meditate on this chapter. Practical steps for you as fathers. This week to live out Psalm 78. Number one. Be present. Number one. Be present. We have a lot of resources in our life. We have water.
We have oxygen. We have our homes. We have our vehicles. We have oil and gas that we put into our vehicles.
We have food that we consume. We have a lot of resources at our disposal. The one resource that we have that is a non-renewable resource that we will never get back. Is our time.
We are only given X amount of time. We cannot add more time to our life. As much as we want to have more time. As much as we desire to have more time with our children. Every single day we step another step closer to the end of our life unfortunately.
Every single day that we get closer to the end of our life. We begin to realize there is more time behind me than I have in front of me. We can't add more time.
We can't get more time. But the one thing we can do. Is we can spend quality time with our children. We can love our children. We can show them what it means to be a father.
We can show them what it means to live a life that is worthy of Christ. You see you cannot microwave. Think about this. You can't microwave discipleship. Discipleship is walking step by step faithfully with other people.
Jesus took his disciples and for three and a half years he walked with them every single step of their life. He went to the. If there would have been movies he would have went to the movies with them. He would have done these things with his disciples.
He went to the upper room. He was on the boat with them. He is at the upper. He's at the temple. He's in the upper room. He's having meals.
He is living his life for three and a half years with them. He didn't take his disciples and throw them in the microwave and say okay in 30 seconds you're going to be our disciples.
Boom. There's disciples. We're good to go. It would be great if that would be it. But life is difficult and we have a time that is hard. And our kids need to see quality time that we spend with them so that we can influence them for the gospel. And spending time with other people just being present with them.
Being present for them over time. I was at my sister's house this last week before the convention and they had a sign on their fridge. It said be present not presents.
It was just a simple reminder every time they go to the fridge. Be present with your kids. Don't just buy them things. Don't just try to win them over. Don't just try to do things for them. But simply be there with them and do life with them. Be present with our families.
Number two be consistent.
Be consistent. Live your faith daily. Every day when you wake up are we going to the word. Every day when we wake up are we living our life that is for Christ every single morning. One thing that I've learned as a father. Children spot hypocrisy very easily. Dad that guy there he's not real. That's a mannequin.
Is that a mannequin? Yeah he's not real dad. Okay good. Walk through the store they notice these things. They pick up these things.
In our life as living examples of who Christ has called us to be. We our children will spot if we are real or if we are fake. Our children will spot if our life that is living for Christ is just a simple routine that we're doing.
Or if it's an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. And they'll spot that and you've spotted that as well.
You've seen that before. You've seen someone and you've said they're only Christians on Sunday. And you've also seen others who every day of their life they follow the Lord. They love the Lord. They're consistent with the Lord because their life is for the Lord's life. Number three be transparent.
Be transparent. Share your struggles. Show that grace is for you and it's also for them.
We try to do the best of our ability to at least have one meal every single day of the week. Sometimes we fail because of sports and stuff. But we try to have one meal where we sit around the table. And we just share life.
And we talk about things that are going on. Things that sometimes I don't go in detail. Trust me, I don't tell my family everything. But struggles that I have as a pastor. Struggles that I have as a father.
Struggles that Allie has as a teacher. And me and Allie are just talking back and forth. We're being real. Our kids are seeing this. Our kids are hearing this. Our kids are asking, well, how did you respond to that? What did you do in that situation? We're being transparent.
We're being real. We're showing them that grace is not just for some high up elite person. But it's for us. It's for those who will trust in the Lord. Just as windows let light in.
We should be vulnerable in allowing others to see Jesus in us. And we should allow our lives to repel Jesus out from us so that people can see us. As a pastor, I have to live in a glass house. I have to live in a house that's vulnerable. And people know my struggles.
I live a vulnerable life. I don't try to...
I learned this when I was in high school. As a computer guy, at the top of your keyboard, you have some letters, Wissywig. These letters mean what you see is what you get.
And when we see this is what you type in your computer, whatever you see on that document, when you hit print is what you're going to get. You should not be that way. But through Microsoft, they invented this. Listen, I just determined as a young person, I want to be a Wissywig person.
I want to be a what you see is what you get.
If you hang out with me at my house, if you're at dinner with me, if we're out on a vacation, if you're just hanging out in my building with me, wherever I'm at, I want to be the same person in the pulpit as I am in my house with my kids.
What you see is what you get. And I believe, church, when we are living a life that is transparent like that, our children look at that and they say, you know, it's okay to be vulnerable. Jesus carried them through their darkest time.
And I think I want Jesus to carry me through my darkest time too. We begin to be an example for our children through a transparent life. And number four, be intentional. Be intentional.
As Terry comes and I close this down, make family devotions a priority. Something that we struggle with a lot. We don't do a lot of sit down family devotions, but we drive a lot. So we try to throw songs and music and sometimes podcasts,
even though my kids tell me to turn my podcasts off. We try to incorporate the Bible and life in with them.
Devotions may not happen every night, but what does happen every night to the best of my ability for 12 years,
almost 12 years, for nine, almost 10 years for Jade and for Hudson every night. We pray with our kids every night individually. I sit down with them.
Last night, I didn't do all my singing that I normally do with them, but I sat down and I prayed with them. Because I felt them as a father last night.
But I sat down and I prayed with them. And I said, Lord, forgive me for the wrongdoings that I had, but also forgive them for their wrongdoings against their father. And I was intentional to pray with them.
And I'm intentional to speak truth to them daily. And we as young men and fathers and grandfathers, we must be people who are intentional on being spiritual leaders in our home. Are we this morning been intentional in that? The legacy that you leave will only be one legacy.
As I said it a couple of weeks ago, we only have one life.
Living a Legacy for Christ
And it's only for Christ's sake and only what we've done for Christ will matter anything. We must be people who are living a life that is a legacy for Christ.
You see, Psalm 78 is not just a chapter as a history lesson, but it's a mandate for us.
It's a heritage mandate to tell us that God has been faithful to us and to one generation. Are we going to be faithful to share what God has done with us to the next generation? Or is it just going to die with this generation?
Fathers, you're not just shaping and raising children. You are shaping and raising eternity. And if we fail our kids,
we will stand before God one day and have to give an account for what we've done. I challenge you men, women as well, but specifically on Father's Day, I can preach a little harder.
We must be men who are men of character, who stand for what is right, even when the world says it's not. We stand for truth. We stand for righteousness. Let's all stand and respond as you see fit.
Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. God, you are faithful to us. Help us to be faithful to you. Help us to trust you more than we ever have. Thank you for my father here this morning and what he means to me. My grandfather.
Lord, I pray that you would just continue to help us this morning to be men and women of faith and integrity. Be with us this morning as we have our time of invitation and response. In your name we pray. Amen.
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