Ben Sasse, former Senator from Nebraska, is dying with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But he is fighting to stay alive as long as the Lord allows. He is writing, he is podcasting, and he is continuing to love his wife and his daughters of 24 and 22. And he has a son. He said in a recent podcast, “Our wonderful providential surprise is a decade younger…our boy is 14. And when you get a precise date on how soon you are going to die…(you might) go through the question of, if I can get into a clinical trial and a lot of what is going to happen in that hospital is kinda nasty, why do you want to do it? And I felt a duty to try to fight to live a little while longer (because) he needs a dad to slap him upside the head a little bit longer and give him some advice and wrestle through some questions. And help him recognize that he’s going to need to be a man earlier than those of us who were blessed to have a dad in our lives (for more years). So…I want to be a good dad for longer.” Sobering. As the Bible says, “Man knows not his time.” And for Ben Sasse at just 53 years old, whose time is coming quickly, what he wants most, since he knows he is going to heaven, is to be a good dad for longer.
We all want to be a good dad for longer, don’t we men? I would suggest we take up two responsibilities the priests in Israel had in the Old Testament. They went before God on behalf of the people.
They did this first as worshipers. The priests were the worship leaders of Israel. Dads and Moms are the worship leaders of the family. Your family will learn to worship and learn to love to worship as they watch and imitate you. Let your children see you singing with all your hearts, worshiping the Lord like David did, “with all your might.” You don’t want them to have to look around and find someone else to imitate! Sadly, the pattern often seen even in healthy churches with healthy families is that the wife is the one fully engaged in worship, not the husband. It doesn’t have to be that way and it shouldn’t. As I like to say, “Real men worship really loud.” Or at least, real men worship with a real heart filled with real passion for the Lord. That takes courage. And it takes preparation.
A priest had to do a lot of work to prepare to take his people into the presence of God. All those regulations and ordinances in Leviticus for priests? It was a physical picture of a spiritual reality. Taking people into worship means preparation and responsibility. How much preparation goes into getting your family ready to worship on Sunday morning? Dads, you can help prepare the hearts of your wife and children to worship corporately on Sunday by demonstrating worship all week in the family. Give God glory. Praise Him in front of your family. Lead devotions with an attitude that God is awesome! Do that all week. Then, come to church with expectation and talk about that on the way. Pray for the worship team as a family as you drive in. Pray for the elders as they prepare to lead and minister to the flock. Prepare to worship God, dads and moms, as the worship leaders for your family.
The priest also went before God on behalf of the people of God, as an intercessor. Hebrews 7 records that Jesus, who is our High Priest forever, always lives to make intercession for (us). If Christ is seated beside the Father as our High Priest, and He is, forever making intercession for His children, we also are given that great honor and privilege. Men, pray for your wife. Pray for your children. Bring them before the throne of grace every day, asking the Lord to bless them and to keep them. Get to know what your wife and children are struggling with and pray for them about that. It is certainly important to pray about the sin we see in our family. And if there is a spiritual attack going on, YOU have more authority than anyone else in the whole world to deal with it. You are the head of your home. When we still had children at home, I would ask every morning during family devotions, “What do we need to pray about?” It is great to give your children and wife the opportunity to tell you what concerns them, what is coming up that day or that week that they need the Lord’s help with. Now that it is just me and Cindy, I still ask that question: “What can I pray about for you today?”
Paul mentions prayer in Ephesians 6 after he tells us to put on the armor of God. Our children used to stand up and recite that passage and “put on their armor” after family devotions: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. We wanted them to know that life in Christ is first in importance, and it is a battle we engage in daily. But what are we to do with the armor in place? Pray! Paul said, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”
Men, hear this. Prayer with and for our wife and with and for our children is the most powerful tool God has given us for their good and for His glory.
J. Mark Fox 