The last post highlighted many of the similar principles with which we love our sons and daughters. There are nuanced differences, but these differences fall short of fully loving our sons into their biblical role of leadership. Let’s move beyond the basics of the previous posts and look at our unique gift of discipling the next generation of men in Christ’s Church.
As Parents we have the unique opportunity to disciple our sons with the prayerful hope of them growing to be great men who love Jesus and lead in His Church. As Fathers, we have the unique gift of showing our sons an example of this faithful life lived out daily.
How can we love our sons into biblical leadership?
Here are a few thoughts on how we can love our sons into biblical leadership:
We must model a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. A son seeing his father in prayer and regular Bible reading will show him that those are usual rhythms of a disciple. Further, if we as fathers begin to share little tidbits of what we are learning through spending time in God’s Word, it displays to our sons that we aren’t mindlessly reading but rather we are being changed by the truth of scripture.
We must model a biblical marriage. Fathers, the strongest picture of marriage that our sons will have will be the one they grow up viewing day after day. Model for them what it looks like to love your bride, his mother, in a biblical way. He watches your every move and listens to every word that you say. They way he sees you leading and loving your wife will be exponentially more significant than any words that you ever say to him on the subject.
We must model biblical leadership within the home. Our sons should see and hear us having spiritual conversations with everyone in our home. He should see and hear us praying over everyone in our home. This is an incredible gift that you can give your son. There are way too many men who have to overcome seemingly insurmountable walls of discomfort when it comes to leading spiritually in the home. What if, for your son, it was a normal sight that he saw growing up and he knew nothing different than to reproduce that spiritual leadership in his own family? That is legacy.
We must model church leadership. Obviously this assumes church involvement… we must first model healthy church involvement to our sons. Then, knowing that the Bible clearly calls men to lead His church, we must model biblical church leadership. There are endless ways this can be displayed in our homes. If we are serving the church through children’s ministry, small group ministry, deacon or elder ministry, or any other ministry of the church, we are displaying leadership. One of the most detrimental things our sons could see in us, aside from no involvement at all, is a consumer mindset when it comes to His church. Look for appropriate ways to include, even just in conversation, your son in your own church involvement.
We must model a shepherd’s heart. This is a bit of a ‘catch-all’ which includes modeling compassion, hospitality, mercy, and mentoring. We can raise our sons with a picture of what it looks like to reach out to those around us with compassion and mercy in the name of Jesus Christ. We can raise our sons with a picture of what it looks like to be a man that disciples and mentors other men for their continued growth and maturity. To model a shepherd’s heart means that we do all of these things from a motivation of love, because of the love we know that God has for us in His gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
We have the opportunity to impact not only our grandchildren and generations to come through modeling and discipling our sons toward biblical leadership in the home and local church. Fathers, will you commit yourself to loving your son(s) toward biblical leadership through both word and deed?
Matt Powell serves as teaching pastor at Crossings Community Church, a body of believers whose mission is to engage, equip, and empower homes for gospel transformation in Katy, TX.