For the Salvation of His Family

With that having been said, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews, I'm sorry, Hebrews 11. Hebrews chapter 11. If you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be for the salvation of his family. For the salvation of his family.

This will be a little bit different of a sermon. this, this morning, I'll be spending most of my time doing some, speaking somewhat biographically and reflecting on Ways that my own father contributed to the salvation of his family. When I share my testimony, faith in Christ, and I've got any length of time to share that with people, I normally do not begin the story of my conversion with the weeks or the months leading up to, my conversion. I normally begin my testimony by telling people about my dad because what happened to him is a vital part of my own gospel narrative.

My dad grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in a godless family characterized by brokenness and by no religious training. his parents divorced when he was young, and his only memories of his biological father were the times when his dad would bring by the alimony check to his mom every other week. My dad's mom remarried a few years after her divorce and my dad had a stormy and distant relationship with his stepdad. At the age of 17, my dad was going nowhere fast, frequently in trouble with the law.

My dad found himself in 1959 standing before the juvenile judge at the Wayne County Courthouse in Detroit, Michigan, and the judge told him, if I see you in my courtroom again, I'm going to put you in prison. He strongly advised my dad to join the Marine Corps. On that occasion, and he framed my dad's choice in the following terms, 4 in the cops or 10 in the pen. My dad used to tell us that he was not good at math back then, but he thought to himself, 4 years in the Marines seems like a better deal than 10 years in prison.

So he joined the Marines. He went to boot camp at Pendleton and shortly thereafter, he found himself stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where at the age of 19, he met a young woman named Janie. She brought him to church with her and it was after a service one Sunday night that my dad found himself sitting out. In front of the church after he had heard the gospel being preached that evening.

And his heart was heaving with the realization that he needed salvation through Jesus Christ. The man who preached that night approached my dad as he sat there and long story short, that night, my dad called upon the name of Jesus for salvation. At the age of 20 my dad married Janie. And they both knew so little, and they felt so unready to have a Christian marriage and to build a Christian home.

But there was an older couple in the church, who was a great spiritual blessing. To my mom and dad. This older couple took my mom and dad under their wing, invited them over to their house, and sometimes babysat for them after my older brother was born and just helped them and encouraged them in the ways of Christ. The name of the couple was Milton and Betty.

And my parents named me Milton as a way of honoring the role of this man in their life, and I am so thankful that they named me after Milton and not Betty. My dad ended up staying in the Marine Corps for 20 years, which was 16 years longer than he had planned and 10 years longer than the prison sentence that he was trying to avoid. During that time span, my dad did 3 tours of duty in Vietnam, a 6-month tour in the Mediterranean, and a handful of shorter tours elsewhere. Essentially, guys, he was literally overseas or away from home for 4 years of the 1st 12 years of his and my mom's marriage.

But somewhere in the midst of all that, He and my mom had 4 children. Of whom I was the 2nd. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1, the text says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Perhaps what I'm most grateful for regarding My dad is that he was willing to look beyond the brokenness that his eyes had seen.

All around him as he grew up, and he was willing to embark on a radically different life, a life up to that point that had been unseen by him. In Hebrews 11:7, the writer of Hebrews goes on to say, speaking of Noah, by faith, Noah, being instructed by God about things not yet seen and fear, prepared an ark for the salvation of his family. Here's what's amazing to me. Noah had never seen it rain like God said it was going to rain.

He had never seen a flood like God said was going to happen. Noah had never built an ark, nor had he ever seen an ark. I'm sure his dad had never built a 450 ft long ark before, so Noah had no example to follow in that regard. But God told Noah that a huge flood was coming.

And Noah believed it. And God told Noah to build an ark and Noah apparently believed that if God told him to build a 450 ft long ark, then he can do that. I'm sure that Noah had never seen himself as an ark builder before. But if God was calling him to be an ark builder, then Noah decided to believe that he could become that.

In so doing, he modeled the faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And so Noah prepared an ark, and the text says he did so for the salvation of his family. His own wife, his 3 sons, and their wives were miraculously and wonderfully saved because Noah was willing to have the faith that is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Turns out that Noah's faith was hugely practical.

redounding to the benefit of many. All of us in this room are alive today because of his faith. My dad never built an ark, but by the grace of God, he did something just as great in my opinion. He built a home that led to the salvation of his 4 children, including me.

And building such a home, my dad was living out of faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Throughout his years growing up in Detroit, my dad received no affirmation from his earthly father. His earthly father imparted to him no vision of what he could become. But when my dad read God's word as a 20 year old newborn in Christ, my dad read and he saw that God was calling forth from him things that he had never seen in himself before, nor in his upbringing.

My dad saw that God was calling him to build a godly home, and to have a godly marriage and to lead a family and to be a dad and a husband, the likes of which my dad had never seen with his eyes. No one who knew my dad would have seen these things in him. My dad didn't see such things in his past, and he didn't see such things in himself, but as the writer of Hebrews says, faith is the substance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.

By the grace of God, my dad with the invaluable help of my mom, operating in the grace that God was providing. My dad built a home for the salvation of his family. What I wanna do with the time that we have this morning is to observe 8 things that my dad did by faith that contributed to building a home life that proved instrumental for our salvation. And I'd like to share these 8 things with you this morning.

8 things my dad did by faith. That contributed substantially to the salvation of his family. You interested? OK.

Let's, let's try to go through this. Number one, he led us in family devotions. He led us in family devotions in Joshua 24:14, Joshua says, as for me and my house, we will worship the Lord, and that was my dad's philosophy as we grew up. My dad never saw family devotions practiced as he was growing up, but he became convinced that he needed to launch this practice in his home.

My earliest memories as a child, Or of our family gathering each night in our living room and of my dad reading the Bible to us. He would also read to us from a devotional book. The book featured stories with spiritual lessons for us to learn, and some of the stories that he read to us when I was 4.5 years old are still vivid in my memory today. Parents do not underestimate the impact of the stories that you read to your children or of the power of you reading the scriptures to them.

There were many days in which the practice of family worship dropped from our family life as I was growing up, but then we would start it up again and then waver again. As a father myself, I know how hard it is to get the family together for such times of family devotions, and I have failed on as many days as I have succeeded as a dad. But I am grateful for what my dad strive to do. And for each day that he did succeed in gathering us as a family to hear from God and to pray to him.

I learned from my dad that God is a God who is worthy of family meetings. There's another thing my dad did that contributed to the salvation of his household, and that is he loves the church. He loved the church. By the way, these aren't in any order of importance, but they're just observations as they have come to mind.

He loved the church. How many of you wanna be like Christ? Raise your hand. OK.

If you do want to be like Christ, then you will want to note That according to Ephesians 5:25, Christ loved the church and demonstrated that love by giving himself up in death for her. My dad was like Christ in that way. He loved the church, the bride of Christ. and I'm speaking biographically here.

I, I know that this gets worked out differently in different people's lives, but And this may sound strange to your ears at first, but I honestly never remember my mom or dad making a decision to attend church. We children grew up knowing that that decision had already been made long before we were born. And we were simply living in the good of that transaction that had happened before we came around. And to my parents, the decision to be a part of a local church, meant attending Sunday morning, Sunday school and church and Sunday night church and Wednesday night church and every night of the week-long revival meetings that our church had or held at least once a year.

Church attendance was never a choice that they would labor over on a Saturday night. Or on a Sunday morning. It was just assumed attending church was as automatic to them as the sun rising in the morning. And setting at night and everything took a backseat to gathering with God's people.

It's just the way it was. And again, I, I'm not legislating for anybody else. I'm just describing the way things were in our family. I played 7 years of baseball, and 4 years of football, and 4 years of soccer, and 1 year, 1 pathetic year of basketball.

In fact, the name of our basketball team was the Rainbows. And just the name of our team put fear in the hearts of our opponents. But through all of the years of engagement in all of these various sports, never once did I or my siblings ever miss a church service because of practice or because of a game. At the beginning of every season, With every sport, my dad would talk to the coach and explain that church came first in our family, and he would tell the coach that if a practice or a game conflicted with church, then we would miss all or some of that practice or a game.

And fortunately, our coaches were respectful of that and let us play. I remember many occasions leaving practice early or leaving a game early and changing clothes in the car. And eating a tin foil wrapped meal in the car while our parents drove us to church. And I don't remember us kids ever complaining about it, and that's not because we were virtuous kids, so we were not virtuous kids.

It's simply the way it was. We didn't even think about it. Plus meals wrapped in tin foil were our favorites after a hard game or practice, and we simply grew up with the sense that this is just the way it is. Through my parents' example, they instilled in us, their children, a sense that the local church is a happening place in the kingdom of God.

With all of its beauties and with all of its failings, the church was the center of God's activity on earth and nothing on earth was more important than what God was doing through his redeemed community in the local church. And don't get me wrong, the churches that we attended were far from perfect. They were full of memorable characters. And flawed people.

Kinda like cornerstone. and I am among those flawed characters. I remember one Sunday morning church service when I was about 12 years old, an argument literally broke out between the pastor and a close friend of our family who was a member of that church during the service. This friend of our family was on the back row of the church and the pastor was up in front of all of us, so we all got to hear every word they said.

As they literally argued with each other. In front of us. There was a business meeting that night and the tensions were thick in the church. A police officer literally had to be present for that business meeting that evening and a punch ended up being thrown.

In that business meeting on that Sunday evening. That's how bad things were. But my parents, even though enduring that type of thing, never gave up on being a part of churches. They love the Church of Jesus Christ in spite of all of its her brokenness, just like Jesus loves us.

When my dad retired from the Marine Corps at the age of 37, He enrolled at Indianapolis Baptist College and got a degree in Bible. Around that same time, coincidentally, he became quite successful in business, but he made it his ministry. To pastor struggling churches that could not afford a pastor. He would insist that they pay him something as he pastored them.

But then he would always put that money back in the offering plate and donate it back to the church. Eventually, when the church became strong enough and large enough to afford a pastor, my dad would shepherd them towards a new pastor and then my dad would step away. So strong was my parents' love for the local church that, and again, I'm just speaking biographically here, all four of us children, when we reached maturity and it came time to decide what we wanted to do with our lives, we all chose ministry in the local church to one degree or another.

My older brother served as a youth pastor in the Midwest for 3.5 years.

I chose to be a pastor of a church on the West Coast. My younger brother chose to be a pastor of a local church on the east coast where he continues to serve to this day. And my sister chose to marry a man who is now serving as a senior pastor of a local church in the Midwest and he's the man who preached to you all. A few weeks ago.

All this and never one time do any of us remember our parents ever telling us to be pastors. I have no memory of that. But I do ask myself, how did that happen? How did it happen?

Well, God is sovereign and God leads people in different ways, but from a human standpoint, I think at least part of what happened was that all of us children wanted to be involved in the one enterprise that we knew would outlive every other institution. It would outlive every baseball team, baseball league, baseball season, every football squad, every trophy, the one institution that would even outlive the sun and the moon and the stars, and that's the church. The bride of Christ.

Again, I'm not legislating here.

Not everyone is supposed to become pastors of churches, but we are all blessed to be a part of the church, right? And we are blessed to love the church and to serve and use our gifts in Christ Church and thereby manifest the heart of Christ toward his bride. Which is the church. There's something else my dad did that led to the salvation of his family, and that is, he had good heroes.

He had good heroes. In Proverbs 13:20, Solomon says, He who walks with wise men will be wise. This not only speaks of having good friends, but it would also include walking through life with the stories and the examples of wise men in your heart and mind, whose teaching and whose example can inspire you and counsel you as you go through life. My dad provided such wise men for us.

His library was stocked with books written. By wise men and biographies of men like Charles Spurgeon and the great DL Moody, the American evangelist. Who preached the gospel to millions of people over the course of his ministry and also founded the YMCA. My dad also admired pastors and I came to admire the pastors that he admired.

So not surprisingly, growing up, my heroes were preachers and pastors. When I was in high school, my younger brother and I shared A bedroom in our home and we had two posters that we had put on the wall of our bedroom. One of them was a poster of Franco Harris, the running back of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Can I get an amen?

Oh well. The other one was a poster of DL Moody. The evangelist. There we go.

Those two images hung on our wall through our high school years. What I did not realize at the time Was that my dad. wittingly and maybe unwittingly was shaping our future destinies by simply influencing who our heroes were. Often it is true that a person's heroes have a huge impact on the choices that they make in their life.

So parents make it one of your goals to put good heroes before your children. If you shape your children's heroes, you just may be shaping their destiny in the process. There's something else my dad did that led to the salvation of his household, and that is he disciplined us with love. He disciplined us with love.

In Proverbs 23:13, Solomon says, do not withhold discipline from the child. My dad obeyed this command religiously and frequently because we gave him so many good reasons to do so. When we deserved it, my dad spanked us. I know that's not popular today.

But he did that in obedience to scripture. And I'm not gonna lie, I hated those spankings. And my dad spanked hard, he spanked like a marine. If you talk to my dad today, and he shared this with me, that he looks back and with the benefit of hindsight, he realizes that he spanked us too hard.

We tried to tell all this when we were growing up, but, but he wouldn't listen. But to his credit, here's what stands out to me. I can recall many occasions in which my dad would sit me on his lap after a spanking, and he would hold me close to his chest while I sat on his lap and he would embrace me. And tell me how much he loved me.

My memories of such moments are more vivid. Than the spankings themselves. I felt like more of a king upon my father's lap on such occasions than any king ever felt. Upon a throne My dad never got to sit on his father's lap and have his father embrace him and ministered healing to him after discipline.

My dad never saw this done in his own upbringing, but he launched out and did something that he had never personally seen or experienced before. why? Because faith is the substance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.

There's something else my dad did that led to the salvation of his family, and that is he spent time with us. He spent time with us. The famous David Livingston was a missionary to Africa and he had a huge, wonderful impact on the African continent. But near the end of his life, David Livingston said the following, quote, I often ponder over my missionary career, and though conscious, conscious of many imperfections, not a single pang of regret rises in the view of my conduct except That I did not feel it to be my duty while spending all my energy and teaching the heathen to devote a special portion of my time to play with my children.

But generally, he says, I was so much exhausted with the mental. And manual labor of the day that in the evening there was no fun left in me. I did not play with my little ones while I had them, and they soon sprung up in my absences and left me conscious that I had none to play with. My dad has his regrets as a father, but he doesn't have Livingston's regrets.

Because of his service to our country in the military, my dad was gone for 4 years, 4 years of the 1st 10 years of my life. But when he was home, he spent time with us. I remember countless occasions of being tickled half out of my mind by my dad, being flipped again and again in our living room. When I got older, I remember countless games of chess with my dad.

Thousands of games of ping pong with my dad, games of pool and games of football in our backyard. I remember many occasions of playing catch with my dad. Although I have to confess that I Really didn't enjoy playing catch with him. My dad was a fast pitch pitcher for the Shamrock Squadron softball team in the Marine Corps.

So whenever we would play catch, it always turned into him putting me up against the side of our house and having me catch the junk that he wanted to throw at me. I'm totally serious. When my dad wanted to play catch with one of us 3 boys, we would hear him coming through the house and we would hear the sound of the ball going into the mitt and we literally would hide and And the first son he found was the one who had to go play. Catch with him.

And I can say I learned how to catch from my dad and I also learned what it felt like to have a softball bouncing off the side of the house and popping me on the back of the head. My dad on many occasions took us fishing and shrimping at locations where we lived on the east coast. I also remember my dad being generous with whatever we caught and giving it away freely to other people. All of the games of fishing and shrimping, or the games and the fishing and the shrimping that we enjoyed together were not meaningless times.

Such times of relationship building served to pave a road from His heart to our heart, and from our heart to his. When my oldest son, Brendan was in high school, there was a point where I was losing his heart and I couldn't see my way past the fog between us to know how do I, how do I get to his heart. I tried to have conversations with him and, very little was working, so. In desperation, I broke out the ping pong table and we engaged in some vicious competition for several weeks, playing hundreds of games together, just going at it, and the road from my heart to his began being rebuilt.

Those were not wasted shallow times. I treasured the road from my heart to his, and sometimes those roads get built and strengthened by playing with. Our children But even that chapter in mine and my son's life bears the imprint of my dad's influence. There's something else my dad did that led to the salvation of his family, and that is he grew before our eyes.

In 1 Timothy 4:15, Paul tells Timothy to take pains with the things of God and to be absorbed in them, and then he says, so that your progress may be evident to all. I want you to make progress and I want people to see you progressing, Paul says to Timothy. And I can honestly say that while my dad was not an example of perfection to us, he was an example of progress and in the process of doing that, he gave us an even greater gift than the gift of perfection. After my dad got saved at the age of 19.

He immediately quit drinking alcohol. He wanted nothing to do with alcohol because he had seen the enslavement of alcohol in his youth. He quit drinking immediately, but he had a hard time breaking free from his addiction to smoking. Which was enslaving him.

Right around the time my older brother was born, however, my dad had smoked his last cigarette. And I grew up knowing that God used Philippians 4:13 to deliver him. Philippians 4:13 says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. My dad quoted that again and again and again whenever he was tempted to smoke.

And he quoted that and believed that passage all the way to freedom. And I grew up knowing that I could do all things through Christ. Because I saw that exemplified in my dad. My dad, this is one thing that amazes me about him.

My dad heard a lot of cussing growing up and he cussed a lot as a teenager depending on who he was around. But when God saved him, God cleaned up his mouth. And because of that, I never once in the entirety of my life ever remember my dad cussing. Which is all the more amazing because I gave him plenty of reasons to cuss.

Looking back, I marvel at this. Given the background that my dad grew up in and given his 20 years in the Marine Corps, it's a startling thing that I never once heard him utter a profanity. The closest he ever came was one occasion when I was about 12 years old. We were all as a family getting into the car.

And in a moment of frustration, my dad told some family member to shut up. And that was like a cuss word to us kids. We all were like looking at each other like, whoa, did you just hear what he said? But that moment of hearing him say shut up to someone in our family is so vivid in my memory precisely because it's the worst thing I ever heard him say.

My dad had his issues though, and we were witness. To some of them. He failed along the way in some significant ways, ways that put him in the same category as you and me and Abraham and Jacob and King David and other biblical characters who failed to live up to God's ideal. My dad had an anger problem and at times I witnessed his anger and saw it do damage to relationships in our family.

But even in this area, I watched him grow over the years. I watched him mature and gain increasing control over his spirit. I can remember moments in high school. And in college when something would happen and I fully expected an angry response from my dad and I got a calm.

And measured and peaceful response from him instead, and those moments stand out in my memory more vividly than any moments of anger that preceded them. My dad and mom did not have a perfect marriage. There were stormy seasons in their marriage, but they weathered those storms, and they are still together, and they are still holding hands. And oh how I needed their example during storms that Don and I experienced in our marriage.

And I learned from their example that if you work on things and you continue to depend upon God and love one another, That God can show Himself strong. Another thing my dad did that contributed to the salvation of his family was he loved the word of God. He loved the word of God. In Psalm 11997, the psalmist says, oh how I love your law, it is my meditation all the day.

It was very clear to me from an early age that my dad loved the Bible. My dad loved books about the Bible and he stocked his library with hundreds of such books, but there was no book that my dad enjoyed reading more than the Bible. When I was in high school, I remember many mornings of walking down the hallway as I was getting ready for school and I would see my dad sitting at his desk in the morning reading his Bible. And the sight of my dad reading his Bible.

Always generated in me a feeling of security. I always knew that our family would be fine because Dad was listening to God and reading his word. My dad's Bible was well worn. I used to love going into his study and, and combing through the pages of his Bible.

They were marked up with many colors of pencil and comments that he would make in the margin. I looked through his Bible and I honestly could find not one page of his Bible. That did not have some text underlined or some marking on it, not a single page. I can also tell what his favorite passages were because those pages were unusually worn and stained from the oily residue of his fingers on those pages as he lovingly lingered over those favorite texts and marked.

Everywhere there was blank space on the page, his interactions with the text. I loved the look and the feel and even the smell of my dad's Bible, so much so that when I got my first leather-bound Bible in high school, I immediately began rubbing my fingers on the pages. In order to create the same stained look and worn look of my dad's Bible. My dad loved the word of God.

And we as children caught that love. From our dad. He had a passion for the Bible and we caught that passion. Dads, take note of this, that the most, whatever it is you're passionate about, that's the most contagious thing about you.

Your children will be more influenced by what you love than by your lectures. Be very careful about what you love and what you're passionate about, and the word of God was one of my dad's passions that affected us and led to our salvation. There's a final thing my dad did that contributed to the salvation of our household, and that is he demonstrated that salvation is available to all. He demonstrated that salvation is available to all.

In John 3:16, the text says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life. My dad truly believed that. He truly believed that whoever believes in Jesus, no matter their brokenness, no matter their sins, no matter their age, could have eternal life. And he lived that My dad involved himself in a ministry at a local rescue mission near where we lived.

And he would preach the gospel to the men whose lives have been broken through drunkenness and slavery to other sins. And he would often take me and one of my brothers with him when we were very young and we would sit there, we would watch him preside over the services there. He would lead the singing, he would lead the men and singing hymns to God and then he would preach a message to them, preaching the hope of Christ. To those men who were willing to listen, and then he would join the men for a meal and be their friend and talk with them.

And because of this, I grew up at a very early age, seeing that no one is ever beyond the reach of God's great love. And that no brokenness is too great for God to heal and that it's never too late to cry out to God for salvation. My dad, what I just said, my dad would preach that to you this morning. If he were here, he would say that to you if you have never yet believed in Christ for salvation and called on his name.

When I stopped to review all of these things, it hits me afresh that everything I ever needed to know in life, I saw with my own two eyes in my dad. And I'm amazed at the sheer volume of the substance that I saw. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, and the faith that operated in my dad produced a substance that I got to see with my own eyes, a substance that he never got to see when he grew up. When I was in college, somewhere around then, my dad's biological father died and we all went up to Detroit, Michigan for his funeral.

I'll never forget, before the service started, I was standing next to my dad by the casket of his biological father. And we were both looking. at his earthly father as he lay in the casket. And while we stood there, I asked my dad, I said, what was he like?

When you were growing up. And my dad said, I don't know. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't know him then.

And his answer hit me like a ton of bricks and I had a little epiphany right there. I realized in that moment what I'm conveying to you in this message, I realized that my dad had no example. to look at and to follow in being a dad. He came from a home life of brokenness, a home life that knew nothing of Christ.

And as I stood there by that casket and by my dad pondering the fact that my dad had seen no example from his earthly Father, From his own family that he could pattern himself after. I in that moment appreciated like never before that my dad had done a tremendous job. of parenting me and my siblings. In my youthful pride at that stage of life, I had been critical of my dad and I was more focused on his failings and on his shortcomings and on the good that was in him.

But his answer to my question that day changed my perspective instantly, and I wrote him a letter shortly thereafter and officially gave my dad an A as a dad. And today I would say the same thing. I give my dad an A because faith is the substance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.

My dad was willing to step out in faith and become something that he was never blessed to see with his own eyes as he grew up. And I am thankful that my dad did not allow himself to be held captive by what he had seen, but was willing to become something that he had never seen. A few years ago, my, my parents were out here in California visiting with us and they came to church on a Sunday morning and then after church, we went to a Sizzler. Restaurant, the one, in Moreno Valley.

We were eating lunch there and in the course of the conversation, I asked my dad a simple question about his biological father. My dad, hearing the question, very casually and conversationally began to answer. And then all of a sudden, he broke down and started crying. As we sat in that restaurant.

It was an awkward moment for all of us, but there was a poignant sweetness in the moment that was palpable. And it hit me then. And it hits me now that my dad is 73 years old. And he still carries in his heart the wounds of an absent father.

Those wounds are still raw. My dad knows that he will live and die and never be pursued by an earthly father. That he will never hear his father say, I'm proud of you, son. My dad carries such wounds with deep feeling and other than that moment in the Sizzler restaurant a few years ago, he keeps those feelings carefully tucked away in his heart and tries not to bother anyone with his wounds.

But I don't have such ones. And I know precisely the reason why. Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I don't carry such wounds because by the grace of God, my dad was willing to read God's word and believe it and step out and chart a course for himself that was different than anything he had seen while growing up.

When God told him to lead his family and devotion to God, he did it, even though he had never seen himself do that before. When God told him to walk in freedom from bondage to sinful habits, he fought the fight of his life and learned to walk in freedom, even though he had never seen himself walk in freedom in that area before. When my dad stumbled and fell, He returned to God and found grace with God, and he kept believing and clinging to Christ. When God told my dad to love his children and to be a good father to them, my dad stepped out in faith and learned to do that even though he had never seen his dad do such things for him.

What was unseen. To my newly converted father back in 1962 and what he had to accept by faith that he could be. I have seen with my own eyes. And my life and the life of my 2 brothers and my sister and the lives of my parents, 17 grandchildren and all of your lives are richer because of it.

And by the way, God's grace doesn't just work its way downward through the lineage. God's grace worked its way back up into my dad's parents' lives also. My dad's dad and my dad's stepmom received Christ a few years before they died. And my mom had the privilege of leading my dad's biological mom to Christ shortly before she passed away.

My dad has also had the privilege of leading two of his sisters to Christ. So don't let anyone tell you that faith has no substance to it. Faith produces a lot of substance. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and I personally got to grow up inside of that substance.

I got to touch it and hear it and see it and take root in it. Don't ever let anybody tell you that faith is an unsubstantial thing. And every one of you dads here in the cornerstone congregation, you have the opportunity to do the same thing. Don't let your family history define you and tell you what is not possible.

Don't let your own past and even your present failures define you and tell you what isn't possible. If you're reading God's word and God tells you to do something that you've never seen in your family history before, something you've never even seen in yourself before, step out in faith and do that. Get your vision from God's word. Not from your family history, not even from your own personal history.

And in the process, give your children, give everyone in your life the substance. That you never had. For those of you that are being raised in Christian homes, I plead with you to honor the legacy that you have been given by us, to whom much is given, much will be required. Jesus says, we parents, and I feel this so keenly, at this stage of parenting, we parents have fallen short and we have let you down, children in countless ways.

You deserve better than what you've received from us. And our Lord deserves so much better than what we have done for him in serving you. But I plead with you not to let our failures turn you away from the legacy of Christ that we have given to you. If anything, let our failures motivate you to do better than we did.

To go farther than we have gone. To stand on our shoulders and see farther in your day than we've been able to see in ours, and in the process, you give to your children an even more substantial legacy in Christ than what we, your parents have given to you. And in the process, I'm confident That you will do better even than we have done and showing to the world and to your children and your children's children that faith is the substance of things hoped for. And the conviction of things not seen.

Let's pray together. Lord, in, in doing what we have done this morning, My primary aim is to encourage All of us to believe, to believe in Christ. If there's anyone in this room, Lord, that is not believed in you. boldly believed in you and said, I'm with Jesus.

My faith is in him, not in me. Not in my works, my faith is in him. I pray that you would touch their hearts and And, and bring them to a point of saving faith where they would say, I, my boast is Jesus, He is my savior, He is my Lord. And I'm putting my faith in him.

I pray, Lord, that You would help. All of the dads in this room to. And I include the moms in this. That, that we would just be struck by the power of True faith.

The faith is truly a substantial thing that it is through faith that things from the unseen world become visible and enter into time space human history and, and the substance that can be generated in our lives that our children and grandchildren and others in our lives can, can be encouraged by and find sustenance and, and take root and is so profound, Lord. Because all of that substance comes from you. Make us a believing people who walk by faith and not by sight. And as we walk by faith and not by sight, substance is generated in our lives from you through the instrumentality of our faith.

That is hugely substantial. And where we have fallen short as, as dads and as moms, Lord, we're so thankful for the cross. We can run to the foot of the cross and we can find grace and forgiveness there. You are a God who is pleasured to forgive us of father's sins and mother's sins.

And it is that grace that Melts our hearts. And serves as the wind beneath our wings. As we seek to soar in being the men and women of God that you have called us to be. Thank you, Lord, for grace.

Thank you for this opportunity that we have here to give of our offerings to you, Lord, receive these funds, do much with every penny that is given. For the glory of Jesus and for the spread of this good news about Him. We give to you and we give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus. And all God's people said, Me.