• Don’t forget we go to two services this Sunday. See the website for details. Also, here is the link to Kevin DeYoung’s “Plus-One” post. Worth reading. Until you’re invested here, CPC is just “…this church we go to in Issaquah, if we can make it….”
• We use the word “insecure” to describe various people we know, but you may not know the word never occurs in the Bible. Certainly “insecure” would have fit King Saul, who always obsessed over how he was doing in the polls (“…I feared the people and obeyed their voice” 1 Sam 15:24-30 & 1 Sam 13:11). Yet for all the opportunities in his lengthy narrative, translators never saw “insecure” as an appropriate term to translate any of the Hebrew words associated with his character.
• The reason for this is “insecure” is a measure of belief in the self, while the biblical measure of a man is his belief in God, his faith. The man who believes in himself, far from being secure or stable, is suffering a kind of blindness (Luke 18:9); or immaturity (2 Cor 1:9); or even folly (Pr 12:15) and death (Pr 14:12).
• What could this possibly have to do with fatherhood? As men, husbands, and fathers, we feel pressure to succeed, to move up in the organization, to take on greater responsibility and bring home a larger check. We tend to represent this to ourselves as fighting on behalf of our families: if we do well, they do well. To a certain extent, namely when we aren’t making enough to provide, this may be true. But it may also be that we’re just insecure. Um… wait. I mean, lacking in faith.
• What our families really need from us are godliness, love, and time. If we give our families “love” and time without passion for God, then we’ve given them nothing — nothing lasting. To give them “God” without love is also nothing, since God is love and somehow we missed that. Time is the context. We have to give them all three.
• Be careful of your passion for work, which may just be your longing to believe in yourself, and the attempt to get others to believe in you. Our families don’t need that from us. They need for us to have faith in God, the one who promises to provide all that we need (Mt 6:25ff “…do not be anxious about your life…”), so we can get about the business of fulfilling the responsibilities he’s given to us. And among these (certainly not first — that belongs to Christ and his kingdom), is our responsibility to wrap our families in the love of God.