Three Important Words For Dads

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Three Important Words For Dads. He will be reading out of 1st John 4:13.

Because Christ has already paid the price and so salvation is available to you all you have to do is come to Christ and to receive him as your Lord and Savior there could not be a better Father’s Day in your life than to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior hello this is pastor Mike Sanders from the open door church it’s a blessing to be with you today and we are bringing you the radio broadcast of hope worth having designed to bring you the hope of the Lord Jesus Christ and knowing that in a hopeless world there is hope and that hope is only found in Jesus today we want to wish all dads out there a happy Father’s Day and we’re gonna be talking about three important words for dads so let’s go to 1st John chapter 4 and let’s begin this study on three important words for dads if you have your Bible this morning I want you to join me in 1st John chapter 4 I want to talk to you about three important words for dad that are significant to our life when we consider this day of Father’s Day certainly a question is before us and that is what is our greatest legacy as a father your greatest legacy is your children it is your grandchildren it is your family this certainly reminds us that investing in our children is the most important investment we can ever make so that’s why I’m here this morning to talk to you about three important words that are about investing our time in other people and specifically our children and grandchildren now we live in unique times because the family is changing in America and families are really the one in that has become the bedrock of civilized life.

Now I know we live in a world that wants to redefine the family and wants to redefine what a marriage is and wants to redefine who even a person is. But I want you to know that for us we look to the Word of God for our definition of what a family is, what a marriage is, and what an individual is.

We can’t look to the world because the world will lead us astray but God will lead us to great peace and joy in our life and salvation as we follow His way. And that’s why it’s important for us to come back and center our thoughts, our beliefs, and to center what we understand to be true about the family.

You cannot improve on what God has designed. God has designed the home to be an institution within society that will have many blessings, even beyond what we can even fully understand. Now, when it comes to this idea of being a dad or a parent, I know that many of you this morning are saying to me, well, Pastor, you know, I already did the dad thing and I already did the parenting thing.

It’s kind of beyond me, Pastor Mike. Well, I want you to listen to me this morning because I got some things I need to say to you. Number one is that we never stop being a parent. Did you know that? Now, there are three stages to being a parent.

And the first stage of parenting is what I call imitation. And that is when our little children, you know, they just imitate everything that we do, whether it’s good, bad, or even ugly. They just imitate it.

If we do fishing, they want to be just like us. They want to fish with us and they’re going to do it just like we do it. But sometimes children imitate the wrong things in our life, right? And I’ve heard parents think it’s funny when their children curse.

But you know, where does a child learn how to curse? Child learns how to curse from mom and dad. They learn from the home. And so there is this stage of imitation. But let me tell you, there’s another stage of parenting.

It’s the stage of instruction. That is, we are responsible to instruct our children. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later on. But remember, there is a stage of instruction and it’s obviously biblical instruction, but sometimes it’s just practical instructions to our children as they are growing up.

But that final stage of parenting, and it doesn’t matter how old your children are, and it doesn’t matter that they’ve already left the home. And it doesn’t matter that maybe you feel like you’ve completed this parenting.

Every parent, no matter what, should be participating in this stage. And that is the stage of inspiration. Every mother, every father should be inspiring their children. to be all that God wants them to be, to be encouraging them to live out the promise and the purpose that God has for their life.

And you know what? Some of the best cheerleaders are parents and they are grandparents. And that’s why we can’t say to ourselves, well, Mike, I’m done with that parenting thing. Quit teaching me about how to parent.

Listen, friends, you need to recognize that if parenting wasn’t taught in the Bible, us preachers wouldn’t teach on it, okay? But number two is that if parenting wasn’t important, then God wouldn’t put it in his word.

And whatever God puts in his word, you know, the Bible says, Jesus said that we should live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Not just some words, not just the words we like, or not just the words that we think apply to us, but every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

So we don’t live by bread alone, but we live by every word. Why are some Christians not fueled in their faith? because they are neglecting the word of God. And not just portions of it, but every word.

You know the Lord has a message for us in his word. And so you should come to the word of God wanting to learn, to be teachable, to be blessed. But let me tell you another reason why you should never have the attitude, well, I’m done with that parenting thing.

And that is this, is that God has called all of us as believers to be mentors. He has called us to be mentors and the principles that we are sharing. Listen, I am not standing here today because of some great knowledge of Mike Sanders or great abilities of Mike Sanders.

But I stand here today on the shoulders of many mentors in my life. I grew up without a father, but I stand on the shoulders of many mentors. Where did those mentors begin in my life? They began in the church.

And you know, I’m glad that the deacon who was at the door when I came in, I didn’t know what to do, where to go or what to thank. And I was scared to death first time at church. But the deacon, he came up to me and he welcomed me and he greeted me and he showed interest in me and my brother and my sister.

And by the way, me, my brother and sister all love the Lord and we’re all active in church and married to Christian spouses and children are active in the church. Listen, it started with a mentor in the church.

Now he could have said, you know, I’m done with that parenting thing. My kids are all grown up and I’m not gonna worry about these other little kids running around. But you see, God had a plan for Mike Sanders and God had a plan that had to be fulfilled in mentors investing in him.

And I wanna say to every one of you, the Bible teaches that the older women are to teach the younger women and the older men are to teach the younger men. I know sometimes we like to divide the church up and we like to keep everybody separate because we are afraid somebody might.

influence somebody the wrong way but listen I’m telling you that some of the best influence upon your children can be good and godly people who are older and they love God and they’ve had some experiences so God has called you to be a mentor so what pastor is going to teach you today is not just about your children and whether they’re at home or whether they’ve grown up or whether they’ve moved out it’s about God’s plan of you influencing other people for Christ and for children and who knows that you just might be that person that is mentoring the next pastor that is mentoring the next evangelist that is mentoring the next missionary that is mentoring the next person who will make an impact at their workplace and lead many to Christ that is mentoring the next person who will have influence and take the gospel to their family and share Christ with them and many will come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

You just don’t know what God can do in a person, through a person, and around a person. And so church, let us not embrace an attitude of I’m done. You’re never done. You’ll be done when God takes you home.

When you wake up one day and you’re in the heavenly portals walking on the streets of gold, you say, done with that, amen? Done with that, praise God. Living in heaven now. But until then, you keep trucking.

You keep moving. You say, you know, sometimes people say, Pastor, why has God let me live so long? Well, you know what? You know what the greatest ministry is? Prayer. And I believe as long as you got breath, you can pray.

And you may not be able to be as physically active as you used to be, but I tell you, all of us can pray. We can pray for our church. We can pray for our pastor. We can pray for the children. We can pray for many people.

And so you might feel like your life is useless. No, your life is valuable in the kingdom of Christ. And it is valuable because ultimately all of us can pray to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me give you those three words.

You wanna write these down if you’d like to take notes. Number one is the word no. It’s the word no. I want you to look at 1 John chapter four, and I want you to see verse 13. The Bible says, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit.

And we have seen and testify that the father has sent the son as the savior of the world. Fathers, mentors should know him, meaning Christ, who is from the beginning so that they can teach their children and mentees to know Christ as well.

Every one of us should know God. This phrase or this word, if you will, of no or knowing is a major theme in 1 John. It’s all filtered throughout the story. As a matter of fact, we go over to chapter five and we look and we see that God has some wonderful things when he teaches us about this great word about know.

And he keeps reminding us, look at verse 15 in chapter five, he says, and if we know that he hears us, God hears our prayers, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him.

It is God who wants us to know, and he wants us to know him, and he wants us to know him in a personal relationship. First John 5, 20, and we know that the Son of God has come and given us an understanding that we may know him who is true, and we are in him who is true in his Son, Jesus Christ.

This is the true God and eternal life. And so we need to know. Now the Greek word know. is mentioned 25 times in 1 John. So I think when something is repeated, it’s important. And whenever the Bible says something that may seem redundant to us, God is trying to send a message to us.

There’s some things that God wants you to know. And most importantly, he wants you to know that you have eternal life, that you are a born again Christian, that if you left this world, that heaven would be your home and that you would live eternally with Jesus Christ.

When we think of this word, no, it has two different types of meaning. There is the no knowing of truth and there is the knowing of experience. The apostle John writes that there are times we know because we’ve experienced it, but he says ultimately we know because it is the truth of God.

All that we know is not just limited to what we experience, but all that we know is rooted in the truth. The Bible says, Jesus himself declared to his disciples, I am the way, the truth and the life.

And no man comes unto the father, but by me. And so the truth is Christ. He is who you need to know. He is who I need to know if we are to inherit eternal life. Jesus is the true savior. And it is his death on the cross that brings eternal life for all who believe in him.

Now back up in your Bible, go to first John chapter one, go ahead. You say, man, what kind of church is this? This is a Bible believing church. This is a church that we say, bring your Bible to. This is a church that says we study the Bible.

Now, if you were looking for a little psychology, that’s just not us. We’re here to teach you the Bible. And we want you to know the word of God, first John chapter one, verse seven. He says, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, talking about Christ, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sin.

Now I want you to jump in. over to chapter 2 in verse 2. And he himself is the propituation for our sins. Don’t be scared of that word propituation, it just means substitute. So you could say it like this, that Christ is the substitute for our sins, and not ours only, but also for the whole world.

So Christ went on the cross. We should have been the ones that paid the price for our sins, but Jesus took our place. He was our substitute. He died on the cross for our sins, and he bore the wrath of God and the punishment of God for our sins.

Now we go over to chapter 3 and verse 5. This is all in 1st John. Chapter 3, verse 5, and you know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin. I was not qualified to pay for my sins because I’m a sinful person, and every person born into this world is sinful.

The number one thing you could learn as a mom and dad is that your children come into the world sinful. And it’s the job of moms and dads to step in. But Jesus Christ is the sinless son of God. He was sent from the father and he came to this earth and he lived a sinless life.

Therefore, he was qualified to go to the cross for my sins and your sins as well. I want you to jump over to chapter four and verse 10. Chapter four, verse 10 of 1 John, he says, in this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the perpetuation or the substitute for our sins.

You see, that’s the point. And that’s what you have to know, that you can never help your children. You can never help your mentees. You can never help another person to know God unless you know God, unless you know Christ, unless you have received him as your Lord and savior.

Those who confess their need for Christ are cleansed from their sins. Those who are willing to say, Lord, I need you. I’m not too arrogant to say, Lord, I don’t need you, but I’m willing to humble my heart before God and say, Lord, I need you, I need you to wash away my sins and to make me a righteous person before you.

The scripture says in Revelation 22 and verse 17, that the spirit and the bride say, come, and let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who is thirsty, come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price because Christ has already paid the price.

And so salvation is available to you. All you have to do is come to Christ and to receive him as your Lord and savior. There could not be a better Father’s Day in your life than to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior.

Now, I want you to go back to chapter four, verse 13, and I want you to see something he says in verse 13, by this we know, we know that we abide in him. That’s our salvation. and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

When you come to Christ, did you know that God dwells and lives in you? Did you know that as a believer, when you come to Jesus Christ, that the Spirit of God fills you? And the Bible teaches us in Romans 8 -16 that the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

God not only wants you to know Him for salvation, but did you know that God wants you to have the assurance of your salvation? When I came to Christ as 11 year old boy, at the age of 14, I began to question whether I was really a Christian.

Was I saved or not? And you know, that’s how the devil works. He likes to cause doubt in our hearts. He likes us to think that, you know what? You’re not a Christian. Look at you, you’re a mess. Look at all these things.

You think God would ever forgive you? I’m here to tell you my friends that there is no sin in our past, present, or even future that our heavenly Father, if we come to Him with a humble heart and we are repentant and believe on Him that He wouldn’t take our sins and cast them as far as the East is from the West.

And I want you to know that your assurance of your salvation has nothing to do with how you feel. I got breaking news. Breaking news for you today, church. And that is this. I don’t always feel like a Christian.

I don’t always feel like being a pastor. Sometimes I get up, I don’t want to get up. And my wife says, Mike, you’re the pastor. You have to go to church today. I said, oh yeah. But we don’t always feel it, do we?

And I know some of you don’t feel like going to work. You’re already starting to feel a little nauseous, aren’t you? You’re already thinking about, I better text my boss. I’m not feeling good. But let me tell you something.

Who I am in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with how I feel. It has to do with what He did on the cross for me. It is based upon His promise. Now, how does God confirm to me? How does He help me know that I’m a true Christian?

Here’s what the Bible says. This is not Mike making this stuff up. This is verse 13 of chapter four. And He in us because He has given us of His Spirit. And remember Romans 8, 16, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, the assurance of your salvation.

You need to know that you’re saved and you need to know that you can be assured of your salvation. And God does that through His Spirit, not your emotion. I mean, if He was left to our emotions, friends, we would be a mess.

We would be on a roller coaster every day. And some days we’d feel great and we feel like we are just touching the heavenly portals. And there are days we feel like the flames of hell are breathing down our neck.

Friends, I want you to know that God has given you His Spirit. If you’re a true believer and He has given you His Spirit, given you his spirit, that his spirit may bear witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God.

Now, how does the spirit of God bear witness to your spirit that you are truly a child of God? Three words. Write these three words down. Number one is conviction. You know the spirit of God is living in you because every time you mess up, he is convicting you.

Now, sometimes Christians will come to me and they’ll feel so devastated because they have maybe made a bad choice or a bad decision and they come to me and they feel like maybe they are not saved anymore and I say, praise God, you feel convicted.

Praise God that you’re sensing the spirit of God convicting you for your thoughts or maybe your words or your actions. You know why? Because that tells me the spirit of God lives in you and the spirit of God is not going to let you run down a path.

that is anti -God and that is worldly and ungodly, the Spirit of God is gonna continue to work on you day after day, the Spirit of God is gonna continue to convict your hearts because the most miserable people in this world are not those who do not believe in Christ, but they are those who are true believers who are prodigal sons and living out of the will of God.

Now, if you can live out of the will of God and it not bother you, you probably don’t have the Spirit of God in you. But if you are out of the will of God and you are living for the world and you are living for self and it is messing you up and you are miserable and you keep trying other things to try to cover that misery, you, my friends, have the Spirit of God living in you, trying to tell you to get back to God.

You see, the Spirit of God, he bears witness to my spirit through conviction. Sometimes you come to the church of God and you hear the Word of God taught in Sunday school classes, you hear it taught by the pastor and the Word of God and the Spirit of God works together to convict you about something in your life.

You see, friends, if you come to church and get convicted, then you know the Spirit of God is living in you and you know you’re a child of God and you ought to go out here celebrating. Let me tell you another way that the Spirit of God bears witness is through changing your life, change.

But anyways, you look back at your life and you see your life and you can see God shaping your life and you can see him changing your life and you can see the things that used to not be important are now important and the things that were important in your life are not important anymore.

That’s the work of the Spirit of God and remember in second Corinthians chapter three, verse 16, he says that we are being changed from glory to glory by the Spirit of God. This is what the Spirit of God does to us.

You see, what’s wrong with these people that wanna go to church? What’s wrong with these people that wanna read the Bible? What’s wrong with these people that want to study the Bible? What’s wrong with these people?

They always want a fellowship. What’s wrong with these people? They have the Spirit of God. God living in them and the spirit of God is changing their hearts and drawing them to God Almighty. Friends, when you have that kind of passion and you see that kind of change in your life, you know it’s the work of the spirit.

Let me tell you a third way that the spirit bears witness to your spirit. This is important. It’s the word comfort. You see, the spirit of God comforts us. Jesus said, I’m not going to leave you comfortless.

I’m not going to leave you like orphans. I’m going to send the paracolaia. What he meant was the encourager, the comforter, the spirit of God who would walk alongside of his people, the spirit of God who would dwell within his people, the spirit of God that when we are grieving over the sorrows of life, when we have a loved one that’s been promoted to heaven, when we are struggling through the trials of life and we are dealing with the temptations of this world, we have a spirit, the spirit of God that is comforting us and encouraging us to stay faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, friends, I sometimes read about tragedies in this world, or I hear about them, and I wonder, how will those people make it without Jesus? How will they make it without the hope of the Gospel?

How will they get through this without the comfort of the Spirit? The Spirit of God is sent from the Father and delivered to us through Jesus that we might experience His comfort. And so, though the trials of life may weigh heavy on our hearts, it is His Spirit that sustains us.

It is His Spirit that makes it sufficient for us to take one step a day just to live for God, to stay faithful for Him, and to stay on track. And though we sometimes may weep and cry, it is the Spirit that reminds us that joy comes in the morning.

What is it that the knowledge of salvation will impart to us? Number one, it gives me peace and rest. Therefore, being justified by faith, the Bible says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So many are living in turmoil, but when you have Christ as your Savior, and you know that, friends, you are gonna have peace. But number two, it gives you joy, gives you joy. The Bible says in Luke 10, verse 20, nevertheless, Jesus said, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.

Is there anything better, church, than to know that our names are written in heaven? Can anything be better than knowing that when God calls us out of this world and promotes us, that our names are written in heaven, and we have a reservation that is protected by the power of God?

The knowledge of our salvation not only imparts peace and joy, but confidence. I love 1 John 2, 28, it says, and now, little children, abide in Him that when He appears, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

God doesn’t want His people to be… hanging their heads down, acting all defeated and pity parties and acting like it’s so hard to be a Christian. No friends, we are more than conquerors in Christ. He already won the victory at the cross and we walk around as victors, not victims.

Any ideology, any theology, any philosophy that teaches you to be a victim is not from God, but a theology that teaches you that you are a victor in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you know it came from the word of God because God says that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

So I want you to hold your head up, church, and I want you to live confidently before Jesus. We are not arrogant, we are not prideful. No, but we humbly are walking before our God in the confidence of his great work.

Now this salvation also gives me assurance. It gives me assurance. 1 John 3, 2, beloved, now we are the children of God. It has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is.

Look at this verse that is projected before you. And I want you to know something distinct between the world and Christianity. The world keeps telling you to look back. The world keeps telling you to drudge up the hate and the anger and the vengeance.

The world keeps telling you to look back at your past and to look back to your problems. But here’s what God does. God says, look to the future, move forward, forge forward for me, look forward to that day that one day Christ will split the eastern skies.

And it’s not yet sure what we will be, but when we see him, we will be like him. What does all that mean? I cannot tell you, my friends, but I know this, that it is more glorious than anything that we currently are.

And so friends, God is always calling us to look ahead. He is calling us to look forward. Don’t be a rear view mere Christian. That’s always looking back, always full of anger, always upset at someone, always dredging up what happened in the past, but be a person who lives in the assurance of Christ that there is a better future, there is hope and that hope is found in Christ.

Number two is encourage. Colossians 3, 21, fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. You see, in the Greek world, when children were born, they were placed at their father’s feet.

If the father picked up the child, the child got to come home. If he walked away, the child was left to die or sold into slavery. Sometimes a boy was allowed to live. And if the father did not like the girl, he would throw the child away.

If the child was deformed, it was doomed. Do you see what difference? Prince Christianity makes, you see that when the apostle was teaching these godly men how to be fathers and mentors, he is saying to them, don’t provoke your children to be discouraged.

Don’t be like the world that only defines a child by the outcome of a child, or what a child can accomplish. Every child is a gift from God, and every child, no matter what their challenges might be, friends, they are from the heavenly Father, they have a purpose and a plan.

This is how God views all of life. You say, what’s wrong with Pastor Mike? I’m pro -life. Not ashamed of it. Not ashamed to be pro -life. Not ashamed to say every child’s important. I believe life begins at conception.

I believe that we should value every child. Now friends, we value children. Dads, you need to not discourage your children, but you need to encourage them. Well, the biggest need in America is not financial, it’s not even political.

But it’s really the home, it’s the family, it’s dads. We need dads to step up. Some of you dads are great dads, you’re providing, but you’re stepped out emotionally. You’re not engaged with your children emotionally, and I need you to be there for them.

I need you to step into their life, know what’s going on, encourage them, and be a great example to them. And I hope today’s message helped you out with that. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.