Well turn to Malachi chapter 4 verses 1 through 6. Malachi 4, 1 through 6. Malachi 4, 1-6. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven. And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.

And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch. But you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings. You shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. You will trample the wicked, for they will be the ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of Moses my servant which I commanded him in Horeb and Israel for all of Israel with the statutes and judgments.

Behold, I'll send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Well the primary interpretive word for the book of Malachi is the book is the word love. In Malachi chapter 1, 2 we read the words, For I have loved you. That's the controlling principle in the book of Malachi.

Perhaps it would be easier for us to say that That's the controlling principle of this conference on charting a roadmap for biblical fatherhood. Because we're really only talking about taking something from God, internalizing it, and giving it out as fathers to our children. We're in the business of mediating a father's love to our children, demonstrating it, talking about it in many different ways. But we must be clear that nothing good that we will ever be able to give comes anywhere but from the Father in heaven. All of this is about the exaltation of a father who loved his son and sent him to the earth.

All of history is founded upon the love of a father to his son and all of our life histories should also be caught up in this in this great principle. So we're here in a book Malachi where the interpretive controlling phrase is I have loved you and all of the counsels and judgments of the Lord are for for love. All of the things that He has said are first of all to draw awayward people, to treasure and appreciate Him, and then to be found in Him under the mighty shadow of His wings. And it is for us as fathers to demonstrate the love of our father toward our children and so Malachi chapter 4 which is the chapter we're in now, puts before us the final words of God in the Old Testament. And it marks the close of the canon of Old Testament scripture.

And in this very dramatic passage of Scripture, we'll see all history drawn together in this one statement that falls right at the end of the last book of the canon of the Old Testament Scripture. And it's a summarization of all that's gone before and a casting forth of what the government and the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ will be about. And one of those things is that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, will turn the heart of a father toward his children. And then his children will be turned toward him. How?

Only the Lord can do it. He will do it. He will turn the hearts. And wherever the Lord Jesus Christ is present, the hearts of fathers turn. And that's the principle that we find here.

I want to lead you through four ways that God expresses His love in this passage in Malachi chapter 4. And the first way is through the coming judgment of the wicked. God exercises His love in that He will come and He will destroy the wicked. Verse 1 says, For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven. And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.

And the day which is coming shall burn them up says the Lord of hosts that will leave them neither root nor branch. The Blessed news for all of us is that God will make every wrong right. God will bring to justice everything that was unjust. We never have to worry about any earthly injustice because we know that there will be a day that God will make everything perfectly clear. All will know.

All will meet at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ with nothing to say because the righteous judge will rule and reign and he will speak and all will be silenced. You know the cry all over the earth is, how long, Lord, how long will it be before you bring the wicked to judgment? When will that dreadful day of the Lord be? Well, it will be a dreadful day, and it will be a vanquishing day of victory. But this is the way that God expresses His love, is through His judgment of the wicked.

And then the second way that He expresses His love is through the blessings of Christ. Now, these words are so beautiful, it's embarrassing to even try to read them after having Wayne McDill lead us through this process. How could you possibly read these with with the intended passion and beauty here? But look just look at these words in verses two and three there they're marvelous they're so encouraging they explain the beauty of the gospel and the kind of beauty that the Lord Jesus Christ desires to be resident in your homes. Oh your children should be like these skipping leaping calves because of the happy government of their father.

And so there are five images of Christ here in these two verses. But he says, but you who fear my name, the Son of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings and you will go out and grow fat like a stall-fed calf and you'll trample the wicked and they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on that day I will do it says the Lord of hosts there is this marvelous image of the Son of righteousness The presence of Jesus Christ is like the warm Sun You think of those those warm Sunny days where you're sitting outside and you turn your face toward the sun and close your eyes and just soak it in. This is a very small taste of the kind of ministry that Jesus Christ has in His love. He brings healing in His wings, how much We need that. And he makes us like leaping calves breaking out of a stall.

Frolicking calves in the open field. This is an expression of the love of God toward mankind. He sends the Lord Jesus Christ. He and he alone can establish this kind of government anywhere. I would just say that the Christian home, it should be the happiest place on the earth.

Early this morning, I was in my office with Jason dome and his young son Jake and to see this wiggly squirmy four-year old six there you go well that was a big mess so this this squirmy six-year-old boy just full of life that you see in every little six-year-old boy you know and and and just seeing the joy on his face he was just one of the he was like a frolicking cav leaping in the open field after having broken out of the stall and I was just very delighted to be there. Well you know why he's that way? His father is that way and it's a blessing to be around men like that and you and I need to be men like that And the only way we can be is if we really understand the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ and drink him in. How can we give anything out if we haven't drunk it in ourselves? How can we bless our children with the word of God unless we've completely loved it and appreciated it all of ourselves, unless it is in our heart.

It's not just to be on our lips and in our minds. Well, it should be there, but it must be in our hearts. Well, God expresses his love through the blessings of Jesus Christ. And then thirdly, through the remembrance of the law of God, verse 4, remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel with statutes and judgments." This is about the goodness, blessing of the law of God, And this is a looking back to God for stability so that we know how to behave, so that we know how to think about things. I believe that every point of the law is helpful for everything in life.

It's given to us for all of life and godliness. Unfortunately, we breathe this atheistic air that makes us think that we can just kind of create our own lives out of our own liberty. But God has given us things that would direct us like a laser beam to the things that are important and would lead us in the right direction. And here he says, remember the law of Moses. The same thing that Paul said to Timothy he said the law is good if it's used lawfully and he's speaking here of the heart that David had, unless your law had been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.

Here, we know that our thinking is corrupted by worldly ideas. And it's only the Word of God that can rescue us from those worldly ideas that have been raised up against Christ. And so we're called here to remember the Law of Moses. And God gives us His Law for one single reason, and that is to express love to his people, to rescue them from this wicked and perverse generation in which we live. God calls the law here, God calls Moses my servant.

Now you have to notice there's a time marker here. Moses was 1200 years before Malachi. Malachi is looking back and he's saying, remember my servant Moses. We're in a war of ideas and God and his love has come down to earth and given us his word so that in the midst of that war we would know how to keep our wits about us and the darkness seeks to obliterate the light but Christ comes with his own light and the darkness cannot comprehend it and we fight back with only one thing and that is the law of God and of course everyone knows what the summary of the law of God is right So God expresses his love to us through the remembrance of the law. And then fourthly, through fathers who turn their hearts toward their children.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest I come and strike the earth with a curse There are many things to observe here. First of all, Elijah will come, the Spirit of Elijah will come, and something will happen in the hearts of fathers. So this makes it obviously one of the great fatherhood passages, and it's found at the end of the Old Testament canon and it casts forth in prophecy what will happen under the rulership and the reign of Jesus Christ. And so it's from a historical standpoint it's pivotal.

Isn't it interesting that one of the most pivotal historical prophetic passages in the Old Testament would include this all about fathers. It should be obvious if you've read the whole Old Testament that God works through fathers from father to son, father to son, all throughout history. And God marks his tracks through the generations. And he calls his sons and his fathers to look back and to ask their fathers to tell them that fathers would proclaim to the next generation so that the knowledge of God would continue to be transmitted from one generation to the next. And so it's kind of an unexpected thought here, but that somehow the rulership of God would express itself in the turning of a heart of a father toward his children and then the turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers.

Now one rule of Bible prophecy is to remember that prophecy is often telescopic. There may be a future event in the distance and another one in the further distance. Bible prophecy is confusing in this way. It's hard to know exactly when the fulfillment was or is there a complete early deposit of fulfillment and then a complete fulfillment. These things you know for me I just my mind spins on some of these things but Christ's many believe that Christ's first coming and second coming are in mind here.

And I don't know, but here's what I do know is that the Spirit of Elijah came when John the Baptist came and it marked out the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. That for sure we do know. We can hang our hats on that one and that the and how much it has to do with the second coming of Christ I don't know but we do know that one of the effects of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that the hearts of fathers would turn toward their children and the hearts of children would turn toward their parents. You'll notice that it's a magnificent mercy that's given in the rulership of Jesus Christ. When a man turns to Christ, God pours his spirit out upon him and something snaps, something changes and his heart turns toward his children.

And fathers need a heart change and only God can give them that change. The only hope, the single hope for families in this world is the Lord Jesus Christ. Because unless Christ fills the heart, There's no hope for the family at all. And so this is why we must do the work of evangelism. This is why our churches must be full of the gospel and not inwardly focused in any way but are carrying the precious words of Christ.

If you want a family Reformation that you talked about, well there's something that must come first and that is a gospel Reformation in the hearts of men and women. We must be so dedicated to this proposition. But fathers hearts need to be turned in a direction. Now here he's speaking of the fathers who are living fathers and their children and they will be transformed and there will be an actual heart change. And how did the heart change happen?

God did it. No one who has his heart turned toward his children or children turned toward their parents can do this unless God accomplishes it by his mighty hand. Now a father may have an impulse to turn and run away But only Christ can really help him to turn his heart toward his children. And a father may be being rebuffed by his daughter, but Christ and Christ alone can help her turn her heart toward her father. If you have a son or a daughter whose hearts are turning away, you just need to know this, only the Lord Jesus Christ can turn that heart back.

And God can use you as an agent with earnest counsel and time investment and things like that. But you must know this, only the sovereign will of the Lord Jesus Christ can turn the heart of a son toward a father. Are you disconnected with your son? You have only one hope, and that is that the Lord Jesus Christ would rest upon that son, cry out for him, pray for him, be with him. Your daughter, is she becoming hard?

Does she want to go look like Britney Spears? Does she want to follow her friends rather than her mother? Are her role models the ungodly, wicked women of the age, the rebellious, boisterous women of the age? Her only hope is the Lord Jesus Christ and so that means that means one thing then that our only hope is that we fill our homes with the love the Lord Jesus Christ him alone we must have God-centered homes we must have God-centered churches We must have God-centered hearts because He alone is our only hope. Our sons and our daughters will be thrown on the rocks of this world.

They'll be dashed to bits without a rescue from the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you think that your techniques can do it, if you think that all of your great councils are going to do it, just forget it. If you think all your ideas about modesty are going to turn her heart, You think, forget it. It's worthless. There's only one hope for your daughter or your son.

And it's not your rules. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Because only He can turn a heart of a child to a parent. And it's the same way with a father. You know, you might have a hard heart toward your children or you might know men that do.

And he is your only hope too. We are bankrupt, absolutely bankrupt in all of our activities, all of our philosophies, all of our rules are absolutely worthless. Now, There's a very dramatic warning here that must be understood. And there's this smiting of the earth with a curse. If the hearts of the fathers do not turn toward their children, and if the children's hearts do not turn to their fathers the earth will be smitten with a curse we see that curse every day and it makes me angry when I see it and I see it everywhere I look and the only answer is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in our generation.

I'd like to talk about some different ways to, different ways that fathers can turn their hearts toward their children. Now again, I present these because I look around and I just see different kinds of needs that are out there that I've identified. So I want to walk through a number of ways that fathers can turn their hearts toward their children. Here's one. By helping them nurture holy affections.

Fathers, when they turn their hearts toward their children, in this process I would just urge, I would urge us to help them nurture holy affection. Holy means different. Holy means better. Holy means superior on a different level, more wonderful, stronger, happier, holy. That is what holiness is.

Holiness is not some hard-bitten austere thing. Holiness is superiority. Holiness is more beauty, more truth, more of everything good jammed in it above anything you've ever seen. That's what holiness is. My friend Arnold Pint, we were talking about this verse and he said to me and I'm gonna quote him, I wrote it down I was at my computer when he said it to me on the phone.

He said, Scott if you don't fill your daughter's heart and mind with Scripture, it really doesn't matter what else you do. You can take her to church, you can take her on mission trips, but the main point will be lost in the midst of all the activity. With your daughters, with your sons, read the Bible with this kind of passion we've just been talking about. Preach the gospel to her and him. Give these people the sweetest things and when the hail and the storms of life come, you cry out to God knowing his great and mighty hand so that they'll do the same thing.

They'll see the beauty of it. They'll see the joy of it. John Piper made a statement in one of his sermons just a few months ago on a Sunday morning service, and he was talking about unholy affections. He was talking about in the context of their church that the worst thing the worst thing about their Sunday morning worship times is that the people have been so defiled by their affections that they can't worship. Here's what he said, you'll never hear me on Sunday morning saying the problem with this service is people don't come here to give they only come to get.

That's not the problem. You know what the problem is? The problem is people stuff their faces with the white bread of the world and then they come to the banquet table of God's word and they're not hungry. And I'm talking about television mainly and a lot of other junk that we waste our time on. Are you ready for this?

The world as I look at it is just filled with triviality. Almost all TV is trivial. Almost all ads are trivial. They're silly. It's an epidemic of silliness so that the soul feeds itself on this this an hour or two a night it can't help but just shrivel up to the smallest capacities for real magnificent and glorious joy how much silly stuff can you watch before you realize that you're a stick figure you're a puppet you're just a silly little echo of the silliness coming out of through that tube continually.

You know, how does a father turn his heart towards children? And first of all, he must help his children nurture holy affections. Let the fear of God be in every man that they would nurse affections of their children on the stupid things of this world. Are you the entertainment father? My spirit is so stirred up, it has been for a long time, many years, that we would engage ourselves and our families in meaningful, substantial engagements, time investments for the nurture of the mind and the soul and for the kingdom of God.

And I'm concerned because I see Christian fathers with all of the right motives, all the right heart, but the wrong road map for what they are going to invest the time of their children's lives in. And so I see fathers with the very best hearts because they want to be the party animal father. They want to be that they want to be the happy fun loving father. And so they engage their families in hundreds of amusements and thousands of hours of passive entertainments and mindless time investments. Our culture is absolutely supersized entertainment and it's destroying the Church of Jesus Christ.

If You think the people in the Church of Jesus Christ are healthy at all, you're wrong. You know why? Because they've been drinking in a bunch of poison and they're just drinking and drinking and drinking and they have no roadmap for what holiness or what godly life is all about. Now it's everywhere and there are all these all these methods that can be used for good or for evil but I'll tell you with with iPods and computers and games and videos and home entertainment centers and cell phones and chat rooms and everything that your heart desires sitting there on the internet for you to surf from here to there and to toy with meaningless engagements on eBay or SkiBay or wherever you want to go. But what is the value of time in terms of the affections of your children?

Because let me tell you something, time equals affection. We need to understand that for sure. Time equals affection. And this is killing the church because we've accepted, we've adopted, we've adopted worldly thinking in the church of Jesus Christ. This is why the church, This is why when the statisticians go out and they survey the church they realize that the church doesn't think any different than the rest of the world because we're watching the same things.

We're listening to the same songs. Stop it. Stop listening to those songs. Turn off the flow because if you like it your children will like it because they will fall in love with everything they see Play seems to be the ultimate objective in life. Brothers, I just believe that we need to break out of the crowd in this area.

We live in a play culture. Massive industries are grinding on because of this play culture that distract people from the main business of life of justice and mercy and hospitality and loving kindness and filling the mind and heart with the Word of God and it either makes couch potatoes out of us or it makes us sports addicts who spend years and years and years, hours and hours and hours to try to shave one stroke off your golf game. What an absolute irrelevancy. It's madness. And we have got to Stop it in the church of Jesus Christ.

Now. Someone says if we only get 17 or 20 summers, if you only have 17 summers or 20 summers with kids, how are you going to spend your time? Right, yeah. You get 17 or 20 summers with your kids. What are you going to do with it?

It's limited commodity. You only have so much time. You know we often end up taking our children with us into our addiction to amusement and play and we have a whole generation of children right now in the church whose fondest memories have been crafted and formed by their little irrelevant fun times. Now, I have to tell you, the Brown family is not against fun times, the Brown family is not against vacation, we go on vacation, okay? But, hey, the reality is, is that if you slake the thirst of your children on entertainment, then they'll have a taste for it.

It'll be so powerful and their fondest memories are going to be formed on those entertainments. And then they'll just do the same thing with the next generation because that's just the way they're wired. We wire our children up with affection by what we do with it. By our own. It starts with us.

So here's a question I would like to ask. Is it possible? Is it too far of a stretch of the imagination to think that one of the tragedies of the modern church in the age of entertainment is that our children's fondest memories are not forged in times of prayer or mission or fellowship with the Saints or worship or evangelism but they're forged on the latest fantasy book or the latest whatever. It matters, It really matters what we feed our senses. And in an entertainment-obsessed culture, the writer of Hebrews makes a very stern rebuke to the people because the people were babies.

They should have been teachers. He says, you should be teachers by now, but you're nothing but little babies. And then he gives them the reason why. He contrasts the mature with the babies. And he says, the mature are those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.

The mature are mature because they're exercising their senses on the things that are good. What's the exercising of the senses? Well, it's the eyes and it's the ears and it's the exercising of those senses to the things that would make us mature and we've got to get real about this in the church. We're not making laws about how much time you can do this or do that. I really don't have any interest in telling anybody what to do with entertainment except to give some broad principles like this.

But I'll tell you one thing, if your children's affections are being nurtured by too much entertainment you're going to kill their souls. You're going to make a whole swath of their life blind. And they will be babies just like the people the writer in Hebrews is talking about. They should be teachers but they're just still babies because they're exercising their senses on all the wrong things. So it matters.

It matters what we do. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap." That's just that's a promise. It's either a terrifying promise or it's a very happy promise.

It just depends on which way you're going with it. It can be a tremendous encouragement or it can be a tremendous condemnation. Paul said to the Corinthians, Oh Corinthians, you are not restrained by us. You're restrained by your own affections. One of my dear friends sent me this quote by an English Puritan, William Fenner.

William Fenner lived about a hundred years before Jonathan Edwards and he spoke about the affections. Now Edwards was the pastor to illuminate the affections and of course Jonathan Edwards was the apostle of happiness and the apostle of happy affections toward God. And the proposition that One can only be happy if all his affections are in God. He should be the hero of the 21st century and I trust that that we in the 21st century would quote him and bring back the principles that are the only hope for happiness for the human soul. Here's William Fenner.

Evil. The affections are the feet of the soul. For as the body goes with its feet to that which it loves, so the soul goes with its affections to that which it loves. The soul hath no other way to come at that which it loves but by its affections. The affections are the soul's horses that draw her, as it were, in a coach to the thing that she affects.

A man is moved by affections. By anger he moves out to revenge. By desire he moves out to obtain. By love he moves out to enjoy. By pity he moves out to relieve.

The affections are the motions of the soul. So my charge, my proposition is if you would turn your heart toward your children, help them to nurture holy affections. You're the only one that can do it. Take charge. Secondly, by helping them protect their purity.

There's much that can be done to protect the purity of sons and daughters and the media, the media on slots are part of it, the relationships are part of it. I was really amazed when spring break came around this last year. I was in San Antonio, Texas in a hotel and my son and I were eating breakfast and there was a guy on television giving counsel about how to protect your daughter, how fathers can protect their daughters while they're on spring break. Okay? Send them on spring break and then all these absolutely insane reasons or methods for how to protect your daughter while she's on spring break.

You know, like, here's how you can do to protect your daughter. Make sure that her personal identification is all updated in her pocketbook so that if she's passed out, they'll know who to call. He's just saying this in national television, I couldn't believe it. This is an FBI investigator who is on, I went to his website and He does consulting on CNN and all this kind of stuff all the time, but it was just absolutely madness. Don't go anywhere alone.

Always go out with a tribe of three. Use technology, mobile phones, take a GPS system so you know where you are. You know, oh here's one, here's how to protect your daughter. Buy your own drinks. In other words, get drunk but make sure you buy them and drink only from sealed containers or get your drinks directly from the bartender.

Don't leave your drink unattended. You don't know what someone could put in it. Date rape drugs are many and varied. Avoid drinks with foam or something on the lip of the glass. The main idea, while you're getting drunk, make sure that there are no poisons in the drink.

You know, hey, this is the culture. This is the... Could just somebody stand up and say, this culture is crazy. Okay. This is the way that we protect daughters in this culture.

You know, fathers need to put things in place to protect her from neighbors, from people in the church, maybe even from siblings. There needs to be a structure in the family where family purity is fostered so that daughters are protected, even from their own brothers. There's an enormous amount of data that there's incest and the important principle of protective purity within the family structure should be spoken about. Remember Lot and his daughters. The stories in the Bible are there for our instruction and let's be careful with all these things.

There's a lot of data out there that indicates that often mothers know that these kinds of things are going on, they don't say anything because they don't want to deal with it. These are secret sins. God sees these things and I don't know if anyone is struggling in this area but this would be a great time to repent and turn to the Lord and to transform this sin in a family. Now we know that if a girl is very strong she can avert the sense through her resistance she can stop it daughters need to be alerted I just we daughters need to be alerted about the strength that they need to exert in situations if they find themselves unprotected I'll just tell you brothers I let this let this be a a warning I Make sure that your daughters are never in a position where they're vulnerable like this. I just don't believe fathers should allow it.

You're going to have to figure out what all the details are about that. But it's your responsibility. If your daughter falls into sexual sin, I'll guarantee you this. The question will be asked of the Father first. Why he allowed that to happen.

I see fathers sending their daughters out into places to act as free agents in these universities and things like that and guess what? There's just massive collapse and devastation in these daughters' lives as a result of it. I have too many examples to make me say anything about that and so I'm confident in the warning. Thirdly by helping them fulfill a biblical calling We protect our children by helping them find themselves in the range of the creation order principles that are there. For our daughters, that we would help them fulfill their callings as helpers and mothers and keepers at home.

And domestic entrepreneurs, fathers need to prepare their daughters to be wives under the submission of their husbands, to be helpers of them. There's a real danger here of raising a bunch of picky, unpleasable daughters who are unable to follow imperfect men. You know, it's a sin to raise a wimpy prima donna daughter. What's a prima donna? Prima donna, prima first woman, first lady, one who is vain, she's overly sensitive, she's temperamental, she can't get along with things that are contradictory, she can't follow authority, she can't wrap she can't wrap her energies around helping an imperfect man.

Daughters have to be prepared to follow imperfect men. Why? All men are imperfect and they need help. They need helpers and it's so important that we we train our daughters to marry sinners, to marry males, to marry workers, to marry men who have family backgrounds, and there's always crazy people in family backgrounds, right, isn't that true? Have you found that to be true?

There's always a nutcase somewhere in a family. You've gotta train your daughter to survive in that, And how to love these crazy people. I want to train my daughters. I want to train my daughters to see their husbands through the toughest times. I want to train my daughters so that when war breaks out against them, their heart will not fear.

When an army is encamped against their husband, in this they will be confident. One thing I've desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord. That's the kind of daughter I want to raise. I just have to tell you, when our family hits trouble, I'm giving lectures to my kids about how we're going to go through this. They get specific instructions about what they're going to think and what they're going to feel and what they're going to say to their enemies all around them.

And believe me, it's all about the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and happy fearlessness. So daughters and sons need to be helped to fulfill a biblical calling. And then here, just, papas, don't let your daughters grow up to be prima donnas. That's just a bad, that's a bad, bad thing. And then Lastly, by helping them find marriage partners.

This is one of the responsibilities of fathers. Fathers need to be careful to, if you have daughters, then you should make it your practice to know young men. You should do that. You should do that whether you have a daughter or not and to get to know these young men and to be of encouragement to them. You know, they may never be your son-in-law, but you should be of an encouragement of young men and know these young men, have them in their house for no other reason that who knows perhaps someday you know develop a relationships with ten young men who knows which one of them might or might not be your future son-in-law but if you if you know him if you pursue him in his family you'll have a much better opportunity to discern his character to know whether he's fit for your daughter.

Same thing with, of course, sons are in a little bit different, in a little different category, but the behavior of fathers should be the same. They should be thinking long-term, they should be thinking transgenerationally. One of the most important things that we ever do in our lives as fathers is to give our daughters and to allow our sons to leave and to have them ready to go. That's one of the most important things we ever do. It's far reaching in its impact.

And so if you have little kids now, you need to be praying and thinking and developing relationships right now. Don't wait. Don't wait till your daughter is 22 years old before you start looking. Hey, are there any young guys out there? Hey, that's just that's just not thinking right about life.

Start thinking now. Develop real relationships. Fathers have much work to do. It's a vigorous, high calling. It demands all of a man's schedule, demands all of his brain power, demands a lot of a diligence, but it's really it's the calling of a man.

God has given men a tremendous role in life to really take ground, to tear up Satan's territory and grade over it and put a marvelous garden there. And that's what God has called us to do as fathers. That's why this prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ is so important that when the Lord Jesus Christ comes that the hearts of fathers would turn toward their children and the hearts of children would turn toward their parents. Only the Lord can do this and this should make us to do one thing and that is to set our hearts toward God in every way that we can. Would you pray with me?

Lord, Lord I'm so thankful that you have turned the hearts of so many fathers toward their children and so many hearts of children toward their parents. Oh, Father, would you come and help us to be found with your own heart, your own ways, your own words. Lord, help us to be bold men who are willing to risk everything at the word of your law. That we would be, Lord that we would lead through life not by the consensus of the world Lord but by the convictions that you've given us. Lord help us to be men, help us to be manly men under your authority and our hearts turning toward our children.

In Jesus name, amen.