I am so delighted to be able to spend this time with you over the internet in all our respective homes.
We are thrilled as a family to be tracking some of the progress that you men are making. As I pray for you, I am reminded just how few men there are that are willing to bow their hearts and their will and be willing to adjust everything about your lives for the sake of the gospel. I pray for you would be able to sustain the interest you have and you would be able to transfer the zeal you have this morning to your sons.
Yesterday morning reading to my family out of Proverbs, we stopped at verse 12:11, “He who tills his land will be satisfied with bread.” All assets that you have need to be cultivated to bear more fruit, not just land. “But he who follows frivolity is devoid of understanding.” As we’ve seen the end of manhood in my generation. It used to be that men entered military as men. The pressures of battle sharpened their since of duty and responsibility even more. Now in many militaries around the world, the men who enter basic training are still children.
As a generation of dads, we grew up in that frivolous generation too. We are gathered here to change that following of frivolity. “He who tills his land will be satisfied with bread. But he who follows frivolity is devoid of understanding.”
Prayer:
We beg you to give us wisdom to be the men we really want to be. It grieves us we have so little to offer you in your service. We know it will take discipline we are prepared today to give to you.
Q: What is the role of a young man’s father in courtship or marriage process?
It is complex what a dad needs to do, also simple: Protect his daughter’s body, mind and strength and spiritual interests until he is able to give it over with great confidence to the man she will assist and help the rest of her life in a great Gospel mission. He is not just leaving cupid to direct her future, he is taking a strong interest in it.
Last night we had families over and analyzed the 1999 David Mamet movie, The Winslow Boy. Honor, reputation and a family’s good name was truly more desirable than gold.
Three young men were interested in the sister, Katherine. Father took one young man through a courtship process which took about four minutes. We stopped the film and talked about why did he only devote four minutes to the process? He knew he had duties, but did not know the extent of those duties.
Q: What is the role of a young man’s father in the courtship or marriage process?
Prepare your son for marriage early by teaching about wisdom, life challenges, moral tests, discipline, duty and belief…from scripture. I’m talking about age 2.3,4…
For my sons, we spent a lot of time in the book of Proverbs, when they were really little. I wrote out verses on cards and drew pictures so they would remember. I remember one, ‘If a father refuses to discipline his son, it proves that he does not love him.’ ‘For if you love him, you will be prompt to spank him.’ Sons do not have it within themselves to obey. All my sons wanted to escape those spankings yet kept doing these things. Spankings reminded them of their sin, reminded them of what God’s justice is, and helped them realize they needed a savior. The rod and reproof give wisdom. “He who withholds the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”
“If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.” Heb. 12:7
Fathers and mothers who withhold chastening from their son are withholding something God has given them as a gift, and are treating their children as though they are orphans, as though they are not even really part of the family. We have to stand against the culture that says this is a barbaric remnant of a barbaric religion, which is really only mythical and we have to depart from it and find the new mythical psychological solutions. There are lists to do instead: Time out; Reason with them; Count to 3; Count to10, Count to a million. Children learn that parents have no intention of bringing any form of discipline. They are just faking it. Please respect the biblical model.
What is the role of the father in courtship? Start preparing your son for marriage at age 2, 3, 4. It can be too late, when they get to the marriageable age, if you have not trained them when they are younger.
2. Explain obedience to the Gospel and lead him to faith in Christ’s words.
No Christian can twist someone’s arm into the kingdom. We can’t save our children. We can lead them to faith in Christ’s words. They see what you respect; they know that it is real.
We know from Romans 1, that every single human being knows that the creator created them, and only suppress that truth in unrighteousness.
If your homes are bastions of righteousness where the word of God is upheld, you are literally leading your children to faith in Christ’s words. That will have a deep influence on them till they are regenerated spiritually. We have the duty to explain obedience to the Gospel and what that looks like. Everyone is required to obey Christ. “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”
3. Point out the vast divide between the holy and profane.
We have a culture that glorifies the profane, glories in the frivolous. Men are taught to pursue those things as a sign of masculinity. We need to show our children the difference between what is required of Christ’s disciples. The more you work on this, the more you will see on front pages of newspaper, billboards. ‘Look at this, it is ugly, this is good, a farmer taking dominion.’ This prepares them for marriage, to be the protectors and providers. You are training them for training their sons.
4. Teach him his duty to teach and disciple cultures into godliness and show him how to study.
It is impossible, but with God nothing is impossible. As you attempt to do it, you see how hard it is. You see how hard it is and see, ‘I need to study.’ ‘I need to know about taxation.’ In the movie last night, we found so many things we wanted to learn more about: What is British Common Law? Where did it come from? Scripture. King Alfred.
Richness of the law of God and how that law can reform entire nations. How it can be applied magnanimously and graciously? Psalm 119 ‘Graciously grant me your law.’ We must understand how clearly grace goes with law. The opposite of law is not grace; the opposite of law is lawlessness.
5. Make sure he knows the law of God and how to apply it
Is the war with
6. Make sure he knows how to work and love it.
Work is not part of the curse. The thorns are. But work is enjoyable when we are doing something that is not frivolous or empty. If a young man has not learned how to work by age 11 or 12, he will have a hard time being married. Work is not part of the curse, it is a blessing.
7. Make sure he understands the Quadravocational Vision:
So they do not struggle with the dichotomy, do I be a preacher man or a business man? There is no such thing. All must oversee business, church, disciple entire nations by how we live. Boys can be doing all these things while they prepare themselves for marriage.
Leadership by Dick Winters, head of Easy Company – Band of Brothers made into mini series by Steven Spielberg: A hero who never wants to be called a hero. He entered the army with character of a man. Dick Winters make countless right decisions under fire.
These are the points he gave to military colleges:
1 Strive to be a leader of character, competence, and courage. Our van needed cleaning out. I assigned one son the position of foreman, directing, but not lording it over.
2 Lead from the front. Say, “Follow me!” and then lead the way.
3 Stay in top physical shape – physical stamina is the root of mental toughness.
4 Develop your team. If you know your people, are fair in setting realistic goals and expectations, and lead by example, you will develop teamwork.
5 Delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their job. You can’t do a good job if you don’t have a chance to use your imagination and creativity.
6 Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. Don’t wait until you get to the top of the ridge until you make up your mind.
7 Remain humble. Don’t worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head (Winters never sought advancement or rank, it was given to him.)
8 Self-reflection. Look in the mirror every night and ask yourself if you did your best. (We say pray to the Lord and ask Him, ‘Lord would you reveal to me where I am shrinking back’ -- not just your own understanding.)
9 True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to successful leader is to earn respect, not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. (You can learn the tricks and management techniques of leadership but men follow character. Men follow godliness.)
10 Hang tough! – Never, ever, give up.
Give sons jobs that challenge them. I remember one son small given a job to shovel gravel. He was discouraged. “Do it one shovel full at a time and keep going.” He could look at that job and say, ‘I actually did that, when I did not think I could.’
8 Point out to him strange women. They have been discipled by a corrupt culture and warn him away from them. Pro 22:14 “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit. He that is abhorred of the LORD will fall therein.”
If you abhor His law, the Lord will abhor you. If they do not love the word, a hatful attitude before the Lord, one of the punishments is the bimbo. They come with their claws out to snake your sons, seduce him with their words and destroy his life. And our culture is full of these young girls who have never been trained to be anything else but flirts ...and they are coming after your sons. By age 9, 10, or 11 you have got to talk to your sons about what the strange woman really is.
Nehemiah 13:25-26 “You shall not take these daughters for your sons or for yourselves… Did not Solomon, king of
If your sons do not learn from you men, that there is an objective standard of beauty from scripture, they will be attracted by the allurements of American women. This is not a gentle and quiet spirit...We are wired to love beauty. ‘Let me tell you what a beautiful woman is, let me tell you how we honor women, how we control our affections and emotions.’ Prov. 5, 6, 7, have wonderful lessons for young men. ‘Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the evil women.’
9 Show him the majesty of the godly women and how they are to be esteemed. Godly women really are beautiful in ways the world never notices. They are regal, just in the way they stand, in the way that they speak to one another, the way that they adorn themselves with good works, with a confidence, with clarity of eye, with the ability to look at a man and carry on an intelligent conversation and not be a simpering flirt. If you teach this when your sons are 14, 15, 16, you will have sons ready for courtship and marriage. You have a huge responsibility for this.
10. Affirm to him how patriarchal culture and only a patriarchal culture properly honors godly women. There is no other culture that knows how to do it. There is really no such thing as a matriarchal culture because God did not design the world that way. If it looks matriarchal, the more proper definition would be, it is simply infantile patriarchy. The men have disappeared. They have shrunk back; they have shrunk down to infants. They don’t know how to lead and guide and correct the culture. So women step into the vacuum and it looks like women are in charge. But men still bear the responsibility. They’re leading. They’re just leading the culture to hell. And they are letting the women stand in the front and be the point men leading the culture to hell.
11. Teach your sons the great essence of biblical manhood and how this contributes to beauty in women. The manlier you are, the more beautiful your wife will become, because they simply respond to that. When men rise up to take their place as leaders we begin to see what masculinity looks like again. Men are men of action. Men are men who look at women in a protective way. And when women see men looking out for them, doing things for them, holding open a door -- I’ve seen a hardened woman who looked ugly and depressed. I held the door open for her and by the time she got through the door a change came over her posture and her countenance.
12. Help him develop his gifts. Some are late bloomers. Just because a son has an unusual aptitude in music doesn’t mean he should do it for life. I have one son who has great talent in music by God’s grace and he has been diligent to develop that talent. It’s a great trade, but he knows from his dad that his primary calling is as a disciple maker, an ambassador for Christ. If that interrupts his music, he’d drop it in a minute.
A church in our area is experimenting with having young men give short sermons on Sunday afternoons from age 8 upward.
13. Help him with his personal vision and mission pertinent to his gifts. This will help him with courtship and marriage. He must be able to articulate to his future bride what his life mission is.
14. Talk often about his future estate and how it is tied to the mission, the Kingdom and disciple making.
15. Get specific about eligibility in desirable young ladies. Comment on character in grandmothers down to young girls, in how they demonstrate disciple making abilities.
16 Make sure the entire family knows about the biblical standards of godly womanhood and can serve your sons as wise counselors. You are not the only counselor. His sisters will advise him, even little brothers, “Johnny, you don’t want to marry her! Do you know what kind of music she likes to listen to?” Just make sure all this advice, solicited and unsolicited, follows the pattern of wise council that you give your own son.
I say to my sons, “Son, don’t just think that your life mission is totally on hold till you have a good wife by your side. You need to be demonstrating your ability to lead and disciple others. You need to be demonstrating the maturity of a successful leader. Or you are nothing but just theoretically eligible for marriage. Be aggressive in faith, expanding your work and mission. Be aggressive in the way you pray about marriage and a girl. Be ready to approach the father of a girl to get council. Don’t be overconfident, be diligent. When you think you see a young lady, consult with your parents, talk to your brothers and sisters, then go to her father.” We talk about these things as a family. Make sure you have talked enough about these things so they are not embarrassing. They are very natural things to be talking about. I want to see my sons getting council from their brothers and sisters about a particular young lady. Because there are things they will see and notice that I don’t see. In the abundance of counselors there is victory.
17. Be ready to give a conscientious blessing on your son’s efforts in becoming a suitor or potential suitor. “Yes, she might be a great wife; are you worthy of her?” If he wants to marry a godly young woman, he has got to be worthy of her. In the same way that you fathers must be worthy of the wife God has given you. Be ready to give him a blessing. Be ready to give up your son to marriage so he can start his own estate.
18. Endorse him to the other family with great honesty and candor. Your job is not to provide some extraordinary sales pitch for your boy. Your job is to be honest, so that the father of the young lady who is doing his due diligence. Your job is not to try to make it happen or force something together. Give right counsel, so that the Lord’s will could be done. If it’s not the right match and you have given the right council, you can rest assured that the Lord may show both of them, ‘We thought it would work, but we found out with research that we are really not quite suited for one another. We are not equally yoked the way we should be. We’re going to start over.’ That is totally fine. It is a successful courtship. Praise God. It served its purpose.
There may be a time you all see that as a perfect match. You be ready to speak to the young lady about your son. “How confident are you that you really are right for my son? If she has hesitation, you don’t twist her arm or try to pull her over to your opinion. You want the Lord’s opinion to prevail here. I think my son is wonderful, but if there is any reason you do not think it is the right match, you do not have to force it to work in your mind just because everyone else thinks you are the perfect couple. You must be able to joyfully and willingly submit to him in everything. If there are hesitations, then he is probably not the man for you.” Be willing to say the hard things no matter how wonderful you may think she is for your son. If she asks you, be candid about your son’s weaknesses. Be sincere and honest. The goal is not to make a marriage happen. The goal is that they marry well.
19. Introduce him to the young lady with confidential sincerity.
20. Help define the terms of the courtship with the other family. This is one reason there are so many problems, because there are so many ideas about courtship. Define all the terms: engagement, dowry, bride price…
21. Make sure your son is objective before making the final decision, or you will not have confidence that he is making the right decision.
22. Make sure that he is submitted to Christ and is willing to go either way, before making the final decision to propose to her, that his priorities are right and his feet are on the ground.
23. Rejoice with him.
24. After he is engaged, assist in the forming of the terms of the marriage covenant. Some lawyers today would call it a prenuptial agreement. This has been true in Christendom for centuries. Marriage covenant is an agreement that is made. What can we give to the young couple to help them get started? One of you men wrote in, ‘It says in Proverbs that houses and lands are from fathers. Should I be doing that for my sons?’ Yes. In this country, where we are raped by bureaucrats who have unconstitutionally taxed the people to many times greater than the Hebrews were paying to the Egyptians, this is hard, but we should be looking toward this.
The first year he should be able to invest time in his wife, not go off to war. It would be wonderful to marry with zero debt and a house paid for. That should be a goal, part of the inheritance that we give our sons. An inheritance is not something that we should hoard away until we die, for an attorney to piddle out. No, we should be giving to them all the way along, help them multiply it a lot.
Q: How do we know when it’s time to start a new church body? The goal is not just to have a family integrated church. The goal is the conquest of the entire world.
I pray about following the doctrines of ecclesiology:
1. The goal is not simply finding the perfect family-integrated assembly. The goal is world conquest by discipling the nations through the active governance of the local church. You want to be in a church that is training you and training your sons and exalting that great commission vision.
2. You cannot be an accomplice in a church that may be an “illegal assembly.” That is a term John Calvin used. That is one that refuses to submit to biblical requirements for eldership, mishandling of tithes, idolatrous to laws of the state.
3. Every church has a vision and is leading by example. Your family may be learning a sacerdotal, impotent and contemptuous tradition. There are signs of a potential “illegal assembly:” Neglecting the apostles doctrine, teaching error in regard to sin, righteousness, the judgment to come, and salvation, if they are teaching error, refusing to submit to church holiness and a policy of discipline members to keep the church holy, biblical requirements for church leadership, improper handling of the tithe, or if there is an idolatrous endorsement of statist laws. RJ Rushdoony said, “The church today has fallen pray to the heresy of democracy.” Many churches today think it is their duty to soft peddle the law of God, while following in compliant lockstep with the wishes of the state.
4. You are commanded to be making disciples of the nations by training men for family and church leadership within the church. Do you have the opportunity to do that within the church?
5. You have obligations to support a church who is dutiful in it’s obligations to church growth and planting, not trying to build itself into a tiny empire for the minister.
6. You need to put obedience to God above the maintenance of comfortable social environments.
7. You have duties to be always reforming.
8. You have duties to lead by setting an example to others who need a solution as badly as you do.
II Pray about the steep cost of the process of starting a church and the hard spiritual work.
III Don’t shrink away from you duties as a man.
Q: What is the process of properly starting a legitimate church, for a family in a nice church that is teaching the wrong thing?
This is not a formula, they are points to consider:
1. Be holy in your submission to Christ. You can’t be arrogant, impatient.
You have to be on your knees.
2 Be obedient in personal and home worship. Before you criticize, even in your heart the present church leadership, what is your leadership in the home?
3. Be highly and fearfully respectful of the present church authority. “Yeah but these guys are posers, they’re phony.’ You’ve got to adjust your attitude.
4. Master the concepts of biblical church strategy and vision. Go to the word and ask, what does a church really look like biblically? Not just something you saw in another state one time on a Sunday morning. You need to know biblical church strategy and vision and dig it out for yourself.
5. Analyze your church situation carefully, magnanimously and generously. No church is perfect.
6. Do not cause disharmony or unhappiness in the congregation as you learn. Learn quietly.
7. Appeal to church leaders for Biblical reform. “Here are some things we are learning. What do you think? Wouldn’t it be great if we could see some of the men being trained in more vision than they’ve had?”
8. Commit to stand by them and help them in real reform efforts.
9. Do not accept passive solutions as reformational leadership. Some church leaders are taught in seminary how to keep everybody happy.
10. Try to get counsel if you think you should leave from as many men who have done this before.
11. Do not be impatient, but do be decisive leaders to your family, who is watching you.
12. Be honest with the leaders about your prayerful resolution to leave. Not sneaking around, be open with them.
13. Seek the leaders’ blessing as you make plans to leave. Want everything to be transparent as we leave, not going to try to steal sheep as we go.
14. Do not trouble the congregation as you leave, not shedding a lot of big crocodile tears about how hard this is to leave.
15. Leave peaceably and lawfully, with support of the leadership, if possible.
16. Do not seek to draw families after you. There are plenty of elect in your cities who need to hear the gospel and they need to be brought into a church to be nurtured.
17. Move quickly to form the new church with at least one other family.
18. Determine a confession future families can reference. I am in the process of forming a new church with a couple of good men. We are using the London Baptist Confession. It’s a good summery. We see a couple points we think need reformation since it was written in 1689.
19. Determine a statement of faith future families can reference.
20. Determine a covenant other families can reference. It can be short.
21. Obtain as much counsel from supportive outside leaders.
22. Do not be hasty in recognizing elders. One of the biggest mistakes these early new church plants make is being too hasty. Elders brought up within the congregation. A church can be legitimate and live for a season without them.
23. Maintain a good relationship with former church, as far as it lies within your power.
You are working to grow the
24. Evangelize and nurture new converts. Not just trying to find other homeschoolers. Will take a lot of time, need counsel, risky that is part of being in a church. “The Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved.”
25 Involve all men of the church in leadership as their maturity and availability permits. As I mentioned this local church is including 8 -10 year olds in teaching, to the extent of their maturity and availability.
26. Make preliminary plans to start a new church and target a tentative geographic location. Even though you are a new baby church, be thinking about being reproductive.
The local church on the face of the earth is the frontlines.
27. Remember that church planting is one great missing mission in the message of the Church. This is the neglected ingredient to both medieval and modern Christianity.
We must to recover this. We are not here on earth to find the country club church that we can be born and die in and see our daughters married in.
The Lord Jesus Christ will support you as you do this. I have seen brand new baby convert men, who knew little about the Bible, who were willing to devote their lives to being church planters. Men devoted to the Bride of Christ. In the very first church I was in with Mrs. Botkin, just coming out of being a Marxist, I was biblically illiterate. 99% of other young people were too; most were in their teens or 20’s. The Lord was adding daily to our number and adding great maturity to the men who were willing to stand up and be leaders. I saw miracles, like in the book of Acts where the Lord was adding to our number daily where there were 24, 50, then 75, people, then 100, 200. Men were serious about learning.
Thank you again for your diligence. May God bless you.
1 comment:
Wow, thanks for posting that.
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