Amen, Thank you Jesus, Thank you Father. You are daddy, You're
Abbah. Thank you Lord, your Lord, you may be seated. Do
you have some men in the house this morning, Yes, we have some
fathers in the house. Yes. Okay. If you're a dad, stand
up, stand up. Also, if you would like to be a dad,
now, you need a wife first and all that. But even if
you're a little boy and you want to have kids someday, stand please.
We're standing for dads and those that want to be dads. Lord, Thank
you for these men. Thank you that they are your mighty men. They
are enlisted in your army and you them with honor and respect and high rank.
Thank you, Lord, you do. Thank you Lord for your fifth
commandment, which says, honor your father. We honor fathers today. Thank
you for fathers. Thank you Father, you're our dad. Thank you Father
that you sent your son to die for us so we could be with you
and hang out with you and be one with you. Thank you for these
young men that want to be fathers, that you're preparing their wife for them
even now. Thank you Father. You're setting them up to have families that
are blessed and honorable and mighty in you, and we thank you for this
house and the father of this house, Pastors Dwayne, and the mother this
house, Pastor Joel, and we just celebrate being in this wonderful place with
each other in Jesus' name. Amen, you may be seated. You get
me talking about how cool the church is, I always cry. I'll be
out in public talking to someone about how cool is church is. I'll start
crying. So I guess it's just the presence of God and such wonderful people
to serve with. And this is my son, Drew, my birth and
he has this beautiful annoying for being able to just serenade the Lord. It
just plays these love songs to the Lord. And it's awesome, son,
So thank you for And I just you know, we've done some things lately.
I mean, we do stuff all the time, but I don't so
much he remember what we did. I just so much enjoy being with him,
how much as our heavenly Father enjoy being with us. Think about it.
Devn Borgan, are you in the house there? You are back working,
volunteering as usual. I just wanted to highlight this young man. The
word says to know those that labor among you. He labors among you all
the time. And I want to just say, Devin, that you're just
a mighty man of God. You're a great father, You're an example of
a great father. You're a strong man, you're an overcomer, You've it's
just awesome to watch how you treat your wife and children, and that you're
such an example of a mighty warrior for Christ, a great leader of your
family. And we just honor you today for that. Amen. Amen.
So we're going to talk about fathering. Begins with prayer and we'll go through
what fathering is, the leadership aspect of it, what that is. We'll
talk about how to pray, what to pray, about when to pray,
and we'll finish with a call to pray. But first, what is fathering?
What is a father? So creating a child, impregnating a woman and
creating a child, that makes you a father by title, But that's it.
A father is made through love and made through caring, and made through
serving, and made through protecting and providing and guarding and providing a sense of
belonging and that you're with me, so you're important. That's what a father
is. That's what fathering is, But how do we do that? All
starts with prayer, and so that message will be laced through what we talk
about today. You know, we talked about it, the title of a
father. The Texas Department of Corrections has a statistic that eighty five percent of
the men incarcerated, like Pastor Dwayne said, early, did not have a
father in the home. And I've met those people on the street. My
son and I were in La a few days a few weeks ago, down
on skid Row, just helping the guys that are wandering the streets down there.
And when you talk to them and you say, how is your relationship
with your dad? And they're like what dad? And so I stand there
and I hold them. I repent that they didn't have their dad because they
need one. And we all had varying levels of circumstances of emotionally distant fathers,
even if there was one in the home. But that's okay, because
my heavenly father has more than enough love and emotion to make up what my
earthly dad didn't get. So I can turn around and love him and love
others with that that fatherly kind of love. Okay, I'll get it.
Together here. So fathering accepts the call the leadership because that's what fathering is.
It's leading. And what does leading mean. It means that you provide
direction, You set a course, and you take your people there and they
follow you and they feel like they're part of something important. And that's basically
what leadership is. It's a good leadership is fathering. It's serving, helping,
lifting up your people and making them great, providing them significance. What
leadership and fathering is not is trying to please. Sometimes, if we weren't
raised with fathers, we can get into mode with our spouses and kids that
we just want to please them all the time, and then we're wandering around
trying to find what pleases them when we haven't stopped and said, father,
what pleases you and what pleases you about my family that I can run down
line to them. But if I'm wandering around always trying to please, I'll
be aimless and without vision and probably broke after a while. So so how
do I how do I lead? Well? First of all, know this
it's not an option. You were enlisted into the army of leadership the minute
you proposed to your wife. You became the head of the family. Once
you asked if she would marry you, you stepped into leadership role. It's
not an option, it's an assignment. It's it's it's a mandate. Ephesians
four to one. Paul said, live a life worthy of your calling.
And sure that could be fivefold ministry. But every man who chooses to be
in a family be married as a calling. You have a mission, You
have a calling for that family. So how do I do this calling?
How how do I do all this stuff? It sounds great, Jeff,
But how do I do this stuff you're talking about? Well, there's a
model in Ephesians chapter five, and everything you need to know about running,
leading, and guiding a family is in that chapter. It starts out in
verse one, goes about twenty verses talking about how to clean up your life,
and probably from age twenty one to twenty eight. I was there in
the first twenty chapters. But then God introduced this beautiful woman to me,
Karen. But I was ready at that point, because when you get to
verse twenty one, it says submit one to another in the love of God,
And I was ready to get started on that journey. So here's how
it works. Let's do some board work here. And so here's you men,
how's that? And here's your wife? And yeah, and let's see
if I can do a good job here there there she is. I know
that's a hat or a hairdoo or what? Can you see this? Okay
as our marker? Dark enough? Okay, let's make the hair a little
longer there so anyway, all right? Verse twenty two of Ephesians five,
it says, wives, subject to your selves to your husband as unto the
lord, or submit yourself under your husband as unto the lord. So in
this marriage connection, the wife gets the first instruction. And why is that?
And I thought the husband was supposed to lead. Well, here's the
deal. This is verse twenty two. Wives, submit yourself to your husband.
When the wife does this, the husband senses that he's being starts with
an r. Respected. Men want respect. And if our wife submits to
us, we feel respect. And when we feel respect, we can let
her up into our heart. And when she's in our heart, she can
influence my mind. And now we're equals. All that from submitting yourself unto
your husband, he has a message for ladies too, as under the lord.
This is the way we're supposed to submit unto Christ. So all that
happens in that first verse, but then comes two instructions for men, for
the one for the wife. The one over here is verse twenty five.
Men lay down your life. Lay it down, guys, and the Holy
Spirit is there to help you know what that means day by day by day.
Sometimes it means you don't argue back and try and pound her into the
dust to win the argument. You just listen and try and understand. Sometimes
you don't. You cover a fault or a shortcoming. But we love,
we serve. This is a posture of foot washing right here. Humility,
husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and laid his life down
for her. He gave up his life for us. So that's what you
get in return, ladies. But there's more. But wait, there's more.
There's an over the top assignment. In verse twenty seven. We are
to present her, our wives to the Lord Radiant, without stain, wrinkle,
or any blemish, Holy and blameness. That's our role as the intercessor.
Lord. My wife is in you, She's hidden in you. She
does not deserve this sickness and disease and challenge he's going through. We rebuked
that. I declare her perfection in you. I declare her wholeness in you.
I declare her security in you. Lord. My wife's feeling threatened and
unsure about stuff. Lord, I just pray that you're putting certainty in her
heart because that's who she is in Christ. That's our job to go before
the Lord and present our wife to the Lord that way. Yep, even
in the middle of an argument when we want to be right. Ever wanted
to be right, Karen. She likes to be right too. But in
the middle of an argument where I'm trying to maybe prove my rightness, the
Lord's going on, don't you just pray right now? So we'll stop mid
argument. And I don't want to do it, she doesn't want to do
it. Okay, let's pray, all right, Lord, we bind a
spirit of strife. We thank you Lord that your Lord and Savior over us,
and we're one and we're in unity, and we rebuke the enemy.
I'll tell you more than a hundred times. We're laughing in five minutes because
it changes the atmosphere. When you pray, you cannot just battle this stuff
out and flesh will want to take over our flesh. This thing is not
submitted to God. That's why we have to fast sometimes and pray is to
tell flesh you will not be in charge here. Flesh, be quiet.
You don't have to win this argument. You just need to lead. So
spirit man lead, and flesh you be quiet. We need to tell our
flesh to shut up. This is you know, you see the coexist bumper
stickers around here. There's no coexisting between the flesh and the spirit. There
is no coexisting either the spirit dominates or the flesh dominates. And if you're
going to let your flesh dominate in marriage, you're going to have war all
the time with your spouse. That wonderful lady made the image and likeness of
Christ. You two will be at war unless you get control of this flesh
and run your marriage on the spirit. So this is verse twenty seven up
here. So it's two to one man. You have twice the assignment that
the wife does. She gets the security, the protection, the love and
all that. You get the respect and reverence that you want. But that
is the model for a marriage. And it's all about you being the high
priest in your home and going before the Lord on her behalf. That's how
it works. Okay, Okay, we'll get back to the board in a
minute. So how am I going to pray? How do I do this?
What does it mean to pray? Because your family needs to see your
spiritual leadership. They need to see you up early in the morning and pacing
the floor and praying and stopping in the middle of an argument to pray whatever.
They need to see it. They need to see it. It can't
just be something silent. So let's talk about what prayer is now. We
won't go into the details of Matthew five point forty four. But the word
for prayer prayer there is in the Strongsucordance. It's Greeks number forty three thirty
six. And it's a weird by itself. It's a weird definition. The
word prayer there means wish. I thought, that's that's a really at least
initially, that's a really weak definition for the word prayer, like a wish
I mean, oh I wish this would happen. But it's it's way more
than that. As you go on to study the other parts of the word,
and I won't go into a lot of detail, but it means.
It means to a wish mixed with faith. And you heard Pastor talking about
that at the beginning of the service, like mix your faith with your giving
so that you don't lose hope. Well, to keep life from being more
than a wish and a hope, we have to mix faith with it.
Lord, I believe my wife is healed of that infirmity. It's already done.
You've taken care of it. And I'm up in my place in you,
seated in heavenly places, declaring that truth. Just like the son sits
before you, Father, I sit before you and declare my wife's healing.
See that's a wish mixed with faith. That's how they mix together. That
makes sense. Okay, good, So how first, as before we go
into more of what this is, I want to just give a couple quick
testimonies to show that God does answer prayer, and I'll go back to the
definition for just second. There's this switching of our wishes for God's wishes.
The definition of the meaning of prayer. There's a substituting of our wishes where
the Lord comes in and molds our desire to his. And I was getting
into my late twenties, I was still single. I wanted to be married.
So I took a day out to fast and pray and say, Lord,
things aren't happening. I've got to break through. I tell you,
Fasting is a key to add to prayer. Prayer sometimes is like a twelve
gage shotgun. You can go fifty to one hundred yards down range to hit
something, but beyond that you won't hit it. But when you mix fasting
with your prayer, it's like high octane. It's like shooting with a sniper
rifle that can go ten thousand yards and you can hit the bullseye. There's
a movie called The Patriot, and I love that movie. We watch it
every fourth of July with mel Gibson and his son gets taken prisoner who is
fighting for the revolutionary cause by the British, and so mel Gibson and his
young sons hunt these guys down. So he tells his little boys, who
he's trained, how to shoot. He gets down, he goes, remember
aim small, miss small, Aim small, miss small. In other words,
go exactly to the target, focus on the button on his coat instead
of him when you aim your gun. And that's what it's like when we
fast, we aim small, miss small, and we can shoot down range
a long way. So anyway, I just slipped that in for free,
right there. Don't make it some big legalistic deal if I mean, if
fasting means that you're going to skip dessert or you're going to skip one meal.
When I do a one meal fast, I skip dinner because I can
make it through the day that way, I say, okay, I can
get to bed and fall asleep and wake up in the morning and all gone
over twelve hours. And especially, and what really makes it powerful is when
you load the bullet in that gun of fasting. Is when you add a
little bit of prayer and studying of the word to it, you do serious
damage to the enemy's kingdom. He fast and pray. So I fasted and
pray today, and talk to God about my wife, like God, who
is she? What is she? How can I receive her? And my
desires? I had some new desires that day. It's like he was mixing
his desires with mine. I thought, you know, I want a wife
that's tall. I want her tall, and I want a wife that has
a big laugh, you know, and my wife can laugh. I mean
in an office environment, it echoes down the hallways and in the house.
It's just the house circulates when she's home. When she's gone, it's like,
oh, I don't Karen, and my wife's gone. When she's home,
it's siding and fired up. So anyway, God gave me the desire
of my heart and I prayed for her. Also, God let me to
pray for Karen before I met her. God put me in that leadership role.
I had received my wife, so before the Lord, I'm the leader
of my family. This hadn't met it. Do I have to meet her
yet? The leader? No, But the Lord says, she's in the
midst of making some big decisions. Pray and sure enough, after we met.
During that time I was praying for her, she was considering taking a
coaching job in the Midwest, which would have led us apart, and I
never would have met her. We never would have had Drew and the other
two kids. This stuff's important. So and then kids come along, and
we have our older two, Drew an Abbey, and I'm in the laundry,
the laundering room, doing laundry, and this is the conversational part of
prayer, and I'm talking all of you. I'm so excited to have another
girl. And her name is going to be so and so, and this
would be great. And I have two girls and the boy and the Lord
just like arrests me. It's like he stuck a rod up my backbone.
And I hear this inside of me. He says, you do not have
a girl. I mean you do not have a Yeah, you do not
have a girl. You have a son. And he's a leader of leaders,
and stay out of his way. And you know, from what he's
been through in life, there's some things where we had desires for him that
were really caring and my personal desire and not our son's desire, and we
just had to back off. And now this morning I get a text from
his his fiance. It was the best Father's Day greeting I've ever had,
you know, and his life is progressing and doing fine. But it wasn't
a daughter. It was the son. Alcah's prayer. We're having a conversation
with God, and so I focus on my kids. During Daniel Fast,
I'll take a day during each week with the Daniel Fast, I'll pray for
one and then the other, and then the next week the other one,
and so forth. That's nothing you can do. So there's just and God's
a provider. We were at at Karen's farm, her parents farm, and
it was a drought year and the crop wasn't coming in. So we walked
down the lane and prayed for rain. And in the middle of a high
pressure system. The following week, there's a little squall that came in,
not a big front or anything. It dropped an inch of rain and saved
the crop. So God, God answers prayer. And then I'm running out
of But there's miraculous things about finding stuff, like Pastor Dwayne's found stuff and
gotten stuff return. But you know, sometimes things don't work out the way
you want them to. You have questions, you have dilemmas. Prayer doesn't
seem to get answered. And so if we go to Satan Corinthians four Versus
seven, eight, and nine, Paul said, this, go to verse
eight. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed
but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed.
You know, we went through a trial twenty four twenty five years ago
that was rough. It was like being dropped into a cat five hurricane on
his deserted island with no shelter. Our finances, our friends, our business,
and our health all at the same time were just blown away. And
it was hard. But can you put that scripture back up verse eight and
nine. We were hard pressed on every side, but you know we were
not crushed. We were perplexed, but not in despair. We were persecuted,
we had some friends walk away, but the Lord never abandoned us.
We were struck down and not destroyed, and when the waters receded, we
were standing on solid ground. Fact Proverbs eighteen ten says that our God is
a stronghold, a very present help in trime of trouble. He is a
fortified tower righteous run to it and we're safe. And that's what we did.
So there's the tower in the middle of that hurricane, you know,
the light beaming out of it, and we came out of that trial over
into the safe place. That's where we ended up in that. But the
way we got through it is you know, someone had given me one of
those worship flags on a long pole and it was bright red, was the
color of Trell's shirt over here, you know, like the blood of Christ.
And I don't have the flag on it here, but this is the
pole. So they had this big pole, and I wasn't a flag waiver
at church. I thought, that's kind of weird the wave flags at church.
I don't think that now. But but I got my flag out and
I started. We had this long basement that I walk in during this trial,
and I get my flag out and I'd start waving it. I said,
I got the vic in the name of Jesus. I'd start waving that
flag and then I'd flip it around when I use it as a spear,
and I'd be wrong and say, Satan, you will not have my family.
No way, no way, you can't have us. I have the
sword of the Spirit, the word of God that sharpened any tuigids sword,
and I'm taking you out. And I would just pace and fight. I
would just fight and fight and fight. And the circumstances were totally contrary.
But my God was faithful, and you know, the apostle Paul said,
fight with me. Paul asked for help five times in scriptures. Jesus asked
for help in the garden. So you're in good company asking for help.
So I fought and fought and fought, and I swung my flag and wielded
my sword in the army, you know, in God's army. It's like
Israel. Everyone goes into the military. Once you're saved, you're in the
military. With God. You better decide what weapon you're going to fight with.
But He's given us all his sword to fight with his word, and
so I ended up. We ended up in the strong tower, and then
we ended up here. So anyway, what do I pray about? Just
a few minutes left. So here's what you do. Ask for courage,
first man, ask for courage. Do the hard things, but ask God
to help you do the hard things. I've got some stuff I don't want
to do next week, but I'm going to do them because I've asked for
prayer. I've asked for prayer with other men here about it, and so
I'm on the hook to go deal with it. I'm going to do it.
Ask for wisdom, patience, grace, kindness, finances. Ask your
wife what you need to pray for and about. Ask her what's troubling her?
Where does she need you to be the high priest of your home and
cover her? Where does she need covering? Where does she need help,
Where does she need support? Have a Sunday night meeting or a night of
the week where you rally as a family. You put your kids in the
same room with you and you just go around the room and say, Okay,
Drew, what do you need, Abby, what do you need?
Troy? What do you need? What are you looking forward to this week?
What's the challenge in front of you? That's all it takes to lead.
You don't have to do anything more than that except lead them and find
out how to serve them and how to help them. And we'd bring those
requests before the Lord. And you know, I don't remember what all the
requests were, but I sure remember the feeling of closeness and togetherness and security
we got from hanging out with each other. You know, there was too
much, There was too many, too much to do, too much homework,
too much of everything that wants to crowd it out. But we just
made it a priority and we jumped in and went for it. So pray
before you sign the contract, before you buy the car, before you choose
the school, Pray at home, at the store, on the plane,
all private and public places, pray. Pray, Pray for each other.
First pray for strangers. If you walk around, you'll see people say,
God, what's your heart for them? What is your What is your heart
for this person sitting next to person on the plane? Lord, what's up
with this person? What's your heart for them? Now you've got the Holy
Spirit working with you, with your evangelism and our each it makes it easy.
Super I could. I could stand here for an hour and tell you
stories about that. How about when you don't feel close to God? God,
you are my refuge and strength, a very present help in time of
trouble. That's some forty six one. God, you are my refuge and
strength, a very present help in time of trouble. In other words,
He never leaves you nor forsake you. And first of all, when we
say stuff like it, don't feel close to God, that's not a feeling,
that's a thought, and that thought could be introduced by the enemy.
But the word settles it. God has not left us nor forsakenness. He's
right there. So what do I do in a practical sense to feel closer
to God? In prayer? Get a routine, have a place, you
know, we fixed up. We put a new floor in a room in
our house, where I had my chair where I'd go and we had to
move the chair out to get the flooring done. We haven't moved it back.
So I tell my wife, I feel like a man without a country.
I don't have my chair to go sit in because she was sitting in
it in the living room. But get a quiet place, walk and pray.
I like to walk and pray. You can just okay, okay,
Lord, God could head of it. You know, you're just praying in
tongues. You're just walking and praying. That's what Jesus did. He walked
up mountains in the morning and prayed and met with a father and walked down
and prayed. Personalized scriptures. Make scriptures your own and confess them. Okay,
join corporate prayer. You know, there's a lot of men that show
up on Tuesday and Thursday morning sometime between five point thirty and seven am,
And sometimes I just make it the last half hour, but I try and
come because there's so much strength being with men, and I love it.
It's like we're Pastor Dwayne's dogs. You know. We're like we're like bulldogs
with a bone. We don't let go. We just we pray hard and
we pray. And that's why his name is wolf where the dogs in the
wolf pack. You know football players, when they're talking about their teammates,
a sign of respect is to call them a dog. Oh yeah, he's
a dog man. He just works so hard. He's a dog. But
we need to be dogs for God. Sometimes when it comes to prayer,
man and fight, fight, fight. We don't let go of that bone
until we see the answer. So so pray before bed, pray in the
morning. Well, I pray and speak the Word over my family and protection.
When we start doing that on a consistent basis, we stopped having nightmares
and stuff. They ended because I don't let the devil into my room at
night. I kick him out. He's not welcome. And when you wake
up in the middle of the night, pray and we talk about fasting.
One Timothy four to eight says, I'm want men to pray, lifting up
holy hands. So there's a conscription of requests by the Lord for men to
lead in prayer. It doesn't have to be women all the time leading the
prayer meeting. It can be men. So ask for prayer. Remember Paul
requested prayer, fervent prayer in Romans fifteen thirty. He said, fight with
me, Struggle with me. Now Paul had the victory, but we have
to fight to enforce the victory. Paul said, fight with me. Jesus
asked for prayer in the garden. You know, the man's side of Jesus
almost died, didn't even make it, hardly barely made it through the garden
experience. There was so much stress on him. It is not a sign
of weakness to ask for prayer. Maybe some cultures that some of us have
come out of us said that's weak to admit that you need prayer for something.
Well, it's not weak. That is not true. That is not
Bible. If you want to shoot down range a long way and get victory,
pray with other men. That's the answer. I don't think Jesus and
Paul were weak or that they lack faith. Sometimes we need to just repent
of pride. Pride. Sometimes they'll try and keep me from coming to the
front for prayer. Oh yeah, these people around you are going to think
you're weak. No, that's the liar, that's the devil, you know.
So, So to build a family, a home, a business,
a ministry, a nation, you must lead on Timothy two to one to
four. It asks us to pray for everybody and then pray for leaders and
kings all in authority. Why that you may lead a quiet and peaceable family
life. That's what it says. It's all tied together. It's all tied
together. When the pilgrims hit the shores of America, it wasn't separate like
that. It was everything, the family, the government, it was all
connected. So we want to pray first, We want to pray often,
we want to pray hard, We pray with others, and we pray for
our nation. The First Continental Congress in seventeen seventy four, when Britain,
the Deep State, Britain was putting the clamps on the United States. That
meeting happened because one guy, Sam Adams stood up and said, no,
We're going to start the meeting with prayer. And they brought in a guy,
a preacher, and who read Psalms thirty five, and the anointing fell
in the room, and the old, older, stodgy men were all weeping
and crying as the presence of God filled the room of the First Continental Congress.
And we have a nation today where we get to sit here in freedom
in a meeting like this, because prayer was first. So there's the model.
We pray first, we pray often, we pray hard, and we
pray with others, and we pray for a nation. So men, I
invite the men, Prayer Warriors, Destiny Team guys to come up, and
I'm going to ask you to come forward for prayer. Maybe it's prayer for
something beside yourself. Maybe it's for yourself. Maybe you want that prayer language
and you want to be released in that. It could be prayer for anything.
But take a look. Make sure pride is not holding you in your
seat. Make sure that you're not being controlled by people around you. That
as leaders, we're controlled by the Lord only by him alone. We're controlled
by the Lord alone. And if he's nudging you to get up out of
your seat and come down here and to be in agreement with another man for
what your needs are or what someone else's needs are, that you're standing in
the gap for, do it. Maybe you've never come up before. Now's
a good first time. If I sound like I'm pressuring, I'm not trying
to be that way. What I'm trying to do is introduce you to freedom.
Freedom like never before. So we thank you for this ministry time.
Lord, we thank you for what you're doing in men. Thank you Father.
We can go to a highl place and our commitment to lead our families
as the spiritual leaders of our home, to pray, to intercede, to
be the high priest of the home. Help us to cover our wives,
help us to cover them. Cover our wives, Lord, cover our children,
cover those we love. We stand in the gap for them. Thank
you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord,
Thank you Lord. Want you everyone stand and just this stand. This might
make it easier. And reach your hand out towards the front for these men
who are coming up to stand with their brothers. Lord, we thank you
for these men. Just reach your faith how towards them right now. Church,
Thank you Father, Thank you Father. Thank you Father. Thank you
Father for humility and freedom. Thank you Father, Thank you Father. We
don't have to feel spiritual, We just have to decide to be spiritual.
Thank you, Jesus, Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus, Thank you Jesus. Ose. I'm going to ask
you a question. You're going to Mexico, right would you come up and
pray with Tony for the Mexico trip and for all the people that are going.
Would you just be the spiritual father right now over that spiritual Papa,
over that trip and intercede. Thank you, thank you Jesus, thank you Lord,