November 28, 2022

What I model is what I teach

My boys love to wrestle with me. The game we play together is pretty simple: I get down on my knees, and one of them attempts to knock me over, but they end up getting captured and mercilessly tickled. At this point, a rescue mission begins, and the other two boys swoop in to save their brother from the torturous tickling. This repeats over and over, and for my three boys, it never gets old. No matter how long we play, it’s never quite enough to satisfy them.

So we wrestled last night. We also watched the Chiefs win their football game. And we saw the first half of the Packers / Eagles game. Additionally, we welcomed another family to join us for football and dinner. Earlier in the day, we visited the Prairie Pines Christmas tree farm, and we enjoyed sandwiches at Jimmy John’s, and we spent time with our church family on Sunday morning.

9:00pm arrived. Our Advent candles were set up and ready for a family Bible study around the coffee table in our living room. But I was tired and tempted to skip it. Our day had been full. I get up early on Sundays, and it’s always an emotionally-intense work day. Our afternoon was busy, and guests had been over, and we burned energy wrestling, and the fresh school week was pounding at the door.

I am so glad that I pushed through the tiredness and led out in doing a family devotion (Bible study) together. In view of the first week of Advent, we read a verse from the Bible on hope:

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13)

Blaine asked what the word “uninformed” meant, so I explained that to him. And when I read the verse, instead of saying “those who are asleep,” I said “those who have died,” since that is what the Bible is clearly talking about in that verse. Then we discussed the meaning of the word “grieve.” This is all a part of the process: explaining the meaning of words, answering various questions, using word-pictures and stories to try and make it clear. It’s never clean or tidy. It rarely goes to plan.

I told the boys to imagine if our whole house burnt down with everything in it. And then we discussed why we would still have hope. We talked about people we knew who loved Jesus, but had died. And then we discussed why we can still have hope when we are sad. And all throughout the devotion, there were distractions, random questions, and stop-and-go moments of explaining things.

The prayer at the end was the best. August got to light the first candle of Advent, so I told him he needed to pray first. Then Blaine also prayed, followed by Connor. August thanked God that we get to go to “a beautiful place when we die.” Blaine thanked God for forgiving us even though “we still make many sins.” Connor thanked Jesus for dying on the cross to save us, even though we are all “freeloaders and lazy bums.” Oh, the convicting power of prayer!

Being a pastor is a great calling and job, and leading others to know and love Jesus is wonderful, and preaching the Word of God to help people obey it is an honor – but in my own home, I have a family who needs me to be a godly husband and dad, and if I don’t do my best to point them to Jesus in my living room, who will? Talking about the Bible at home with my family is my favorite place to talk about it.

Sometimes I do a poor job of explaining the Bible to my kids. Sometimes I’m pretty sure they don’t learn much from our family devotions. Sometimes I spend the whole time explaining things and answering questions, and at the end, we’re talking about things I didn’t think we would be discussing. My plan was to do one thing, but the end result was something totally different.

But last night, as we talked about the candle of Hope in the first week of Advent, I did model this for my boys: Life is not truly good if we just have church service, friends, food, football, and fun wrestling. Life is only truly full and good with God at the center; the Bible at the center; Jesus at the center. I’m not sure how much they learned, but we still did it. We opened the Bible. We talked about it. We prayed. And if I do this over and over and over again, all throughout their years of childhood, my boys will grow up and hopefully be able to say something like:

“Dad cared a lot about Jesus and the Bible, and he didn’t just talk about it at church. He talked about it at home with us. He listened to our questions, he showed us how to pray, he made us read the Bible together, and it was just what our family did.”

The truth is, we did our family devotion last night only because I knew we needed to. I wasn’t feeling it. I was tired. But my boys absolutely have to learn that a life of good friends, good food, good football, and good times is not enough. Death comes for us all, and if we reject Jesus as our Lord and Savior, there is only sorrow and anguish for all eternity.

How will they learn such a big and hard lesson that even I am prone to forget in this busy and distracted world? I suppose they must learn it by growing up with me as their dad, and that means my feeble attempts to open the Bible with them and pray with them are not about being great, but being consistent.

Regardless of where you are in life, no matter if you’re single or married, young or old, simple or sophisticated, whatever you model for people around you is what you ultimately teach. The things you consistently do paint the picture of who you are for the people observing your life. Sometimes what I claim to value doesn’t align with my patterns of life – in the end, it is the consistent, outward patterns that people remember about a person.

We are all called to make disciples of Jesus. That’s our mission, plain and simple. We are called to do this in all the places where we are planted: home, work, family, friends, networks, clubs, and groups. We don’t need to feel overwhelmed by all the things we don’t know. The fact is, we all know very little.

That’s okay because disciple-making is not for the professionals: it’s for all of us. And we do it by simply living as Christians, modeling consistent patterns of life that point to our faith in Jesus.

This is a lesson I must be reminded of again and again, and I suspect I will need continual reminders until either Jesus calls me home in death or returns to take us home in life. It’s a humbling lesson that makes me consider how I’m using my time, energy, emotions, schedule, money, and dreams. Perhaps this reminder is helpful for you too.

We are the people of God. We are still here on this earth. Let’s not forget why we are here: We are making disciples of Jesus. You don’t need to be an expert to be faithful. Just be consistent about living as a Christian. That last sentence was only eight words, but it’s enough to fill the rest of our lives. Let it be so.