Extreme Home Makeover: Dads Edition Series

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER: FATHERS EDITION

Scott Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 6/17/2012

For the past six weeks now, we’ve been talking about giving our homes an extreme makeover according God’s blueprints for life, marriage and family.

About a decade ago, home makeover mania started sweeping the nation. Since then, dozens of these TV shows have cropped up with teams of experts that come in and remodel or redecorate rooms or whole houses. There is Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Trading Spaces, Clean House, Curb Appeal, Design on a Dime, Divine Design, and many more. And that last one is what we’re looking for—a Divine design.

Can you imagine going on one of these shows and discovering that the so-called experts didn’t have a design or blueprint to work from? They were just going to wing it and see what happened? You might think twice about letting them inside your house! Yet, so many singles and married couples try to build their homes—their lives, marriages and families—without ever consulting the Master Architect’s divine design. Two people just hammering away under the same roof, trying to build their home based on two different sets of incomplete and imperfects plans—it’s often a mess!

Let’s look once more at our anchor verse for this series. The Bible says, “Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted” (Psalm 127:1 NLT). When you leave God out of the building process, in other words, you are bound to fail. And if there is one area of life that I don’t want to fail in, it’s at home—with my family.

I’m glad that this series is ending on Father’s Day because fathers are so important when it comes to family. For Father’s Day, Ashley gave each of the kids a “Pop Quiz about our Pop.” She interviewed each of them and wrote down their answers for me. Let me share some of their answers.

• How old is dad? 7 (Abby) 11 (Sarai)

• How much does your dad weight? 75lbs (Yeshua), 100lbs (Sarai)

• How tall is Dad? 11’5” (Sarai), 10’2” (Yeshua)

• My Dad is great at… running in circles (Abby)

• Dad likes to cook… donuts (Abby)

• His favorite thing to eat is… cheeseburgers and Oreos (Sarai)

• My dad’s favorite things to do are… teach about God and spend time with his family (Yeshua).

When my kids tell me that my favorite things to do are teach about God and spend time with my family, I know I’m doing something right! Being a father is easily the greatest joy of my life.

I heard one this week about three boys in the schoolyard bragging about who had the better father. The first boy says, “My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, and people give him $100.”

The second boy says, “That’s nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him $1000.”

The third boy says, “My Dad is ever better than that. He scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, calls it a sermon, and it takes 6 or 8 men just to collect all the money!”

Sadly, in our day, a lot of dads aren’t living up to their responsibilities. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 25 million children do not live with their fathers and more than a third of these children will not see their fathers at all during the course of a year. Studies show that children who grow up without responsible fathers are significantly more likely to experience poverty, perform poorly in school, engage in criminal activity, and abuse drugs and alcohol. Roughly 70% of incarcerated males have had little or no interaction with their fathers.

That’s why dads are so important. It’s nearly impossible to build a stable home without a dad. God knew that when he drafted the design for the family. Dads are so important that God chose to reveal himself as our heavenly Father. And it’s God who teaches fathers how to be a good dad.

This morning, I just want to share with you three characteristics of a good dad that we learn from our Heavenly Father. First, a good dad adores his kids.

• ADORE YOUR KIDS

Anyone who’s ever been to church ought to know that God loves us. He adores us. If he had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had wallet, your photo would be in it. The Bible actually says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1 NIV).

You are a child of God. Before you knew you needed adopting, God had already filed the papers and selected the wallpaper for your room. And as our Father, God lavishes his love on us.