If you are a father, grandfather or want to be, this might be the best 49 minute program ever to learn how to be the father you were meant to be.

7 Secrets of St. Joseph for Dads by Devin Schadt

My sophomore and junior year of Scott Community High School football there were so many guys on the football team (just under 90 counting freshman) that coach had a travel squad list. Every Thursday night, as the players went to the practice field, an assistant coach would put up a list on the field house wall of who was going to travel that Friday night to the game on the bus.

So after practice there was always a mad rush of sophomores and juniors to that list to see who was going to get to go to the game and suit up? The freshman never traveled with the varsity in those days.

When your name was not on the travel list, you were disappointed because that meant you were staying home.

The truth hurt.

Early in the football season of my junior year the head coach offered to give me a ride home from practice one night. So I jumped in his pickup and as soon as he started driving he said to me, “You are good enough to start on the varsity team this year, but I have seven seniors at your position and they have been with me for four years, so I need to figure out how to get them in the game. So you will never be a starter on varsity. Next year will be your year.”

The truth hurt.

Jesus as he stood before Pontius Pilate about to be condemned to death on the cross says to Pilate, “I have come to tell the truth.” Jesus was a radical. He was swimming upstream against the current while most of humanity was going against him and it got him killed.

Today, as Christians, we also are called to be different in our generation. What have you done today that separates you from the non-Christians?

Here is something that will make you a radical in your generation.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And the truth hurts.

Recently, I thought of this recording from the 1950’s. This is a recording of a football game with Jesus and satan coaching their respective teams in a classic battle.

You will never understand answered prayer, until you have, an answered prayer. And to receive an answered prayer, you first must ask in prayer.

Teacher hunting season is here again.  Every year all across America some teachers find themselves in the crosshairs of spoiled students and angry parents.  Sometimes the teachers fall. They are mounted on the wall, over the fireplace, where they become the proud conversation of well-meaning parents who let the world know they stood up for their child and felled another teacher.  Felled.  Not failed.

Hunters pride themselves on having respect for their prey and following time-tested rules of the hunt.  Except in this season.  In this season there are no rules.  Ladies don’t have to be ladies.  Gentlemen can become terrorists.  Christians can lay down the cross and take up the curse, and feel justified, maybe even noble.  After all, isn’t it an honorable thing to stand up for your child?

Well, actually, no.  Now, before you put me in your crosshair (I’m not a teacher, so save your tag), let me explain a few things.

1. It is not wise to fight for your child.

Follow this line of reasoning carefully.  It’s a subtle paradigm shift.  If you raise your child to think that you will always fight for him, that you’ll always be in his corner, no matter what, your child has not actually learned anything from you except that he always has a back-up, and that maybe you’ll help him get out of trouble someday.  Youtube routinely displays such ignorance, as in the case of the woman who just last week famously stated: “He didn’t do nothin’ wrong; he just shot a cop.”

People have disrupted communities this summer because they were “standing with the kid” who got shot by a cop.  Some people think that’s the right message to send, but it is not.

If your child is wrong, and you think it’s your place to fight for your child, right or wrong, you just create two wrong people instead of one.  If your child is an idiot, and you defend him, you’re a bigger idiot than the child because you perpetuate the idiocy in your family line.  Oops, I may have left subtlety for a moment.

2. It IS wise to fight for truth.

Rather than loyally and blindly fighting for a child, what parents ought to be doing is fighting for a principle, for truth.  If you teach your kids honesty, respect, self-discipline and other virtues, then as they grow they “will not depart” from those values, so says the proverb.  They’ll make mistakes, and then they’ll own up to the mistake and take their correction or punishment.

And in those occasions where they are right, and a teacher is wrong, they won’t seek blood. They’ll seek truth, and they’ll need a parent to help fight for truth.  When you and your child are actually pursuing something noble and righteous and truthful, that’s a fight you can carry with dignity all the way to the courthouse, if need be, because in that instance your target is not the reputation of a teacher but rather the establishment of a principle.

3. It is always right to love your child.

If you haven’t got the subtle paradigm yet, I’ll try to phrase it one last time.  Loving a child when he is wrong is good, but fighting for him when he is wrong simply perpetuates his wrongness.

Love ’em forever.  But lead them.  Teach them.  Show them that the pursuit of honor and righteousness is more noble than a classroom victory.

Good luck this school year.  When the season is over, may the only trophy in your home be a wiser, stronger, nobler child who has grown in grace and dignity.

The comments below are from Tommy Nelson’s notes who preaches at Denton Bible Church.

There are things in our old life that providentially prepared us for the course of our Christian lives.

Do you know what the chief thing was in my life? It was being a football player. Not just an athlete but a football player. Football is not an Olympic sport. Only American’s play it. Olympic football would start wars. It’s just too violent.

But you know what? It gave me an edge in life that a lot of my pals never had. There were things that I was force fed that became second nature. It’s been said that unless you were an athlete, a farmer, or in the military that, with the state of fatherhood today, you probably never learned these things.

For example…

• I had to discipline my body to do what I did not feel like. Feelings were submitted to vision.
  
• I had to co-exist with discomfort and being stretched. Physical and emotional toughness were requirements.
• I had to submit to authority… that I often didn’t care for.
• I had to be a team man. I had to bend with others, encourage others, and recognize them.
• I had to do short term things that had no immediate recompense in order to attain to an ultimate success.
• I had to master certain skills.
• I had to maintain poise when hopelessly beaten just to keep a standard.
• I had to come back after extreme discouragement.
• I had to finish… the practice, the game, the season, the scholarship. I could not quit.
• I had to follow rules that other people didn’t because I wanted something beyond me.
• I had to do something with excellence just because of personal pride in who I was.
• I had to represent a school and a group of people with distinction.

I didn’t realize the benefit of football growing up because ball players were all I knew. But then I got in the ministry with regular folks. I discovered that many of the things that had become instinctive to me were alien to them. So often they did not dream for something greater than themselves. Often, they had a habit of quitting what they began or often not committing to anything that would curtail their freedoms. Too often when things got tough, they would take off. Many of them could not function on a team or be responsible to duty. Many could not submit to authority.

But I found out that these attributes were not original to sports but to the Bible’s view of successful living.

So…

• Dream! Have a life that goes beyond you.
• Do the short term things that will lead to ultimate success.
• Finish… Finish… Finish. Quitting is a learned art.
• Be excellent in all you do with a sense of personal pride in who you are.
• Discipline. Make a habit of quiet times… prayer… giving… church.
• Live higher than the crowd. Have a moral standard that sets you apart.
• Achieve. Let each year take you intellectually higher and ministerially higher and farther. Let no year pass without a sense of growth.
• Be a team man able to work under authority.

Live on purpose. Not just on passions and instincts.

Denzel Goolsby on winning the award and the loss of his father on the same day.