TV Program

Current Episode

Father's Day: Father's Footsteps

2008-06-15

PRODUCTION #: 1143

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

GUEST: Jean Boonstra

SB (Shawn Boonstra): The story is told of a little girl who was forced to spend the night in an air raid shelter during the ravages of World War II in England.

Her father tucked her into her cot, kissed her forehead and turned out the light. As she lay in the dark, she could hear the terrible noises of war coming from above. Once in a while, her cot shook violently as bombs fell on people above, and even though she was very young, she was well aware of what the people above were experiencing because her mother had already been lost.

Her stomach was in a knot. It was impossible to sleep. The smothering darkness was suffocating. She closed her eyes and bravely clutched her doll, but the terror of the night finally broke her resolve.

“Daddy, are you there?”

“Yes, honey, Daddy’s right here. Now close your eyes and go to sleep.”

She pulled the blankets up past her chin and tried to peer through the blackness in her father’s direction, but it was too dark to see anything. She pinched her eyes shut and tried desperately to sleep, but it didn’t work.

“Daddy, are you still there?”

“Yes, sweetheart, Daddy’s still here. Everything’s going to be all right. Just close your eyes and you’ll fall asleep.”

It felt good to hear her father’s voice. She felt better for a moment, but before long, the darkness pushed her helplessly to the edge of fear.

“Daddy!”

“Yes, honey, I’m still here, what is it?”

“Daddy, I was just wondering if you’re facing my way.”

“Of course, sweetheart, my face is turned your way.”

It’s a powerful story, isn’t it? The little girl had peace, just knowing that her daddy’s face was turned her way.

Well, today is Father’s Day and I want to wish you dads and my own dad a happy Father’s Day. If you watched our Mother’s Day show a while ago, you’ll remember that I had my wife, Jean, as a guest on the program. We talked about her experience as a Christian mom.

Well, today, my wife is on the program again, and she’s going to turn the tables on me and ask me a few questions about being a dad.

Jean, I’m glad you are here on the program again.

Jean Boonstra: Yes, thank you. It’s good to be here and I’m glad you are on the hot seat this time. You know Shawn, God has blessed our family with two daughters. Parenting and fathering really isn’t an easy job. Tell me, how do you think your job as a father is different from your dad’s or maybe your grandfather’s?

SB: Let me start with how I think fathering has always been the same, because I don’t want anybody to think that previous generations didn’t have a tough role or a challenging role as fathers.

If you think about it, the responsibility that God puts on a man when he becomes a father is astounding. He drops a little child in your lap and says, “I want you to take this child who belongs to Me, and I want you to train this child and raise him or her up. I want you to mold this child who belongs to Me.”

Now that is a challenge. It means that all of the decisions I make have an effect on that child later in life. The things that I say, the words I choose to use when I speak to those children, will mold who they become later in life as adults. The things that I teach them or fail to teach them are going to shape their future, and when that child is on loan from God, and God says, “Listen, you’re responsible,” that’s an incredible responsibility for any man to bear.

God says, “this child is on loan from Me,” and the thing is, while the Bible gives us instructions on being a father, and gives us general principles for being a godly man and a godly husband, it doesn’t give us specific instructions for each child.

Those children come into your life without a specific instruction manual for that person.

JB: Right, and wouldn’t it be nice if they did come with an instruction manual!

SB: Oh yeah. It’s all sanctified guesswork for the most part. You take the principles, you do a lot of guessing, you make some mistakes—that’s the challenge fatherhood has always been. It has always been that way.

Now for my generation, as we become fathers and we are fathers, it’s a different world.

JB: Well, give me some examples of that.

SB: I don’t think there is any argument that in the 21st century, the world looks a whole lot different than it used to. It’s a smaller place. There is an exchange of values, ideas and morals across international boundaries much more readily. So there are these challenges that weren’t really there a generation ago, even from the time when I was a little boy and my dad was being a father to me.

Here is an example. When I was a kid, my parents would just turn us loose in the morning, you know, on a weekend they’d send us on our bikes. They’d say, “Good bye, away you go,” and we’d take off. The only rule was that we had to come back for lunch. We would know it was lunchtime because the small town we lived in had a siren that blew every day at noon sharp, and when we heard the siren, we knew it was time to pedal back home.

JB: And I can’t imagine letting our children do that nowadays. It’s so different.

SB: I’d like to give them their freedom, but while the problems we face have always been there, there has always been a problem with, you know, basically bad people or bad circumstances. They are so much more prevalent it seems, in this generation, that I just can’t do that for my kids like I’d like to. I’d love to turn them loose, go explore the world.

That is really a dad’s job. Push the birds out of the nest. The mother wants to keep them in. The dad wants to push them out, get out there and go explore. I can’t do it like my dad could do that for me, just because of the world we live in.

JB: Right.

SB: Influences. I think that’s another thing. When I was a kid, we had a little black and white TV. I lived in a small northern town way up in the middle of nowhere, tucked behind the Alaska Panhandle. We had one and a half TV stations, and I really mean that.

JB: What do you mean by one and a half?

SB: Well, one and a half is because one of them sort of only came in every other day, and that’s when dad would stand there and fiddle with the rabbit ears. You remember rabbit ears on televisions. We’d complain, “Aww, Dad, move. Move. We can’t see the show.” That was the way we grew up.

And there was something on every Saturday night, even with two stations, that on a family evening, we could sit down and watch that program together, and they didn’t have to worry about it too much.

JB: Right, and nowadays the opposite is true. Every hour of the day there is something inappropriate on.

SB: Absolutely. Television is not a major part of our household. Even with hundreds of stations, we often can’t find a single thing that I would want my children to see.

So influence is different. The influence of the media is different. The standards portrayed in television programs bother me as a Christian father. In the family that is portrayed on television, the children are the center of attention. The whole universe revolves around them.

JB: Right.

SB: Whereas I believe the godly model is that your home revolves around God, and then the marriage comes next, and the kids should know that the marriage is the strongest thing in the home, and that they are part of the family, but not the focus of the family. That is hard to find in a TV model. Nowadays, the kids talk back to their parents on TV, and quite often the father is portrayed as a bumbling idiot.

JB: Well, I’ve noticed that it is predominant. It is in television commercials and even the TV programs that are made for the little ones. It seems like the father is the easy target, and he is always the silly one no one trusts.

SB: And that is quite prevalent, and those aren’t things I want my kids to learn. I want them to learn what a godly father is and not learn the way those kids on TV relate to their father—smart-alecky. That wasn’t really so much an influence when I was a kid. Respect was automatic.

JB: So Shawn, tell me, what have you learned through your experience as a father about God and about His character?

SB: One of the first things I think I’ve learned is just how little I actually know. This little human being shows up in your house and right up to that point, you have the world by the tail. You go to college, you take courses, you form opinions, very strong opinions, and if you happen to come from a Dutch background, your opinions are unassailable. You just know what you know.

JB: Well, I’ll vouch for that one, being married to you.

SB: What happens is this little human being shows up in your home and you haven’t got a clue. I know that you bought parenting books; you knew what kind of challenge I was probably going to face as a guy when those babies started arriving, and you bought this book, “What To Expect When You’re Expecting,” and I read it.

You didn’t know I was reading it, or maybe you did. I would sneak it off somewhere and read that book, and I discovered that even though I read the book, I didn’t have a clue what to do when this kid arrived. I mean, here is a little human being, no bigger than, you know, the palms of both hands put together. I remember I could carry our oldest like a football. That used to drive you crazy. Head on the hand, or like a rugby ball…

JB: You would walk around like this.

SB: And I’d walk around with the baby like that, trying to figure out what do you do with this human being who can’t communicate, can’t negotiate. I mean, there is no reasoning to be done. I can’t apply my theories to this little human being. This little child can’t do anything, can’t even feed itself, can’t do anything except sleep, cry and dirty a diaper once in a while, at which point you hand it back to mom.

JB: Yeah, you were really good at that one.

SB: Absolutely. If a man is paying attention when that child arrives, here is what he learns. Humility. You find out you don’t always have the answers. I’ve found I don’t have answers. I have to get past my strong opinions as a man and figure out who this little creation of God is, and what it is that God wants me to learn.

And the other thing that really starts to happen when you become a father, I’ve discovered, is you don’t really learn humility through what you don’t know. You learn humility when you see your own character traits—not your best ones, but some of your worst character traits—actually come out in your kids.

JB: And isn’t that humbling?

SB: It’s terribly humbling. It reminds me of the time we were driving through the city of Toronto on the highway when, suddenly, a truck cut me off. It would have hit the front of our car had I not swerved to another lane. I regained control of the car, swerved back into my lane—my knuckles were white around the steering wheel, there was a bead of cold sweat on my forehead, my heart was pumping in my chest—and out of the back seat a little voice yells, “Jerk!”

JB: I remember.

SB: I remember the look you gave me. You shot a dirty look across the front of the car asking, “Where did she learn that?” And I have to admit, she probably got it listening to her dad as he mumbles his way down the freeway.

You find out how little you know and you find out how flawed your own character is as you relate to children as a father.

JB: And what does that tell you about God and His character?

SB: Well, here is the thing that I think I’m learning, and of course, our kids haven’t been raised to completion.

JB: Right, they are just eight and five. There is a long way to go.

SB: There are a lot of parents who are smiling whose kids are 20 and 18, and some have kids who are ages 40 and 35. They’ve told me you never stop being a mom and a dad. I guess so. We’re in this for life now.

What am I learning about God? God, obviously, is incredibly patient with me, I’ve discovered. My child has to grow, I have to take his hand and be patient while he stumbles and falls. But I never reject that child because he stumbled and fell as he was learning to walk. I never reject my child, our daughter, who reached into my CD collection and messed them up all over the floor.

JB: That happened once or twice.

SB: I thought we’d teach her how to respect things, but you don’t reject your child. God asks us to call Him our heavenly Father, and that is deliberate. He wants us to look at Him as a Father, and understand the things that we learn when we become fathers. He doesn’t reject us. He doesn’t lose patience with us as we are growing. He doesn’t lose patience with us. He delights to see us grow, which really brings us to another point. As a dad I’ve noticed how much I delight in teaching the kids.

I remember when one of our girls was learning to roll over. We had her on a blanket in the living room and we were there cheering when she tried. She’d roll over, get up on one side, and fall on her back.

JB: Then she’d try again.

SB: She tried again and again. She must have tried it 40 times, and every time we were cheering and clapping, and she’d try it again. Then she finally rolled over. All she did was roll over and I felt so proud.

And I think to myself, what does God think when He looks down at me and at you, adult human beings, and we are trying to step in His direction and we make huge mistakes as we go? He is there cheering because we are trying. We are trying to get closer to Him, and He is the one who grabs our hand and leads us as we try to walk, and He doesn’t reject us because we stumble. He delights in teaching us patience and the joy of teaching and watching a child grow.

The other thing I think we learn is God’s undying love for us. You know, there is this spark in every man’s heart when he becomes a dad, this desire to do something for his family, to provide, to take care of and to protect. That desire is almost overwhelming and I know that should it come down to it to save my kids, I would quite willingly put my own life on the line, no question about it.

You know, if a child falls in the river, I don’t think a moment about going in there to get them. I’m not thinking for a moment about the fact that I might drown. A dad jumps in.

And then you look at the Cross of Calvary and you can kind of understand a little bit what motivates God to become a human being, to give up His only begotten Son, to save us. Not a moment’s hesitation. You can count on Him the way that when you are a little child, you can count on dad.

JB: Count on your daddy. And you know, our opening segment, our opening story was so beautiful, wasn’t it? The little girl just needed to know her daddy’s face was turned her way. Daddies have an incredible influence on their daughters. I have to tell you, Shawn, last week Naomi had a little friend over for a play date. Now, she is just in kindergarten and this is her first school friend she had over for a play date. It was a big deal for her.

And I happened to overhear them when they were playing, and Naomi said to her little friend, “Have you met my daddy?” And the girl said, “No.” And Naomi said, “Well, I have to tell you, he is very handsome.”

SB: Oh, no. I tell you, one day our daughter will grow up and see other men and realize that she didn’t see clearly as a child.

JB: Well, for right now, you are tops in her world. Really you are, and that brings me to a question for you. What do you feel children should learn from you men, you earthly fathers, about their heavenly Father?

SB: It gives you pause. You know, there are a lot of things that men, as godly men, are supposed to be teaching their children. If God is our heavenly Father, the first model that a child gets of our heavenly Father is their dad, and that is humbling. What a role to step into, realizing that I’m responsible in so many ways for their first impressions of their heavenly Father.

I’ll never forget that I always assumed as a little boy that God the Father, should I ever have the privilege of seeing Him—you know, one day in heaven we will see him—but as a little child I thought, “What does he look like?” And in my mind’s eye, He looked exactly like my dad.

JB: Beard and all, right?

SB: Beard and all. He looked exactly like my dad. For a little child, fathers often play the role of setting the first example of who God is.

So, what should a child learn? There are a number of things I think that kids learn early on from dad. Sacrificial love, right? Daddies go out and they are often the breadwinner in the family. I think kids should see that they can depend on their heavenly Father, and that He’s always there for them in whatever way. But beyond that, kids should learn from their father that God’s highest priority is their salvation.

I need to model that as a dad in the home—that the most important thing in the universe is their relationship to their Creator, and the fact that God has pulled out all the stops to get them into the kingdom of heaven. They should see that happening with their dad, too, that their dad pulls out all the stops to teach them to love God, love Jesus and find their way into God’s family.

JB: You know, we’ve talked already and you’ve shared what you think your fatherly role is in the family, and I know how you love to have fun with the girls.

SB: Oh, no question about it.

JB: You love to make them giggle and laugh at the dinner table, you know.

SB: Captain Fun.

JB: Captain Fun. But the other side of fatherhood, whether you embrace it or not, at least in our family, is that the bulk of the disciplinary role falls to you. There are a couple of Bible texts I thought we could look at, and the first one is found in Ephesians six and verse four. It says (Ephesians 6:4):

“And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

SB: Right.

JB: And then, of course, there is the other text that we all talk about when we think of parenting and disciplining, and that is the one in the book of Proverbs. It says (Proverbs 13:24):

“He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”

Talk to me a little bit about that.

SB: There is a balance that shows up in the Bible all the time, and I hope the people will notice the balance. In the first text that you read from Ephesians, it talks about not provoking your children to wrath, but raising them up in the discipline of the Lord.

So often today, in this generation, people have rejected the concept of discipline because they have a skewed idea of it. And in the modern world there are people who abuse discipline. They literally don’t understand what it is about. It is about channeling a child in the right direction, moving them toward God, moving them toward a godly life.

In the Bible picture, it shares with us that God disciplines those He loves. To fail to discipline is to fail to love. The easy thing is to let it go in the short term. In the long term, the easy thing is to discipline, because down the road the child learns that you just don’t step out into the world and it revolves around you. The world doesn’t owe you anything. You have a debt of gratitude to God in the way that you live, and that comes through discipline.

Discipline. The word disciple—it is all from the same root. We have a responsibility to channel that child’s energy and mind without breaking their spirit, and that is the balance.

JB: That is key, isn’t it? Definitely.

SB: Don’t break the spirit, but guide them, and that is the struggle that a lot of parents face. But the Bible teaches balance. Some people are down on the Bible—they say, “Oh, it is extreme” or “it is this,” or “it is that.”

But the Bible provides a real balance and you see it coming out in your kids. They are disciplined, but happy.

JB: Yes, and that absolutely is the key. We’ve talked a lot about your responsibilities as a father. Tell me a little bit about what some of your greatest joys in fatherhood are.

SB: Number one is: When it works. You know what? In spite of me, in spite of who I am, in spite of what I don’t know, in spite of my flaws, taking the principles from God’s Word, applying them to the children and watching them grow into Christian young ladies (our two daughters); when it works, that puts a smile on my face. Then you think, “Hey, our heavenly Father smiles when we get it. When it works.”

I love being a dad because I like to provide. That just gives me so much joy to just provide for my family, to create opportunities for a little person to meet God.

I love it when we get to play. We mentioned that already. I mean, you have to behave until your kids arrive, and then you get to play again. I just love the fact that they are keeping me feeling like I’m also eight years old.

JB: Yes, it is your second childhood, isn’t it?

SB: Laughter. Those kids laugh. This world is so painful. There is so much that goes wrong every day. I know that a lot of people who watch this program, you deal with pain every day. There’s disappointment in life. And then you can come home to the family circle. And that little infectious giggle of a 5-year-old sort of just melts away the tension and the problems and the stress you faced for that day. It brings joy, and you can suddenly see why our heavenly Father created us in the first place.

JB: It’s really a little taste of heaven, isn’t it?

SB: Absolutely. God created this world for companionship. That’s what we are learning, and He loves it when we smile, when we get it, when we laugh, when we enjoy life, when we grow toward Him. I love the little peck on the cheek, the one that I didn’t ask for, where the girls come running and say, “I love you, Daddy!” When I come home through the door at the end of the day, “I love you, Daddy!”

And, of course, that tells me a lot about how my heavenly Father must feel waiting for me at the end of my busy day on my knees to say, “Daddy, I want to tell you about my day.”

JB: Well, Shawn, it has been so much fun to be here, and turn the tables on you. Thank you for allowing me to do that.

SB: Hey, it’s been a lot of fun, and thanks for coming on and putting me on the hot seat.

Today on Father’s Day, we’ve all been reminded of the fact that parenting is no easy task. It’s full of challenges. Perhaps today you are a dad who finds the responsibility almost overwhelming. You have the demands of work and home and worries about your family all on your plate. You may feel helpless at times, but God, our heavenly Father, has us in the palm of his hand. The ultimate Father wouldn’t give you this responsibility if it was an impossible task.

We need to look at fatherhood as a school for heaven. This is how God intends to mold our character as men so that we can become more like Him. God wants you to be so closely connected to Him that you will trust him in all the areas of your life.

In this way, you’ll be an example of faith to your kids. You’ll be the father whose children gladly follow in his footsteps. You’ll become your children’s introduction to their heavenly Father.

Honey, I think I’d like to have a prayer now, especially for the dads that are watching. Will you pray with me?

JB: Yes.

PRAYER:
Dear heavenly Father, today we place our children, the ones you have given us, humbly in your care. We pray for the faith and courage of Abraham to give all of the cares and burdens over to you, to trust you completely with the fate of our children. We want to trust you fully to take the helm in our lives. We thank you for the gift of fatherhood, for Your mercy, Your forgiveness and love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Scriptures Used in “Father's Day: Father's Footsteps”

“And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”
—Ephesians 6:4

“He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”
—Proverbs 13:24