One More Day With Dad

I brought my picture box. I've got a few pictures. I decided not to try to put all this on a PowerPoint. It would have been too much trouble for the few that I had. Those of you at the back won't see all of these, but if you want to look at them later, I'd be glad to show them to you as we go through some of them, but it'll just at least help to illustrate a few things. I've got a very small photo right here. Again, I can't even see it, but you can't either. It's not that important that you see it, because if you saw it, you still wouldn't be able to tell too much. It's one of these old black and whites taken in some time 1944-1945. It was part of a whole box full of pictures growing up that I used to look at from my dad's collection of pictures that he brought back from World War II. One night, during those years, I would look through these and never really knew what I was looking at. I would put them back in and put the box back on the shelf and go on about my business. Years later, when I was an adult, we were home visiting one time, and my dad and I stayed up late talking, and we pulled these pictures out, started going through them. I remember pulling this particular picture out, and I said, What was this? It's just half a dozen posts and a sign on a beach. Actually, it's Omaha Beach in Normandy. It says, First American Cemetery in France, World War II. First American Cemetery in France during World War II. I said, What is this, Dad? He said, Well, that was the first cemetery. He said, I dug it. I sent a bulldozer. My dad was an engineer. I sent a bulldozer to dig this mass grave of soldiers who died about three days after the initial invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy. They had to then go back and start to bury the dead. I think it was between 6 and 8,000 men just on Omaha Beach died on the first day of landing. It was a carnage. I thought, Wow! I had him write it down on the back.

He said, This was on the cemetery on our section of the beach, and we carried most of the bodies into it. Later, these bodies were taken out and put into the permanent cemetery, which overlooks Omaha Beach today. I thought to myself, Wow! That's interesting. I've got a picture here of my dad, a photo of him in service, taken obviously probably before they invaded. I saw everybody's picture before they invaded, so they had copies of him and pictures of everybody. He was about 22-23 years old at the time, a staff sergeant. I didn't realize until he was a leader of a rather large platoon. I saw Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. The opening scenes were the front of these landing craft dropped there on the beach. Remember, you've seen that. They all jumped out. In the opening scene of that movie, the guys that were out on the front, when that front gate dropped, they all got shot. The Germans opened up. I realized after seeing that, my dad was out on the front because he was a sergeant. He was leading them off the ship. He survived the day, survived the war. This particular picture of the First Cemetery really amazed me because of a historic fact in that sense. What amazed me most when I thought about it later was, I would not have known that if I had not asked. If I didn't ask him, I wouldn't have known what it was and some of the others. I got him to write it down and a few others. We had another few nights to get more information down, but my dad was like all the other men that came back from World War II. He didn't want to talk about it too much. He didn't share a whole lot over the years. But at least I got a little bit of information on that one night. I asked and, in a sense, knocked. Christ says in Matthew 7, if you ask, seek, and knock, you will find multiple applications there. You have to ask certain things to find out certain bits of information about people that you love and are close to. It's been 18 years since my father died. I think about him a lot. I think about my mother, too. I think about both of them in a lot of ways. But I guess being a man and whatever, I think about my father quite often. In recent times, I've come down to the idea that it would be nice to have one more day with my dad. Now, I know that I'm not looking for one more day with my dad, so I don't think I'm kind of strange and flaky. I know that we'll wait for the resurrection. My dad will be in the resurrection, and we'll have a whole eternity ahead. But I thought, just one more day, 24 hours, lots of things I'd like to ask him. I'd just like to know.

What if you had one more day? What if you had one more day with your dad, with your mom, with someone that was your closest parent in that way, that raised you, and who's no longer alive? What would you say? What would you ask if you had one more day with your mom, with your dad?

Now, this sermon is going to be more than just a personal reminiscence about my dad. It's really a reflection about being a father today, from my part, with four kids and four grandchildren. So, it's more of a reflection there. One thing I've learned over the years is that you never stop being a father, no matter how long you live.

The role of a father just goes on and on and on. I first heard that from an older member up in Fort Wayne that was part of the church years ago with us. He told me, and he had a big family, he said, you never stop being a dad. And I didn't know what he meant then, but I do now. A little bit better. You never stop being a dad.

But this sermon is also a devotion to our spiritual father, because we all have a spiritual father. And that's the most important relationship with our spiritual father in heaven, one to whom we every day have a relationship with.

And I know for many of us the quality of that spiritual relationship hinges to a large degree upon the quality of relationship we may or may not have had with a physical parent, or especially a physical father. I've talked to many people, members over the years, who have told me that they took a while to relate to God as a father because they had a difficulty with their own physical father, for whatever reason.

And I understand that. And I know God's spirit can help a person to work through that. But getting a firm grasp on being a physical parent, being a physical father, and relating to our own spiritual father is a very critical part of life. Very, very important.

It is, when this goes wrong, especially on the physical level, that we get off into a swamp of problems. And so, what I say today, and however I go through this in my own personal reminiscence, and more importantly in the scriptural discussion, I hope will help us to reflect a little bit in a more positive way upon our physical fathers, but most importantly, on the relationship that we have with our spiritual father.

I've learned a lot over the years as I have thought back about my father. My father had a very good work ethic, and I think I got that from him. I've never shirked responsibility, went looking for it, taken it on, sometimes more than I need to. But my dad was a worker. He would be out the door by 5.30 every morning, and work all day, and building a business, and serving his clients and his customers.

He didn't walk on the job. He usually had kind of a half-trot when he would move from one station to the other at his business. And I think I developed the quick gate that he had as I move around as well. My wife always tells me that I leave her a step or two behind when we're walking someplace, and I blame it on my dad. It's not anything in that sense. He moved quickly from one part of his job to another.

My dad had a lot of compassion for people. His main business for a number of years was a Texaco gas station. He eventually went out of business because of a number of factors, changes in the business, his own indifference, change of customers. He just lost interest in the business. But it was interesting. Years later, I was going through some things. I think after he died, I found the old black ledger book of all of his accounts. All of this was done by hand in those days. And I started going through this big black ledger book, and I recognized a lot of names in there for customers that we'd had in the station. And I started looking down the ledger and realized that it seemed like every page I turned, there was an outstanding balance.

You know, $50, $75, a lot of money in those days. Still a lot today, I guess. But I started adding it up, and I thought, man, if he just collected half of this, he could have stayed in business. But he extended credit to people who may have been down and out or in between paychecks or, you know, it was Wednesday and they weren't getting paid off Friday. And he'd put a tank of gas in their car so they could get to work.

And this and that, a lot of people just would take advantage of it and never came back to pay it. It just was the way of things. But he had compassion for people, and he had a certain innate trust in people. He also kept his old friends, a lot of them, until he died. I remember at the graveside service, looking over faces of a number of people that he'd been friends with for multiple years.

And the night that we had the viewing, when he died, I was kind of walking around the funeral home, and I saw an old gentleman walk, come lumbering in. He could barely get up the handicap ramp at the back of the funeral home. And I looked at him and I recognized him from years ago in my youth. And I introduced myself to him when he came in.

He said, your dad saved my life when I was a kid. We were swimming in a swimming hole, a lake someplace, and I nearly drowned. He said, your dad pulled me out. And so he could barely get into the funeral home. And I thought, boy, that said something. He had to be there to pay his respects when my dad died.

My dad was born in 1921. Were he alive today, he'd be 89 years old. His father was a farmer. My dad was the second of 13 children. 12 of them lived to be adults. The two great events that defined his life were the Great Depression and World War II. He was, after World War II, well actually just before World War II, he was working at a combination gas station, diner, tourist court.

How many of you know what a tourist court was? Yeah, those old people raised their hands on that. It was a combination gas station, diner, tourist court on the south edge of our town where we grew up. He was working there, and it was there that he met my mom.

She was a cook, and he was working. He pumped the gas out front, and that's how they met. There's a picture for that period of time I've got. I'll hold this one up. This will be the last picture I'll show you. This is a picture taken sometime before World War II of my mom and my dad. The original of this is a much smaller picture. I blew this up and put it in the frame a number of years ago.

I used to look at this picture all the time when I was a kid because my dad's sitting on a motorcycle. It's an old Indian motorcycle. They don't make those anymore, but that's how he got around. I remember I thought, that was pretty neat, a motorcycle. The cycle was long gone by the time I came around. When I blew this picture up, and I could see more of the tail, I was looking at it. I noticed this white spot right here, something hanging from the handlebar.

I looked closer at it, and it's a skull. It's one of these skulls. I thought, dad? The motorcycle gang that he rode with, they all had skulls hanging from the handlebars. It was totally uncharacteristic for me to think of anything like that with my dad. That's how they met. They got married. He went off to war. He survived the war. He came back.

He raised a family, started a business. I was the second of three children. My dad was not a perfect man. He had many flaws, but he did the best job with what he had.

I've always said that. Long ago, I came to reconcile myself to my dad's imperfections. I think every kid goes through a phase where they wish they had other parents. Am I the only one that ever did that? I don't think so. Long ago, I reconciled myself to my dad's problems. I realized that he did the best that he could with what he had. He never told me he loved me, but I know that he loved me. We were talking about this the other day, and we heard some country song that came on.

What was the title of that song? I forgot it. I bought it off of iTunes. But it was the very same thing. The guy was talking about his dad couldn't say he loved him, but he tuned up his car and changed the oil. That's how he was telling you that he loved you. Things like that. Whenever any of us as adults come to recognize those things, we can move over, or whatever, and it's a sign of maturity when that happens.

You and I all have memories of a father. Whether we understood them or not is another question. I hope that we all came to appreciate the parents that we had. Did you know your mom? Did you know your dad? Regardless of the quality of the parenting that you got, you were probably better off for having him there than you realize. I know some will challenge that, and I recognize that. I'm not excusing abuse or anything else of that nature.

That's in a whole other category. I guess I'm referring perhaps to some of the other normal day-to-day issues of life that we deal with. The facts do show that children with a father in the home are immeasurably better off than those without. Most poor families today are headed by a single mother. It's just a fact, statistically. This came out again just this week in the run-up to Father's Day. I pulled a number of articles off that wrote this fact.

This one was from the Heritage Foundation. It says, The principal cause of child poverty in the U.S. is the absence of married fathers in the home. Marriage is a powerful weapon in fighting poverty. Being married has the same effect in reducing poverty as adding five to six years to a parent's education level. Even one of the more fashionable forms of women becoming pregnant today by artificial insemination by sperm donors speaks to the fact that so many moderns have the idea that a man is not necessary to be in the home for a woman to raise a child.

That can be done, and children are well-adjusted, they're happy, and everything's okay. A large number, largely, the majority of women in that category, are well-off, professional women, who buy a sperm from a sperm bank, are artificially inseminated, and raise their children that way. But there's a growing body of evidence to show that children raised like that from that process are not quite as well-adjusted as people have come to realize.

There was an article that was in, I believe this was the Wall Street Journal that I got this one out of, yeah, Wall Street Journal. Daddy Was Only a Donor was the title of it. A New Study Paints a Troubling Portrait of Children Conceived by Single Mothers Who Chose Insemination. And some of the quotes they had in here were rather interesting. Young adults with maverick moms and donor dads report a sense of confusion, loss, and distress about their origins and identity and about their inability to relate to their biological father.

71% of those that were studied in this one study, 71% of the adult offspring of these single mothers agree that, quote, My sperm donor is half of who I am. And they wonder what their sperm donor's family is like. They can find these things out by going back through the records, but many report that they feel sad when they see friends with their biological fathers and mothers. And others felt that, in a sense, they were a freak because they didn't have a dad.

So, again, a growing body of evidence to show that even in those types of situations, the absence of a father makes a big difference even in how they feel about themselves to adulthood. The point is that fathers have a moderating influence on a boy's life. Remove it, and the chances of emotional swings and aberrant behavior, not only of boys, but even of girls, rises.

A boy without a father figure, one person said, is like an explorer without a map. A boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map. I was reading a book about Winston Churchill the other day, and skimming through it, really. I got to the end of it, and they had an interesting quote about Winston Churchill's feelings about his own father.

He felt neglected. He was kind of shunted off to boarding school. His father died when he was a young man. Of course, Winston Churchill went on to become one of the most decorated men of the 20th century, England's prime minister during World War II.

On page 481 of this book, it had a quote, a story about his question that his daughter put to him. When Winston Churchill was old, his daughter Mary asked him in his old age whether he felt that anything was missing from his wondrous array of laurels. He said nothing of medals. He had plaques, plaques, and he had honors. He said he said nothing about medals, but instead he answered very slowly to his daughter, I should have liked my father to have lived long enough to see that I made something of my life. That was the one medal that he wanted at the end of his life, to have been able for his father to have lived long enough to see that he made something of his life.

It speaks to what many knew about the man, that he had been, in certain aspects of his personality, had been stunted because of the way his father treated him, and the distance that was there when he was a child. The influence of a father is quite powerful, and even the memory of a father can be quite powerful as well. Let me get back to the question that I had. If you had one more day with your dad, what would you ask? What would you want to know? What would you say? I thought about this. I wrote down a few things. If I had one more day with my dad, I'd want to know what he thought about religion. He was not a church-going man. I'd want to know what he thought about war. My mother told me once that he was never the same man when he came back after World War II, and I can well understand that. I'd like to know what he thought about war that altered his life. I'd like to know who his favorite siblings were. He had 11 brothers and sisters, and they were all fairly close. They kept relationships going through their years, and I still get together with all five of his sisters still live, and one brother, and when I go back to Missouri and visit, I get together with them and usually have lunch. I'd like to know who his favorite was and why. It's just something that would satisfy me. I'd also like to have a deep conversation with my dad about something that really mattered. I think I could do that now. Growing up, I couldn't because I was too stupid, just like you were, and didn't know what to ask, or perhaps didn't know how to ask. Probably that was the biggest thing. I didn't know how to ask. I wouldn't have known at that time. But I think I could sit down with my dad now and have a good conversation about something that really mattered. I'd also say thank you to my dad. I'd say, dad, thank you for never embarrassing the family.

He never embarrassed us with his behavior, with any aspect of his character or action. Never embarrassed the family. He left a good name. I can still, if I run into people that knew my dad, they have a good image or he had a good reputation in that sense. The only falling out that my older brother had was over an action that he was taking that could have damaged my father's name and our family name in our small town there in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I remember a few years ago having a very, very pointed telephone conversation with my brother over an action that he was letting about to happen that would have sullied the family name. I said, our dad would never have done that. If that is what happens, you're going to bring shame. We've got family there, this and that. But my dad, he left a good name. He didn't leave a lot of property, he didn't leave tons of money, and he didn't have his name on any building in town, but he left a good name. And I'd say thank you for that. I never lacked for anything essential growing up. I had everything I needed, not always everything I wanted, but I had everything I needed.

I drove a Jeep before a Jeep was cool, because he always had a Jeep using his business, and he even bought a brand new one at one time. He would let me drive it around, and I could drive it around with all my friends, drive it to school. Nobody else had a Jeep in those days. Now, of course, that there dime a dozen. But in those days, that just wasn't the case.

The other time, I was driving an old beater. But there was always something the essentials were taken care of. I would sit down, and I'd tell my dad about the world to come today. I remember my mom who came into the church. My dad was never in the church. I remember my mom trying to explain some things about the church and the Bible to him one night. I kind of walked through the house and saw this conversation going on, and my dad was just flummoxed. She wasn't getting through to him at all. I recognized that, and I just kept on walking. I didn't want to get involved in that one. But I think I could talk to him today in language that he might understand and tell him about the world to come. In words that he would understand. A world without war, without the aftermath of war. To tell him about a world where love really mattered. Where love really made a difference in the daily lives of everyone. My brother tells me that when my dad died, just a few days before he died, he was with him. My dad was in the throes of cancer and the pain of cancer. My dad kind of rose up one time and said, you know, we really need to love one another. For my dad to even use that word in a sentence was quite amazing. I'm not quite sure what he may have meant, but maybe it was his way of atoning for a few things, too.

But we could have a good conversation about that. Of course, I'd tell my dad what I've learned as a father and as a grandfather. I'd tell him that family is everything and that grandchildren change your whole outlook on life. So I'd have a good conversation. 24 hours wouldn't be enough. Probably wouldn't be for you as well. But what would you tell your father if you had one more day? One more day, what would you want to know? It could be a good exercise to go through, just to maybe cathartic for some, maybe nostalgic for others, helpful, hopefully, in some ways. But if you had that chance, what would you ask? Really, most important for every one of us is to today be able to talk about and go to our own spiritual father and seek and ask from him all that we need. That's what I take and translate from my feelings, memories, affection from my own physical father and recognize that's what's most important for us today. The past is past. I'll not see my dad until the second resurrection. And I look forward to that time when he steps from the grave and has a chance to learn all these things in a different world. And, God willing, if I'm there, I'll be able to have a part in doing that with him. But today, you and I have the opportunity, the need, the responsibility to make sure that we are developing that relationship with our own spiritual father. Because that's what God is doing today. He is, as Hebrews 2 says, bringing many sons to glory. So many scriptures talk about that family relationship to explain to us the plan of God, the purpose of life, and what God is doing. We all know the many, many scriptures that we could turn to that talk about that adoption, that sonship. Christ is as our brother. And that is the greatest need for any one of us in our lives to develop is that close spiritual family relationship with God as our father. And that's probably the biggest challenge in our spiritual lives. And yet, it's the biggest need. As I was thinking about this and where to go with it in this sermon, I started thumbing through some of the gospel accounts. And I thought, well, what example of fatherhood would be best to illustrate this? And I had to think, the thoughts struck, well, how did Christ look at his father? What can I learn from how Jesus looked at his father? And so I started going through the book of John. Just chose that gospel. And I'd like to walk you through a few verses.

Because it struck me in a way I had not noticed before. How often, consistently, incessantly, Jesus talked about, talked to his father. He referenced his father time and time again in his ministry. And John is a perfect example of that, the gospel of John. Turn over to John 4. We'll just start there and we'll page through a few examples of this. Maybe it will strike you, maybe it won't, but it did me, I guess.

Just how much Jesus talked about his father. In John 4, and in verse 21, he was talking to the woman at the well in Samaria. And he said, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation as of the Jews.

But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit. Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Jesus was the Son of God, come as God in the flesh.

He was begotten of the spirit in the womb of a woman. That was His true Father. Joseph raised Him, but Joseph was not His true Father. And we understand that. That's one of those matters of faith that we do understand.

And when Jesus got to this critical phase of His life, the ministry that He was conducting, He knew who had sent Him. He knew who His Father was. He knew His boss. He knew the instructions. He knew how it all had to play out. And He did not take credit for Himself. He knew, in a sense, who had really fathered Him in chapter 5 of John. Look at verse 17. Jesus answered them, and He said, My Father has been working until now, and I've been working.

Like Father, like Son. I learned to work ethic from my dad. I appreciate the fact that I did. That is one of the biggest things He taught me. That's what Jesus said about His Father. My Father works until this hour, and I have been working. Jesus knew that every conversation, every day of His ministry was critical. He had a finite window to do His job. To train the disciples. To teach the multitudes. To put the teachings out so that it could later be recalled by the disciples. He did not miss an opportunity to do His job.

To do what was right. There are times we find Him going off to Himself to pray. He would go up on a mountain. He would go out on a boat on one occasion. There are times that He took a few hours, maybe, off. We don't read about Him going off on any extended trips by Himself or on a vacation. He did have time that He got away from the crowds and felt a need to do that. But even that was, in a sense, probably to try to recharge spiritually, spent in prayer, to allow Him to get back into the job that was well before Him.

But He spoke well of His Father here. He laid out what His Father was doing. In verse 19 of chapter 5, He said, Most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. For whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. Like again, like Father, like Son. Sometimes we do what we do because of our parentage. One of the worst things a Father can hear is, Well, you're just like your dad.

Especially in emotional situations. If things are said or things happen, sometimes a mother, a brother, even a wife will say, Well, that's just like your dad. You want to emulate the positive qualities. Jesus did that. Verse 20, He goes on, He says, For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does, and He will show Him greater works than these that you may marvel. If nothing else, just notice again as you read through these verses, and do your own study on this. Just notice what He said and how He said as He referenced His dad.

He's not talking about His old man. He's not denigrating His Father's presence, His memory. He's speaking respectfully about His Father. For the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even as the Son gives life to whom He will. He goes on through this section to talk more about that, about His Father. Actually, all the way through down to verse 43, He says, I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive Me. Christ knew that His ministry, His work, was conducted by the authority of His Father. It came representing His Father, His Father's name.

Of course, the people did not receive Him. He said, If another comes in His own name, that you'll receive. But how can you believe and receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God? Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust, for you believed Him. But if you do not believe His writings, how will you believe My words? In chapter 6, verse 35, Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet you do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And in these four short verses, you see Jesus talking about Himself. He says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will not hunger. He knew His respective role in the plan and the purpose.

He knew that He was the true bread. But then, in the next phrase, His mind is back on His Father. He could move from explaining His own role in the plan and the purpose, to again putting the spotlight back on the Father. He was not there to negate the Father's influence, the Father's role, nor to sublimate His own responsibilities. He could talk about both within the same speech, if you will, the same conversation, and get the point across.

Verse 38, He says, I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. One of the biggest lessons I ever learned, I think, working side by side with my dad in his gas station at times, one of the biggest lessons I think I learned was to remember that He was boss.

I can't remember one time I made a decision, or I kind of got feeling like I knew the business as well as He did. I remember making some decision, small decision, but it had bigger ramifications in the job one day. I didn't go to my dad, and it turned out to be the wrong decision. I remember when He corrected me, and He got a little bit upset about it, He corrected the problem, and He looked at me, and He said, just remember, My name is on the paycheck. My name is on the paycheck. Yes, sir. I learned that I'm there not to do My will, but His will.

Spiritually, that's a big lesson for us to keep framed in our mind as we go about our life. We're here to do the will of God. Christ had to remember that as well. There's far greater possibility for Him to get to thinking of Himself greater than He was. But He never did. He never did. Verse 40, This is the will of Him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life. I will raise Him up at the last day. So He transitions into talking again about His role and what He would be doing, what would be accomplished in His part at that time.

In chapter 7, verse 28, Jesus cried out as He taught in the temple, saying, You both know Me, and you know where I am from. And I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.

But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me. So again, He gave another reference to the Father just to make sure that everyone understood that and what was taking place. In chapter 8 and verse 19, Then they said to Him, Where is your Father? As He was talking about His own role and responsibility, He answered, You know neither Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also, because He gave full representation to who the Father was.

One of the most remarkable episodes is in chapter 11, at the death of Lazarus, when Jesus finally appeared at the tomb of Lazarus to perform this great miracle of resurrecting His friend. And down in verse 41 of John 11, they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and He said, Father, I thank you that you have heard Me, and I know that you always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent Me.

Now just look at the scene. Again, it's one of the most stupendous of miracles that He ever performed, raising a man known to be dead, and the people standing there watching that man come out of that tomb. No question of those observers of the death of Lazarus and the life of that man. But what did Jesus do? He lifted His eyes to God. Now, He knew that His strength, His purpose, and His will came from the Father. He was not doing that on His own power. He was doing it through that of the Father. But to me, at least, it's instructive of the relationship that He had, that He looked up to His Father and He said, Father, it was a very brief prayer.

It was a moment of acknowledgement. He looked up, not that He necessarily needed to look up to do that, but you can say that His mind was on the Father. How many times do we run across certain situations where you and I would be better served looking up to the Father and mouthing a brief prayer such as this?

I thank you that you're there. I need your help. Give me wisdom. Help me through this time. Help me know what to do. But just to offer a silent prayer, it shows Jesus' connection with His Father. That's what this shows to me here in thinking about where His mind was. He was about to perform the biggest miracle of His ministry, arguably, and He made sure that He had the connection. You and I get into scrapes, jams, and pickles, as we call them, and sometimes we don't always remember who it is that we can call on and what we need and where we are.

It may be because we have strayed. It may be that we've just never developed our spiritual relationship with our Father to that degree. It could be a number of different situations.

But ask yourself, if you don't, why don't you? And if we don't, it should be a sign that there is something that we can yet improve on in our relationship with our spiritual Father. That is there, that connection to be made, and that help. To be instant in prayer.

To take on the mind of Christ, if you will. All of these phrases that the New Testament talks about in this matter are relating to God that are so important. When Jesus came down to His final hours and the stress and the pressure that was there, He was constantly talking about His Father, to His Father.

John 17, His final prayer in the garden, His mind was on the Father. And in the end, as we all know, when He was dying on the stake, He lifted His eyes and He said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. His mind, at that time, was on the Father. And again, that really speaks to the need to have that type of relationship in prayer. Not just in prayer, but even in our ability to control the thoughts that come into our mind. I was thinking about this last night, and the Scripture in 2 Corinthians 10 came to mind. 2 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about the spiritual warfare that we are always in.

You and I have daily, hourly, by the minute, thoughts, impulses, ideas that come into our head. Feeling of joy, as the sermonette talked about, feelings of frustration, happiness, sadness, doubt, anger, envy. All kinds of thoughts come into our head. It's amazing sometimes. You could be reading the Bible or thinking good thoughts. Put it all down, and within 30 seconds to a minute, you start thinking about a situation or someone. And all of a sudden, you can be having some different thoughts, can't you?

Some of you are nodding and smiling. You know what I'm talking about. Because the thoughts that come into our head are always changing, regardless of the stimuli. The email that comes in, the Facebook we go across, the phone call that comes in, or what we're going to be facing when we go out the door. The whole gamut of emotions and thoughts. We read scriptures, we hear sermons, we read a book, we're challenged to put on the mind of Christ.

We're challenged to prove all things. Was it Philippians 4 and 8? We're challenged to think on these things, love, joy, peace, and not be moved. And to think good thoughts, positive thoughts, indicative of the fruits of the Spirit. Think on these things. There are challenges that are there, and we at times get frustrated with ourselves. Sometimes we feel we're doing a fairly good job. But it's a warfare. Here in 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about it as a spiritual war. He says in verse 3, We walk in the flesh, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Most of us would have to admit we've got a long way to go to get to the point where we can say we've got every thought brought into the captivity of Christ. Or, to go back to what we were reading in John, the example of Jesus, where our thoughts are on the Father, or toward the Father, praying to the Father.

We all have a long way to go toward that, but that's the goal. Conversion and Christianity and relationship with our spiritual Father is getting to the point where we bring every thought into captivity of Jesus Christ. That we model that example that we can see here from Christ to where our thoughts, predominantly, more than half the time, are oriented toward the Father. And we bring every thought into captivity, where we have a certain level of control. That when we find ourselves getting angry about something or someone, we know enough to shut it down and not let it dominate us.

God's Spirit can help us do that, and it should. And if it takes lifting up our eyes to the Father in a prayer, Father, help me, that's what we do. But we have the presence of mind to do that rather than to let it continue on and really foul up the day. Or cause us to write, say, or do something that we're going to regret over an action or a situation or a person. We all know what we're talking about there. That comes back to the relationship with our Father and the importance of having that challenge, of bringing our thoughts into captivity to God and to where God's Spirit is there.

That's what I see in the way Jesus looked at His Father. And that's what you and I have before us. Because spiritually, our Father in heaven has a very strong influence on us. And when you and I, from time to time, will think about the influence that our physical Father had upon us, or good or bad, but at least to know that our parents had a very strong influence and continue to if we still interact with them.

That's good. That's what it is. Our spiritual Father can have an even stronger influence upon us. If we shift and focus our mind there, put our focus and think about it. That's what's most important. That's what we are to develop.

If we want to get a big lesson out of the Father's Day we keep, it's that every day we should be having a spiritual Father's Day with our own spiritual Father. Build off of whatever positive we can from our own parentage and work toward the relationship with our spiritual Father that we see our elder brother, Jesus Christ, having. That's what's important. That's what's important for us to work on. I won't have another day with my dad for a long, long time yet as the plan of God goes. I look forward to an eternity with him when I know I'm going to have many more days with him. But today, tomorrow, the day after, I know I've got many more days with my own spiritual Father, just as you do. And it's important that we work on that and develop it in the same way that Jesus Christ had with his Father.