God Chose You to Be Their Dad: 10 Messages for My Husband This Father’s Day
This weekend, many of us will pause to let our dad, husband, or father-figure know how much we love and appreciate them. Your Father’s Day celebration might include a trip to the lake or firing up the grill. Maybe you’re giving Dad that proverbial tie, a new power tool, or a handwritten card.
But come Monday, the celebration will likely fade even as the responsibility of fatherhood remains. Being a dad is a 24/7 calling—one that’s often rewarding, sometimes difficult, and always important. God calls fathers to be the spiritual leaders in their homes, to provide for and protect their families, and to instill in their children a love for God and His Word. This calling comes with real pressure, especially as fathers strive to point their children to Jesus in a world that constantly pulls them in the opposite direction.
My own dear husband feels the weight of this role. With our kids now in their teens, he often questions if he’s doing enough or doing it right at all. He sees the day rapidly approaching when these kids will leave our home and step out into the world, and it’s easy for him to become discouraged as doubts creep in and he questions whether he’s been a good father.
This Father’s Day, I want to give my husband more than a table saw and one day of celebration. I want to encourage him to look to our heavenly Father as a guide in this sacred role—and to trust Him in our family’s unique circumstances and challenges. Here are ten messages I want to share to strengthen and encourage him this Father’s Day—and for all the days to come. Perhaps they will encourage the men in your life as well or serve as a launching point for you to write a list of your own.
10 Things I Want You to Know
1. God made you a father—and He will equip you to do this job.
The reason you’re a father in the first place is because God made you one. Children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3), one that He chooses to give to some and not to others. So, since this role is something God called you to do, He’s going to provide what you need to do it.
In fact, the Lord has a history of doing just that. He did it for Moses, the prophet Jeremiah, King David, the disciples, and the apostle Paul—just to name a few. Even in the process of building the temple, God gifted a group ofcraftsmen and artisans with the talents and abilities needed to build His temple to exact specifications. He will do the same for you in this vital role He’s called you to (Heb. 13:20–21).
2. You’ll never be perfect—only God is.
I see how deeply you care for our children and how much you want to get it right. I also notice how hard you are on yourself when you make a mistake or when things aren’t going well. As much as you want to do this job of fatherhood perfectly, you will never be able to.
Thankfully, you already have a heavenly Father who is perfect (Psalm 18:30), so you don’t need to be. But our perfect Father promises you can go to Him for wisdom when you need it. And in the times when you’re weary and overwhelmed, He will strengthen and sustain you to keep going.
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28–31 ESV)
3. Ask God to help you understand our children’s hearts and personalities.
We often go into parenthood expecting these little ones to think and respond the same way we do. But God created them as unique individuals (Psalm 139:13), and as you and I have both seen, they’ve expressed that individuality from an early age whether it be food preferences, clothing choices, or how they want to spend their time.
Even though we know they’re not just a carbon copy of us, it’s easy to forget when it comes to how they respond to stress, how they like to communicate, how they want to be encouraged—and even in the best ways to discipline, guide, and correct. If we always do those things the way our brains and personality best understand them, it can lead to exasperation in this child who’s wired very differently from us.
From the moment these children came into our family, we’ve prayed that the Lord would give us insight into their hearts and how He made them. Don’t give up on that prayer. As they get older, there’s so much more to discover and understand.
4. In the comparison game, there’s never a winner.
This one’s hard. All those pictures of smiling families on social media, those brag posts about graduation, the stories of kids’ success. When we play the comparison game, it’s easy to feel as if we’re the only family who experiences these struggles and who doesn’t “measure up.” But that game is one that never has a winner.
I know you know that, but it can be hard to keep in mind when a coworker tells a story about how great their kid is doing. In those moments, please remember that you—that we—haven’t failed. Our family has struggles and challenges that other families don’t—just as they have struggles we don’t know about. God has written a unique story for our family. Instead of comparing, we need to “run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:1–2).
5. Don’t tell yourself a story.
You’ve reminded me of this many times in conversations about others, so now I’m saying it back to you. We can’t know another person’s thoughts, feelings, and motives, but so often we act as if we do. We start to fill in the blanks with fear. They’re angry with me. They don’t want to spend time with me. They think I’m a bad dad. But those aren’t facts—they’re just insecurities talking.
The truth for why things happened as they did are often a lot different than what our imaginations like to tell us. Maybe that kid was feeling anxious. Maybe they were overtired and hungry. Maybe they chose to be stubborn and defiant even if they knew deep down that you were right.
Instead of focusing on that voice in your head, focus on what is true. Focus on who God is and what He says about you and our children. And remember the apostle Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ” (4:32). That verse is always applicable no matter how the story unfolds.
6. Today might have been hard, but it’s not the end.
Today might not have ended like you had hoped. Maybe the sun set with tears, hurt feelings, or slammed doors ringing in your ears. But this was just today. You’ll get another chance tomorrow to try again. In the words of Anne of Green Gables, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”1 We find an even better promise in God’s Word:
Because of the LORD’s faithful love
we do not perish,
for his mercies never end.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness! (Lamentations 3:22–23)
When morning dawns, you can choose to stay in yesterday’s hurts and mistakes, or you can face things anew with the Lord’s help. He pours out His mercy and grace on you—and our kids. You have the opportunity to ask forgiveness, to pray, to make connections, to encourage, to listen, and to love. Even if the hurts run deep and you can’t see any way through, nothing is too hard for God (Gen. 18:14).
7. Your life is just as powerful as your words—sometimes even more so.
I know you feel a great responsibility to pass on lessons to our children, whether it’s how to change a tire, manage their money, or guard their hearts. Sometimes they listen; sometimes your words fall on deaf ears. And while you should keep trying to pass along what you’ve learned, don’t be discouraged if they don’t always take those lessons to heart. Later in life, they might not remember everything you said, but they will remember the time you just listened. When you laughed with them. How you loved them, how you loved me, how you loved God. They’ll remember how you lived (1 John 3:18).
8. They are responsible for their own choices.
You could do everything right in teaching our children about God and how to live, encouraging and correcting them, being a great model of what it means to love Jesus. But even if you were able to do it all perfectly, it wouldn’t guarantee they would always follow God or make the right choices. As it says in Romans, “Each of us will give an account of himself to God” (14:12).
You can guide, direct, and point them to the truth all day long, but ultimately, they are responsible for their own choices. And that’s why my next reminder matters so much.
9. The most powerful tool you have in your arsenal is prayer.
Since the day we married, you’ve always said that it’s important to have the right tool for the right job. And when it comes to our kids, there are a lot of tools available. Over the years, we’ve leaned on advice from books, websites, pastors, and other parents to know how to navigate everything from sleep issues to potty training to homework battles to teaching them to drive. Yet the best tool you have at your disposal as a dad is prayer.
Just the other night, you lay beside me saying, “I don’t know what to do.” In those moments when you’ve tried everything, when you’ve said all the words you know to say, the best and most effective thing you can do for our kids is to lift them up in prayer, asking the Lord to work in their hearts and lives, to direct their steps, to do what to us seems impossible. No matter the issue, no matter the job, it will always be the right and best tool. “The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect” (James 5:16).
10. Our kids don’t belong to us; they belong to God.
As much as you want to do the right thing for our children, as much as you want good things for them, as much as you want to protect them, in the end, you (and I) have to let them go. Our children are an incredible gift from God, one that we thought for a long time that we wouldn’t receive. But they are a gift on loan—they don’t belong to us but rather to Him.
As Janet Parshall shared at True Woman ’08, “We are simply in a lend-lease program. [God] gives us permission to touch their hearts and their minds, to teach them, to write truth on the tablets of their heart, to help them to know and love the Savior, to get them to know and love His Word, but in the end, they’re His and His alone.”
You can and should strive to be a godly father to these children, but ultimately, you need to let go and trust God to keep them, protect them, and work out His good and perfect will in their lives (Rom. 8:28).
One Last Encouragement
So, as Father’s Day comes and goes this year, I hope you walk away with a renewed sense of encouragement and purpose. God chose you to be their dad—and you are exactly the father they need.
But what’s even more important is that you don’t have to carry this responsibility alone. God is there with you, equipping you, helping you to persevere, giving you wisdom for what to do and the courage to let go. In the coming days, when things get hard, I hope these messages will echo in your heart. You are a good dad. You have not failed. You are doing a holy work—and I thank God for you.
1 L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (Bantam Books, 1992), 176.
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