During this summer’s Connecting Church and Home conference at Southern Baptist Seminary, Russell Moore talked about the need to convey fatherhood of God in our families and churches.  He used Psalm 89:20-37 as the basis for his message.  The following thoughts were most helpful (times are approximate):

• 7th minute – Every fatherhood is a copy of God’s Fatherhood
• 9th minute  – Every boy is designed to be affirmed by his father.  A woman is designed to see herself affirmed by her father in a way that is seen as glorious to her father in that quiet and dignified spirit of 1 Peter 3.  The problem is that women are too submissive.  Scripture doesn’t call women to submit to men, but to her husband only.  Too many women are trying to appeal to men generally, rather than just to their husband.  The root of this is a loss of understanding of what it means to relate to God has Father.
• 13th minute – The Fatherhood of God in identity.
• 16th minute – We need to cultivate in our children and congregations what it means to be a son or daughter of God and that he is well pleased with us.  When we separate generations a the congregation, the next generation loses the ability to see our identity as children of God from elders who have been through more trials.
• 21st minute – Discipline is the whole processes of shaping someone toward maturity.  Jesus was disciplined/taught/mentored by what he suffered.  He grew in wisdom and obedience.  The danger we face in that we are trying to communicate the gospel is that the we don’t have a sense of what it means to restrain our appetites.  We don’t understand what it means to take small appetites when our children are small and teach them to crucify those appetites.  Parents and mentors normally ask if a sin is catastrophic enough for to be deal with, but Scripture teaches us to hunger for God and his word in all things.
• 29th minute – God’s commitment shows His faithfulness.  When people see spiritual fathers and mothers abandon a church because of criticism or difficult situations…   if parenting is about showing the faithfulness and fidelity of God and it is based on what is best for me at the moment.  There is an eclipse of understanding for what it means when God says, “I will keep My promise to you even when it seems like everything else in your life is falling apart”  in many of our congregations we have orphan making ministries.