7 Steps a Father Can Take to Show Love to His Children

1. Fear the Lord and Get Wisdom

Step one of exercising authority in your children’s lives is to fear the Lord and get wisdom yourself. God wants you to use your authority, to be a parent, to teach and administer discipline. Yet he wants you to use it compassionately and studiously, always calibrating your corrections and instructions for their weaker frames. So study the word. Examine the character of God as a loving Father and consider how you might grow in these ways. Devote yourself to prayer. Seek out both the wisdom and admonition of godly men.

2. Use Your Authority for Their Good

Step two is to use your authority for your children’s good, never for your own selfish convenience or gain. You are the trimmer of roses so that the rose might grow, the braces on the teeth so that the teeth might be straight, the regimen of exercise so that the athlete might run fast, the word of love so that the child might smile. That means you draw lines. You say no. You demonstrate resolve. You administer discipline. You let them feel the consequences and the loss of things they want. Yet you also look for ways to say yes. To bless. To help them experience wonder. You pack their brains with good things. You encourage. You give and give and give as God does with us.

3. Take Initiative

Steps three to five involve how God has uniquely designed you as a man in comparison to your wife. The headship you possess in her life, as described in the last chapter, should impact parenting too. A father is the head of a home in a way that a mother is not. Step three, then, is to take initiative in the family’s work, togetherness, and worship. To be clear, my wife is a tremendous help to me in all these ways. She devises the chore chart. She makes sure that family dinners happen. She reminds me to lead in family worship and offers counsel about what’s effective. Yet ultimate responsibility falls on me, and it falls on you if you’re a dad. If evenings are consistently filled with strife and rancor, if the children are undisciplined, if the family often misses church, Jesus will knock on your door, Dad.

4. Be the Heaviest Presence

Step four is to “play the heavy,” as I call it. By that phrase, I mean that yours should be the heaviest presence in the home. You’re the boulder that’s least likely to budge, the wall that cannot be pushed over, the pole holding the flag whipped by the wind. Your presence should be steady, stable, calming, and good. When Dad is in the house, the wife and children should feel at ease, protected, and happy, as if the world is in its natural place and the home is as it should be. Maybe Mom is exhausted and feeling a little grumpy. That’s okay, Dad knows how to keep things calm and upbeat. Maybe two sisters accuse each other of unfairness. That’s okay, Dad will be fair and mediate a resolution. The kids cannot manipulate him to get what they want, and they feel a sense of safety in that very predictability and consistency.

Examine the character of God as a loving Father and consider how you might grow in these ways.

5. Bring the Joy

Step five is to be the primary bringer of joy in your home. Imagine if our God wasn’t a God of joy but a God of gloom and a short temper. No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to live in his universe. Now imagine living in a home where the father is sullen, severe, and gloomy. I wouldn’t want to live in his house either. So Dad, every morning ask yourself, How can my presence be a joy-giving presence to my wife and children? It starts with your own heart, of course. You need a faith-filled confidence in the goodness and power of God. You need to trust that he intends good for you—always—if you’re a Christian (Rom. 8:28). Then you need to wear that confidence and joy on your sleeve. Greet them every morning with words of affection and excitement. End every day with finding ways to laugh. Know how to have fun and even be a little goofy. But more than that, know how to keep your eye on God’s big picture even when times are dark, and help them do the same. Your wife and kids want you to empathize with them when they’re feeling anxious and down, but they also want you to be a source of hope, for your smile to help them smile.

6. Sing!

A sixth and very, very practical step for good measure: Sing! Yes, I mean that: Sing. Lead the way in singing hymns and songs of praise in the home around the dinner table. Lead the way by singing loudly at church. Do this even if you cannot carry a tune and your wife winces at your off-key crooning. Haven’t you noticed how men in church often don’t sing, at least American men? They only mouth the words. I suspect that’s because singing involves emotion, and many men feel uncomfortable with displaying emotion (I do) unless football is involved. Not only that, our models of masculinity—from superheroes such as Batman to the cowboy characters played by Clint Eastwood—model stoicism. We like to look tough, and singing makes you vulnerable. And that’s what I’m really after here: Be vulnerable in your praise to God. Your lamentations. Your confessions. Your thanksgiving. Lead by exposing your heart before your family and your church by singing to God with vigor. Then you’ll know you’re a manly man and a tough man who is not afraid. So will your kids and wife.

7. Love and Affirm Your Kids

Seventh and finally, one of our most important jobs as our children’s authority is to love and affirm them as God made them. They don’t need to be smarter than they are, or prettier than they are, or faster than they are. They need to be what they are, because what God made is good, very good, and we love it. And we should let them know every day that we love it.

This article is adapted from Using Authority Well: A Concise Guide for Men by Jonathan Leeman.

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