Hello, this is Brother Denny.
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Shall we pray together?
God, our Father, we love you.
We thank you, Lord.
You are such a good Father to us.
You do overflow toward us with love and
blessing and care and instruction.
And yes, Lord, even with spankings.
And we thank you for all of it,
God.
We accept it all from your loving hands.
O God, we pray again tonight that you
will teach us to be like you and
love our children like you do.
Open up our hearts and give us wisdom,
O God, to be able to understand your
beautiful precepts.
We pray this in Jesus Christ's name.
Amen.
This evening, the title of the message is
Father, the Anointed Teacher.
We are now moving into other important aspects
of training children.
Very important aspects, especially if you look at
it in the light of the Father being
an anointed teacher.
One of the most powerful influences that you
can have upon your dear little ones, you
will have when you open up your mouth
with the anointing of the Holy Ghost and
teach them.
My, that's a powerful influence.
God says to you fathers, you are a
teacher.
Just like God said to Abraham, you are
a father of many nations.
God says to you, you are a teacher.
There is no difference at all in these
two statements.
Both of them are true.
Maybe the only difference is that Abraham believed
God when he said that to him.
And it's still a question tonight whether you
will believe God.
But you are a teacher.
The Lord has called each one of you
fathers to preach and teach the Word of
God to your family.
You are the leader of your house, and
one of the prime callings in this leadership
is teaching.
The ability is in the call.
Amen?
If God calls a man to stand in
a pulpit, the ability is in the call.
He may be a stutterer when God calls
him.
But when God calls a man, the ability
is in the call.
And God calls you fathers to be anointed
teachers.
God, who calls for things that be not
as though they are, says you are a
teacher.
Believe it.
Step forward, even if you have to stutter
while you do it.
God will help you.
I promise you.
God will help you.
Brethren, this is the nature of biblical faith.
If you already sit here feeling overwhelmed by
the words that I have spoken, I'm here
to tell you tonight, this is the nature
of biblical faith.
We are to be living on the edge
of the impossible repeatedly.
Without this kind of faith, it is impossible
to please God.
So this is your next assignment.
Amen?
You may as well get started on the
impossibilities right now.
Remember, faith is the substance of things hoped
for.
It is the evidence of things not seen
yet.
It is the witness of God's Spirit in
my heart that God will take care of
me and do what he said he would
do with me.
That's what faith is.
Why am I speaking so firmly and confidently
this evening?
Because many men, as they come to grips
with the needs in their home, they say,
I can't do it.
I can't teach.
This is absolutely not true.
It may be true that you, in the
flesh, you cannot teach.
But I'm telling you, in the Spirit, you
are a teacher.
Thus saith the Lord.
To say the other is like looking at
an acorn and saying, it cannot become a
tree.
You may look at it and say, it
doesn't look like it can become a tree.
It doesn't look like a tree.
But yet we all know that within that
little acorn is all the power and all
the ability and everything that God has put
in there to make a mighty oak tree
someday.
And guess what?
The ones who don't believe that it's a
tree never plant it.
But the ones that believe that it's a
tree put it in the ground.
And bless God, they see a great big
oak tree growing up.
Which one are you going to do tonight,
brethren?
Most men who can't teach, in quotes, grew
up without being taught by a father.
Amen?
We must break the chain of this disobedience
and pass on a legacy of teaching to
the next generation of fathers and mothers.
I believe God will meet you at your
point of need.
Remember how God gave the Spirit of the
Lord to the craftsmen in the building of
the temple.
My dear brothers and sisters, we are building
temples for the Lord.
Surely we can trust God for an anointing
to build His little temples.
You do not have to be an apt
teacher to teach.
If you have a longing to communicate truth
to your family and you start teaching, God
will teach you how to teach.
When I met that family in Canada twenty
-some years ago, nobody sat me down and
taught me how to teach.
All I had was a desire to make
something happen.
I stammered around.
I made mistakes.
I didn't do it right.
But there was something inside of me that
made me keep on getting up and keep
on going.
And there came a point in time when
I realized, as I was sitting in my
family's devotion times, that my children were grasping
what I was saying.
God was making me a teacher.
God has given us a door of opportunity,
brothers and sisters, with our children.
Let us seize it.
We spoke earlier about the natural desire to
please parents, which is inside of our children.
God has placed several things like this in
a young child.
It is a special period of grace so
that we, as fathers and mothers, can teach
and guide and train and mold our children
for the glory of God.
Consider a few of these natural things which
God, in His wisdom, has put in our
children.
Number one, there is a natural desire in
the heart of a child to want to
please their father and mother.
They feed on our approval and they live
to see us smile at what they are
doing.
We need to teach them how to please
us.
And I trust that how to please us
comes out of this book right here.
Because they want to please.
They have a desire to please.
Number two, there is a natural desire in
a little child to want to learn.
You've noticed it.
They don't want to stay laying on their
back.
God, they want to be on their belly.
They don't want to stay on their belly.
Bless God.
They want to crawl.
They don't want to crawl.
They want to walk.
They don't want to walk.
They want to run.
They don't want to run.
They want to talk.
They don't want to learn how to talk.
They want to learn how to read.
And that's the way it is with a
child.
There is that natural ability in them.
They want to go.
They want to grow.
They want to learn.
Oh, God, what have we done?
We are missing the opportunity.
There is a natural admiration in the heart
of a child for its parent, because they
are ignorant and because God has put it
in there.
Amen?
The glory of children is their fathers.
Remember, my dad's the best dad in the
whole wide world.
Man, we better take advantage of that.
But also because they're ignorant and they do
not understand at this point, they do not
see your needs.
There will come a day when they will
see your needs.
But they do not see your needs.
Man, we need to take advantage of the
opportunity that we have.
I remember one time that I, when Elizabeth
was about ten years old, I felt like
I needed to have a confession in front
of my family.
And I opened up my heart and broke
my heart before my family, confessing some of
my needs.
And Elizabeth came to me afterwards, sweet little
Elizabeth, ten years old.
She said, Papa, you don't need to do
that.
There's nothing wrong with you.
You're the best papa in the whole wide
world.
And I said to her, well, dear, someday
you will know that's not true.
But I'm glad you feel that way now.
And that is how they feel.
God has put that in there, not for
naught, but so that we can seize that
admiration and fill their heart with the Word
of God.
God has done it.
They have the ability to learn very quickly.
They have quick minds.
Their minds are not loaded down with cares
and distractions and many other things.
They have a mind that is pure from
all of these, and they can learn very
easily.
We should seize the opportunity.
Another one.
They are masters at imitation, aren't they?
I mean, the little cliche.
This is where it comes from.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Right.
That's talking about children.
Children are just like that.
The little child sees and the little child
does.
Oh, that God would give us the wisdom
to show them an example so the little
monkey can see and do.
And lastly, they are gullible.
They will swallow anything.
They believe in you and they believe you.
You can teach them anything you want.
They will believe it.
I mean, the nonsense of Santa Claus and
the Easter Bunny are good examples of what
a child will believe if you teach it
to them.
They will believe that.
Oh, they are gullible.
Shall we not seize the opportunity and plant
the right things inside of their hearts?
I think it's very clear.
God has given us a special door of
opportunity.
We dare not pass this open door of
utterance by.
It will not always be there, brothers and
sisters.
My observation is this.
That it lasts for about ten years.
For about ten years.
Now, if you do your homework for those
ten years, then you will be able to
continue to teach and guide for many years
after that.
But for the most part, if you have
neglected and you have not done what you
should be doing, it's very difficult to get
them interested in what you're saying.
Unless salvation comes to the household and transforms
everybody, then you will have another door where
you can put something into them.
That's my observation.
What is a teacher?
Webster says to teach is to instruct or
communicate knowledge to one who is ignorant.
Our children qualify.
Another definition.
To impress truth upon the mind.
To admonish or counsel by words and examples.
This is what Jesus did.
And he was the master teacher, wasn't he?
Another definition of teaching is to catechize.
Now, that's an old English word and many
of you may not know what it means,
but here is exactly what it means.
It means line upon line teaching with questions,
answers and open discussions.
Here we see a teacher engaging his students
in meaningful dialogue with learning in mind.
They're not just chattering, they're not just talking,
but the teacher is engaging the students in
meaningful dialogue and his goal is that they
will grasp the truth that he wants them
to get into their hearts and make it
part of their very life.
Again, did you see the Lord Jesus doing
this with his disciples?
That is exactly how the Lord Jesus discipled
his disciples in those three and a half
years.
Isaiah 28 verse 9 and 10 is a
beautiful example of this.
Of who to teach and how to teach.
Hear these words.
Whom shall he teach knowledge and whom shall
he make to understand doctrine?
Them that are weaned from the milk and
drawn from the breast.
That tells you the when and the who
and the how.
For precept must be upon precept.
Precept upon precept.
Line upon line.
Here a little, there a little.
That's the teaching program that the Bible reveals.
Let's turn to Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we're going to read
verse 4 through 7.
This portion of Scripture is rich with a
revelation of God's heart for us and for
our children.
From this text, we are going to plumb
the depths of what a father-teacher is
supposed to be.
Will you allow me to give the fullness
of God's heart, though it may be way
beyond where you are at this point in
your life?
Would you allow me just to give the
fullness of God's heart that we can all
look at it and say, Yes, Lord, that
is what you want.
That is your design.
That's what I want.
You may not be there, but you need
to see where God wants you to go.
I want to give you a glimpse of
who you can be.
If you will, sincerely, in brokenness, cry out
to God and begin to teach your children.
Let's read verse 4 through 7.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart and with all thy soul
and with all thy might.
And these words which I command thee this
day shall be in thine heart.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children and shalt talk of them when thou
sittest in thine house and when thou walkest
by the way and when thou liest down
and when thou risest up.
In this most famous text, we have a
lovely picture of an anointed father teaching the
next generation to love his God with all
of their heart.
We must look at this man with the
eyes of the new covenant, which is where
you will find the grace to be this
kind of a father.
You won't find it in the Old Testament.
You'll find it in the New.
But I'm telling you, the grace that you
need to be this kind of a father
is already bought and paid for on Calvary.
Hallelujah!
I mean, it's already done.
It's a done deal.
We just need to believe God and move
forward.
Just notice these six holy qualities that I
would like to draw our attention to.
Number one, this father, he loves God.
He loves the Lord with all of his
heart.
And God has first place in his life.
This dear father has a single eye.
And that eye, the eye of his heart,
is fixed continually upon God to love him,
to worship him, to walk with him.
There is nothing half-hearted about this father.
Nothing shall turn him aside for very long.
This is the inner foundation that supports every
true teacher.
If you want to be this kind of
a teacher, you're going to have to begin
right here.
This is square one.
I must love the Lord my God with
all my heart.
This must become a commandment that bears down
upon our hearts and doesn't stop until we
can say with an overflowing heart, I do,
I do, I do love the Lord with
all my heart.
This first point is without question the most
important of all.
It is the prime reason for most of
the devastation we see in our homes in
this land.
Though this series is on raising godly children,
I feel urgent to permeate its contents with
this greatest need again and again.
Because it's futile if we don't.
Number two, he loves God's Word.
These words shall be in thine heart, God
says.
These are basic principles for any teacher.
We know this.
A teacher must love his subject and be
excited about the textbook that he is using.
He loves God's Word.
We wrote earlier about the power of the
human heart.
Well, that is implicated here.
These words shall be in thine heart, the
most powerful part of your being.
Amen.
Like John said in 1 John 2, 14,
the Word of God abides in you.
We also know, out of the abundance of
the heart, the mouth speaketh.
This is the requirement for being a teacher.
The natural outflow of a heart that is
full is teaching.
I don't care if you stutter.
If your heart is full of your subject,
you will be a teacher.
Amen?
Number three, he loves to obey the Word
of God.
This anointed teacher is not merely passing on
information.
Amen.
It is so much more than that to
him.
He has obeyed what he is teaching.
He knows it works and therefore he wants
to teach it to somebody else.
That's beautiful.
Praise God.
He loves to obey the Word of God.
He lives his subject.
This is the most powerful tool that a
teacher can have to influence his students.
He has done it.
He has tasted and therefore he is motivated
to transfer it to somebody else.
Like it says up in verse three, he
has observed to do it and they know
it by his life.
This is not a have-to thing with
a true teacher, but rather it is a
I get to teach thing with a true
teacher.
Number four, he loves to teach the Word.
Here we have the picture of a wholehearted
teacher.
Teaching is not done in a haphazard way.
It is purposeful.
The Word says thou shalt teach them diligently.
This father is not merely reading the Word
to his children, but he is finding ways
to put it into their heart like it
is in his heart.
He has tasted.
It has changed him.
He knows that the Lord is good and
now he wants to put it in the
hearts of his children because he knows they
will prosper just like he is prospering.
That's a teacher.
He loves to teach.
The word teach means to sharpen or wet,
like sharpening of a sword or a stick.
And the picture there is to take the
Word of God and break it down or
sharpen it or simplify it and make it
easy to understand so you can take a
sharp portion of the Word of God and
stick it into the heart of your children.
That's the picture there.
The other word we want to look at
here is the word diligently.
That means again and again.
You see, if this thing is in his
heart, he's not going to play around with
this thing.
I mean, this is what is going to
change his children's lives.
He's going to do it again and again
because he knows what it will do to
them.
The next point I'd like to look at
is he loves to talk of them.
Here I would like to make a difference.
We have here a second method of teaching
the word to our children.
As I see it, the previous method is
planned, prepared for and carried out with purpose
at specific times of the day.
The father studies.
He gets a word.
He breaks it down.
He sits his family down.
He sticks the word in their heart.
But then, because it is in his heart,
he talks about it all the time.
Thou shalt talk of it when thou sittest
in thine house and when thou walkest by
the way, when thou risest up in the
morning and when thou sittest down at night.
And what I see there is he's just
talking about the word all the time.
He's walking down through life and saying, oh,
you know, that reminds me of that verse
over there in such and such a place.
And do you see how that animal is
doing?
That reminds me of this verse.
Boys, do you see how that one cow
over there is pushing all the rest of
them away?
You know what the Bible says about things
like that?
Just on and on and on and on
and on.
Thou shalt talk of them by the way,
because it's in his heart and he likes
to talk about it.
And because out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaketh.
Amen.
And lastly, on this portion, he is anointed
with the Holy Ghost.
Now, I can't point you to a portion
here in this passage of scriptures that says
that.
But we're living in the new covenant and
it's the will of God.
This needs to be done by the power
and the anointing of the Holy Ghost.
I think this is obvious.
He cannot be and do all that we
have listed here except the Spirit of God
be upon him.
And you can't either.
And you know that this is the New
Testament standard of a godly father.
We fathers and mothers, we must come to
grips with our greatest lack in light of
our greatest responsibility, which is our children.
Humble ourselves, seek God's face, turn from whatever
is standing in God's way.
Then God will hear us, heal our hearts
and anoint us with the Holy Ghost.
To be the parents that God wants us
to be on the day of Pentecost and
all through the book of Acts, they were
filled with the Holy Ghost and they did
profit side.
You know what that means?
Speak forth the mind and will of God
in the power of the Holy Ghost.
That's what it means.
That's for you.
You say, brother, I can't do that stuff
you're talking about.
Welcome to the club.
Neither can I.
But by the grace of God, I can
do what I'm supposed to do.
God has made a way.
So maybe you say, yeah, well, I'm just
a nobody.
Well, I got a verse for you.
Nobody's to act to 18, says, and on
my servants and on my handmaidens, I will
pour out in those days of my spirit
and they shall prophesy.
Beautiful.
Hallelujah.
God has provided everything.
Dear fathers, do not be discouraged.
This is where God wants to take you
as a father.
And let me just say to you mothers
here.
You know, if your husband walks out of
here and he goes home and says, oh,
OK, I don't know how I'm going to
do it.
But bless God, brother.
Did he said I am?
And so I'm going to do it.
Let me give some counsel to you, dear
ladies that are sitting in this room tonight.
He may stutter and stammer at it.
It may not be the best sermon that
you heard.
He may not be able to match the
preacher that preaches on Sunday morning.
But I want to give you some counsel.
You sit on the edge of your seat.
You fold your hands.
You put your eyes wide open and bright.
You be excited about what he has to
say.
Enter into the conversations that he opens up
and be in there with everything you got.
Don't you remember why I invited you all
here?
Because I need you.
And dear ladies, your husband needs your undivided
support when he tries to make this whole
family teaching program work.
He needs your eyes fixed upon him with
a smile and a support.
I mean, bless God, give him an amen
face.
Right?
Listen, there are people in this room.
I found they have an amen face.
And I look at them very often while
I'm preaching.
I do.
I find them.
And once I know where they are, I
watch them.
And you know, when I look their way,
you know what they give back to me?
You know, that's like, get him brother Denny,
get him.
So I look at those every now and
then, you know.
The ones that are frowning at me, I
don't look at them too much while I'm
preaching.
I just don't look their way very much.
They're not a lot of encouragement.
I'm not going to let them intimidate me,
but I don't look their way because they
don't give any encouragement.
Amen.
Oh, dear sisters, get behind that man of
yours and give him the smilings, amen, and
the support that he needs.
He's going to stumble.
But listen, if you'll bear with the stumbling,
bless God, someday he'll prophesy.
He will.
I believe it.
Dear fathers, don't be discouraged.
This is where God wants you to go.
Will you step into the River Jordan and
watch the waters begin to part?
Will you be one of those who will
testify of the God's all sufficient grace in
a few years and look back and say,
I changed my mind about that and set
my heart and God has made me a
teacher.
I've seen it many, many times.
Brethren, you have too.
Many of you have.
In our settings, men are called into the
leadership of the church.
They're called, they're ordained to preach and lead
out in the churches without any theological seminary
training.
And many times they aren't much when they
first get up, are they?
But you know what?
God has a call on them.
The church recognizes the call.
They get up there.
We support them.
We give them an amen face.
We come up afterwards and say that was
a good sermon, brother so and so.
We're praying for you.
Keep on going.
Guess what?
About two years later, brother so and so
is holding the attention of the whole congregation.
Dear people, that's how it works.
God will do that with you.
You have just been ordained to the ministry
of preaching to your family tonight.
Brothers, you have been ordained.
Go for it.
OK, let's look at family devotions at our
house for just a little bit.
Devotions are very important at the Keniston household.
It is up there on the top of
the priority list, right next to eating.
How many of you have eating pretty high
on your priority list at your house?
Let me see your hands.
Come on.
Let me see them.
Yeah, you all do.
Every one of you.
It's right up there.
Well, this is right up there with eating.
And that's something none of us miss very
often.
We spend about 45 minutes in our devotional
time, and it often goes longer.
It just depends on the fellow who's leading
it, how much he has to say, and
how much everybody else has to say.
I mean, if the thing is rolling and
the children are talking, we don't stop.
I just keep my eye on Mama sitting
over there.
She has a lot of things going on,
and she's watching the clock.
But bless God, she sits right there and
supports right through to the end.
When the children start talking, it's not time
to stop.
Recently, we have gone to morning and evening
time of sharing.
After studying all these home histories, I was
convicted that we should follow the twice-a
-day pattern that so many of these godly
homes that I've studied was following.
So we've changed that at our house, and
it's a real blessing.
Right now, we are reading and meditating on
the daily light for the whole next year.
Daily light is a compilation of scriptures put
into categories, morning and evening.
So the whole family reads the morning meditation,
writes down their thoughts about it.
Then we all come together and have a
beautiful discussion, and Papa takes the teachable moment.
And you'd be surprised how many different subjects
come up as the children share what God
said to them as they read those verses
and wrote their thoughts down.
We can go ten different ways in one
meeting.
Bless God.
This is a morning and evening reading, and
we enjoy it very much.
Let me say this about family devotions, fathers.
Be a bulldog on this one.
Somebody has to be the bulldog.
You know what I'm talking about?
Make it a priority.
Everything in our society fights against this.
There is always something else on the agenda
that could be done.
But whatever those exciting things are, brethren, we
all eat, don't we?
We need to put this up there on
the priority list like eating.
And I believe if we get filled with
the Holy Ghost, we will.
As I travel, I meet very few families
who actually have this whole thing down on
a consistent basis.
I meet very few.
And many times I'll ask for a raise
of hands, and I'm not going to do
that to you here today, but I'll ask
for a raise of hands.
I see very few hands ever go up
when I say, how many of you have
consistent family devotions with your family?
I mean, day after day after day, in
the thick and in the thin, in the
good and in the bad, in the high
times and the low times, you're right there.
Not too many hands go up.
We must become a bulldog, Dad.
Somebody has to direct the thing, and I
believe it's us.
This has to change.
It is a danger sign.
Every now and then is the norm, and
that won't get it.
We have a good time during devotions in
our house.
It is not a dry ritual.
It's not a have-to thing.
We are free.
We share.
We have a good time.
We have sharing times.
If one of the children has something interesting
to say, they say it.
If somebody says something funny, we laugh about
it and get right back into the Word.
It's a good time.
We have a good time of wholehearted singing.
And when the children were younger, we sang
25 hymns.
I had them marked out.
This one, this one, this one, and we
just stayed on those 25.
You know, you can move around quite a
bit, but we stayed on those 25 because
I wanted the children to know how to
sing 25 songs very well, and because I
wanted the doctrines in those 25 hymns to
be sunk deeply inside of the hearts of
those children when they were small.
So we have a good time of singing
solid hymns full of doctrine.
When we had little children, we often sang
children's songs, you know, everything's alright in my
Father's house, you know, and the wise man
built his house upon the rock, and the
wise man built his house upon the rock.
We sang songs like that.
Children love it.
I mean, they sit on the edge of
their seat.
They can get into those little songs.
And we sang some of those.
If singing is extra worshipful, we'll sing longer.
Then I sit in front of the family
like a teacher and preach the Word of
God to them.
That's the way that I do it.
It doesn't matter to me how you do
it, but that's the way I do it.
The family is here, and I am here
sitting in a chair with my Bible in
my hand to teach my family the Word
of God.
That's the way that I do it at
our house.
It's an open time like I described.
We have dialogue.
We have questions.
We have answers.
We share struggles.
We have confession meetings.
We do all kinds of things like that
in our times.
I use simple object lessons to teach important
truths on the level where the children are.
I do this continually.
One time, I got up right in the
middle of family worship and disappeared out into
the shop.
Just left them all sitting there.
Well, you can be sure they were watching
when I walked back through the door.
I came back through the door.
The children didn't have a clue where I
was going.
I came back in with a rope in
my hand.
I grabbed little David, put him down on
the floor, took the rope, wrapped it around
him, tied him up, and Josh was looking
on wishing, Boy, I wish I could be
there.
I mean, he wanted to be there.
And then we had a lesson.
While David laid in the middle of the
floor tied up with a rope, we had
a lesson on how sin can bind you
and destroy your life.
Somebody heard a story like this somewhere, and
I got a letter from some dear lady
reproving me.
She said, How dare you do that to
your poor little boy?
She didn't have any idea.
He loved it!
One other time, I just jumped up, just
like that, right in the middle of studying
the book of Proverbs and took off into
the kitchen.
Came back with a butcher knife in my
hand.
Everybody was watching that morning.
Here came Pablo with a butcher knife, and
they're all watching.
And we had a lesson on how evil
it is to use our tongue and how
we can hurt people with our tongue.
And it's just like a knife sticking it
into their heart when we say bad words
to people or about people.
And we had a lesson like that.
And I'm telling you, they remember things like
that.
And by the way, Jesus used objects all
the time to teach, didn't He?
And He did that with grown men.
Surely we can find ways that we can
break the Word of God down to our
children so they can understand what we're saying,
so that they can take deep truths and
grasp them into their little hearts.
And those truths will grow like beautiful plants
in their heart into beautiful, beautiful portions of
Scripture in days to come.
We do that.
We have had confession and repentance meetings where
we all fell on our faces and wept
together, confessing our needs one to another and
praying one for another.
It's good to have a family revival meeting
every now and then.
We also have a time of prayer.
This varies in length depending on the time
and depending on the circumstances.
Sometimes it will be a longer season depending
on where we are at as a family.
If we're facing some very difficult things, we
may take more time to pray.
Sometimes there's difficult things going on in the
church and we'll take more time to pray.
And sometimes our loved ones who are missionaries
are facing very difficult things.
We take extra time to pray at times
like that in our devotions.
Well, I must draw this lesson to a
close.
I want to encourage you fathers to begin.
God will help you.
The whole motivation for this message right here
is not only instructional, but it is to
create a desire in your heart.
I do believe if you have a desire,
you will find a way.
Where there is a will, there is a
way.
But we must first have the desire.
And where the desire is there, God will
make a way.
I promise you He'll make a way.
He'll make a way through the wilderness for
you.
He'll make you something that you never thought
you could be.
In fact, some of you men in this
room, God has a call in your life
to be in the ministry someday, but that
call will never take place if you don't
give yourself to the responsibilities that you have
in your homes.
God trains ministers in the home, brethren.
Not in Bible colleges where you sit in
a classroom and hear a bunch of words.
He trains men in the home.
Some of you are going to miss your
calling if you don't start facing your responsibility
with your family.
I'm telling you.
I don't know who I'm talking to, but
I know I'm talking to some of you.
You're going to miss your calling if you
don't wake up and take care of your
family.
And by the way, if your family is
not in order, you won't have a calling
that way either.
I'm just pleading with you.
Let God stimulate desire in your heart.
And with that desire and the grace of
God, God will make you a teacher.
Even you.
Say, Brother Denny, that's too much for me.
Listen to me.
The first time that I stood to speak,
I was supposed to give my testimony in
a Baptist church.
They gave me 30 minutes to speak to
the youth and give my testimony.
I got up in front of those youth.
Maybe there was 60 youth there.
I don't remember exactly.
I stood up behind the pulpit and looked
at those youth.
And I was scared to death.
I stuttered and stammered around for about three
minutes and sat down.
And my wife got up and saved the
day.
She got up and shared, you know, and
just opened up and just shared all kinds
of things with them.
And she saved the day.
The preacher was glad she was there.
And I sat down in utter humiliation.
I didn't know how to do it.
I didn't know how to talk.
I didn't know how to teach.
Bless God, I was a social misfit.
But you'd never know it today.
God can change you.
But you've got to step into the water.
You've got to step into the water.
Let's stand for prayer.
In fact, all you sisters, you sit down.
All you fathers.
Let's just pray.
All the fathers.
Oh God, our Father, we come to You
as fathers.
To You, our Heavenly Father.
We don't know what we're doing, Lord.
But we want to.
We don't know how to do it.
But we're willing to learn, God.
We repent right now, Father.
God, forgive us for our unbelief.
We have not believed Your Word, Lord.
We have held back.
We have not done our responsibilities, Lord.
Would You forgive us?
Would You cleanse us, Lord, from our disobedience
and from our unbelief, God?
Would You do that right now, God?
Would You impart into every one of these
fathers a spirit of faith and confidence and
belief in You that You can take them
through, God?
I commit each one of them into Your
care.
And I pray in the name of Your
precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God, I pray, work in these men, Lord.
Bring them to the place where they are
surrendered and full of the Holy Ghost.
And I know the rest will take care
of itself.
God, I commit each one of them into
Your care.
I thank You for hearing our prayer in
the name of Your Son, we pray it.
Jesus Christ, Amen.
Amen.
You may be seated.