In this video, Rev. H.B. Charles Jr. gives pastoral advice to fathers.
What advice should you give to a man, a husband, a father, who feels like he is so broken that he’s not able to lead his family? The first thing I would say is be honest. Number one, be honest with yourself about how you feel, how you are processing this, and where you are.
I would secondly say be honest with your wife and consider you and your wife as partners in the gospel; in caring for your family and children. Be honest and don’t let . . . I really don’t think the size of a problem matters; I think the location of the matter is all that counts. Meaning, a problem is either standing between you and the Lord, or it is pushing you closer to the Lord. So, don’t let being honest with your spouse become a source of division. Together, let this issue push you closer to the Lord.
So be honest with yourself, be honest with your mate, and then be honest with the Lord. The beauty of prayer, the privilege of prayer is stated in two words in Philippians 4:6, “In everything.” I think that’s the best part of that verse. Not just the “be anxious for nothing and make your request known to God” or “thanksgiving,”—all of that’s wonderful. But what so blesses me is the, “In everything.” That is, when I talk to God about what’s going on in my life, heart, mind, I don’t have to dress up my prayers to say what I think God wants to hear. I could tell God just like it is—the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, I would say be honest about your feelings.
But coupled with that, I would say don’t trust your feelings. This is the opposite advice of the world. The world would say, “Follow your heart.” And the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ warns us that that is some of the worst advice someone could give us. Our feelings, our emotions can lie to us all the time. And our emotions, how we feel, cannot be the ultimate gauge of spiritual devotion.
After that, I would say keep going. Start where you are, do what you can, and don’t give up—caring, and leading, and loving, and ministering to, and building up your family, your wife, and your children. There are going to be dry seasons and difficult seasons. There is a name for a place where there’s always sunshine and no rain. It’s called a desert and nothing grows in a desert. So, there are going to be seasons to the Christian life.
In difficult seasons in my life, I have benefited greatly from the Psalms. And there are psalms of praise, and psalms of confidence, and psalms of thanksgiving, and there are also psalms of lament. And lament is a fancy word for singing the blues. And all of those psalms—the major notes of life and the minor chords of life—are all in the Psalms. That reminds us that there are different seasons of life, and God can be trusted in them all.