Sermon quotes on Fathers
Augustine of Hippo
No one can have God as his father who does not have the Church as his mother.
Taken from The Pilgrim City: Social and Political Ideas in the Writings of St. Augustine of Hippo.
Hosea Ballou
If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in Heaven?
Jerry Bridges
Five fatherly responsibilities that God has assumed toward His children: 1. God provides for us (Phil. 4:19). 2. God protects (Mt. 10:29-31). 3. God encourages us (Psm. 10:17). 4. God comforts us (2 Cor. 1:3-4). 5. God disciplines us (Heb. 12:10).
F.F. Bruce
God is the archetypal Father; all other fatherhood is a more or less imperfect copy of his perfect fatherhood.
John Calvin
With what confidence would anyone address God as ‘Father’? Who would break forth into such rashness as to claim for himself the honour of a son of God unless we had been adopted as children of grace in Christ? He, while he is the true Son, has of himself been given us as a brother that what he has of his own by nature may become ours by benefit of adoption if we embrace this great blessing with sure faith. Accordingly, John says that power has been given to those who believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God, that they too may become children of John (John 1:12)
Ken R. Canfield
I like to compare the job of a father to that of a long-distance runner. Fathering is a marathon—a long and often trying journey—and we must be disciplined if we hope to finish successfully.
G.K. Chesterton
The really great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
Lydia M. Child
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!
Ed Cole
A father’s responsibility is not to make the child’s decisions, but to let the child watch him make his.
Umberto Eco
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
Jonathan Safran Foer
“When you’re a dad, there’s no one above you. If I don’t do something that has to be done, who is going to do it?”
Sinclair Ferguson
Unless God is our Father, we are orphans. But God’s own Son has become our Older Brother. He comes through His Spirit, with His Father, to live with us. The Holy Spirit dwells in our lives, making us a suitable dwelling place to receive the Father and the Son! As a consequence, by the Spirit we learn that we are not abandoned and unloved, but rather that we are loved by the Father, by the Son, and lovingly cared for by the Holy Spirit (John 14:21).
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalysis . . . daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.
Leonardo da Vinci, Vintage/Random House.
Billy Graham
A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.
George Herbert
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
Clarence Budington Kelland
My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
Martin Luther
“Abba” is only a little word, and yet contains everything. It is not the mouth but the heart’s affection which speaks like this. Even if I am oppressed with anguish and terror on every side, and seem to be forsaken and utterly cast away from your presence, yet am I Your child, and You are my Father. For Christ’s sake: I am loved because of the Beloved. So this little word, “Abba,” Father, deeply felt in the heart, surpasses all the eloquence of Demosthenes, Cicero, and the most eloquent speakers that ever lived. This matter is not expressed with words, but with groanings, and these groanings cannot be uttered with any words of eloquence, for no tongue can express them.
Martin Luther
Father and Mother are apostles, bishops and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel.
David Mitchell
“I’d love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I’d love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I’d be one day to look inside it.”
Patrick Morley
If you want to lead a balanced life, decide how many hours you want to work and stick to your guns. Put work appointments on your calendar in pencil, but put your family commitments in pen. Love is time, and time is love.
Pope John XXIII
It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
J.I. Packer
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God the Father.
Derek Prince
Every father represents God to his family. That is not an option! The question is, Do you as a father represent God rightly or wrongly?
Husbands and Fathers: Rediscover the Creator’s Purpose for Me
Dennis Rainey
What a boy can use, and too often doesn’t have, are the heart of his father and the fellowship of men. A boy needs at least one man who pays attention to him, spends time with him, and admires him. A boy needs a role model, a man whom he can regard as a mentor.
Rick Rigsby
The wisest person I ever met in my life, who taught me to combine knowledge and wisdom to make an impact, was my father, a simple cook, wisest man I ever met in my life, just a simple cook.
Marilynne Robinson
“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
Salman Rushdie
“At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren’t listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don’t see how your gestures already mirror his; you don’t see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don’t hear his whisper in your blood.”
Salman Rushdie (For Contrast)
“In the end, everyone can do without fathers.”
Joni Eareckson Tada
There is nothing that moves a loving father’s soul quite like his child’s cry.
Hudson Taylor
I am taking my children with me, and I notice that it is not difficult for me to remember that the little ones need breakfast in the morning, dinner at midday, and something before they go to bed at night. Indeed I could not forget it. And I find it impossible to suppose that our heavenly Father is less tender or mindful than I… I do not believe that our heavenly Father will ever forget His children. I am as very poor father, but it is not my habit to forget my children. God is a very, very good Father. It is not His habit to forget His children.
Taken From Marshall Broomhall, The Man Who Believed God: The Story of Hudson Taylor, Moody
Mark Wahlberg
I want to give my kids the world, but I also want them to appreciate everything, to succeed, to be good people, to enjoy life. This is my most important role. If I fail at this, I fail at everything.
John Wooden
Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating…too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.
William Paul Young
“Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don’t misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence.”
Jack Whitehall
“I’m sure wherever my Dad is, he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”
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