A Father’s Day Lesson on Breaking the Cycle
A Father’s Day message from The Woodlands First Baptist Church
There is an old story about a father on a long road trip whose kids would not stop fighting in the back seat. After two hundred miles of bickering, he finally pulled over, ordered everyone out of the car, and laid down the law: thirty minutes of total silence, not one more word. The kids climbed back in and sat quietly until, right at the thirty minute mark, the youngest one meekly asked, “Daddy, can we say something now?” The dad said sure, as long as it was not a complaint. The boy said, “Remember when you told us not to say another word? Well, one of my shoes came off back there at the gas station.”
Every father in the room that morning at The Woodlands First Baptist Church in The Woodlands, TX laughed at that one, because every father has lived some version of it. Dr. Bruce Webb opened this year’s Father’s Day message with that story before turning to a far more serious point: fatherhood is hard, but it is also the most important job a man will ever have. Succeed everywhere else in life and fail as a father, and you will not have been faithful to your real mission.
To make that point, Dr. Webb turned to an unlikely Father’s Day text: the story of Abraham, the father of our faith, in Genesis 11 and 12.
Input, Not Outcome
Before getting to Abraham, Dr. Webb made an important distinction about what it means to succeed as a father. Failing as a father does not mean your children make bad decisions. Some wonderful fathers have children who go on to make terrible choices, and some genuinely awful fathers somehow raise wonderful children. A father’s responsibility is not the outcome. It is the input. Putting the right things into your children and trusting God with the rest is success with the mission, and every father is capable of that.
Abraham Broke Away From a Family of Idol Worshippers
It would be easy to assume Abraham had a spiritual head start. His family tree runs through some impressive names: Noah, Shem, Terah, and then Abraham. Noah’s faithfulness preserved the entire human race. That sounds like good blood, as they say in West Texas, pretty tall cotton.
But Scripture tells a different story. Joshua 24:2 says plainly that Abraham’s forefathers, including his father Terah, lived beyond the river and worshipped other gods. Somewhere in the generations after the flood, the family drifted. Noah’s firsthand faith became secondhand faith for his son Shem, and by the time Terah came along, it had become essentially nonexistent. Terah ended up worshipping the astrological deities common in Ur of Chaldea. Abraham grew up in a home that was, in Dr. Webb’s words, totally contrary to what is good and right.
That is exactly what makes Abraham such a compelling example on Father’s Day. He did not stay the way he was raised. He had the courage and character to break away from his family’s pattern and become a faithful follower of God, not because of his heritage, but in spite of it.
We Are Becoming a Fatherless Society
This message lands at a moment when fatherhood in America faces real strain. About one in four children currently live without a father in the home, and roughly four in ten will experience a father’s absence at some
Senior Pastor Dr. Bruce Webb celebrates Father’s Day with a message on Abraham, encouraging dads to break unhealthy patterns and build a new normal rooted in faith.
point before adulthood. According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, about 40 percent of children are now born outside of marriage, and the parent most often missing is the father. Research consistently links father absence to higher rates of poverty, educational struggle, emotional difficulty, and family instability.
Even in homes where a father is present, emotional absence is its own form of loss. One man Dr. Webb knows described his entire relationship with his father in four words: “Hi dad, bye dad.” No substantive interaction, no spiritual training, nothing more than passing in the hallway.
Years ago, Dr. Webb surveyed about fifty teenagers connected to a church he once served. The results were sobering. More than 80 percent said their fathers did not pray with them. More than half had never once heard their father pray out loud, at a meal, at church, anywhere. Three out of four named their mother, not their father, as the primary spiritual influence in their home. And three out of four felt their fathers were more invested in their careers than in them.
Dr. Webb is quick to point out this was not a statistic pulled from a book. It came directly from kids in a church he pastored, though not this one. Asking why fathers fall into this pattern reveals no real mystery. Most fathers simply raise their children the way they themselves were raised. Like father, like son, as the saying goes.
Creating a New Normal
Dr. Webb shared his own version of this struggle. He never once heard his father pray, not even at the dinner table. When he became a father himself, already serving as a minister, praying with his own children felt strange and unfamiliar. It was not the normal he had grown up with.
He had to come to terms with an uncomfortable realization: the normal he inherited was not actually normal according to God. Deuteronomy 6:5–7 describes what is normal in God’s eyes: loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and impressing his commandments on your children constantly, when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you rise. Ephesians 6:4 puts it directly to fathers specifically: do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Not mothers exclusively. Not youth pastors. Fathers.
Breaking out of an inherited pattern took deliberate effort, but it eventually became second nature. Dr. Webb now prays comfortably with his grandchildren and talks with them about the Lord as a completely ordinary part of life. On one recent drive home from VBS, his six-year-old grandson Webb told him, “When I get older, I may take over for you at the church.” Dr. Webb’s heart soared, right up until the boy finished the sentence: “When you die.” Not quite the timeline Dr. Webb had in mind, but the larger point held: children become what they see and hear from the men raising them. If they see you pray, that becomes normal. If they see you studying Scripture, that becomes normal. If they see you committed to your church, that becomes normal too. It is very hard for children to become something they have never witnessed.
Abraham’s Faithfulness Blessed Generations He Never Met
The second half of Abraham’s story shows what is at stake when a father chooses faithfulness. Genesis 12:1–3 records God’s call to Abraham: leave your country, your people, and your father’s household for a land I will show you. In return, God promised to make him into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great, and to make him a source of blessing to all peoples on earth.
Abraham obeyed. He left the most advanced culture of his day and walked into the unknown. Because he did, he was blessed, his descendants were blessed, and people who would not exist for thousands of years, including us, are blessed by his faithfulness today. A father’s decision to walk with God is never an isolated choice. It echoes forward into lives he will never personally meet.
The reverse is equally true, and Dr. Webb illustrated it with a story from his own ministry. A man in a former church complained constantly, even about the food served at the Lord’s Supper. He liked Dr. Webb personally and once wrote him a note calling him the best pastor he ever had. Dr. Webb showed the note to his wife and said, somewhat unsettled, that if this man’s praise sounded like that, he could only imagine what his criticism of others must have sounded like. The tragedy is that neither of the man’s grown children will set foot in a church today, and he never understood why. Dr. Webb’s honest assessment: if he believed everything that man said about the church, he would not want to go either. A negative attitude, passed from father to child, did exactly what it always does.
Exodus 20:5 captures this pattern soberly, describing consequences that can echo to the third and fourth generation. Whether that verse is read as God actively punishing or simply describing how generational sin tends to play out, the practical result is the same: children often inherit the spiritual patterns of their fathers, for better or worse. But the very next verse, Exodus 20:6, completes the picture with hope: faithfulness is shown to a thousand generations of those who love God and keep his commandments. The same generational weight that can carry harm forward can carry blessing forward even further.
It Is Never Too Late to Start
An old Chinese proverb says the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now. Patrick Henry, the Revolutionary War patriot remembered for declaring “give me liberty or give me death,” wrote something remarkable in his will: “I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more that I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian faith. If they had this, and I had not given them one shilling, they would be rich; and if they had not that and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.”
A father’s influence does not end when his children grow up and leave the house. It continues until he dies, and in the most meaningful sense, it continues until they do too. Like Abraham, every father has the opportunity to break an unhealthy pattern, build a new normal, and leave behind something more valuable than property: a faithful example of what it looks like to love and follow Jesus.
If you are a father looking to grow in this area, our own Tierce Green is leading a six week men’s study this fall designed to do exactly that. And if you have never given your life to Jesus, today is as good a day as any to start. Don’t leave feeling guilty. Leave with a commitment to move forward faithfully, one step at a time.
If you are searching for a church near me in The Woodlands, TX where men are encouraged and equipped to lead their families well, we would love for you to join us at The Woodlands First Baptist Church.
Learn More about The Woodlands First
► Watch the full sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQzWgylqJJI
► Plan your visit this Sunday: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/new/
► Learn about our church: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/beliefs/
► First Kids (Children’s Ministry): https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/ministries/first-kids/
Visit The Woodlands First Baptist Church
We offer worship services in traditional, modern, and Spanish-language styles across two campuses in The Woodlands, TX, along with Bible study classes and small groups for all ages.
South Campus: 11801 Grogan’s Mill Rd, The Woodlands, TX 77380
North Campus: 5148 FM 1488, The Woodlands, TX 77354
Phone: (281) 367-4317
Website: thewoodlandsfirst.org
Looking for churches near me in The Woodlands, TX? The Woodlands First Baptist Church has served this community since 1979. Come discover a community that helps men become the fathers God created them to be.
