Among the many ways the Lord began reshaping my life, one of the most humbling was His calling me to lead my own household. The conviction did not arrive all at once, nor do I remember the exact day it settled upon me. It grew gradually as I continued sitting beneath the faithful preaching of God’s Word each Lord’s Day and reading the Scriptures throughout the week. Again and again I encountered passages that spoke directly to fathers. They were not addressed merely to pastors or elders, but to ordinary men entrusted with ordinary families. I could no longer escape them.

The Lord had not simply called me to provide for my wife and children. He had called me to shepherd them. That realization produced two emotions that seemed almost to exist side by side. I was convinced and I was nervous. If someone had asked me a year earlier whether I was qualified to lead my family spiritually, I probably would have answered with a confidence born of ignorance. Now that I had begun learning the Scriptures, I was painfully aware of how little I actually knew.

I had spent nearly thirty years living for myself. How was I now supposed to lead others toward Christ? Yet obedience does not wait until confidence arrives. The Lord does not call men to shepherd their homes only after they believe themselves fully prepared. If He did, no father would ever begin.

So we began. I do not remember our very first evening of family worship. Memory has a way of preserving what mattered most while allowing many smaller details to fade. I cannot tell you what day of the week it was, what everyone was wearing, or even where my wife and each child happened to be sitting in the living room. What I do remember is the mixture of nervousness and conviction that filled my heart. I knew this was what the Lord would have me do.

So I opened my Bible. We began where God Himself began. Genesis. There was no carefully developed curriculum. No catechism. No polished plan for leading our young children through the Scriptures. There was simply a father who loved Christ, loved his family, and desired for his children to know the God who had shown such mercy to their father. Looking back, I smile at those early evenings. I often mistook family worship for a sermon. I talked far too long. I explained far more than little ears could absorb. Before long I would notice wandering eyes, fidgeting hands, and minds that had drifted somewhere far away from whatever point I was still trying to make.

At first I wondered whether I was failing. Now I realize the Lord was teaching me as much as He was teaching them. He was reminding me that my responsibility was not to produce immediate results. My responsibility was simply to plant the seed faithfully and trust Him to give the growth.

The Lord was also teaching me something else through those evenings that I did not recognize until much later. The success of family worship was never measured by how eloquently I spoke, how long we sat together, or even by how attentive the children appeared to be. Had that been the standard, I would have concluded that I was failing more often than succeeding.

Children are children. They become distracted, they ask unexpected questions, they grow restless. Sometimes they laugh at the wrong moments, sometimes they interrupt, and sometimes they seem to hear almost nothing that is being said. I had to learn that these things were not obstacles to family worship; they were simply part of shepherding young hearts. I also had to learn patience.

Before the Lord saved me, patience was not a characteristic that described my life. If something inconvenienced me, I became irritated. If someone interrupted my plans, frustration quickly followed and oftentimes fueled my further rebellion. My children often experienced that side of me during those earlier years. Though I loved them, my love was frequently mixed with selfishness. I expected them to fit neatly into my plans rather than seeing them as souls entrusted to my care. The Lord was changing that.

As I opened the Scriptures before them evening after evening, I began to see them differently. They were not merely children to be managed until adulthood. They were eternal souls, each one fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, each one in desperate need of the same gospel that had rescued their father. That realization changed the way I spoke to them. It changed the way I listened to them. It even changed the questions I wanted to ask.

Instead of merely correcting outward behavior, I found myself asking what was taking place in their hearts. Why had they lied? Why had they become angry? Why were they unwilling to obey? Scripture continually reminded me that sinful actions are the fruit of something deeper. The heart always comes before the hands. That truth first exposed my own heart before it ever helped me understand theirs.

For years I had blamed my circumstances for my sin. I had blamed my upbringing, my addictions, other people, stress, and disappointment. Yet the Lord had shown me on October 31st that my greatest problem had never been outside of me. My problem was within. Now I was beginning to understand that the same principle applied to my children. Their greatest need was not simply better behavior. Their greatest need was Christ.

That did not mean discipline became unnecessary. Quite the opposite. The Scriptures spoke too clearly about a father’s responsibility to ignore that duty. But discipline itself began to look different than it once had. I had often viewed discipline as the quickest way to restore peace and quiet to the home. If the behavior stopped, I considered the problem solved. The Lord showed me how shallow that thinking was.

Biblical discipline aims at something far deeper than outward conformity. It seeks to address the heart. It teaches children not only that disobedience has consequences, but that every one of us stands in need of mercy. It reminds them that God’s commands are good because God Himself is good. I did not always get this right. There were times I spoke too quickly. There were times I disciplined while my own heart was still unsettled. There were times I expected maturity from children that I myself had only begun learning as a new believer. The Lord was patient with me in those failures.

There is a peculiar kind of humility that comes when a father realizes he must often repent to his own children. Before my conversion, such a thought would have seemed almost unthinkable. I believed authority meant appearing strong, certain, and never admitting weakness. The gospel teaches something altogether different. The strongest fathers are not those who pretend they never sin. They are those who are willing to confess when they do.

There were occasions when I gathered the children together after losing patience or speaking harshly and asked them to forgive me. Those conversations were never easy. Everything within my remaining pride wanted to justify my actions or minimize my words. Yet I had already been forgiven far more than I would ever ask another person to forgive. How could I withhold confession from those whom the Lord had entrusted to my care?

Looking back now, I believe those moments taught my children something that my successes alone never could. They learned that their father needed the same Savior he spoke to them about each evening. I was not pointing them toward a perfection I had attained. I was pointing them toward a perfect Christ who continually showed mercy to imperfect people.

Little by little, family worship ceased feeling like an unusual activity and became part of the ordinary rhythm of our home. The Bible was no longer opened only on Sundays. Prayer was no longer reserved for meals or moments of crisis. Conversations about the Lord began arising naturally throughout the day. Sometimes they came while driving together, sometimes around the dinner table, at other times they came at bedtime after a difficult day. The Scriptures slowly became woven into the ordinary fabric of our family life. None of this happened because I possessed unusual wisdom. It happened because the Lord is pleased to honor His own Word.

I often think of the promise found in Isaiah, that God’s Word does not return to Him empty but accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it. I did not always know what the Lord was accomplishing as I stumbled through those early evenings in Genesis. Many nights ended with me wondering whether anyone had truly listened. But God’s promises never depended upon my ability. It was His Word that had quickened my own dead heart and I knew it would be His Word that was able to work in the hearts of my wife and children as well. And that gave me every reason to continue opening it, one evening at a time.