in the book of 1 Timothy chapter three, and read verses one through verse number seven. As we think about, I've titled this message, The Balance Between the Ministry and His Family. I'm a minister. a pastor, a preacher. I didn't choose his work. I had another choice all set out for myself. I was going to be an accountant. I was an accountant. The Lord changed my mind and he put me into the ministry. It wasn't my plan. I thought later on, I probably should, after the third church, I thought, I think I'm done. I'm so glad that the Lord wasn't done with me. I'm so thankful that he wasn't. But let's read this passage. 1 Timothy chapter three, verse one through verse number seven. And the Bible says here, this is a true saying. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach. not given to wine, no striker, not greedy, a filthy looker, but patient, not a brawler, but not covetous, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and snare of the devil. That's reading 1 Timothy chapter three, verse one through verse number seven. And we want to speak about the subject, the balance between the ministry and the family. That is a precarious balance that every minister of God has to walk on. Let's go to the Lord in a word of prayer, if you would. Our precious Father, I thank you, Lord, for the day. I thank you for the people that come to listen. Lord, I pray that you might encourage them. Lord, I trust, Lord, that the things that we say tonight will not be offense to them, but rather, Lord, will be a help to them. Lord, I pray that in all things, your will might be done. I trust, Lord, that you might give me things to say that might be a blessing, might be a help. Lord, I pray that you just take charge of the service, you might use it pleasing to yourself, that your name will be glorified. Forgive us for our sins. Watch over us today. For it's in Jesus name that I pray, amen. One of the first things I want to say about being a minister is that it's a male. I'm gonna say that again. One of the first things I want to say about being a pastor, being a minister, being a preacher, is that it's a male, M-A-L-E, a man. You know why I believe that? In the passage that I just read, the word he or him shows up 11 times. in these seven verses. Let's go through and check it out. So you'll know that God expects a male to lead. This is a true saying. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he, that's two times, desires the good work. In verse number two, a bishop then must be the husband of one wife. I think there it is again. He must be vigilant, sober, good behavior, given hospitality out to teach. Not given a wine, no striker, not greedy, filthy looker, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous. Verse number four. one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. And the reasoning given there is in verse number five, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, Look at that. In verse number four, the word his shows up two times. In verse number five, the word man, his, and he. There it is. Verse number five, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and snare of the devil. So, today there are many women that are pastors of churches. Let's reword that. Many women are taking the place of a pastor in the organization that they're in. Probably not even a church, I don't know. I don't know. One fellow I talked to a long time ago, he told me that they had a woman pastor. He said, the hardest thing was getting used to. This is what he told me now. He told me the hardest thing getting used to that was the high pitched voice. I think I have more trouble than that. Getting used to that. But as anybody knows, any man is not perfect. There's no man perfect except Jesus Christ who is the perfect one. The only thing we have going for us is the fact that I am a male. God calls men into the ministry. He wants a man. There was a few judges of the nation of Israel that were women. I'm not against that. But you know, the period of the judges is not a good example either. Because in those days, when the whole nation was going against God, God chose a woman. And I'm thinking Deborah, who The man said to her, I won't go if you don't go. And she said to him, I'll go, but you know that the glory will not be given unto you. And it wasn't. But no man is able to treat his family in the right way when he is a pastor. Understand that. God has blessed me and my family, he really has. I have two sons, two daughters. One of my sons is a pastor. One of my daughters is a pastor's wife. God made them faithful. I didn't do that. One time, a long time ago, I was bemoaning the fact of my rebellious children to my mother-in-law. That's Jesse's mother. Her name is Liz. In that, I forgot entirely that she was the pastor's daughter. It never entered my mind at all when I was telling her how bad my children were. I said, I don't think I know how to raise them. And she told me something that I will never forget. She said, you sure don't. Well, that's some good news, isn't it? She was plain, she was very truthful. I did not know how to raise children, but she said this to me. She said, the most important thing you can ever do is to be what God wants you to be before your own children. They will see you as you live. They will get a hold of that. God is the only one that can put his desires into their hearts. God is the only one that can do that. You can't do it. You might as well lay it down. You might as well understand that only God can make your children be what they need to be. You can't do it. That was true words, isn't it? I mean, that is really true. Because I don't want my children to just be... The word mock comes to my mind, but that's not the word I want to use. I don't want my children just doing what I'm doing. I don't want them to be that way. I want them to be what God wants them to be. Not what I want them to be. I want them to be what God wants them to be. I told both my boys. I told Kevin, I could not do his job. I could not, I don't want to do it. I'm glad he can do it. I told Paul when he was plumbing. There's no way in this world I could even do that. I could not, I don't wanna do it besides that. They both just grinned at me. But I want my children to know this, that every one of them are accountable to God to do what he wants them to do. They're accountable to him. Being a pastor is a difficult thing. Difficult. I've heard it said that pastors should never be friends with the people that he pastors. I've heard that. I've heard it said. by a pastor, by a Baptist pastor, that you can't be friends with your church members. I tried that, I don't like it. I'm not any different than you are. You might look at me and think, this guy is really different. Boy, I'm not, I'm just like you. I'm just afraid just like you are. I have the same fears, the same, all that. I worry about things just like you do. I'm no different than you are. But I have found this. I am different than some of you. I know that. Sometimes I wish I was more outgoing. I'm as outgoing as I can be. I wish I was different. But I found this, that it's helpful to me When church members see the daily struggles that I go through, the daily things that I want to do, I need to do. I have before me a job that God has given to me to do. I think it's one of the greatest jobs in the world. I really do. It's a struggle. I make the radio broadcast with great care with great difficulty. The 30 minute one week broadcast. It's on Sunday morning, KWRE eight o'clock in the morning. I have three other messages during the week that I preach. I want to do a good job. I want to say what God wants me to say. I want you to understand that. But I make many mistakes. I'm not perfect. Not by a long shot. I'm not perfect. I'm not your idol at all. you'd be well advised to look to God and God only. Because he can take care of you, and I can't. God wants you to understand this, that your pastor prays and gets answers. but I'm nobody special. You can pray as effectively as I can about situations, about problems, about the things that come up in your life that I don't know about. You can pray about those things and God will hear and answer your prayers. Do you think that's so? Say amen, just so I'll know you believe that. Now, God knows the things that you need. You can pray and God will answer your prayers. That's why it's important that you pray. Know that God will answer all those prayers for you. This leads me to think about this thought. And when I think about this, I tell you what, I have laughed and laughed and laughed about this. When I pastored in Louisiana, there was another pastor there, he was a Baptist preacher, but he oftentimes told us in our church, he told Tom Thornton, he said, how's your tulips getting along? How's your tulips doing? Tom said, what are you talking about? We don't have any tulips. You know what he's talking about? How many know what tulip means? One, two, three, four, five. Five? It's a hard shell expression. We're not hard shell. I'm not hard shell. It's T-U-L-I-P. I don't remember now even what they mean. I haven't said that thing in a long time, and I don't intend to study it, to tell you the truth. But this pastor, he would always ask Tom about that, and Tom didn't know. He asked me about it. I told him what it was. He said, you don't believe that. You don't preach that. I said, no. But this pastor, this is the thing that's funny. I think it's funny. This pastor put hogs on his land. That's not funny. There's nothing wrong with a pastor owning hogs or putting hogs on his land. What was funny about it is that he put these hogs as far away from his house as he could possibly get them. You know why he did that? Have you ever smelled hogs? They don't smell good. But he put these hogs right next door to his neighbor. And when it rained, it was real bad, and the neighbor asked this passer, he said, would you please move those hogs? Because the scent is bad. The pastor said, they're on my land. I'll leave them where they got them. He had his hog pen there. He had his hogs there. The story here that I'm telling you is about praying. A pastor can pray, a preacher can pray, and God can hear their prayer. But I'll tell you something, people that are church members can also pray and God will hear their prayers as well. And so when this neighbor approached his pastor about moving his hogs and he said, the hogs are on my land, that's it. This man went to pray. He went to pray. And one night, there was a storm. And that hog house was struck by lightning. Killed all the hogs. The man said, The pastor can pray and he can preach. I can pray and I can study. I can learn what God's word says. And God will hear my prayer just as effectively as he hears that preacher. Do you believe that? Yeah, yeah. God, listen, the whole thing about it is, is that God can hear anybody's prayer. He wants you to pray. He wants the pastor to pray, but he wants you to pray. God can make your prayer effectual. God can make it work. Well, the end of the story is that the preacher moved the hogs. He moved the dead ones. That was real funny. But he built a pen the further away. That was real neat. I thought. I'm not a two-bit preacher either. I'm not. We find this, that the preacher's family is no different than anybody else's. The preacher's family is no difference. There's no difference in them at all. What the Bible says here about the husband leading the family is absolutely the truth. The husband ought to be the one to lead his family. The husband is responsible before God to lead his family, especially when there's children involved. So husbands, it's good when you want to do what God wants you to do. It's excellent when you want to do what God wants you to do. God will always provide a way for you to do that. He always will. And for you wives, it's good for you to be under subjection to your own husbands. That's a good thing. to listen and obey your own husbands in the Lord. It's an excellent thing. That causes your whole family to be prosperous. The daughters that you have will learn how to be faithful wives by watching you. Many times today, however, that whole family situation is turned upside down on its head. Even worse than that. Because children, when they watch their parents go through all kinds of difficulty and troubles and trials, and they don't get along, and they finally separate, what's the children supposed to do? It's not good. It's not good at all. A principle here in verse number four and verse number five is often overlooked. Notice, in this reading of the qualifications of a minister, that a minister, let me say it again, that a preacher, a man called of God to preach, before he can really be the kind of minister that God wants him to be, will have children of his own that he's raising, that he's trying to raise. Alright? In verse number four, the Bible said, one that ruleth well his own house, having His children in subjection with all gravity. Notice in this verse that the husband has not turned the raising of the children over to the mother. He's not done that. It is the husband's responsibility to raise the children. Leave that with the wives. Husbands, you have a responsibility to your own house. If you can't take care of your own house, how in the world can you ever take care of the church of God? How can you ever do that? I'll tell you how it's done. It's by the grace of God. It's by the grace of God. The only way any preacher can ever take care of his own family at the same time take care of his own church is by the grace of God. That's the only hope there is. I'm not sure the circumstances exactly why I can tell you all about that, but I think that we were in Shreveport, Louisiana in the hospital. I was visiting someone in the hospital. I think it was one of the deacons there at the church. And we were sitting there in the waiting room, waiting to get in. And there was another man over here on this side. And he began to talk to Tanya. And she's a little bitty girl. She wasn't very tall at all. She was playing with something on the floor or whatever. And he's talking to her. And he said something like, you know, you ought to go to church and all that and all that. And she's listening to all that. OK. And he said, you need to tell your parents that. And she said, Oh, you can talk to my daddy, he's right there. Yeah. And he began to talk to me and found out I was a pastor. He didn't know that. He couldn't have. I'd never seen the man before and never seen him since. But he and I had a good conversation about the Lord, about how great God is. And so, we was just there. But that's what Tanya said. I appreciate that very much. The Bible here in verse number five says, if a man know not how to rule his own house, how should he take care of the church of God? You can't do it. You can't do it. Every child is different. Every child is different. Some children are easy to get along with. Some children are not. I remember Vanna Maria Dieter, they had a girl and she was all girl, every bit girl. Calm, in the house, playing with dolls. That was her. She was a perfect child. And then they had Joe. And Joe was all boy. I'll tell you what, Joe was a, we kept him. His mother was working at the school. She was a teacher. And you would think that she would know. You would think that she would know. But until she had one of her own, it was different. But we kept Joe. The last I heard, he was helping the Baptist church. in Arkansas, somewhere in around Walnut Ridge area. He was either the assistant or working with the youth. I don't I'm not contact him at all. I would love to see and see how he was. One thing you need to be careful of is being a pastor. is making your children think that they have to do something because you're the pastor. That's wrong. I may be the pastor, but my children are just like everybody else. That's all they are. They're just people. They're my people, but they're just people. I've not tried to tell my children they need to be good because I'm the pastor. I tell them they are accountable to God. They're answerable to God, not me. And the final outcome of the thing, sometimes I need to get on to them. But I do that under the principles of God. They ought to be good because God wants them to be good. They are accountable to God and they will give an answer to God for what they do. There's some things, and my children are all grown now. Jess and I just live in the house alone. And it's different, it's a quiet house. Except on Sunday night, and I like that, when they all come by, or a lot of them come by. Some of them come by to eat, some of them just come by to talk, but it's good. I enjoy that. You see, a pastor cannot be a dictatorial pastor. I've known some of those. I don't think that's right. It doesn't fit my it's not what I need to be at all. Every dad must figure out the personality of their own child and deal with them according to that. Just like every pastor must figure out his own personality as well as the personality of the church and deal with them according to that. That's what it has to be. If there'd be any harmony at all. Who do you put first? Who do you put first? Do you put your church, your family, or your children, or your ministry, or your wife above God, or below God, or equal to God? Where do you do that? How do you do all that? Every pastor must come to the place of dealing with that. Every pastor must do that. God is involved in all of our lives. And, and he's a part of us. The things we do, the things we say are what God wants us to do. In some situations, I can put I don't know how to word this exactly. I don't like what I've got written down here. I don't know if I want to say that or not. I don't know. But in some situations, I can put God first by putting my wife, my children, my duties on this earth, vacations ahead of church duties. I can do that. If I put God first, I can do that. There's a time to everything as stated in Ecclesiastes chapter three. I give this one example, this one. This is one that Tanya gave to me and Tanya and Beth both gave this to me. For example, my children need a dad. I want to be a dad to them. I want to be a grandpa. And I don't mind being a great grandpa either. I'm looking forward to being a great, great grandpa. But when one of my daughters, I'm not sure who started this. But one of my daughters said to me, when they wanted to get married, they wanted me to walk him down the aisle, not preach the message. And I think both of them said this to me. I was kind of hurt at first, because I thought that'd be a good honor if I could marry my own daughter, that'd be a good thing to do. I could marry my son. I was involved in the ceremony of Paul. But they told me, my daughters told me this, that they told me that every time there was a church meeting, I was there and I was a pastor. I was not their dad, I was their pastor. I was taking care of church members for everybody. But on their wedding day, they wanted me to be dad. not pastor. I like that. I really like that. That puts everything in perspective, doesn't it? It puts everything in perspective. I may be your pastor, but I am the husband of my wife. I am also the father of my four children. We have grandchildren, we have great-grandchildren. My family needs me. You need me too as your pastor. I'm glad. I tell you what, I found out something just today. I have a birthday coming up, the 10th of December. I found out I'll be 81, not 82. I've gained a whole year today. Isn't that fabulous? That's great. So I've got another year to pester you. For my children, I mean, you're younger than I thought I was. So I got another year to pester you. God is good, isn't he? But this thing about being a pastor, in 1 Timothy 1, verse one through seven, is difficult. It is difficult. In verse number six, the Bible said, not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. A pastor, I tell you what, You know how a pastor can learn not to be a novice? It's in verse four and verse number five. That's it. That's it. That's how a pastor can learn not to be a novice. When they have children of their own. Because children can teach you a lot. Without children, There's a lot of things that you'll never learn. I feel sorry for people that don't have children. I really do. And I know I've talked to some of them, and they wish they had children too. But that comes along with time. It does. The Bible said in verse number seven, not only can they learn not to be a novice by their children, by teaching children, he learns how to be a pastor. That's what the Bible said. By teaching your own children, you learn how to be a pastor. Because you love your children, and you love the members of the church that God has put you over. It's a grave responsibility. to be able to teach people. You say, well, that's no big deal. Listen, I preach three times a week in the normal week and one radio broadcast. During that time, there's like 200 messages go out a year. In the course of 10 years, you multiply it out, you multiply it out. How long have I been here? How many messages have I preached? You think I haven't influenced your life? That's a grave responsibility. It's a great responsibility. I want you to be really devout the way God wants you to be. And not just for me, I want you to be the way God wants you to be. In verse number seven, it says, moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall in the reproach and snare of the devil. The devil's out there. In verse number six, verse number seven, the devil's out there. He wants to devour you. If you think it's easy being a pastor, come ride with me a while. Come sit where I sit. Come see what I see. Come see the influence. It's not easy. But the rewards are great. The rewards are great. I'm thankful to God for what he's done for me. Let's go Lord in a word of prayer. Our Father, I thank you, Lord. for letting me preach this little part of what a pastor, what a preacher, what a minister, what a dad, what a man really is. Lord, I pray we might not take any of this for granted, especially as men. Lord, I pray that you might help these women that are with us. Lord, for our wives, for our children's wives. I pray, Lord, for these daughters, that you might bless them. For our granddaughters, you might teach them what it really means to be true to God. I pray, Lord, that our speech will not be a mockery, will not be anything but true. I ask you, Lord, to watch over us, keep us close to you. Lord, I pray that for those who are lost, that you might touch them today, that they might come to you in saving faith, that they might trust in you and you only, Lord, knowing that you're the God that watches over them and you know exactly what they're doing. I pray, Lord, that you might make it real to them. In Jesus' name that I pray, amen.