Father’s Day is not included in any church’s liturgical calendar, but most churches take note of it each year, along with Mother’s Day. There are many hymns about God as our Father, which is perhaps the best way to observe this day, focusing not on ourselves but on Him. Rather than talking about what good fathers we are (or that we had), how much better to talk about what a marvelous heavenly Father we have. He is the perfect Father who loves us, protects us, provides for us, disciplines us, promises us a glorious future in Christ, and assures us that He will never leave us or forsake us. One of the best of the hymns that direct us toward Him is “How Deep the Fathers Love,” which we’ve considered in a previous hymn study in this series.
But when we do consider human fatherhood, one of the very appropriate ways to think of this is to remember the divinely-assigned role of fathers being the heads of their family. Fathers have the God-given responsibility to lead their household in obedience to God’s Word, and to join with their wives to raise children who will know and love Jesus as the Lord of their lives, setting them on a path of keeping the Lord central in their lives in every dimension … in their maintaining godly conduct in the relationships with their childhood friends, in their education and career preparation, in their dating and courtship behavior, in their future roles as godly fathers in their own marriage, and in growing into respectful and involved citizenship in their land.
Many hymnals today include in the section on marriage and the home the hymn, “O Give Us Homes Built Firm upon the Savior.” It was written by Barbara B. Hart in 1965. The only thing that is available about her on the internet is that she was born in 1916. When this is the case, we are left to glean what is available from the lyrics of this hymn to draw an assumed personality profile of the kind of person who would write such a text. It would appear that she not only knew the Lord as her Savior and believed the Bible to be normative for Christian faith and life, but also that she had a high and biblical view of the family.
The theme of marriage and family is certainly one that is much in need of reinforcement in our culture today. These two things, along with the roles and identity of manhood and womanhood, are under vicious attack by the progressive “Woke” voices in society. Sadly, this is also true of churches that have abandoned a confidence in the inerrancy and beauty and controlling authority of the Scriptures. We are told that men can decide to change their self-identity to be women, and that women can decide to change their self-identity to be men. And for some time now, post-modernity has declared that the institution of marriage itself is dead, a relic of ancient understanding that needs to be set aside. It’s not just Scripture that declares these things to be harmful lies, even common sense should tell us (as science does!) that male and female DNA is unchangeable from the time of conception, and that children are much more secure and have a much brighter future when raised by a loving father and mother.
And the contemporary evangelical church needs to renew its commitment to the biblical view of marriage and family, as well. It’s embarrassing to read that divorce is almost as common among Christians as among unbelievers, and cases of adultery and desertion and abuse are not as rare among us as they should be. These are sinful attitudes and behaviors that cause terrible, lasting damage to children in such homes. How often do we hear of fathers regularly leading their households in family worship, teaching their children the doctrines of historic Christianity, and consciously modeling their behavior after the character and actions of their heavenly Father?
As we consider (and sing!) this hymn, we are renewing God’s call for husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, to embrace again His call to live out the kind of commitment that Joshua expressed almost four thousand years ago, when he said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). And we remind ourselves as the Bible warns, “Unless the LORD builds the house they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1). And we also read again God’s description of the roles of parents in a Christian household in Ephesians 5 and 6, husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church and wives being in submission to their husbands as to the Lord, and together raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the LORD.
Notice that the hymn is a prayer, with every stanza addressed to the Lord, asking Him to give these qualities to us and to make our families what He wants them to be. We do so recognizing that in our sinfulness, we can never do this apart from Him, so there is also an implied sense of repentance that we have failed to do so and need forgiveness as well as renewed diligence.
In stanza 1, we sing of several foundational principles about a Christian home. Jesus is the Savior on whom the household is built. When “built firm” upon Him, we have a solid foundation to withstand the pressures all around us. We want Him to be the Head (controlling all we think, say, and do), the Counsellor (providing wisdom to overcome our foolishness), and Guide (leading us where He wants us to go, rather than in the direction our sinful wills and our sinful culture call us to follow). And the stanza also speaks beautifully of our desire that each of our children give their heart to Jesus, secure in their lives that even when they falter, He will always be at their side.
O give us homes built firm upon the Savior,
Where Christ is Head, and Counsellor and Guide;
Where ev’ry child is taught His love and favor
And gives his heart to Christ, the crucified:
How sweet to know that tho’ his footsteps waver
His faithful Lord is walking by his side!
In stanza 2, we remember that this Christian home is dependent on “godly fathers, mothers,” who live in a manner consistent with the biblical pattern of personal and family life. In our churches, we do well to pray for fathers and mothers in the congregation, that the Lord would grant them the spiritual strength to maintain their “hope and trust” in the Lord, living with “tender patience” in the midst of the turmoils that besiege us. How wonderful to have parents whose “calm and courage” remains unshaken in these days. Add to that the selfless spirit of serving others with love in dark days.
O give us homes with godly fathers, mothers,
Who always place their hope and trust in Him;
Whose tender patience turmoil never bothers,
Whose calm and courage trouble cannot dim;
A home where each finds joy in serving others,
And love still shines, tho’ days be dark and grim.
In stanza 3, we have a wonderful description of a home “where Christ is Lord and Master.” That quality will show itself in regular family devotions with Bible reading, hymn singing, and prayer, and when day-by-day conversations are filled with praise as the natural way of speaking. What a wonderful picture we have here in which biblical faith is the constant orientation of the heart, a faith that can move mountains, and in which Jesus is not only the object of faith, but also the all-sufficient resource for the elderly as well as for children and teens.
O give us homes where Christ is Lord and Master,
The Bible read, the precious hymns still sung;
Where prayer comes first in peace or in disaster,
And praise is natural speech to ev’ry tongue;
Where mountains move before a faith that’s vaster,
And Christ sufficient is for old and young.
In stanza 4, we conclude with the prayer that the Lord would take ownership of our homes. Where that is found, we can trust Him whatever “problems, toil, and care” we must deal with. If the members of our family are bound together in love for one another and for the Lord as the Master of the home, then those will prove to be “bonds of love no enemy can sever.” And we certainly see many ways in which Satan is trying to do exactly that in these days. We pray that the Lord will always be at the center of our lives, in every endeavor, and be the honored “Guest in our hearts and homes.
O Lord, our God, our homes are Thine forever!
We trust to Thee their problems, toil, and care;
Their bonds of love no enemy can sever
If Thou art always Lord and Master there:
Be Thou the center of our least endeavor:
Be Thou our Guest, our hearts and homes to share.
The tune, FINLANDIA, is a very familiar one, most often used with Katharina von Schlegel’s 1752 text, “Be Still, My Soul, the Lord is on Thy Side,” translated into English in 1855 by Jane Borthwick. It comes from the serene hymn-like section of the patriotic symphonic poem “Finlandia,” written in 1899 and 1900 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). He later re-worked it into a stand-alone piece. With words written in 1940 by Veikko Anteroa Koskennieme, it is one of the most important national songs of Finland. Although not the official national anthem of the country, it has been continuously proposed as such.
Here is a rendition of this wonderful hymn.