As a church, we have been faithfully reading through the Book of Proverbs during our corporate “Reading of God’s Word” portion of Sunday services. Every week, I stand amazed at the relevance of the Proverbs in these ongoing turbulent days. God inspired Solomon and others to communicate timeless wisdom through the Proverbs, and He did it for our good, not to sap the joy out of living—as some would charge. The Lord’s counsel and statutes are always both good, and for our good.

One familiar “go to” proverb for Christian parents is Proverbs 22:6: 

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

 My wife and I surely took this one to heart with humility and prayer as we began a journey over thirty-six years ago to receive and shepherd five amazing gifts from God. Notice how the proverb contains both a command and a promise. In the command to train up your child, there is an implied marathon effort—a lifetime commitment with peaks, valleys, exhilaration, and exhaustion. So, as parents, we are commanded to shepherd our sons and daughters God’s way for the long haul. 

However, the command, in all that it asks, is also given with this magnificent guarantee: if we run the marathon race of parenting in faith-inspired obedience and perseverance, God will honor the investment. This past weekend, I had the great privilege of witnessing God’s faithfulness to this specific promise when I went hunting with my oldest son, Drew. 

Drew is in every respect a full-grown man who loves Christ and is growing in His grace. As such, we all observe him to be a loving husband, a dedicated young father of my precious first grandson, a hard-working and respected electrician, a generous and selfless friend, and an accomplished outdoorsman. My heart is full as I consider the marathon race mostly run for him (every parent will tell you the parenting race continues over a lifetime), and to see what God has done with the wobbly faith of two clueless young parents—my wife and me—three plus decades ago.           

So, what does all of this have to do with a hunting trip? Well, in Drew’s growth to become more and more like Christ, he did an amazingly Christlike thing quite specifically for me, his old man.

You see, Drew took a liking to hunting in Alaska completely independent of me. He has self-reliantly developed a growing passion with great intentionality, ever becoming more knowledgeable and competent. He has acquired gear, learned the rules and culture, improved his skills, and developed grit. In so doing, he has utterly left me behind. Until last weekend I could only imagine what he was experiencing and talking about.

But instead of leaving me stranded in a world outside of his, Drew pursued me over the past year to get me to come and hunt with him. In hindsight, I see the magnitude of the challenge Drew faced. I see the work he patiently put in to spark interest in me, to encourage me, to educate me, to equip me, and to get me all the way ready for a real, arduous Alaska hunt. Why did he do this? After all, our relationship was already very good, and the distance I needed to travel from zero knowledge to novice readiness was rather breathtaking. His answer says it all. He wanted to spend time with his dad so that we could draw closer as men in the sight of God.

Beyond feeling greatly touched by his demonstration of love for me, Drew’s choice to pursue me got me thinking about what is meant in the proverb by “the way he should go.” It’s easy to think of obeying the proverb’s command with parental structure and activities–take them to church, have family devotions, limit TV, screen their friends, discourage social media, etc., etc. Such things can rightly serve as biblical behavior training, but Scripture also talks way more about the condition of a person’s heart. “The way he should go” in fact, is speaking more about the direction of the heart, than the path of the feet. Rules and structure can only go so far. Parents must also humbly model Christ in prayer, word, and deed to truly reach the heart of those in our care.

Have I done this as a dad? I suppose you could say that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” as the saying goes. Yet, I am not proud of many things I have said and done over the three plus decades of parenting. There is much I would do differently if given the chance. But from where I sit today, I can say that by God’s amazing grace, I have loved my son completely and hence, sacrificially.

I say this not to boast in any way, but to encourage whoever may be reading this with a sense of failure or loss. As the great Yogi Berra once said, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Get up and keep running the marathon even when you trip and fall flat on your face. Why? Because God is always the hero of every redemption story. God does reward faith, but our faith is only possible because He has first given it to us. The marathon run is always toward God’s grace! If I am to see my part in any of where God has my children today, it is simply that I responded to His sovereign grace and believed. He has done all the rest.

As I observed Drew in all phases of our caribou hunt—the preparation, the drive, the hunt itself, the recovery to town, and the reflection afterward—I witnessed a Christlike heart. I was selflessly offered a godly man’s love and respect that swelled my own heart. I was ministered to in a manner that proved I did not even realize how much I needed him to minister to me. He loved me in my elder years of relative helplessness the way I loved him as a helpless innocent child. I can only guess at how awesome eternity will be worshipping God with my son, who is my friend and now in some ways, my mentor, standing at my side.

The things that are truly of God are beyond measure and so my hunt with Drew was priceless.