DAILY VIDEO DEVOTIONAL
Sammy Tippit: Monty, thank you again for being with us in our devotion time. I want to talk a little bit about family life. I know (and I’ve heard from several sources) that you’re really committed to your family. Is it because your wife beats you over the head, or what? Tell me where that comes out of? What is the deep thing in your heart about your family?
Monty Williams: Well, they’re mine. You know, they’re mine for a short time. God has given me stewardship over my children. He has given me an unbelievable helpmate in my wife. We’re in partnership for the rest of our lives here on earth, and we don’t want to waste that time.
Parenting for me, I didn’t get a manual for that. I didn’t have a dad in my house growing up, so… That’s not to disrespect my father. I don’t believe in doing that publicly. But my dad wasn’t around to show me how to be a dad. So I’ve had to rely on the different people God has brought into my life.
They’ve been able to tell me based on God’s Word, “This is how you, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go…'” The Bible says children are born with folly, so it’s my job to redirect that and make sure they submit to the Lord. It’s fun too. I mean, it’s hard when all your kids look just like you. I just take that as my main job. My number one job is to steward my family into a relationship with God and not let that go to waste.
Sammy: You know, my father was sick. He was absent because he was in the hospital more than at home, so I grew up basically with a single parent home too. When I got married, I remember feeling so inadequate. You know, “How do I do this? I don’t know how to be a husband. I don’t know how to be…”
I remember praying a prayer, “God, teach me through Christ how to be a husband. Teach me through your fatherhood how to be a father.” How much does that play into your relationship (looking to God as your Father or Christ as the husband of the church)? How much does that play in your relationship with your family?
Monty: Yeah, I had those same prayers. They usually went like this: “Lord, I messed up today badly. Please cover my kids. Don’t let what I did today scar them for life.” He always does. Then I pray God would send me godly men who were committed to their wives and committed to their kids so I could watch them. But nothing has been more powerful than studying God’s Word.
When you study the Word and you see how King David wasn’t a great dad and you saw the ramifications of that, or you see Paul and his spiritual sons (Timothy, Titus, and Onesimus, guys like that), you get a blueprint for fatherhood. I just think the Lord covers my mistakes because (you ask my oldest child) there’s a number of them. I have a wife who is more than adequate to come alongside of me and help me along as far as fathering is concerned.
Sammy: Thank you for sharing that. We appreciate that.
Monty: Thank you!
Philippians : Chapter 3
15) All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16) Only let us live up to what we have already attained. 17) Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 18) For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19) Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20) But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21) who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Book of the Month
Sammy Tippit told his fiancée, “I can’t promise we’ll be rich, but life won’t be boring.”
Sammy had no idea what an understatement that would become. Beginning in the bars of Baton Rouge and the nightclubs of Chicago, Tippit has shared the news of life-changing faith in Christ all over the world – including in the middle of a revolution in Romania, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, and war in Burundi and the Congo.
Sammy’s lifelong adventure has come at a great price. He’s been cursed, threatened, arrested, deported, and blacklisted. He’s also been personally broken, ravaged with illness, and devastated by grief.
Yet he continues to preach to in stadiums, in open fields, and via satellite technology to hundreds of thousands around the globe. For all other books…
About Sammy Tippit Ministries
STM has been providing inspiration and help around the world for nearly 50 years. Sammy Tippit, founder and president, is a world renowned counselor, teacher and evangelist with experience serving and helping people in over 80 countries. Sammy provides materials that help people tackle a broad array of social, societal, psychological and spiritual issues. He is particularly passionate about making materials accessible to other countries around the world. Sammy is married to Debara “Tex” Tippit, and they have two children and five grandchildren.
Sammy Tippit Ministries is a registered 501c3 non-profit organization.
Contact: info@sammytippit.org
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