Sunday message · Parenting Fail series
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Message Summary
Pastor Phillip Santillan closes the Parenting Fail series with Joseph’s story from Genesis and a simple conclusion: today matters. The series asks, “What do I do when I fail as a parent?” Phil begins with his own recent failure as a track coach. At a hectic meet he lost his cool and got snarky with his athletes, then noticed runners from other schools watching. The next day he gathered the team, admitted he had crossed a line and apologized, and they forgave him. Whether as coaches or parents, we all fail the people we value.
All of us are who we are because of those who came before us. “Every person is someone’s previous generation,” Phil says, and someone’s next generation too. The funny uncle or the candy-giving grandparent never planned to become that kind of person, yet we remember them. How we live in the present can shape the lives of those around us in the future.
Phil turns to Joseph’s story. Hated by his brothers, Joseph was sold into slavery (Genesis 37). In Potiphar’s house he kept honoring God, refusing the advances of Potiphar’s wife as a great sin against God, and was falsely accused and imprisoned. Yet the Lord was with Joseph in the prison (Genesis 39:21). When Pharaoh’s dreams troubled him, Joseph said God could interpret them and advised storing grain during seven years of plenty before seven years of famine. Made second in command, he simply did his job well, focused on what needed doing that day rather than on his past.
Years later his brothers came for grain and bowed before him without recognizing him. Scripture does not say what Joseph remembered, but Phil suggests a story from his childhood. His father Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright and blessing, then fled when Esau vowed to kill him (Genesis 27:41). Twenty years later, when God sent Jacob home, Esau came to meet him with 400 men. Jacob bowed seven times, but Esau ran to embrace him, and they wept (Genesis 33). Joseph was there, and Phil suggests he grew up hearing that this undeserved reconciliation was why he was alive. Now, holding power over his brothers’ lives, Joseph did for them what his uncle had done for his father, extending mercy and later telling them that God intended for good what they intended for harm (Genesis 50).
No matter the fails of the past, Phil says, choosing to live for the kingdom of God now will echo into the future. Children and grandchildren may forget most of what we tell them, but they will remember who we are and what we did when doing right was difficult. What if they take their cue from us in marriage, parenting, temptation, crisis and money? Today matters. Pointing to Jesus’ call to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6), Phil asks what will echo from our lives into the next generation, and closes with a challenge: if this is true, what do we need to change, and why wouldn’t we change as soon as possible?
