Four Reflections from Growing Fathers in 2025

The start of a new year provides a natural opportunity to reflect and reset. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy reflecting on the previous year with my family. My wife and I went out on a date to review 2025 and discuss some tweaks to make in our routines to increase our joy in the Lord and better do the things God has called us to do.

In the spirit of new year’s reflections, the Growing Fathers team would like to share some lessons about fathering from 2025 that will encourage your parenting in 2026.

This week’s article has four lessons about being a growing father, starting with Brett Stowe’s lesson about listening. Brett points to an underrated but essential part of godly parenting that many of us overlook. Here’s what he says:

Brett Stowe’s Reflections

I’ve been married for 10 years and have now been “fathering” for 8 years. But even though I’ve been involved in this ministry of parenthood for this long, there is one lesson that I still struggle to learn: listening.

What I would like to pass on to our readers is the importance of listening to one’s spouse and children as you seek to shepherd their hearts towards Christ. God has continued to show me this year that the discipline of listening is not something that happens automatically; it must be cultivated as a spiritual discipline in my life. This requires work, grace, and perseverance that can only be found in the Gospel. So, my encouragement to other growing fathers in 2026 is to cultivate the spiritual discipline of listening and see God use this in your marriage and parenting to encourage your family to see and cherish Christ more in the year to come.

Chris Lynch’s Reflections

Listening affects so many areas of parenting, especially as your children get older and can express themselves more clearly. In this way, listening becomes a key puzzle piece to wisdom. Chris Lynch’s most impactful fathering lesson from last year revolved around the necessity of biblical wisdom and discernment. He wrote:

I think the biggest thing I am learning and striving to live out by God’s grace right now is the tangible importance of biblical wisdom and discernment. I now have a teenager and an almost teenager, and the parenting opportunities are becoming increasingly challenging and nuanced. The ability to take Scriptural truth, commands, or principles and apply them to real life situations (wisdom) and the ability to navigate complex decisions or situations with spiritual insight (discernment) are learned skills, and parenting stretches those skills with each passing year. I am thankful for the commands and promises of Scripture that help me pursue this. “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10)—it takes immense effort on my part to determine what honors God in each parenting challenge, and it’s my job to make that effort.

But at the same time, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). God gives wisdom freely to those who ask for it and doesn’t hold back! I find myself almost daily exercising these two parallel disciplines: taking significant time and brain sweat thinking through various parenting situations while also praying for wisdom constantly.

I must set aside laziness, being willing to wrestle with each challenge—while also trusting God to fulfill what he has said! God is making these truths concrete in my life through the realities of parenting at this stage.

Bodie Brock’s Reflections

Chris mentioned James 1:5, which invites anyone who desires wisdom to ask God for it in prayer. Bodie Brock’s biggest parenting lesson of 2025 came in this spiritual discipline of prayer:

I studied Luke and 1 Thessalonians this year. Both books taught me something about parenting that I already knew…but hadn’t fully internalized. You know. The kind of truth you’ve heard 100 times, but it doesn’t really stick until the 131st time. It’s simple. Are you ready? OK. Here it is: Prayer fuels discipleship. You see it in how Jesus prays for His disciples. You see it in how Paul prays for the churches he serves. I realized that I should be praying for my kids far more often than I was. Specific prayers. Constant prayers. Concerned prayers. Thankful prayers. Repeated prayers. One of the most effective parenting tools I have is prayer!

Simple? Yeah. But how often do you doubt the power of prayer? How often do you forget to pray? How often do you avoid praying for what you are afraid God won’t do? Or, even worse, how often do you avoid praying for what you doubt God can do? I know for me, I wasn’t praying nearly enough. I hope to lace my parenting with prayer in 2026. If you aren’t convinced of the power of prayer in discipleship, then here’s a pile of verses worth checking out: 1 Thess. 1:2, 3:10; Lk. 6:12, 9:28, 22:31-32; Col. 4:12; Eph. 1:16; 2 Thess. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:3.

Andrew Lee’s Reflections

What prayer does is express my need for God; it shows my dependence on Him. This was Andrew Lee’s most impactful fathering lesson of 2025. He wrote:

This year, God taught me greater dependence on him because so much of my life is outside of my control. Early in the year, our youngest came down with a scary sounding respiratory illness. In the moments in the middle of the night when I wasn’t sure what to do or even if I could do anything, I learned I needed to pray and take those concerns to my Heavenly Father.

Our most intense child required three trips to the urgent care to be glued or stitched up this year. I realized that while I can encourage safe and controlled behavior, only God can protect from serious harm. I have to ask him to do so and trust him in whatever comes in his sovereign plan.

In countless other moments of correction or instruction, I realized there was not a perfect phrase that I could say to convince my children of what was right. I ought to do my best to instruct from God’s Word, but only God’s Spirit can change my kids’ hearts. It seems from these experiences that sometimes God delays that change, at least in part, so that my own heart can learn to trust him more.

More than any other time in my life, I am convinced of the importance of growing in my relationship with God through regular prayer and study of his Word. This regular practice of dependence on him helps me to respond in dependence when the pressure is on in leading my family.

Conclusion

Our prayer for you as our readers is that 2026 would be a wonderful year of growth in listening, wisdom, prayer, and dependence on God, among other things.

If you would like further encouragement to cultivate a stronger prayer life this year, we encourage you to listen to episode 38 of the podcast, released just a couple weeks ago. John and Kris discuss the significance of prayer in the life of the Christian father.

May we all be men of faith who depend on the Lord in 2026!