The King's Hall - August 18, 2023


Be the Blessing Man: A Roadmap to Joyful Fatherhood

Mentioned
Anti-OnlyFans Fatherhood, Part II Antisemitism, The Antioch Declaration, & Ogden

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

192.17

Word count

13,591

Sentence count

676

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

27

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:44.880 The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.
00:00:51.660 Well, gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall podcast.
00:00:55.180 Joined today by Dan Burkholder, Brian Sauve.
00:00:58.040 We are talking, again, this episode about mirthful fathers.
00:01:02.560 And to demonstrate that, we started our pre-show with, what would you say, Brian?
00:01:07.440 Friendly ribbing?
00:01:08.180 I think what we started our pre-show with was a competition to see who could be the rudest to me personally for 30 to 45 minutes.
00:01:18.200 And the answer was everybody tied for first.
00:01:20.800 In my defense, you started peacocking.
00:01:23.300 first and it is a friend's responsibility yeah you're right to hammer the nail i was peacocking
00:01:29.160 in response to ben's earlier harmonica hatred and threatening to kill me by way of poisoning
00:01:35.100 okay this sounds extreme however however i think just a cold analytical look at some of the facts
00:01:41.540 dan just so our audience knows oh so and now we're gonna say dan's gonna give us the cold
00:01:47.040 objective i will i will be fair unbiased to be fair this is what's happening it's like hitler
00:01:52.540 tell us about world war ii
00:01:54.040 hey church i was gonna say something about world war ii hey your friends are you know it's important
00:02:02.040 to have friends it's important to trust one another enough to be able to make fun of one
00:02:06.020 another but i will tell you but now brian so vey single-handedly is one of the best men i know
00:02:14.120 Wow.
00:02:14.600 Wow.
00:02:15.160 See, you go and take the high road, and now I'm like—
00:02:17.620 No, no, no, no.
00:02:18.520 Think of it more like senators debating.
00:02:21.920 The most esteemed, highest, most honorable Mr. Sauvé.
00:02:26.540 Is the biggest son of a—
00:02:29.200 And since he is so—
00:02:30.180 A mother.
00:02:31.200 Son of a pumpkin, I've ever heard.
00:02:32.480 Since Brian is so great at that, Brian, I wonder if you would kick us off.
00:02:37.660 That was a patented Eric Kahn transition, if I've ever heard one.
00:02:40.580 Well, it looked like you guys were, I don't know, maybe going to throw it down.
00:02:43.520 It's fine.
00:02:44.640 I was trying to save our.
00:02:46.180 He called me Hitler.
00:02:47.720 He did. 0.99
00:02:48.600 I compared you.
00:02:49.620 And in a bad way.
00:02:51.000 Look, I could have said Churchill.
00:02:52.500 Which would you rather have?
00:02:54.000 They're both bad.
00:02:55.180 Okay.
00:02:55.800 I, you know what?
00:02:57.180 I don't want to be recorded.
00:02:59.260 You know, the amazing thing about being the blessing man in your home.
00:03:04.860 I have literally no transition for this.
00:03:07.140 Yeah.
00:03:07.460 Other than this was going to end in fisticuffs.
00:03:09.460 I knew it.
00:03:10.700 But you're right, Eric.
00:03:11.640 Brian, we're talking about the blessing man.
00:03:13.120 In the home, we're continuing this, and today we're going to be talking particularly about how we can be this in a very practical way.
00:03:19.980 So one of the things that we talked about last episode, I think we mentioned it, was Doug Wilson has said, as a father, you want to be the blessing man.
00:03:26.600 So in your home, you have a unique role to be both disciplinarian, so you're providing authority, order, and structure.
00:03:32.340 All this is good, but you also need to be like the Lord who overflows with blessing.
00:03:38.360 And Dan, I love this picture from Psalm 65, 9 through 13.
00:03:42.620 If you would read that for me in your sweet bass slash baritone voice.
00:03:48.720 I just wanted to derail us again and just keep arguing.
00:03:53.060 I'm forcing you to be joyful.
00:03:54.760 Psalm 65, verses 9 through 13.
00:03:57.640 You visit the earth and water it.
00:03:59.700 You greatly enrich it.
00:04:01.320 The river of God is full of water.
00:04:04.200 You provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.
00:04:06.880 You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers and blessing its growth.
00:04:13.340 You crown the year with your bounty.
00:04:15.520 Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
00:04:18.280 The pastures of the wilderness overflow.
00:04:20.600 The hills gird themselves with joy.
00:04:22.820 The meadows clothe themselves with flocks.
00:04:25.280 The valleys deck themselves with grain.
00:04:27.580 They shout and sing together for joy.
00:04:30.820 We read that on Sunday, didn't we?
00:04:33.240 Did we really?
00:04:33.940 Yeah, the response of reading was out.
00:04:35.240 Oh, yeah.
00:04:36.740 Nice.
00:04:37.820 A unique providence.
00:04:39.140 Tie-in.
00:04:40.340 Yeah.
00:04:40.700 So this was actually written before that.
00:04:42.620 So Brian obviously copied me.
00:04:44.360 However, he doesn't look at the notes.
00:04:46.440 So he definitely did.
00:04:48.520 Deacon Ben Garrett picked that reading.
00:04:50.360 Deacon Ben.
00:04:51.600 Yeah.
00:04:51.980 Love it.
00:04:52.700 So I love this picture, though.
00:04:54.500 Spurgeon talks about this passage in really how the father is – the picture here is a wagon going through fields and it's just spilling out with good gifts for God's people.
00:05:05.700 So God himself is overflowing with abundant gifts and joy, and we are to model this.
00:05:11.540 Brian, it made me think of something that you had tweeted recently, and not about harmonicas or Birkenstocks or anything like that.
00:05:18.640 No, unrelated to harmonicas.
00:05:19.700 But you said this.
00:05:20.700 You said, men, if you don't lead actively in your home, you rob your wife and children.
00:05:24.460 So take initiative in the following.
00:05:26.540 Prayer, singing, shepherding, discipline, family worship, goal setting, and care.
00:05:32.220 By virtue of these vocations, husband and father, you owe your people strong leadership.
00:05:39.060 So, Brian, as you look at kind of all those things, one of the questions I have is, A, you have to overflow and blessing in kind of a lot of different ways as a father.
00:05:46.420 So why does this this act of overflowing and blessing to your people, why does it require such range for the father himself?
00:05:54.600 I think it requires range like that because, again, I mean, we've beat this drum through the season, but it's so important to remember this.
00:06:02.220 that what we're talking about in fatherhood is something that is an overflow or an outflow or
00:06:07.440 reflection of God's fatherhood. And one of the features of God's fatherhood that we're probably
00:06:14.840 most in danger of forgetting or at least minimizing is God's joy, God's jovial, mirth-filled,
00:06:25.960 joyful character. Like that Psalm is so good because you look at what God created, and especially
00:06:31.340 if you look at what God created without sin, before sin entered the world, or when God's
00:06:37.460 redemption has come to its full flowering, you just see that the whole world is shouting and
00:06:41.980 singing for joy. It's so glad to be what God made it. It's so glad to be doing what God made it to
00:06:48.780 do. So when you're a father, and you're doing what God made you to do, and you're in the pocket,
00:06:54.840 and you're doing a good job, and you feel the smile of God the Father on you, there's just a
00:07:00.520 joy that should infuse everything that you do so that your children feel it, your wife feel it,
00:07:08.120 and what they're really feeling is God's love channeling through you. So the danger is that
00:07:13.640 we would be competent in a lot of things and have a lot of range, but it would be loveless.
00:07:18.080 Like 1 Corinthians 13, you could do all these great things, but if you have not love, Paul says
00:07:21.660 you are nothing. If we're doing our job right, we want to be pursuing competence, we want to be
00:07:28.200 pursuing productivity in our households and strong leadership. But if it's not filled and overflowing
00:07:34.140 with a love and a joy, then it's not properly imaging God's fatherhood. It's not properly
00:07:42.880 demonstrating his character. And I think the result is that our children will, they will come
00:07:48.220 to resent us in our fatherhood. And maybe even those things that particularly we've put a lot
00:07:53.300 of effort into like education or, you know, vocation, they might come to particularly resent
00:07:59.060 those things because those things just become another contact point in their lives for somebody
00:08:03.720 who is joyless and miserly and not just simply not fun to be around. Yeah, Dan, it reminds me,
00:08:12.280 I know you've mentioned this a lot, you know, in the charges and some of the stuff you said in the
00:08:16.080 church, but we kind of have this picture of man, early chapters of Genesis, man is a cultivator,
00:08:20.880 He's a gardener.
00:08:21.800 But this also goes to our people.
00:08:24.180 We have to cultivate our people and our home being one of those places.
00:08:27.780 Of course, you think of Song of Solomon and it will compare the wife and marriage and children of the fruit of marriage.
00:08:33.300 It compares all of this to a garden.
00:08:35.380 So one of the things I wanted to ask you is, you know, we start to think and dig into some of the practical things that we need to be doing to cultivate joy.
00:08:42.640 What are some of those things that you think of and how does it connect to gardening work?
00:08:46.780 So you've got things like walls, you've got things like weeds and foxes in the garden, stuff like that.
00:08:52.120 There's a lot of different things we could say.
00:08:54.100 But how would you connect the work of fathers in the home to kind of this gardening imagery?
00:08:59.000 Yeah, I think gardens are really useful in the way that I think through homes as far as an image to display a lot of the beauty and the blessing, fruitfulness of a home.
00:09:10.500 or the curse from a poorly cultivated garden or home that can come into the house.
00:09:18.020 So imagine with me for a moment, if you will, that you are walking up a path towards a wall
00:09:28.820 that's covered in ivy and you approach an iron gate and you open this gate and the hinges
00:09:36.760 kind of squeak a little bit and you think that probably needs WD-40. Anyway, you walk in through
00:09:42.500 the gate and you close it. And what greets you is a walled garden and the smell of fresh earth,
00:09:50.300 of flowers, of green things, the smell of water in the air, of humidity. And there's a certain
00:09:58.460 feel of warmness from the walls that have absorbed the sun. And you walk through the paths that are
00:10:04.740 well kept uh looking at all of the beautiful growing things the neat rows of vegetables and
00:10:10.580 the beautiful uh wild flowers that are are growing up sporadically at different blooms
00:10:17.020 and you walk your way over to an espalliard peach tree and you grab a fresh peach and you take a
00:10:21.880 bite that's been warmed by the sun and you're just enjoying it i mean it's like one of the best i
00:10:27.080 would imagine a walled garden is one of the best things i do not have a walled garden but hey this
00:10:31.480 This is first-generation work if we're talking about a house, right?
00:10:34.260 So, I mean, that's one picture of peace, of Sabbath, relaxation, of fruitfulness, of good work being fruitful, right?
00:10:46.160 Yeah.
00:10:46.340 But you have other gardens, probably similar to, like, my garden in my backyard, which when you walk in, there are welded wire fences around it to keep my dogs and children and chickens out of it.
00:10:58.600 And there's weed barrier put down and there's still wild growth of weeds somehow.
00:11:03.880 And it's kind of haphazard.
00:11:05.360 Plants have died and have not been well tended.
00:11:08.260 And if you picture those two places in a house, you have one that seems to have a very diligent and careful gardener who has taken study of his people, of his place, and he has cultivated it well.
00:11:25.400 He's used his gifts and the gifts of his people to cultivate a fruitful Sabbath home that's full of rest.
00:11:34.300 Whereas the other one, the one with the weed barrier that doesn't keep out the weeds, is one, as you walk into that garden and that house, it immediately produces different feelings than Sabbath and rest and peace.
00:11:48.940 It immediately produces stress.
00:11:51.380 it produces things like envy because somebody else probably has a better garden than you or
00:11:58.920 better house than you. And it immediately makes you anxious because of all the work that has gone
00:12:06.140 undone and the fruit suffers. You don't have as good a fruit. And so I think that's really helpful
00:12:13.180 when you start looking at your home as a garden, because you have to make a careful study of the
00:12:19.020 people that you're responsible to, right? That's really the most important thing. The garden's just
00:12:23.860 an image, you know, but of things like sin. So weeds take root. And if you don't take care of
00:12:30.580 the weeds before they go to seed, they will multiply. Just like if you walk into your house
00:12:35.960 and you see a small sprout of a weed of sin come up in your wife or in your own life or in your
00:12:43.240 kids. And you don't address that as a, as a good gardener, as a good shepherd of your people and
00:12:51.440 say, Hey, we need to take care of this, this sin. We need to repent from it and make sure that
00:12:55.460 it is plucked out by the roots, that it doesn't grow deep and produce seeds that will produce a
00:13:01.660 fruitful home. But if you go in and you're like, man, I just can't deal with this today.
00:13:05.360 like, you know, my wife's nagging me or I'm being slothful or, you know, apathetic towards my
00:13:13.100 family. What happens is those roots go deep and they become really difficult to pull out.
00:13:19.120 And then they have this annoying tendency of going to seed and spreading other sins. Because
00:13:24.660 as Pastor Brian Sauve here has noted in many sermons, when Paul is talking about sins,
00:13:30.940 they come in clusters like grapes, right? And there's a reason for that. You usually don't just
00:13:35.920 have one sin that comes up and you're like, wow, that's an anomaly. I don't really know where that
00:13:39.300 came from. It's like a flowering or a fruiting of sin, which is real bad because it's weeds that
00:13:45.400 will take over your house. And so all of that to say a diligent husband, a diligent father
00:13:51.600 sees the state of his people and encourages them towards fruitfulness, towards repentance.
00:13:57.260 and he makes a diligent study of him.
00:13:59.640 He knows his people and produces fruit.
00:14:01.900 It produces fruit in his house.
00:14:03.640 But the gardener that lacks diligence,
00:14:06.820 the father that doesn't make a study of his people
00:14:09.020 that is selfish and lacks discipline
00:14:11.260 will produce a house that is full of weeds.
00:14:15.780 Yeah, I think it's a really good point.
00:14:16.660 So Brian, one of the things you guys have been talking about
00:14:18.580 in Breithearth is Ken Sandy's book,
00:14:21.460 Peacemaker and Conflict Resolution.
00:14:23.480 It seems to me that a lot of these things are tied together.
00:14:26.500 in terms of both positive and negative,
00:14:28.920 what we need to be cultivating in the home,
00:14:30.740 putting certain sins to death.
00:14:32.340 I wonder if you would just kind of unpack for me
00:14:34.120 some of the practical things
00:14:36.060 that you guys have been talking about
00:14:37.160 and why that's so important
00:14:38.100 if you want to have a flourishing, fruitful garden
00:14:40.460 that is your home.
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00:15:17.300 yeah when you when you look at the home and i love the picture that dan just
00:15:25.720 painted for us of the two like directions that you can go what really came to mind for me and
00:15:32.620 it maps onto the bright hearth season and also maps onto what we've been doing in church lately
00:15:36.340 in the sermons in our blueprints for biblical household series it reminds me of the five
00:15:41.720 aspects of masculinity and how if you those two roads are really before you in each aspect of
00:15:47.560 them practically speaking and if you go down the path of righteousness and plotting and disciplined
00:15:53.680 obedience to god in each of those categories the result is over a long period of time that garden
00:15:59.220 it's glorious because it's such hard long work to do that to take an especially first generation work
00:16:05.220 where you're taking a lot that's overgrown with weeds speaking from experience and my lot still
00:16:11.520 has weeds in it, but it takes years to go from that barrenness to this mature garden with the
00:16:18.480 wall around it and the peach in the sun and the espalier tree and all of the... And I was there
00:16:23.060 with you, Dan. I literally texted Ray while you were talking. Ray, you don't know what this means
00:16:27.240 yet, but when you get to this episode, sound design everything under what Dan described about
00:16:31.320 the garden. But the five aspects are lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory bearers.
00:16:36.340 Those are Bill Mauser. Bill Mauser. Bill Mauser was in Future Men. Yes. Yes. The Future Men. Mark Driscoll ripped him off and didn't give him credit, but we'll give him credit here. The late friar Bill Mauser. He described masculinity as godly masculine men are lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory bearers.
00:16:54.360 when you're aiming for jovial, mirth-filled, joyful maturity in your home with your children,
00:17:01.300 your wife, your vocation, your church, all of those things. As a Lord, that means as a king
00:17:05.960 ruling well and ordering the realm. So you're the one who steps in and you have a smile on your face
00:17:12.460 and you say, we're going somewhere great. This kingdom is headed, this little kingdom of a
00:17:17.800 household or a church or whatever it is. We're going somewhere great. We're going somewhere
00:17:23.280 where there's good fruit and there's joy and there's peace and rest. And so as a Lord,
00:17:28.840 you're ordering. You're saying, well, then we're going to need to do this and we're going to need
00:17:32.540 to do that. And you're deploying troops and you're fighting battles. As a husband and a shepherd,
00:17:38.040 you are tending the flock and you're going down and stooping down your children and your wife
00:17:41.720 and you're caring for them. You're keeping a watch on your flock. You know where they are.
00:17:46.360 As a savior, you're protecting the home from enemies. And all the stuff we've talked about
00:17:51.300 this season with media and you know what your children are watching and what's allowed in your
00:17:55.460 home you're as a savior defending them from enemies as a sage you're studying and you're
00:18:00.800 leading your family into um like what joseph people would talk about peeper piper piper as a
00:18:07.040 true leisure yeah right a culture that's has true leisure and rest because it knows that we're not
00:18:14.000 just machines and cogs and so we're teaching our children to read well and think well and speak
00:18:19.080 well. And as glory bearers, we're tending everything towards its greatest glory. And so
00:18:24.200 practically, when I think about that, the thing that should suffuse all of that is a warmth and
00:18:29.120 a joy. And so very practically, I mean, this looks like physical affection, getting down on the level
00:18:35.820 of your children, being the blessing man that hugs the children and, hey, come sit on my lap,
00:18:42.000 you know, come, let me read to you. Let me put my arm around you and read you a story tonight.
00:18:46.040 Let me, you know, not ignore you all day, get home from work tired and just like do some yard work and send everybody to bed.
00:18:53.100 Let me be the one who is initiating warm touch with my wife in front of the children.
00:18:59.700 And I mean like obviously nothing weird.
00:19:01.880 I mean your kids should know that you're the one that's like, come here, babe.
00:19:06.880 You're showing affection properly as a man.
00:19:10.000 Was it you, Brian, who said one time, like, it should be showing affection to your wife in a way that would sort of make the kids squirm a little bit?
00:19:16.700 Like, ah, dad.
00:19:17.500 Come on, dad.
00:19:18.320 Yeah, you gotta, I mean, you're showing, you're giving words of encouragement and praise verbally.
00:19:23.240 You're dispensing encouragement and exhortation.
00:19:26.640 Your children hear you laugh a lot in your home.
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00:20:44.760 It's really interesting because I was thinking of two things, physical affection, and then the affection you show your wife.
00:20:51.120 And an older pastor had said one time, really, the way that you love your wife physically in every way, the way that you talk to her, you're modeling for, especially if you have boys, you're modeling to your boys how they ought to treat their wives.
00:21:04.040 but he said also physical affection yeah so like having having environments i think in america
00:21:09.600 particularly this is a very american thing where like the the only time you may you know make
00:21:15.840 physical contact with your kids is with a paddle and they that shouldn't be it no you know they
00:21:21.580 should feel your warmth and and you know your approval even as the boys have gotten older yeah
00:21:26.740 you know now i have a 16 year old i probably hug him more now than ever yeah or just you know
00:21:32.100 pat his head yeah in a very loving and affectionate way like i'm so proud of you good job do that with
00:21:38.080 all the boys like they still need physical affection and so we want them obviously to be
00:21:43.860 physically affectionate with their wives and children as well well if if you're stodgy and
00:21:49.360 british stiff upper lip with them they're not going to have that so we don't want it to be a
00:21:53.300 cold indifference uh when it comes to the physical i do want to ask on that front brian like have you
00:21:59.040 seen dan and i just have boys at this point have you seen a difference with boys and girls especially
00:22:05.260 in the younger ages on this front yes the it's actually helped me be more affectionate with my
00:22:11.660 boys having little girls because little girls are just such a glory you want to like grab them and
00:22:19.740 swing them around and dance with them and give them a kiss and uh they're you know they start
00:22:25.560 playing hard to get when they're like literally two three so my little literally today my wife
00:22:30.820 was dropping lunch off for me and picking one of our boys up from a school thing and uh little
00:22:36.560 winnie's in her car seat and i'm at the window over on lexi's side of the van and our van's like 0.79
00:22:41.560 eight miles long fits like 100 people and winnie from way in the back she's like an exaggeration
00:22:46.600 daddy daddy like she's peeking up and i'm like okay winnie i'm gonna come around i come around
00:22:55.540 And then she's called me in. 0.94
00:22:57.500 She's coolened me in, you know, and I'm like a sucker.
00:23:02.540 And I'm like, hey, baby, how you doing? 0.79
00:23:04.660 You want to kiss?
00:23:05.180 And she's like, no, you know, I'm like, are you sure you don't want to kiss?
00:23:10.680 And she's like, no.
00:23:12.840 And she's but she's leaning closer and closer to my face until I give her a kiss.
00:23:17.940 So she she she senses no one taught her that she should desire, you know, masculine affection.
00:23:25.540 and that she should, but not, but be a little coy about, like, that's just a, there's a little
00:23:30.480 feminine woman in there. And I'm to teach her what it looks like to be gentle and loving and
00:23:39.020 respectful and, uh, you know, warm and affectionate. And it's just, man, it's, it's a joy
00:23:44.800 with, with the little, little, it's a joy with the, with the little lads too. But I mean,
00:23:49.320 there's, there's something there that if I don't give it, no one else can.
00:23:53.920 Yeah, I think that's a really important point. Dan, one of the things I was going to ask you, we were talking about this recently and addressing discipline issues. Actually, when those get addressed the right way, that has actually produced more joy in the home as well. So talk to me about how, you know, because a lot of people would think like, oh, discipline is the mean side. Well, actually the fruit of discipline is joy.
00:24:14.520 Yeah. Yeah. Because what happens is sin actually separates and it causes, well, it's those weeds
00:24:20.980 that I was talking about. It separates relationally. And so what you're doing is you're correcting that
00:24:26.560 to bridge that gap again. And so one of the things that I think is really important,
00:24:32.480 it took me a while to figure out through reading and things like that, is that you have to complete
00:24:38.980 the discipline. So it's not just, Hey, you hit your brother, you get a, you get a spanking,
00:24:44.960 say sorry, you know, and that's, that's like it, right? There's actually more steps in that you
00:24:50.800 have to take, this is about knowing your people. This is really what this is about. So I have you,
00:24:55.920 I have four sons. They have different personalities. I'm not really disciplining the youngest one yet.
00:24:59.960 He's just a baby. So the three boys, they've all got very different personalities. And so knowing
00:25:05.000 my boys, I know what it looks like when they're actually mourning their sin and when they're
00:25:09.640 being stubborn, right?
00:25:11.960 And so when I discipline them, if they don't respond with repentance and remorse and true
00:25:18.460 desire to reconcile, then the discipline isn't actually complete.
00:25:22.060 It's not over yet.
00:25:22.920 And what can happen is you could actually be forging the child's heart against you in
00:25:28.560 rebellion because you're training them.
00:25:30.000 If you leave it there.
00:25:30.620 If you leave it there.
00:25:31.460 Yeah, exactly.
00:25:32.000 If you leave it there with incomplete reconciliation, you're actually training them there, too.
00:25:37.560 You're training them to harden their hearts against the discipline of the Lord and against the discipline of whatever hierarchy they find themselves in, whether it's a boss or it's a pastor.
00:25:47.580 And so it's really important as you discipline your children that you complete the discipline into reconciliation.
00:25:54.720 And out of that, out of that true reconciliation comes joy.
00:25:58.720 I mean, you just – the ultimate picture of reconciliation is when we were separated from God and he saved us.
00:26:04.580 He gave us a new heart, gave us a new mind, and all of a sudden we're sons.
00:26:10.520 Well, it's so interesting how –
00:26:11.760 And there's joy there.
00:26:12.740 Yeah, and how discipline works in that way where – I remember in years past, especially when the kids were younger, but even now, we'll go through this.
00:26:19.840 When they're younger, you're doing so much boots-on-the-ground discipline, like 10 times a day every day for each kid.
00:26:25.780 that's probably an underestimate of how much discipline. But I remember these conversations
00:26:31.140 with my wife and we would say things like, man, things have really, we've slipped. We've kind of
00:26:36.240 gotten lazy with the discipline. We're really frustrated and angry with our kids. They're
00:26:40.720 frustrated with us. You didn't see a lot of this fruit. And we're like, we need three good weeks
00:26:45.980 of really tightening the belt and just clamping down on every issue. So it was like, we're going
00:26:52.620 of discipline for everything that is not cheerful, complete, quick obedience. And we're going to
00:26:57.360 follow through on the discipline until it's complete. And, you know, every time like clockwork
00:27:02.360 two to three weeks of doing that, not, it usually didn't even take that long. It can be two days of
00:27:07.460 just being consistent with your discipline. And it was like joy would return and the kids would
00:27:13.120 get more affectionate with us. This is the thing. A lot of people don't understand your children
00:27:17.780 are craving discipline and structure and order. And when you provide that for them consistently,
00:27:21.840 their affection for you will grow not diminish dan a couple things maybe just by way of maybe
00:27:28.300 if people have young kids they're thinking of books like what could we read i know early on
00:27:32.540 we had read things like shepherding a child's heart there was another one that we were reading
00:27:36.700 recently yeah child training tips was reb bradley i think yeah reb bradley yeah that that one's been
00:27:42.780 very helpful for me just practically so yeah anybody who we can put that in the show notes
00:27:47.260 but yeah just lexie and i are reading we're reading that out loud at night together right
00:27:51.140 now after you guys recommendations it's what i really like about it and what's missing in a lot
00:27:56.420 of these books is two things one is that it's actually practical yeah and so many things are
00:28:01.660 like we're it's so practical and it's just principles but it doesn't land them yeah and
00:28:05.920 in little kid years it's like you know explain to me the mechanics i don't understand because
00:28:11.460 you feel like sometimes you're spanking all the time you're disciplining all the time
00:28:14.600 it's the i know what to do but i don't know how to do it i know i need to spank yes but how do i
00:28:20.140 do it and you give up often if you're not trained you don't know what the finish line is you give up
00:28:25.560 just before the finish line so often in parenting and discipline yeah this book's really practical
00:28:30.400 and the second thing is that it's just totally unapologetic about the fact that what we're
00:28:35.380 trying to do with our kids is indoctrinate them train them form them that they are not smart 1.00
00:28:40.460 they are foolish i mean some of them are smart but they're they're fools folly is bound up in 1.00
00:28:44.900 the heart of the child it's right there like proverbs 29 the rod and rebuke give wisdom but 1.00
00:28:49.380 a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Well, there you go. So I want to know
00:28:53.660 how to do that. And this book is, it's just super practical. And I read it because you both and
00:28:59.020 Kevin had recommended it. So I was like, I need to get this right now. Yeah. The other one that,
00:29:03.940 that I would recommend and throw out there is a volume three, William Gouge. Oh yeah. His book
00:29:08.760 on, especially with children in the household. That's really informative. One nugget I would
00:29:13.960 throw out there that was really helpful to me was like, he's like the first person in Ephesians 0.97
00:29:18.060 five that's addressed as the woman and the wife, she needs to submit to her husband in full
00:29:22.280 obedience. If she won't submit in full obedience, then the children will model her and they won't. 0.94
00:29:27.920 So it really was helpful for me and my wife as we're reading this book, like, wow, like if,
00:29:33.100 if, if we're speaking rudely to each other, why would you expect the children to do anything
00:29:36.600 otherwise? Like, so we really have to be on the same page. If there's something that needs to be
00:29:40.800 corrected or an offense between me and my wife, like, let's go deal with that privately. Let's
00:29:46.220 reconcile that. And then let's make sure that we're modeling the things that we want to see
00:29:49.940 our children doing. So anyway, volume three, you can pick that up from Reformation Heritage Books.
00:29:55.340 That's a really excellent book as well. Brian, I do want to ask another question.
00:30:00.300 We talked about some of the positive things. On the practical side with parenting and discipline,
00:30:05.900 are there like certain things that you see repetitive? You know how in your yard,
00:30:10.640 you just have those weeds that like, you're like, I killed these weeds last week, yesterday,
00:30:14.260 And I come home from work, and in my driveway, they've grown seven feet.
00:30:19.240 Those weeds in the home, what are they?
00:30:21.920 What are the things that sprout up quickly and bad?
00:30:24.980 One of the ones that comes to my mind is critical spirit.
00:30:27.600 Yeah.
00:30:28.200 But what do you think?
00:30:30.240 Yeah, being hypercritical is a big problem, and not just in parenting.
00:30:36.860 It's a big problem in all relationships.
00:30:39.840 Like work?
00:30:40.720 Like harmonicas?
00:30:41.400 or yeah like if if for example like a co-worker was just doing being pedantic was just doing their
00:30:47.300 best to like live his life his best life now and then every two minutes you're like look at those 0.94
00:30:51.620 berkenstocks wow that harmonica sucks i wish you would just die like that kind of thing would be 0.89
00:30:56.320 like hype being passive aggressive do you think like using a podcast episode to vaguely criticize 1.00
00:31:01.380 your friends i don't feel like saying i i hope i want to poison you and until you're dead is being 0.98
00:31:06.960 passive-aggressive. No, I'm saying I'm being passive-aggressive. Oh, okay. I feel like that 0.99
00:31:11.440 was pretty direct. I feel like that was direct. No, but you're right. Being hypercritical,
00:31:16.560 where you're just fault-finding, you're always looking for a problem. And you have to think,
00:31:21.640 like, look, the Father is always aware of all of our problems. And how often does he bring the
00:31:27.100 really heavy correction of the Spirit? Like the Psalm 51, my bones are dried up. Like, I'm ashamed.
00:31:32.260 man it's it's not that often and it's over big things so there's a consistent discipline that
00:31:39.860 has to happen i'm not saying don't enforce rules and be like lackadaisical lackadaisical and how
00:31:44.300 you do this but hypercriticality is a huge problem would you would you tie that one to
00:31:50.220 what we've talked about it recently i think you've been but like sarcasm yes like the sharp tongue
00:31:56.180 i guess is what i would get critical spirit acid tongue it seems like these are ones that sort of
00:32:01.900 just like i again i can think of the the poor moments as a father where i've walked in and said
00:32:07.360 something critical really stupidly critical and unnecessary and the thing that doesn't erupt
00:32:13.660 immediately in your home afterwards is joyful fruitfulness from everyone no it's kind of like 0.81
00:32:18.200 oh i see how it's gonna go we're swinging on each the thing is like if you want to be in a fight you
00:32:23.800 will be in a fight that's the reality right guys like once you get you you do the ribbing thing
00:32:31.360 And then there's a moment where you cross the Rubicon and you're like, no, I actually 0.99
00:32:34.200 hate your face and I want to kill you. 0.98
00:32:35.660 What if I was born on the other side of the Rubicon? 1.00
00:32:39.220 But this is a critical point, I think, practically, is to understand that a lot of what we're
00:32:44.180 talking about is it really has to do with your disposition and demeanor.
00:32:48.200 Are you content and thankful to God and aware of his blessings and overflowing in joy?
00:32:54.080 Is there a deep well of joy in the middle of your soul?
00:32:57.480 Or is there bitterness, rudeness, anger?
00:32:59.700 you're constantly mad you're always frustrated you're prickly it's easy to offend you it reminds
00:33:06.780 me of this i can't remember it's ann bradstreet or one of those um you know of the previous
00:33:11.820 generation ladies uh she said something like a glass which is brimful of sweetness can never 0.92
00:33:20.140 spill a drop of bitter water no matter how suddenly jarred and the point is pull that up
00:33:25.720 from memory yes it's one we talk about in our house a lot lexi it's actually amy carmy carmichael
00:33:32.240 there you go a cup brimful of sweetness cannot spill even one drop of bitter water no matter
00:33:36.920 how suddenly jarred there you go wow that was close that was close that was like 90 90 it also
00:33:43.360 in the great uh musician me without you they have a song called uh where one of the lines is a glass
00:33:49.360 can only spill what it contains there's another way of saying that so if your kids are being naughty
00:33:54.600 and it pulls out of you anger, frustration, loudness, that was already in there, right?
00:34:03.540 If you're full of contentedness and joy, then you have a well from which to give calm and firm
00:34:09.740 correction. But if you're always in every context, easy to annoy or make, you know, offend,
00:34:16.940 you are the problem, not your spouse, not your children, not your church, not your pastor,
00:34:21.480 Not your friends.
00:34:22.300 It's you.
00:34:22.980 Can I ask a question just to get hyper practical?
00:34:25.560 Let's say you wake up in the morning and you sense that you're like super grumpy.
00:34:30.020 I thought you were going to say hyper practical.
00:34:32.560 Who in this room most amplified?
00:34:35.300 No.
00:34:35.680 You wake up in the morning and we've all had those days where it's just like you're just on one.
00:34:40.840 Yeah.
00:34:41.520 Everything annoys you.
00:34:42.800 Somebody's playing a harmonica.
00:34:44.560 You know, the kids are being loud.
00:34:45.680 Whatever it is.
00:34:46.340 Greeting you with a loud harmonica early in the morning.
00:34:48.340 Yeah.
00:34:48.720 Which is clearly sinful.
00:34:49.900 There's proverbs about this.
00:34:50.720 Clearly sinful.
00:34:51.240 what do you practically actually do in that moment you were standing in the bathroom about
00:34:56.580 to brush your teeth and you're like oh i'm just frustrated what do i actually do i mean what does
00:35:02.440 a person hypothetically i don't know if brian has ever been in that situation he's probably
00:35:07.240 singing while he brushes his teeth and playing harmonica at the same time i think it's actually
00:35:12.740 gonna be the same thing but let's say let's say your your friends have been ribbing you all day
00:35:16.280 about your birkenstocks right yeah and how you're a barista and you wear that white coat and you
00:35:20.580 literally words so you're kind of offended because it hits close to home yeah because it's yeah so
00:35:24.400 so you're kind of like uh david powelson used to call this like prickly thorny you're just in a
00:35:29.720 thorny kind of mood how what do i actually do practically in that moment to put that sin to
00:35:35.680 death and change well one of the things that i often do is sin that's not how you put it no
00:35:41.740 no it's not but let's be honest here when we're in that mood a lot of times what we do is we sin
00:35:46.920 a lot. And what's really important is to be able to say, okay, when I recognize it for the last
00:35:53.160 two hours, let's be honest, I've been sinning. You first need to go make peace. You need to
00:35:58.040 confess and repent. And being the blessing man means believing the gospel. Right. But practically,
00:36:04.800 I think over the long haul, what puts that to death is things like contentedness and thankfulness,
00:36:09.900 crowd out, bitterness and anger. If you can meditate, if you're constantly meditating on
00:36:14.840 things like envy, bitterness, problems that you have, things your wife is doing wrong,
00:36:20.600 things your kids are doing that are annoying you, and you're just rolling those over in your mind,
00:36:25.280 A, you need to move quickly to the righteous action those things require.
00:36:29.280 As a Lord and a husband and a Savior, a sage and a glory bearer, go out and say,
00:36:32.880 I'm constantly frustrated with my wife's nagging. Well, I'm actually the head of my home. I'm going
00:36:36.880 to go do something about that gently and lovingly and without harshness, treating my wife as the
00:36:41.340 weaker vessel. And this is an area where I feel like we sometimes don't realize this, but what
00:36:47.500 the Sunday worship is supposed to do is train us in the daily. So a lot of times I remind myself
00:36:54.120 of this, like I'm stuck in this sin pattern today. I'm really frustrated or angry or despondent.
00:36:59.780 What do I do? And then I go, what is the service? Well, the Lord calls you into his presence.
00:37:05.380 First thing we do is we confess our sin. Okay. I know that God says, James five,
00:37:09.260 we should confess our sins to one another so that actually a lot of power of sin is destroyed at the
00:37:15.620 root when you simply go to one another you stop arguing and defending yourself and you go a lot
00:37:21.680 of times if it's my wife it'll be or my sons the person i'm sinning against go to them and say i
00:37:27.240 have sinned against you yeah that gets to the heart i mean it does feel it you'll actually
00:37:32.620 feel that burning but at the same time you're like you're shining light in the dark moldy corner
00:37:38.640 and it draws mercy out of other people, especially Christians. When you are humbling yourself,
00:37:44.900 the first instinct often, I mean, if we're honest, one of the first instincts at least is often to
00:37:50.000 say like, of course I forgive you. It clears the air. And on the other side of that, I think like
00:37:56.960 if you're constantly meditating on those things, you need to do the Colossians 3 thing, or you need
00:38:03.040 to do the put off and put on. Like, okay, I'm meditating on all these bitternesses. I'm full
00:38:09.540 of bitter water. And so even the slightest jar, jarring action in my day, somebody saying good
00:38:16.060 morning before I've had my coffee and I'm going to spill bitter water all over them. I need to be
00:38:21.860 filled up with thankfulness, contentedness. I need to start rehearsing God's blessings,
00:38:27.520 what he's done for me. I think practicing, like you're talking about meditation and gratitude,
00:38:33.040 thinking on righteous things, as Paul says in Philippians 4. The other thing that is really
00:38:37.900 powerful, it seems so simple, but I tell people this all the time in counseling. When you are
00:38:43.340 ungrateful, you get on your knees and you pray to God and you say, Lord, forgive me for being
00:38:47.800 so ungrateful. I know that I should be grateful. Please change my heart. Please help me be grateful.
00:38:54.680 And it is amazing what God does. He'll be like, oh yeah, remember all these,
00:38:58.360 you remember how you are breathing right now? Yes. You're welcome. Yes. Right? Like,
00:39:03.040 when you meditate and you fill your mind and your soul with the remembrance of God's blessings
00:39:10.360 and how good he's been. And on the other hand, this is helpful for me, especially when I'm mad
00:39:15.260 at somebody who I don't know. Take the Nathaniel Jolly stuff that's been going around. That guy's
00:39:21.060 just been letting everybody have it. He called Joel and he called me and Michael and Doug
00:39:27.100 and you at this point, literally like false teachers or don't follow them and they're worldly.
00:39:32.800 And these things can eat you up, these controversies.
00:39:35.660 So sometimes when someone sins against you and they're not going to repent, like you've
00:39:41.120 reached out to them and they're just not going to repent.
00:39:43.560 One of the things that I found helpful is to literally just remember the worst things
00:39:47.500 I've ever done.
00:39:48.940 Like not to pick the scab, but to remember the things God has forgiven me for and be
00:39:55.940 like, yeah, that's bad.
00:39:58.280 But like, don't you remember this thing that you did?
00:40:01.280 And God has forgotten that.
00:40:03.060 Like he's separated you from it.
00:40:04.840 He's not going to send you to hell.
00:40:06.940 And it really does help.
00:40:08.460 Like when you're mad at your wife and then you remember every, like some sin, and you go, okay, that's right, Lord.
00:40:15.460 She's genuinely sinning or someone's genuinely sinning, but it's like, okay, Lord.
00:40:19.300 Yeah, I mean, that's at the heart of as I've forgiven you, so you must forgive.
00:40:23.460 Remember what you've been forgiven for.
00:40:25.360 Yeah.
00:40:25.500 Well, I think so much of it, too, in the gospel, I remember this, like, going through seasons of difficulty in either work relationships or children or in the home, and a good friend was walking me through a passage just reminding me of this, but 1 Peter 2, 23, when he was reviled, this is Jesus, he did not revile in return.
00:40:43.820 Yes.
00:40:44.360 Like, how many spouses, we didn't, I would never think, okay, I need to apply this in my marriage.
00:40:48.660 Yeah.
00:40:49.100 Because you're like, no, people killing Jesus, and you're like, okay, well, but it applies to you and your wife.
00:40:53.800 Yeah.
00:40:54.000 It applies to you and your children.
00:40:55.500 Maybe they're in a moment where they are reviling you, genuinely.
00:40:58.600 Nathaniel Jolly's reviling us.
00:41:00.860 When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to God, his creator, who judges justly.
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00:42:19.980 notes yeah god will judge and also just to make sure i'm clear i can't remember what i said
00:42:28.440 specifically what nathaniel jolly said was that if you want to become more worldly follow these men
00:42:32.560 and it offended me because i was thinking like i don't think the saints at refuge church or east
00:42:36.540 river or these other churches are becoming more worldly by listening and submitting to their
00:42:39.980 pastors in obedience to their membership vows. So specifically that's, and I privately reached
00:42:45.740 out to him and said, Hey, I think you overstated this. You can disagree without, you know, this
00:42:50.220 was sinful, what you said. And he, you know, didn't repent. In my view, didn't repent of what
00:42:56.940 I think is a sin. And I was tempted in that moment to be like, I'm now going to go scorched earth
00:43:03.500 and I'm going to salt the ground of your social media, 0.63
00:43:09.840 tear down your house and raise it to the ground
00:43:12.260 and salt the earth so that nothing ever can grow here again.
00:43:15.160 And then I'm like, well, hang on.
00:43:17.600 The Lord has forgiven me of quite a few things.
00:43:20.360 And he was pretty patient in that.
00:43:21.820 It's been 10 minutes.
00:43:23.260 What if I pray for him every time I'm tempted?
00:43:26.580 Like every time that bitterness comes back,
00:43:29.360 I'm not, this is really not eating me away or anything, guys.
00:43:31.920 But this is a helpful exercise. When a bitterness comes back and it's stealing your ability to be
00:43:38.540 the jovial blessing man, you need to stop and pray for the person you are bitter against
00:43:43.980 and ask that God would specifically bless them. And this is an exercise I've given to people a
00:43:50.120 lot in counseling with extended family issues. And my dad did this, my mom did this, and they're
00:43:55.380 genuinely bad things, horrible things. And I tell them, what you need to do is you need to
00:44:01.440 thank the Lord for giving you clear eyes about the sinfulness of that thing, and not minimizing
00:44:07.380 it all, ask that the Father would bless them by granting them repentance and faith, and
00:44:12.580 that they would have true remorse for that thing, and that God would smile and shine
00:44:16.020 his face upon them, and ask that every time that it comes up.
00:44:20.160 And that's the way that the Lord really pulls these rocks out of your field, is that you
00:44:25.180 keep putting it in his court.
00:44:26.580 i can't fix this thing but the lord granted repentance to solve tarsus like i can pray for 0.98
00:44:33.700 them and stop acting like i have to fix them or i can't be content and happy that's stupid yeah 0.61
00:44:41.480 you'll never be content and happy if you're all if you're just like until i fix everybody who's 0.99
00:44:46.040 ever been wrong at me or sinned yeah and i think i'm gonna be a miserable if you loser yeah 0.95
00:44:53.060 absolutely if you tie it to like uh as a parent you know you think like well i mean i can i can 0.54
00:44:58.400 be joyful once my kids stop doing this or you know i'll be happy if once my wife's attitude
00:45:03.120 changes or my husband's attitude changes yes and it's a lot harder to just say i mean really
00:45:09.100 even young restless and reformed i was thinking back on this where they were great where they
00:45:13.740 were the best was saying the sin is in my heart yes jesus came to die for this one this bad boy
00:45:20.760 right here under the microscope on full display in 4k happening right now this one yes right so
00:45:27.540 so then we take that and and we repent of it god does this transformative work and we don't start
00:45:33.440 by pointing at other people in other situations saying these have to change first one so to add
00:45:38.140 to that one of the wrinkles that really motivates me is that because i'm definitely more prone to
00:45:45.560 be a little bit prickly i don't know if you guys have noticed that or not i probably haven't
00:45:50.100 I haven't noticed that.
00:45:50.920 I've always experienced you as a ray of sunshine.
00:45:54.140 Yeah, kind of like Mary Poppins.
00:45:56.460 That's the person I most describe you as.
00:45:58.240 I have had this strange feeling of wanting to carry an umbrella with me.
00:46:02.320 It's odd.
00:46:02.780 To hit people with it. 0.88
00:46:05.440 To strike people. 0.99
00:46:07.220 Seems like a good concealed weapon. 1.00
00:46:08.560 To smite them. 0.99
00:46:09.660 Can I get one with the sword in it? 1.00
00:46:11.140 Yes.
00:46:11.440 No, so is that I think about, okay, so the small bitterness,
00:46:16.360 the small frustrations and angers that you have with your kids, your wife, your friends, or
00:46:22.120 whatever, especially with the house, is that I remember my mission and that the small things
00:46:29.240 will completely undermine my mission. Because the work that you're doing is actually eternal work.
00:46:36.060 It's eternal work. So the way that I treat my kids, the way that I treat my wife is going to
00:46:43.740 echo through my generations. My sons are learning this. If you have daughters, they're going to
00:46:48.660 learn to find men that are like dad. And if they find prickly, bitter men, they're going to be set
00:46:57.520 up for a very, very hard life. And then they're going to have kids who have that modeled and
00:47:02.720 they're going to have kids and they're going to have kids and the cycle just goes on. And if you
00:47:07.900 start backing up the generations and you're the starting point i mean shame well dan it brings up
00:47:14.780 a good point uh i was thinking about this before we recorded there's really kind of two types of
00:47:20.720 uh dads fathers on the spectrum because they like these are kind of the two polar extremes that are
00:47:26.480 both sinful and one is you have like the harsh domineering father authoritarian and on the other
00:47:34.020 end, you have, I think what is actually more common in our culture, or at least I would say,
00:47:39.820 you know, in 15 years of ministry at different churches, that's kind of the overarching thing
00:47:44.060 I've seen as passive dads. Yeah. Unresolved conflicts. Dads who are like, like the thought
00:47:49.300 of going to one of your children, say like a teenager and saying like, Hey, I've noticed this
00:47:53.540 pattern. It's really bad. Let's work on it. That's like, they would rather jump off a bridge
00:47:57.780 or walk into traffic than deal with that. Yeah. So let's start there. Let's start with passive
00:48:02.440 fathers what's going on here what's the problem why is this not going to produce a joyful mirthful
00:48:07.300 home and i want to start with brian on this one you know what dan was just about to say something
00:48:11.900 and so i'm going to cede my time so the passive dad what's really wrong with the passive dad
00:48:16.960 yeah it's it's actually similar to the way that some people keep house or some people keep the
00:48:22.280 garden or whatever is that they wait and they don't address the problems in tidying up what
00:48:28.580 they do is they wait until their house is unlivable. And then they're like, well, we're
00:48:33.200 going to take a whole day to clean, but they don't actually address the problems, the roots that are
00:48:37.880 causing these issues. And so they just, it's, it's a reactive sort of parenting that man, like
00:48:44.900 there's a blow up at school or there was a fight or the police are involved or my kids smoking
00:48:50.500 weed or whatever. And there were, there were 50 steps that happened before there that you should
00:48:55.560 have stepped in and said enough right now you know let's address this this is a problem but it ends
00:49:02.180 up going to the hey dad i'm i'm a transgender hey dad i'm a homosexual hey dad i hate god i mean like
00:49:09.220 that's a lot of times what happens to passive dads maybe it's not that catastrophic but eventually it
00:49:14.260 could be and so that's really one of the problems with the passive father is that you become so
00:49:19.520 averse to the small conflicts that all of a sudden there's a big conflict and you can't turn away
00:49:24.800 anymore. Your back's against the wall. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You're letting things stack up
00:49:30.120 and until it's, you know, you have to respond. Instead of, like the sermon last week, we talked
00:49:35.960 about this with, if you're not asking questions actively of different aspects of your life and
00:49:41.240 duties and vocations, like, how's my kid doing? How's school doing? How's education going? How's,
00:49:45.920 you know, training them in terms of sexual purity going? How's my wife doing today? How's her, 1.00
00:49:50.840 you know emotional spiritual physical how's the budget going if you don't ask those questions
00:49:55.600 proactively they will start to ask you they'll start to question you well don't you think some
00:50:00.160 of it too i think is our cultural milieu and context right where you think about okay we live
00:50:06.020 in a world where dads and husbands all day long say you're on the somewhere on the conservative
00:50:11.220 spectrum you go to work you can never say what you really think because if you say you probably 0.55
00:50:16.320 get fired canceled whatever we live in this era where i think particularly like boomer generation
00:50:22.120 what they grew up with was this idea of an open society where we've literally been told you have
00:50:27.260 to tolerate everything so how then are you going to come into your family and be like what you're
00:50:30.840 doing is wrong you cannot do this this is sinful i think a lot of guys have just unknowingly maybe
00:50:37.020 been breathing that air and given into it for so long like you know think about the workplace could
00:50:42.640 Could you – in today's workplace, workforce, corporate America, can you go to somebody and say, hey, that was really sinful?
00:50:50.040 What you did – or can you even say what you did was wrong?
00:50:53.300 Yeah.
00:50:53.860 You're not allowed to do that.
00:50:55.480 No.
00:50:55.780 You mainly need to tattle to an HR person who will then deal with it separately.
00:50:59.740 Yes.
00:51:00.380 It's actually built gossip almost into the chain of command and passivity.
00:51:04.580 Passive aggressiveness. 0.86
00:51:05.200 Passive aggressiveness.
00:51:06.220 You send an email.
00:51:07.100 You don't talk to the person.
00:51:08.060 You send an email chain.
00:51:09.300 Yeah.
00:51:09.540 This was the whole thing with Tucker Carlson, right, where he was talking about –
00:51:12.160 hr departments and how like they got mad at him because he went to an employee and was like hey
00:51:16.880 do you have a problem with me like i'd love to clear that up and they're like oh no no you can't
00:51:20.880 talk to another person right yeah so i i think part of it is it's actually environmental yeah
00:51:26.660 um that everywhere we look you're trained to not deal directly with stuff yeah getting practical
00:51:32.520 i think an assignment that's helpful that we've talked about in the context of our local church
00:51:38.440 but this is particularly helpful for passive men guys who are just kind of they know that they're
00:51:45.160 not being active enough in leadership but they're not a lot of times it's because they don't know
00:51:48.840 where to start dispositionally they're more quiet or passive and then they see problems but they
00:51:54.760 just don't know what to do and my encouragement is often to start by listing out everything that
00:51:59.800 you are in terms of your vocations so like where would you start you are a christian i am a christian
00:52:05.360 man. All right. I am a husband. I am a father of these children. I am employed at this plate. For
00:52:11.820 me, I'm the husband of Lexi. My children are, and I list their names and their ages. I work at New
00:52:17.520 Christendom Press and Refuge Church, and I have duties and obligations. And then I go through
00:52:20.900 and list out under all of those things that you are, is you find that those vocations come with
00:52:26.440 job descriptions and duties that God has already given for you. You don't need like a magic ball
00:52:32.460 or the liver shivers or some kind of weird opening your Bible randomly and pointing your
00:52:36.940 finger at it to figure out what to do next. It's like useful. It's just, I am a husband. Okay. What
00:52:42.760 does God say? The job descriptions that come with a husband. And then you go through and you start
00:52:48.100 getting granular and you say, okay, now how am I doing in these different areas? I'm going to now
00:52:52.820 exercise godly kingship, godly lordship, godly shepherding. I'm going to be a godly sage there.
00:52:57.740 Those aspects of masculinity. I'm going to find out then holes in my active leadership in the home. And they're not a mystery. They're things that I've written out and they're obvious. They're like, oh, I literally haven't been doing this thing that I'm supposed to, like educating my children properly, or I've just been letting mom do all the reading on that and all of the work.
00:53:18.400 And, you know, she's this often happens with something like education.
00:53:21.980 And I'm just saying, practically, what that does is it helps you put a name to the thing instead of just, well, hey, stop being passive.
00:53:29.560 It's here is the next thing a godly, active father, husband, whatever would do.
00:53:35.440 Go do that.
00:53:36.540 Here's a job description.
00:53:38.260 Yeah, it's interesting.
00:53:40.320 We're obviously a media company.
00:53:42.360 This seems like it'll be out of left field, but it's not.
00:53:44.320 I promise I'll bring it around.
00:53:45.720 We're a media company.
00:53:47.580 And so we have podcasts and stuff like that.
00:53:49.980 Podcasts are great.
00:53:51.080 Obviously, we do them.
00:53:52.500 It's a great way for people who are on the go to listen.
00:53:56.460 I want to say, looking back at all of my time in pastoral ministry, I don't know, 15 plus years, something like that.
00:54:04.300 There's just nothing quite like a man who will read a book.
00:54:08.120 So I just want to get a feel.
00:54:10.480 Like, do you think that's true?
00:54:11.740 What is it about?
00:54:12.780 so i i'm thinking uh you know obviously the bible but let's say outside of that a dad's like hey i
00:54:18.880 don't really know what to do with my family i'll recommend a book to him maybe it's family shepherds
00:54:23.060 by vody bacham he reads that book something happens to that man almost every time right
00:54:28.940 when he does when he when he commits himself to sitting down and reading the book and really
00:54:34.040 paying attention and taking notes that man comes out of that and he's like oh he's got a fire lit
00:54:39.920 he's like okay i need it i need to do these things it's not the same when he watches a two-minute
00:54:44.760 video yeah what was was it you brian that tweeted something like you could spend 14 and buy a book
00:54:51.000 and it could change your life like what else could you spend 14 on and have it change your life
00:54:54.860 i can't remember but maybe it was a good tweet a lot of things so it probably was a good tweet
00:54:59.200 it was probably michael but no i i think i think you're right uh well whoever tweeted that is
00:55:04.160 definitely right because it's one of eric's favorite questions to ask and i've i've adopted
00:55:08.900 it. When I speak to somebody and I'm like, this person is interesting. I'll ask them, what's the
00:55:13.500 most influential book you've ever read? Yeah. Just to get their answer. And it's really interesting
00:55:20.860 because a well-read person will say, you know, the book that had the biggest effect on my life,
00:55:24.900 it changed the way I think is this one. And they'll give you a book. And sometimes it's really
00:55:30.540 surprising, but those books have formed these people, have changed the way that they live.
00:55:36.800 I have books that I'm like, man, without that book, the trajectory of my life would be completely
00:55:41.000 different. David Chilton, Paradise Restore. You know what's funny, Eric, is that that was one of
00:55:46.100 the top five that came to my mind was that book. Yeah. As Dan said, it is interesting. We should
00:55:50.840 do a book list, a top five. So you guys can have like 500 books each. Wait, have we ever done that,
00:55:56.020 Dan? I don't know. Have we, Brian? It was on the Hardman podcast. You do whatever you want on that
00:56:01.140 show so that's so true that was on our meat trip but yeah meat scapades 2022 baby what a trip what
00:56:08.900 a great trip uh yeah so i think a lot of it is just encouraging guys don't be overwhelmed with
00:56:14.200 all the things that are on your plate just start with something um so i i know jordan peterson
00:56:19.500 just talked about this it's just like a very basic thing about discipline and wisdom just start with
00:56:23.980 one thing right make your bed so when i years ago when when i was in college not really walking as
00:56:30.700 a Christian. I was like, what do I do? My life's a mess. And I was like, okay. I had a guy discipling
00:56:36.180 me and he said, listen, every morning for 15 minutes, I want you to do 15 minutes of Bible
00:56:41.080 reading and 15 minutes of prayer. And that felt like, how could I do that so much? How could I
00:56:46.640 do that? Because I'd never done it before. And so I started doing that every day. And he was like,
00:56:51.460 I want you to do it every day for like three months straight. My life changed so drastically.
00:56:57.300 it's not even funny just from reading scripture and praying. I didn't have great theological
00:57:02.360 teaching. I wasn't listening to great expository sermons at the time. The word of God is living
00:57:07.780 and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. So like if you can just start there and then it
00:57:12.920 was like I made that decision and then I started getting my health in order and like going to the
00:57:17.840 gym and eating better and it was like compounding interest. If you could do one thing and be
00:57:23.320 disciplined at it, you'll make progress. So for a lot of guys, I think it'll be things like maybe
00:57:27.480 it is your personal Bible reading. Okay. Maybe I would say one of the first places I would
00:57:32.240 generally start is with family worship, read the scripture. Like this is my 32nd, how to do family
00:57:38.420 worship, read the scripture, pray with your kids, sing a song. Boom. Like doesn't have to be rocket
00:57:45.320 surgery. Cause guys are always like, well, I need to read a book about 12 more techniques. You need
00:57:49.200 to read the Bible. Yeah. You need to sing a song and you need to pray with your people. If you want
00:57:53.580 a book that says all that, just get Donald's with Donald Whitney's like family worship book. And
00:57:57.540 then it'll tell you to do those three things. Yes. In like 70 pages. And then you'll feel like
00:58:01.760 you've, you've done, you've read a book. Now you can do it. Now you can, there you go. Yeah,
00:58:05.740 exactly. So guys, as we kind of wrap up this episode, I just want to conclude with some of
00:58:09.880 the, maybe some of the other blessings and gifts as you think about yourself as a blessing man
00:58:14.220 that you can give to your people. Some that might be on this list, Dan, that we,
00:58:18.300 They're easy to overlook.
00:58:19.520 Genesis 2.15, you have to provide for your people.
00:58:22.180 You have to protect them.
00:58:23.640 I know Brian's been talking about this a lot lately.
00:58:26.320 On Sunday, we're talking about protecting your wives from Jesus calling. 0.72
00:58:29.820 Yeah, right. 0.97
00:58:30.680 I looked that up, by the way, while you were preaching.
00:58:34.220 That book has sold over 40 million copies in the U.S.
00:58:37.740 So I think, well, there's at least 40 million probably husbands who are not doing their jobs.
00:58:43.640 Who have some explaining to do.
00:58:44.900 Like, what are you doing?
00:58:45.960 But how do we protect overall our family in today's world?
00:58:51.660 Where do you see some of the key obvious places?
00:58:54.460 Yeah, a lot of them for me come back to that.
00:58:58.000 Getting clear, like protect them first from a dad and a husband who doesn't know his job.
00:59:04.940 Start with you.
00:59:06.300 Because if you do all those, if you know your job and you're doing it well, a lot of other things will sort themselves out.
00:59:12.820 and a lot of you'll find enemies all over the place to fight and, you know, kick out of your
00:59:16.900 home and like media that's not allowed and books to get rid of and practices to put to death and
00:59:21.780 things like that. But if you don't start by just getting clear on like, what am I called to do?
00:59:26.660 What is my actual job description as a husband and father? Then it's really hard to succeed
00:59:31.200 because you just don't know where you stand ever. You don't know what success actually looks like.
00:59:36.700 And I think that's the biggest thing that that most men have failed to protect their families
00:59:41.440 from is actually just themselves. They've failed to protect their family from having a passive
00:59:47.580 husband and father, protect their family from having a lazy or a neglectful, tyrannical,
00:59:54.380 whatever it is. If dad gets working on the central things, then a lot of the time things
01:00:01.780 will tend to go well and it will flush out other problems out of the tall grass, right? Like stuff's
01:00:08.060 going to oh that just flew up we got to deal with that but if stuff's just you you're never going
01:00:13.120 out there into the tall grass and flushing stuff out it's just there like it's there's okay now
01:00:18.280 i'm mixing my metaphors there's snakes in the grass now not birds and they're biting people
01:00:23.360 right so the way i i think that's excellent the way i think about it back to the garden
01:00:28.180 illustration so if you're a gardener you have certain responsibilities you need to cultivate
01:00:31.740 the earth you need to fertilize it you need to plant seeds and you need to weed you need to
01:00:36.900 harvest okay those are the that's what a gardener does well then you have to look at your bare patch
01:00:42.580 of ground and go like okay what do i need to do what's the vision you have to have an idea of what
01:00:46.320 this is going to look like how far do you space apart the rows you got to make sure plants don't
01:00:50.720 shade out other plants and that they get along you don't want to plant the watermelons in with
01:00:55.180 the pepper plants because they'll take them over like you have to be you have to have a plan and a
01:00:59.140 strategy what fruit are you actually going to want to eat yeah you know and so you have to have a
01:01:03.340 plan. So if you apply that to a father, you have all these responsibilities, right? Okay. I'm going
01:01:08.020 to be responsible for all these things. I have to cultivate my home in a direction. What is it
01:01:13.640 going to look like? And that's having a mission and a vision for your house. And then you have
01:01:18.780 to be diligent about it. And one of the ways I think about that is, so if any of you have ever
01:01:23.960 kept squash plants, there is the bane of my existence. I didn't even plant squash this year
01:01:29.400 because these things are such a pain, uh, is squash bugs. Yeah. Squash bugs. Uh, they plant
01:01:35.280 days, they plant, they, they put their eggs, they lay their eggs on the underside of squash
01:01:39.500 leaves. And then when they hatch, they, they have piercing mouth parts and they suck the juices out
01:01:45.540 of your squash plants and kill them. Great band name, piercing mouth parts. Call it. Okay. Go on.
01:01:50.840 And so if you think about it this way, so let's say you understand your responsibilities,
01:01:55.460 is you have a mission. The next step is you have to be diligent by going out in the garden and you
01:02:00.000 look over your, under your squash leaves and go, I know this is, could be a problem. I know my
01:02:04.180 people, I planted squash. I like squash. I want to eat squash. I actually don't like squash,
01:02:09.240 but beside the point you go to your squash plants and you, you have to give a checkup and be
01:02:13.460 diligent, check in with your people and you look for those pervasive little eggs before they hatch.
01:02:19.960 So I think that's all just an expansion of what you said about protecting your family from
01:02:24.300 yourself. The other thing is that you must provide financially. Don't give your family a reason to
01:02:32.420 despise you because you aren't providing for them. And I understand that there are exceptions
01:02:40.120 everywhere. It's a really hard time to live in if you have your wife home and you're trying to go
01:02:43.940 out and make a living with high interest rates and inflation and everything like that. It's really
01:02:48.420 hard. The important thing is that your kids see you work hard. Yeah. I was just going to say,
01:02:53.980 It's one thing if husbands are like struggling, but it's way different if like she sees, your kids see that you're working like a dog versus like you're like playing Call of Duty, you know, and everybody's stressed out and you're like, oh, well, yeah, this is a rough economy.
01:03:08.740 I'm waiting on an upper management position.
01:03:11.160 Like don't be that guy.
01:03:12.860 Yeah.
01:03:13.120 You're not turning in your 100 resumes a month.
01:03:15.500 You may not be able to control the outcomes, but you can always control the inputs.
01:03:20.180 So that's just my interjection there.
01:03:21.480 Yeah. And you'll also have like, don't be a fool with your money. So one of the temptations is to start invest in like get rich quick schemes or highly risky investments and things like that in order to fix all your problems right away. The Proverbs say that, you know, wealth gained quickly is lost quickly and wealth gained slowly sticks around. I can't remember exactly what it says, but it's something like that. 0.99
01:03:46.140 So the other thing is like security, which probably would be something that you'd talk to, like go buy an AR-15, become proficient with it. 0.74
01:03:54.300 BLM riots have not gone away.
01:03:56.820 Yeah, there's actually – 0.99
01:03:57.620 Antifa hasn't gone away.
01:03:59.480 I actually have – this is crazy.
01:04:00.940 I forgot about it until recently.
01:04:02.260 There's an e-book on the Mossberg website that I wrote.
01:04:07.740 No, really?
01:04:08.520 Yeah.
01:04:08.880 It's about –
01:04:09.420 You were published by Mossberg and I didn't even know this.
01:04:12.020 Oh, yeah.
01:04:12.320 I used to write for them all the time.
01:04:13.720 Great company, family-owned business.
01:04:15.040 But anyway, they did one.
01:04:16.720 They published it.
01:04:17.460 I wrote it on – I think it was on Home Defense.
01:04:20.760 So, yeah, a lot of stuff that Brian had talked with Josh Adams about securing your home, things like this.
01:04:28.420 I would say years ago it made a big splash, right, with John Piper and saying like I'm not sure I would kill an intruder and whatever let him do to my wife.
01:04:37.040 Your people hear things like that.
01:04:39.320 Right.
01:04:40.420 You know, my wife and I were talking about it afterwards and she was like, you said that to me.
01:04:43.940 like get lost buddy like you better protect me you know physically and otherwise and so i think
01:04:50.020 just just letting your people see like um we lived in kind of a shady part of town and uh you know
01:04:56.700 you can you can give your wife a lot of security by simply saying like okay we're going to buy
01:05:01.460 cameras for every angle of the house we're going to reinforce the doors we're going to make sure
01:05:05.960 that we have a plan a lot of times when you have intruder break-in stuff you got to account for the
01:05:11.260 fact that it's probably not an intruder so a lot of times people end up shooting family members
01:05:16.000 because they're like oh i heard a rumble and i just and then so anyway i started blasting yeah
01:05:20.300 you don't want to do that could be a neighbor coming home drunk you just want to make sure
01:05:23.440 that you have your ducks in a row all the deterrence make your home a hard target all that
01:05:27.340 so you can check out that ebook but um i think a lot of that stuff your people need to know that
01:05:32.060 you're protecting them um this even goes to things like i don't i i would not especially in certain
01:05:38.020 parts of town, I would not send my wife alone to certain parts of town. I would not send her alone
01:05:42.260 to the car mechanic so that she can get jobbed over by some guy who thinks she's a dumb lady. 1.00
01:05:47.040 Like these are kind of different ways to protect. But I think, yeah, including those are just ways 0.95
01:05:52.180 to show your people that you care. I was thinking even my son, 16, he just started driving. And
01:05:57.460 every time he leaves, I give him a hug. And I said, drive carefully. I love you. I'll be praying
01:06:02.120 for you. And he kind of like rolls his eyes like, oh, dad, come on. But if I don't say it, he's like,
01:06:07.460 weren't you gonna say something you know like it's just a way to say i care about you i'm thinking
01:06:12.420 about you you know be safe love you that sort of thing one of the things i'll i'll close with
01:06:17.480 gentlemen is pointing back again to brian's heart songs um there's no harmonica which makes them
01:06:24.260 really good uh yet there better not be any harmonica there's going to be harmonica are
01:06:30.280 you serious i'm guaranteeing it i was on the fence i'm now sure forget everything i said
01:06:35.880 I actually don't know.
01:06:36.940 But definitely check that out.
01:06:38.020 I think that's a good way, Brian, by way of art and culture, just to be thinking through.
01:06:43.820 I don't know.
01:06:44.300 I listen to those songs, and I think this is like it taps into the emotive part that I usually try to kill.
01:06:51.500 There's certain emotive parts of you that are definitely alive and well.
01:06:56.040 Like not crying to thinking about like family and stuff, though.
01:07:00.280 No, no, not those parts.
01:07:01.580 It's like the vein in your head that pops up.
01:07:03.740 that's the one that you like to feed that's the one oh man so yeah definitely encourage people
01:07:09.460 to check that out uh at this point can they buy the whole album how do they support not quite yet
01:07:14.460 um the single a mighty host is out about my wife and my family um and the rest of the album is
01:07:20.780 pretty deep into production so um probably another maybe month or so from now sometime
01:07:26.700 around i'm guessing early september is when i'll be able to release that publicly lord willing
01:07:32.180 It could be longer than that. But yeah, working hard on writing songs in that work that function as like signposts that my kids and my family can look at. That's what I was thinking of first, but also other families and other. To be able to look at and say, like, children, you're a blessing. You're a good thing. We're thankful for you.
01:07:51.560 you know dad loves you particularly to my wife like I'm thankful for her I am appreciative
01:07:58.460 particularly of those aspects of her vocation I tried to include aspects of her vocation that
01:08:04.840 are particularly difficult like you know I'm so thankful and blessed by God that I have a wife
01:08:11.120 who is making dinner for my children and and handling the chaos of dinner time those sorts
01:08:17.460 of things. I hope other, you know, Christians write songs and make art and films that demonstrate
01:08:24.080 those, but that was kind of my first foray into that. I think it's important on the topic of
01:08:28.660 today's episode that dads are leading the charge in overtly out loud, blessing their children with
01:08:37.460 words, praying over them the blessings of God, encouraging them, noticing those aspects of their
01:08:44.660 nature that God made as a glory and encouraging them in those things and saying like, sons are
01:08:50.340 strong, go be stronger. Like, you know, go, go, go kill the dragon, get the girl, that kind of
01:08:56.920 thing. And that really is what it's all about is us pushing faith downstream in the generations as
01:09:03.240 fathers so that our kids know we, not just us knowing our marching orders, but so that they
01:09:09.220 know their marching orders and they see them as glorious. So they're excited to put their hand
01:09:13.620 of the plow and say, I want to be a dad like my dad. I want to be a mom like my mom. I want to be,
01:09:19.220 I want to, I want to contribute and put my hand to this work and continue what my mom and dad
01:09:24.800 were doing. Uh, cause it's a good work. Yeah, that's awesome. Uh, Brian, no misery whistle.
01:09:31.020 You didn't even bring the misery whistle for us to, is that what you call the harmonica now?
01:09:34.840 That's what it's called by like you or others. Uh, no, that's like the official name. The official
01:09:40.220 name you know what i didn't you i i'm totally unprepared man i if i had a harmonica right now
01:09:48.580 eric i would be playing it for you and then later i would tell ray what key it was so he could match
01:09:53.740 the outro music to it oh boy and he would and it would sound great and it would go with festin
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