Bob Russell shares words of wisdom for fathers

Show Transcripts:

Intro: Welcome to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran, Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, dad. You want to be a godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

Kent Evans: Hey, welcome to this week’s episode of the Father on Purpose Podcast with Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. And today, we’re going to give you the gift we give you occasionally. About every month or two, we give you the gift and the gift is you don’t have to listen to me and Lawson for the entire time. It’s going to be fantastic.

Lawson Brown: I’m so excited about this. I’m so excited about this.

Kent Evans: And I’m really honored to introduce our guest today that we’re going to have a conversation about fatherhood with. You probably know this name, the name is Bob Russell. Bob was the pastor of Southeast Christian Church for 40 plus years, left an amazing legacy. He is dad, he is a husband, he is a grandfather, he’s a great-grandfather. And Bob has been both a personal inspiration to me and also, we’ve had counsel over lunch a time or two where he’s helped me in the launch and startup of Manhood Journey. Bob did the wedding premarital counseling at a Chinese restaurant with April and me about, goodness, 26, 27 years ago. Bob, you’re the first guy to draw the triangle where April and I were at the bottom of the triangle and Jesus was at the top. And you said, “Hey, don’t really worry too much about trying to get closer together. You both just worry about getting closer to Jesus and the together part will take care of itself.” Great, great wisdom.

So let me just start by stating first, Bob, thanks a ton for coming onto the show. We really appreciate your time today. Get us oriented a little bit with your family. Tell the listener a little bit about yourself personally, your number of kids and grandkids, that kind of thing.

Bob Russell: Thank you, Kent. And let me say, I’m really, really proud of you and I’ve witnessed your growth as a man, and as a husband, as a father. One thing you did really well, you married well.

Kent Evans: If you’ve witnessed my growth, would you make sure you tell April next time you see her?

Bob Russell: I’m talking about spiritual growth.

Kent Evans: Oh.

Bob Russell: Not physical growth.

Lawson Brown: Yes.

Kent Evans: Zip it, Lawson. Zip it.

Bob Russell: When we stand before God someday, God is going to say to April, “April, salvation is by grace, but if it were by works, just come on in. You lived with Kent all those years.” I am so blessed with a wonderful family. You mentioned I have a new great-granddaughter. I used to think that great-grandparents were old. I don’t feel that way anymore, old is always 10 years older than whatever I am. But I got married in 1965, so I’ve been married for 46 years.

Lawson Brown: Oh, good for you. That’s so great.

Bob Russell: 56 years, my math is off. 56 years my wife and I have been married and I’m really grateful for that. And I have two sons, I’ve got one son who is a preacher in Port Charlotte, Florida, which is where I am right now. God calls me down to visit my son in Florida every January and February and you got to listen to God’s call. But I have another son who is a policeman in Louisville, he’s a Lieutenant in the police department. So I’ve got love and justice in my home, but my sons have seven grandchildren. I have five grandsons and two granddaughters. And then I have one grandson who is married and they just had their first granddaughter, Charity and so I am now a great grandfather.

Lawson Brown: Wow.

Bob Russell: Lord’s really blessed me with a wonderful family. Thank you for asking.

Kent Evans: You bet. And your grandson, how’s Charlie doing? He had overcome a really rough stretch with COVID right at the birth of his baby. How’s he doing these days?

Bob Russell: Well, my grandson, Charlie, actually was in ICU for 77 days and nearly died, but God heard the cries of his people and answered our prayer. And Charlie has been dismissed in the hospital, been dismissed from rehab and is home. He still has tremendous pain in one foot, he has dropped foot because of not moving, being in bed for so long. He’s in tremendous pain, but he’s coming out of that and we look forward to the day he’ll be off medication and be able… He told me the other day, “Papa, I can do everything but drive,” and we’re just grateful he’s alive, and he’s mentally alert, and he’s been able to see his daughter. And we’re very, very thankful to God for answered prayer.

Kent Evans: Man, no kidding. Thank you sir for getting us updated on that. Let me dive in, Bob. You raised two boys and at the time you were raising your sons you were a fairly high profile preacher. I don’t like to use words like high profile, but you were a known entity around Louisville and around the nation at the time and in ways that probably put unique pressure on you as a dad. Can you describe for us kind of what it was like parenting two boys when you were raising them in the home and they were younger? How did that work and what were some challenges you had to overcome as a father?

Bob Russell: Well, I think every father, regardless of whether high profile in the Christian world or not, faces similar challenges. I would say if I were going to reduce the challenges that I faced, one would be the time pressures. The minister is really on duty all the time. He’s never off duty and so you can be with your kids and not be focused the way you should be. And I tried to overcome that, but that wasn’t my biggest challenge. I had seen so many preachers neglect their kids and I decided I wasn’t going to do that, so I went to my boys’ ball games. I remember one time, one year I had a boy in eighth grade and a boy who was a senior in high school and they both played basketball. They both had games twice a week, so I mean, four nights a week, they were playing basketball for four months. I think I missed one game.

Lawson Brown: [inaudible 00:06:18].

Kent Evans: Wow.

Bob Russell: I just decided I would schedule my time so that I was with them at the appropriate time and it was amazing. God still blessed the church because I think my priorities were right, but that was a constant challenge. And I tried to be home when they were put to bed when they were younger and things like that. So I don’t think my boys grew up resenting the church because dad was never here. Maybe a bigger challenge and one I didn’t handle as well was I would have unrealistic expectations for my kids. Some of that was spiritual, some of that was carnal. For example, Kent, I grew up playing ball and I mean, athletics were really important to me when I was growing up and I wanted my sons to be athletes, but it didn’t take very long for me to discover that they weren’t very gifted athletically, and they liked athletics, but they weren’t super gifted.

One of my sons was out playing basketball in the backyard with one of his friends when he was probably eight or nine years old and they came inside, both of them came in, I said, “Who won?” And they said, “Oh, we can’t remember.” Well, that gave me a clue right there, competition wasn’t the driving force. And they both played ball, but my expectations for them were higher and I had to learn to be supportive of my sons, even though they weren’t the greatest athletes in the world. Even though I said I didn’t miss a basketball game, both of them sat the bench and that was a whole new experience for me, but they were gifted in other ways. And so that was an adjustment.

Kent Evans: We’ve had a lot of dads reach out to us and say they have trouble relating to their children, for whatever reason. They struggle with finding connection or they struggle with ways to get them to communicate. And one of the things we talk about a lot is what are some shared interests that you might have? And what you found early was maybe sports wasn’t going to be a deep shared interest. How’d you find some shared interest with your boys over time, if maybe sports wasn’t one of them?

Bob Russell: It’s been especially true with my grandsons. I have one grandson who somehow didn’t get the Russell gene and he’s grown really big, and probably weighs 260, and he played Pop Warner football, and he decided his freshman year in high school he didn’t want to play football anymore. And I was so upset with him because the coaches were talking about here’s a kid who’d get a scholarship. I could come down and watch him play football. Then he’s, “I don’t want to play football anymore.” And the more I listened to him and watched him, he is a musician in a football player’s body. When you talk to him about music, music composition, playing music at church, he just lights up. He just starts chattering away. So I said, okay, rather than me get all over him for not playing football, I’ve got to ask him questions about music and I’ve got to compliment him for what he’s done in church and playing music in the background or singing.

And we have a good… And he’s mentioned to me, “Pop, thanks for noticing that because some people are hard on me for not playing football.”

Lawson Brown: Oh, that’s cool.

Bob Russell: And both my sons are interested in music. One son was interested in law enforcement pretty early on. So I had to ask different questions and not get on them about basketball or football and enjoy watching games together, but try not to force my interest in sports on them. But another part of unrealistic expectations, Kent, as a preacher, I want my kids to be perfect, spiritually, morally. And as preachers kids, sometimes preachers kids go south. And especially, you mentioned I’m in a pretty high profile ministry, and somebody came to me when one of my boys was a teenager and told me, he kind of ratted on my son and told me he’d broken a family rule, I mean, big time. And I was so upset with him, mad. And I sat him down in the living room on the couch and I confronted him about what he had been accused of doing.

And to his credit, he didn’t deny it. He said, “Dad, I did that and I’m really sorry.” But that wasn’t enough for me. I was angry and I began to grind him down, “Why would you do that? You know what we’ve warned about that stuff. Why would you even go there? Why do you hang out with those kids sometimes? They’re not good for you. I can’t understand why you got into that kind of predicament.” And I kept grinding him down and finally he broke and he put his head in his hands and he said, “Dad, I am so sorry. Please, dad, forgive me. Dad, could we pray or something?”, which meant hey dad, let’s get this over with. You know what I’m saying? But when he said, “Can we pray or something?”, I broke. And we knelt by the couch, the two of us, and we both blubbered out of prayer, and then we stood and embraced, and it was over. Strange thing though, Kent and Lawson, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt closer to my son than I did at that moment.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. Yep.

Bob Russell: When he needed my forgiveness and acceptance and he needed grace and I could give it to him.

Lawson Brown: Wow. I love that. I think your sons are around my age now because back then when I was a member of Southeast I remember seeing them and I wondered myself… I’m really glad to hear you say all that. I wondered back then, and it may even be a separate episode, Kent, just the pressures that a father unintentionally even can put on their kids. But for you, Bob, that you were recognized everywhere you went in Louisville and certainly in the Christian circles nationwide, the pressure on Rusty and Phil, I’ve always admired that Phil went into law enforcement because I would’ve assumed back then that it was just sort of a known thing that you’re this bigger than life pastor, sorry to say it like that, and they ought to follow in your footsteps and you had a pretty big shadow.

And I admired your family because when I found out that Phil became a policeman, I thought, and you even talked about it in a couple of sermons that I remember, that you can serve your community and you can minister in a role outside of being behind a pulpit. Will you talk just a little bit about the conversations when they were in… My daughters are… I’m selfish in asking this question. My daughters are in their early 20s and in the throes of kind of figuring out what is their life path and that sort of thing and we’re walking alongside them a little bit. Talk about, if you will, how the conversations happened in your household about what rusty and Phil were interested in, what God was calling them to be? And particularly, I’m just curious on Phil going outside of the ministry.

Bob Russell: The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he won’t depart from it.” And we always thought that meant you trained a child to know the Bible and know God, and then they’ll be faithful. I heard, I think, Chuck Swindle years ago say there’s a sense in which training up a child in the way that it should go is that you examine and observe where the child’s giftedness is, where they’re the most likely to succeed in life and to pursue their passion. And I think if a father can be sensitive to how this child is wired, then we’re more likely to encourage them to pursue that and then when they’re old, they’re happy. They stay with it. And Rusty from the time he was little, he wanted to be a preacher. I mean, he would, when he is three or four years old, he would scribble a few lines on a piece of paper, and go into a room and close the door, and we’d hear him shouting in there. He was going over a sermon like his dad.

Phil never talked about being a preacher and Phil shouldn’t be a preacher. Phil’s mercy gifts are pretty low and one of my favorite descriptions of Jesus is full of grace and truth. Well, and I want to be full of grace to my kids and full of truth at the same time that’s why I say, okay, but Phil’s not full of grace. He’s full of truth and it would be hard for him. There’s a video by Bob Newhart, which he pretends to be a counselor and he counsels for five minutes, he listens to the person’s problem, and then he gives him his cure. He says, “Stop it.” That’s the kind of counselor Phil would be with people.

He showed interest early on in law enforcement and we would say, “Phil, you would really be a good policeman. You would do that well, if that’s what you choose to do.” And then when he got into it, we continued to encourage him as an adult. And I never pressured my kids to be a preacher. If that’s what God called them to be, that’s what I wanted them to be, but if they had giftedness in other areas, then I need to encourage that.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. I’m super proud to hear that he’s now a Lieutenant in the Louisville department. That is, especially nowadays with a lot of the turmoil that’s been going on, that’s a tough gig.

Bob Russell: When the riots were going on in downtown Louisville, 6:30 at the height of the riots, the TV cameras were downtown, and there were people throwing rocks, and rioting, and cursing at the police. And I said to myself, boy, I hope my son isn’t in the middle of that and just then he walked by the TV screen.

Lawson Brown: Oh, gosh.

Bob Russell: And my grandson said, “Hey, there’s dad, there’s dad.” And about, it must have been 15 minutes later, I heard two policemen have been shot. And between the time I heard that and the time Phil texted us and said, “I’m okay,” that’s a long 20 minutes. And when you’re a dad, we always think of being a dad when your kids are little, but you’re a dad when your kids are 50 years old and they need your encouragement. And there’s a part you’re always a dad, but your role changes when you get older. I watch my son Rusty preach on video online and you know what? He doesn’t dress like I think a preacher should.

Kent Evans: There it is. It’s out, it’s out.

Bob Russell: He’s grown this beard that he looks like it’s out of Duck Dynasty or something. But you know what I say to him? I say, “Hey, Rusty, good sermon, good sermon,” because my role changes as a father to being one of instructor or disciplinarian to be an encourager. I’ve done all the damage I can do. It’s time for me [inaudible 00:17:12].

Lawson Brown: That’s funny. Talking about the pressure that dads can put on their children or within their family, how about your own dad? I heard an interview or a part of a sermon where you… It was an interview where you talked about being a competitive person, very driven and when there was one point where Southeast was ranked as like number six of fastest growing churches in America, and you were proud, that really fed you. And then your second thought was, I wonder who one through five is. Where did that competitive drive come from and what sorts of pressure and relationship did you have with your own father?

Bob Russell: Well, I grew up in a very competitive family. Instinctively I’m competitive. My dad was a competitor. And I had the most wonderful dad, my dad had a rough, rough upbringing. He was the 17th of 18 kids, and his mother died when he was three and his dad was an alcoholic and he was kind of abandoned. And for him, once he met my mother, gave his life to the Lord, he never looked back and he was a dedicated Christian and a wonderful, wonderful man. But he loved sports and he would take us to ball games and spend time. He hardly ever missed a ball game that I participated in, that was important to me. I’ll tell you when I was in fourth or fifth grade we used to go to the high school, local high school basketball games, and our team we were rooting for, our high school, was ahead by one point and had the ball with 10 seconds left to go.

And Nicky Vanish, our big center, turned around and took an underhand shot from the free throw line when he should have been holding onto the ball. And my dad stood up and said, “Nick, you fool!” And I was devastated because I knew the Bible said you should never call a man of fool, but that’s one of the reasons I’m in ministry today because you know what? That’s the worst word I ever heard my dad use. He called a man of fool. I never heard him swear, never any profanity, and he was just an elder in the church and a genuine Christian, and I learned a lot from him. He was very, very affectionate. He knew how to hug and communicate he loves you. My mother was the disciplinarian in our home, but my dad was the center of warmth.

But my dad wasn’t perfect. For example, I can’t remember my dad ever saying to me, I love you, but I’m not warped and I don’t feel deprived because my dad never said I love you. I knew he did and he made it obvious he did, but there are just some things that generation had a hard time talking about, and especially in the kind of environment my dad grew up in.

Lawson Brown: Right.

Bob Russell: So as a father, I don’t have any trouble hugging my kids, but you know what? I still to this day have a hard time saying, I love you. I force myself to do it and my kids sometimes initiate it, but it’s hard to outgrow the environment in which you found yourself growing up.

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Bob Russell: And I have to work to be stronger in an area where my dad was a little weak.

Kent Evans: Wow. Wow. What an insight.

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When we talk to dads a lot, Bob, in our ministry, a lot of them still feel like they are living in the shadow of their own dad all the time. I mean, my email inbox is full of guys who will say, “Well, I’m this way with my family because my dad,” and then it goes however long, another sentence to five paragraphs about it. I was just trading notes with a guy from Mexico and he was articulating that some of his current dad challenges he feels are reflection of how he grew up. What do you say to dads who, if your email inbox were filled up with the emails like that, what do you say to those dads that just feel as if their own fatherhood is either doomed, or beyond hope, or they there’s no way back for them because of their own dad?

Lawson Brown: Yeah, they’re still dragging that with them.

Kent Evans: What would we say to that dad?

Bob Russell: Well, I think we need to learn from the good things that our parents did and we need to benefit from the bad things that they did. My dad initiated a statement. I know he initiated it. If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff? Now, maybe he didn’t initiate that. But I think we need to develop that mentality as a parent. If your dad made a mistake and he treated you like this, or he didn’t come home at night, or he was a drunk, does that mean you’re going to do the same thing? No.

Learn from that mistake and quit being the victim and blaming your dad for everything. I’m sure he did a few things right and maybe you can learn from those things. If he did a few things wrong, be like my dad. My dad had a terrible dad. He was an alcoholic and neglected him, but he was determined I’m going to be a whole lot better than my dad, and generationally he broke the cycle. And I talked to you about my family, if my dad hadn’t broken that cycle, my kids who knows where they’d be.

Kent Evans: Man, I know there’s a lot of dads listening who are, I don’t know if this is the right term I would use, but I would use it like this. I would say first generation Christians, because I think we’re at, I hope we’re at the end of this era where the last 30, 40, 50 years fathers have kind of abandoned their homes. There’s a lot of dads gone. We’ve seen more kids born in single mom homes and there’s all this stuff about fatherlessness being epidemic. So God’s moving in the hearts and minds of these men and they’re coming to know the Lord at 20, or 30, or 40. And for the first time they are a believer and they are in that role that maybe your dad was in. What’s a thing or two you would say to encourage that dad? Because we may have hundreds or thousands listen to this episode who are like, “Yeah, that’s me, man. I’m I’m in the role of your dad.” What do we say to that guy, Bob?

Bob Russell: Well, the thing I admired most about my dad, he was genuine and he was totally sold out to Jesus Christ. I mean he scraped to get by to raise six kids and worked in a blue collar job, but 10% of every paycheck went to the Lord. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, we were going to church and he never wavered on those things. My Uncle Don came out to our little farm one day to work on the tractor. My Uncle Don was not a Christian and I heard him using some words that I’d not heard before. And about three days later, my dad and I were working and loading manure on this old wagon we had, and then we overloaded it and the wagon wheel broke and the thing dumped the whole load. And I said, “Well, that SOB.” My dad hit me on the shoulder, knocked me to the ground. I said, “Dad, I didn’t know that was a bad word.” He said, “You know now.”

So I think if you grew up in an environment where you’re cussing, don’t be too lenient with your kids and let them get by. My dad didn’t get let me get by with doing some things that he had done and some things that he had said in his younger years. He let me know that they were wrong. You know what? My parents, both my mother and my dad, never wavered about church. Sunday morning, we go to church and they taught me about priorities. I remember one time asking, “Do we have to go?” That was the dumbest question I ever asked in my life. I came home from little league baseball practice when I was nine years old, I was all excited, I said, “Mom and dad, our team is going to go to the Cleveland Indians and watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball. I’ve always wanted to see a major league game. All we got to do is wear our uniforms. We’re going to get on a bus and take our lunch. It’s not going to cost anything. We all get to go.”

Well, they rejoice with me until they looked and said, “Hey Bob, that’s Sunday. We go to church on Sunday.” I said, “Well, it’s just one time. I can always go to church, look one time.” They said, “No, go to church.” And I didn’t get to go. In fact, on the way to church my dad drove by where the kids are getting ready to get on the bus to go to Cleveland to the ball game. My dad beeped the horn and waved and I dove down the backseat. I didn’t want my friends to realize I was such a religious fanatic, but I mean, they taught me the Lord comes first, even when there’s pleasures of the world for a season. And you can tell they just warped me forever.

Lawson Brown: You still remember it.

Bob Russell: I still remember. And I hear these parents today, Kent, say, “Well,” to the preacher, “we’re probably going to be gone a lot this summer, our kids are on a travel team, and a lot of the games are on Sunday and we’re gone.” And I tell you, my parents, you asked me about what my dad did to overcome, he was faithful to the Lord and I learned some lessons about what’s priority in life and what’s not priority. And let me say a word to dads who have kids who are fair athletes. A professional scout told me one time not long ago, “You tell your parents that if their boy or girl is good enough to play, we’ll find them. They don’t have to go parading them all over the country, if they’re athletically gifted enough to play, we’ll find them. You don’t have to promote.”

Lawson Brown: That’s cool.

Bob Russell: But more importantly, you teach your kids that the Lord matters more than baseball or basketball and 20 years from now when they’re not playing professional and they’re raising their own family, they’ll never forget that.

Kent Evans: Mm. I was fortunate to meet… One of the guys I went to high school with played pro baseball and he had a really great MLB career, played for 13, 14 years, made a lot of money, great guy, really good guy. And he introduced me to another friend, anyway, long story short, I now know a couple guys who used to pitch in major leagues and they would say same thing. They would say, “Hey man, your kid is not going pro. Let’s just start there.”

Bob Russell: Start there. Start right there.

Kent Evans: “Because I’m 99.99% right.”

Bob Russell: That’s right. Yeah.

Kent Evans: Now, if he’s not going to go pro, what’s he want to do after college.

Bob Russell: You recognize the name of Bobby Richardson?

Kent Evans: Oh, sure. Yeah.

Bob Russell: Bobby Richardson was the second baseman for the New York Yankees and he was just a few years ahead of me and he was kind of my idol growing up. I wanted to be like Bobby Richardson. He was my size and everything. Well, of course I didn’t play pro and wasn’t that good. But we had Bobby Richardson as a guest at our church years ago to talk to fathers and beforehand I asked him about his kids if they played ball. And he said, “Yeah,” one of several, they played ball. He said, “I’ve got a son who’s a preacher,” and I said, “Oh,” he said, “He could have played professionally, but he discovered there’s something more important.”

Kent Evans: Mm.

Bob Russell: And boy, that left an impact on me that we think sports are so important, but it’s the Lord that matters in the end.

Kent Evans: You’ve been alive long enough, Bob, to see fathers kind of, I don’t want to say come and go, what I mean by that is you’ve seen the ebbs and flows of society, and culture, and those kind of things. What’s maybe one thing or two things, if you can think of it, that you would tell a dad who’s raising kids today, he still has kids in the home, what would you tell that dad? Hey, if there’s one or two things you try to get right as a dad and you’ve talked about some of them, God is a priority, your marriage was always a priority. I remember from stage all the time you talking about Judy and your marriage is always a priority. What are one or two things you might add and say, hey dad, if you’re going to get one or two things right, here’s one or two things I’d encourage you… Kind of on the other side of now seeing grandkids and great grandkids, what do you tell younger dads these days?

Bob Russell: There’s an old saying, the best thing that a father can do for his kids is to love their mother. And I think it goes a step beyond, let your kids see and hear that you love your wife. I remember my dad, if we go to a ball game or something, getting in the car, and my mother wasn’t very interested in athletics so she’d often stay home, he said, “Oh, I forgot to kiss your mom goodbye.” And he would leave the car and run back in the house just to kiss her goodbye. And I would see him hugging my mom and those memories are tender to me today.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, that [inaudible 00:30:52].

Bob Russell: And I think kids need to see you embracing your wife. They need to see you treating her with dignity and putting her on a pedestal that you don’t… The dad doesn’t let the kids sass their mother or talk back to their mother, the dad intervenes and he communicates there’s something more important than you in this home, that’s my relationship with your mother. And long after you’re gone, I’m still going to have her and she matters more to me than you. And there’s a security that comes to kids when they have that kind of stability in the home. That’s what’s so sad, when the Bible says, “God hates divorce,” and the reason for broken homes, what it does to the kids. And there are a lot of homes where they’re not divorced, but there’s no evident compassion, there’s no evident affection in that home. And I really think one of the best things dads can do is to just love their mother.

Kent Evans: I’m going to let Lawson ask you the last question. But before he does, I remember one of my boys saying one time when they were around 11 or 12, they said, “Dad, you like mom more than you like us don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah. Any other questions?”

Bob Russell: That’s great.

Kent Evans: Anything else?

Bob Russell: You got that one right.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. That’s right.

Kent Evans: Lawson.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. So Bob, this past Sunday at church, I was with my two daughters who, like I said, are in their 20s, and I got pretty teared up during the sermon because I’m a patriot. I think I know you are a patriot. Let’s zoom out just a little bit on the impact of fatherhood. I believe the family unit for our country is really important. And then dad, as a critical centerpiece of that family unit, I believe is ultimately important. The sermon was about, it was is our country nearing death or are we in the throes of birth? And he tied it back to God as our ultimate founding father and that we have faith in Him, He is above all politicians, all people, He is in control of our nation’s future.

And I found a sermon that you gave from Pine Lake on July 4th, where you spoke some words about let’s live in the ultimate hope for our country, that it is not unraveling. It is not coming apart, and you can feel like that if you watch too much news, or social media, or whatever today. Will you give some wisdom from your perspective on, I guess, maybe give a state of the union as it pertains to God is our ultimate founding father.

Bob Russell: Well, there’s a reason for concern, Lawson, about our country because the Bible says the wicked will be cast into hell in all nations that forget God. And we started out with a blessing of God and we’re trying to remove God from almost every aspect of our secular culture, and we are in dangerous times, but there’s also reason for hope. Romans says, “Where sin increases, grace increases all the more.” And while I see the secular world drifting away from God, I see a lot of Christians and churches that are getting stronger and stronger and bolder and bolder. And if God would’ve spared Sodom and Gamora, if there had been 10 righteous people, the hope of America is for men and women in the church to stand up with boldness for righteousness.

And the Bible says, “If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who’s going to prepare for battle?” And it’s time for those of us in the church to stand up and say, hey, here’s the foundation of our nation. We were created as a nation really under God and we’re not ashamed of the fact that we believe that there is a creator and we’re endowed by our creator with certain rights and those rights don’t come from the government that they come from God. And so I have hope that the church and men in the church in particular are getting bolder and bolder and saying, hey, we’ve heard enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, I agree.

Bob Russell: We’re going to stand up and take our country back. So there is reason for hope, but it’s going to take some courage and it’s going to take some repentance on the part of God’s people.

Lawson Brown: Bob, thank you, from my heart. You personally were a big part of the reason for how I got pointed to Jesus and were a big part of the origination of my faith, sitting in the audience, listening to you. And it’s such a pleasure to see you in person and to hear from you. I’m going to listen to this podcast episode over, and over, and over.

Bob Russell: Oh, that’s nice.

Lawson Brown: I can just tell you, so thank you. I’d love one day for you to come back and join us. And for all you dads out there, I know that you will get something from this and I encourage you, hear it again over and over. Just let it soak in, these words of wisdom from a man like Bob. So Bob, thank you so much for being with us today.

Bob Russell: Thank you and I sure appreciate Manhood Journey and all you guys are doing. It’s an idea whose time has come, so stand firm and stay faithful.

Kent Evans: Hey dad, thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcasts, or just call a person up and tell them to listen in. Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally, review this podcast, leave us a review, good or bad wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Outro: You’ve been dozing off to the Father on Purpose podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now, wake up. Head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a Father on Purpose.