God’s Perspective May Show Us the Impact of Little Moments

Show Transcripts:

Voiceover:

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 attentional 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.

 

Lawson Brown:

Hello folks. Welcome to the podcast. I’m kind of excited about this, Kent. We got an interesting topic. Not really exactly sure where it’s going to go, but I trust God and I trust that it’s going to be interesting and fruitful. So, there you go.

 

Kent Evans:

I’m glad you’re excited about it.

 

Lawson Brown:

I have a friend, Shane, who, this was long, long time ago and I’ve remembered it ever since. I hope I don’t butcher the telling of this or the description of this because it’s a super cool thought process. He said, “I hope when I get to heaven that there is some gigantic like IMAX screen version,” of what he called the divine flow chart. So you can go into the divine flow chart room and you can go up and down, you can go backwards and forwards, and you can trace your life, you can trace other people’s lives, and see where the points of intersection happened, where maybe it was you and I, we connected on whatever day that was and that intersection led to something else, which fast forward 20 years, is where we are today. Maybe though it was a conversation that a server had with me on some business trip and I’m paying my check and the server said something that just really touched my heart. That was God in that moment offering me something through a stranger, that I needed right then as I was on my way home, back through the airport, whatever. And that changed my trajectory. That changed my pathway. And I love the thought of this ability to just kind of float around and follow and be like, “Oh man, I remember. I remember when that right there happened. And I wonder what happened to that guy?” Well, follow along and see what did that interaction that you had with that person do for them in the rest of their life? And it puts in perspective the thought of, as we go through our day to day, we see our perspective, we see only our perspective, and we see a snapshot. We don’t see the movie. God sees. He knows what’s coming, He knows what’s been, He knows what’s going to be. But to be able to, I don’t know, something mystically visualizes this ability that hopefully one day we may have, and do it together. Wouldn’t that be fun to go through the times where, and there were a lot, there were years in there where you and I were not. I mean, we would touch base every now and then, but we weren’t sharing life together.

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, there were years I didn’t even like you. I hated you. No, I’m just kidding.

 

Lawson Brown:

Wow.

 

Kent Evans:

I’m just kidding.

 

Lawson Brown:

Wow.

 

Kent Evans:

It never got quite to hate. No, that’s a good point, man, for sure. You and I have been friends a long time, and partly because of distance, you moved out of Louisville not too long, a few years after we met, and so we’ve had to be more intentional about staying connected through technology and phone calls and that kind of thing. Or if we’re ever in the same city. And I think what’s really interesting to me about this topic is how it relates so specifically to dads, as we are walking through all these moments with our kids, where they meet somebody, or they pass that test or they don’t pass that test, or they do get into that college or they don’t get into that college, or that boy does break up with them or that boy doesn’t break up with them, whatever. Those moments are moments where I think we tend to look at them in pretty stark colors. Black and white. That’s a good thing. That’s a bad thing.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

You got into college? Good thing. That kid dumped you? Bad thing. And I will go take him out. That kind of mentality. And I think what’s interesting to me is there’s bound to be, I love the idea of the big interactive kind of board, I see like this giant ladder like in one of those libraries.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

Where you have a big ladder where you can walk up and down and slide it across the rails. That’s the picture I have in my head. And I think what’s interesting to me is I remember reading one time, it’s been several years ago now, but John Piper once said, “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life and you may be aware of three of them.” What a great line, man. That was quite a while ago. And it’s just this idea that we only see life through this kind of knothole out in the baseball fence. It’s like you’re looking through the knothole and you can see part of the game, but we don’t see everything. And even more so, our kids. As I’ve walked through different seasons with my kids, I’ve said, “Hey, man, when you’re a teenager, you tend to think in terms of hours and days. When you’re my age, you tend to think in terms of decades and lifetimes.” And it’s just our perspective gets widened. And I think that is a snapshot of what it will be like in eternity, where God’s going to be able to show us how these different connections and moments did or didn’t combine to make something good or bad. I think, Lawson, on the big board that He’ll show me if this is the way it works, I think there will be moments in my life that I thought were deeply negative, and he’s going to say, ?Man, I was doing a lot of cool stuff in that. You see what happened? And you became more resilient. You became a better listener, et cetera.” Don’t you think there are moments as a dad that we see as black or white, negative or positive, when in the grand scheme, we may just be looking at them completely differently?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. You know this person, but I worked for a guy a long, long time ago, and basically he couched it out of dignity and being gracious for me, he couched it in a layoff, but I got fired. I was just in the wrong role, wrong time, couldn’t handle it. He tried. I tried. I wore myself out and he finally said, “You’re wearing yourself out for nothing. This is just not right.” But at the time I got fired. And two things happened. It’s like you’re saying, back to the divine flow chart, you will be able with that grand perspective to see this had to happen for that, for that next thing, to happen. And in my case, it was the day I got fired. It was raining. I had a long drive. And so it was just an awful sad thing. My pride was hurt. I was defeated.

 

Kent Evans:

It was actually raining?

 

Lawson Brown:

It was actually raining. Yeah. Literally fired me in the rain.

 

Kent Evans:

Standing out in the rain? “Hey, Lawson, come with me outside. I’m going to fire you in the rain.”

 

Lawson Brown:

But on my drive home I come around this long curve. And there were two cars, one of them upside down, wheels still spinning. EMT’s had just arrived. Smoke. Three other cars had pulled over and they were underneath looking through the window, upside down of the car. I was like, “You know what? It’s just a job. I’m fine.” Perspective. God used the baseball bat of perspective to get my head right. That’s one thing. Second is, I don’t know, two, three days later, I’m back at it, moping around a little bit. Sad, worried, scared, not trusting God. Was getting the, back then, both daughters, little girls, out of the tub, put a towel around them, I turned around and Audrey, I’ll get choked up talking about. Audrey was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Reached out our hands, we held hands, and she goes, “Let’s promise each other right now, you are going to get another job. It’s going to be fine. God has got this. He knows what we don’t. Let’s promise each other that when that day comes that we’ll be able to look back on this time and have honored each other. We won’t have bickered about every little thing and that we will have honored our faith.” That was a major reset that, had that not happened, had I not gone for this job that I thought was great, that was bigger than me and all this, and then for that to have not worked out? I don’t know, 18 years later, it totally changed my career trajectory, where we live, everything that came afterwards. I don’t want to say God just, I don’t know, what do I know? I don’t know that He just created that situation, but He certainly taught us so much from that year of our life when we were kind of in like start, stop, restart mode.

 

Kent Evans:

Wow. That’s fascinating. I didn’t realize, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you tell that whole story. I knew bits and pieces, and I didn’t realize that Audrey and April were so similar in the way that they’re made up, because I went through a time when April and I first got married, I was fired twice in roughly less than a few months. I had one job, they fired me. Then I had another one, and they fired me pretty soon thereafter. And we had not been married very long, so newlyweds the whole bit. And I was like, “Yeesh.” And so I remember at one time, April said, I can almost quote her, I’m going to get it a little bit wrong, but she said, “I’m not sure why this is happening, but I am absolutely sure that you’re going to figure it out.”

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s awesome.

 

Kent Evans:

And she didn’t say it in a way like, “Hey, you better find another job, dummy.” She said it in a way, like, “I believe this is going to be okay. And I’m sure you’re going to help. This is a moment.” And it’s funny that both April and Audrey were kind of cut from the same cloth in that regard, that even when it was, because, man, a guy getting fired from his job, that can be really an existential crisis for many men. They’ve tied their identity so closely to their work that sometimes if that work ends abruptly, for whatever reason, whether it’s a lay off or fired or whatever, forced retirement, they’re at a place where half their body’s been cut out of them.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

What would you say?

 

Lawson Brown:

That hurt.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah.

 

Lawson Brown:

It did. I mean, I hate to say it, but it took a couple of years for me to get my work confidence back up and it affected other things as well. It was not easy, but the point is that that had to happen.

 

Kent Evans:

How long did take you to stop toilet papering your former boss’s house?

 

Lawson Brown:

Right. We had to move away.

 

Kent Evans:

That was just so you could hide the fact that you were the one doing it. You’re driving eight hours at night, toilet papering the house, and then driving eight hours back to Atlanta.

 

Lawson Brown:

That guy was great.

 

Kent Evans:

Wasn’t me, man. I live in Atlanta now.

 

Lawson Brown:

That guy was absolutely great. It was all good, man, but it took some time and it took distance from that point in the flowchart for me to really absorb God’s lesson.

 

Kent Evans:

Man, that’s a great way to end. Let’s do that. On the flip side of the break, let’s unpack that a little bit about how sometimes when we’re at the dot on the flow chart, all we can see is the dot, especially as a dad. And we’ll kind of relate this to our kids right after this.

 

Kent Evans:

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Kent Evans:

So sometimes during the break, we kind of talk a little bit about the mistakes I made in the first half of the show. That’s Lawson’s favorite topic. And we have a young man named Hunter who does some tech work for us and he also likes to make fun of me during the breaks. And what they said was, “Hey Kent, why did you get fired twice? Why don’t you just tell everybody that?” To which I said, “Shut up, Hunter.” But the first time I got fired was at an advertising agency and, man, you know what? It was almost like I was glad they fired me. They didn’t really like me all the way. I didn’t really like them all the way. There were a lot of challenges there, and yeah, that was actually fairly amicable. The second one was kind of funny in the sense that I went to work a new job with Company B, we’ll just call it Company B. Meanwhile, I was interviewing for a third job because I didn’t even like Company B. It was just a port in the storm and I just needed a job. And so it was definitely not a career move of any kind and I was not looking forward to being there very long. I printed out my resume on the Company B’s printer to take to another job interview and they found out that I used the printer at that company and I got fired for, say, essentially misappropriation of ink toner.

 

Lawson Brown:

So they were looking for a reason. They were looking for a low hanging fruit reason.

 

Kent Evans:

I may have been the only guy ever fired for misappropriation of ink toner. Back in the day that was a big deal. Ink toner.

 

Lawson Brown:

I remember that, yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

That was huge.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

So all that to say, Lawson, so here we are as dads. And what I think is interesting sometimes when we look at this idea of this giant sort of timeline of the things that are happening and how our lives intersect with other peoples is, as a dad, for me what’s interesting, is I’m still living a life. It’s July and, and I’m living a life. I’m 51, and I have a whole life that I’m living. I’m married to my lovely wife. I’ve got five boys, a daughter-in-law, and sometimes what’s interesting is I find that as a dad, I can get so wrapped up in my own timeline that I’m not helping my children process what’s happening in their timelines. Because oftentimes I do have a better perspective than they do.

 

Kent Evans:

You were saying right before we hit the break, sometimes all we can see is the dot. So when your kid goes out and gives up five home runs and loses the baseball game, all he can see is, “I’m a failure. I failed the team. I failed the school. I failed the coach.” But you know, sitting on the other side of this, that, man, that’s going to build character, that’s going to make him maybe practice harder in the off season, who knows? We can see the positive things that come out of some of those downward moments in our timeline, and it’s incumbent upon us as parents to help our kids see beyond the dot, beyond the dot of the moment. And it’s interesting if you think about it, part of your friend Shane’s perspective on this, Lawson, is like our perspective as an earthly dad, is God’s perspective as a heavenly father in that He’s often telling us, “Hey, man, it’s just one dot. I understand it feels like the end of the world.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, wow, yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

“I understand it feels like the end of the world. I understand. It’s just one dot.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Right. “And this has to happen. Don’t worry.” You know?

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah.

 

Lawson Brown:

“For the rest of it. You got to move through this one.” Yeah, I think that’s a really cool thought process to help your children with that. I like the thought of visuals and the divine flow chart, mega expansive room, is a conversation that I think would probably be good and kind of fun to have with your kids to help them understand that it’s a point by point. Maybe a point is a day. Maybe a point is a year. But to give them that ability to think with a longer-term perspective is it’s just an ongoing conversation. It’s not like you describe it and then, boom, your kid has learned perspective. And so now that’ll serve them the rest of their life. Like in my case that I was at the time really into work and like way, way over. I had to kind of get crushed and have nothing to do. And it was like, literally thank God it happened because I got to spend some real quality time while looking for a job and all that. But I had more time on my hands than working a 80 hour week to be with my little daughters, at the time. And it’s a sweet spot in time now. And so I think maybe revisiting sometimes with your children what has happened in their life and helping to reinforce, “Remember when you got cut from the dance team two years ago, three years ago, and then because of that, we found whatever, fill in the blank.”

 

Kent Evans:

I know what you told your daughters. You said, “Remember when you got cut from the dance team? Hey, good news is mom and dad saved $280 a month.”

 

Lawson Brown:

More than that.

 

Kent Evans:

And that was just on the pizza.

 

Lawson Brown:

On Dad’s pizza.

 

Kent Evans:

On Dad’s pizza.

 

Lawson Brown:

But to help get that perspective, through prayer and conversations with other people. Like right now I’m being reminded of that lesson. So you can help your own children by going and maybe revisiting something that happened in the past and then going, “So, now let’s break it apart. Let’s see where the pathway went from there because of that to where we are today.”

 

Kent Evans:

What’s interesting, Lawson, as we’re talking about this, I’m thinking of the scripture, which I can’t put my finger on the verse. Maybe one of our listeners will email us, but it talks about the God of all comfort, and it says the God of all comfort will comfort us in our afflictions so that we can comfort others. And I think about that idea that as we hit moments in our timeline that feel like low moments, we are comforted by God.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

Not just so we can get through it.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

Not just so we can get through it.

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s right.

 

Kent Evans:

But so that we now have this comfort, this idea, this story that we can use to tell other people. Another guy gets fired? If he comes to you and says, “Man, I just got fired.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Dude, that has happened. Yeah, that’s happened so much. And I made a promise back then, because I remember distinctly a handful of people that came out of the blue that I did not expect that helped me, greatly, find my next new thing or just be in those moments with me or with me and Audrey. And I also remember the people that I would have told you ahead of time were going to be there for me that were non-existent. And so I learned, and I made a promise back then that if I’m in a position to help somebody in the future find their next new job because something just happened to them, I’m going to do everything I can. And I’ve always tried my best to uphold that commitment that I made back then.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation because I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your role on the podcast, Lawson, and I just think, I mean, you’ve tried. You’ve tried.

 

Lawson Brown:

It’s raining. Bro, it’s raining.

 

Kent Evans:

You’ve tried very hard.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right now.

 

Kent Evans:

And I think I speak for me and Hunter when I say, we really do appreciate the effort, the effort’s been stellar, stellar. The outcomes, I don’t know if I’d use the word stellar, probably use a different word.

 

Lawson Brown:

You’re a good trier.

 

Kent Evans:

You’re a great trier. I want you to say on your resume, tried so hard at that podcast.

 

Kent Evans:

Here’s the other thing, as we’re talking about timeline and we’re talking about these moments, I’m pretty convinced that if this board exists, I just think I’ve probably gotten a lot of my moments in life, I’ve colored them with the wrong color. They’ve happened and I’ve colored them black and just said, “Ah, this is all bad. There’s nothing good about this at all. This is all bad.” And I’m getting better at understanding that’s probably not okay. That’s probably not healthy. I remember hearing a friend of mine, anytime something went well for him in a business context, he and I would be chatting and he’d say, “Man, I landed that big deal and I got that huge commission. I’m going to get a new car. And I prayed for that to happen and I just know God was in that.” And I’m like, “Awesome.” That could be true for sure. God blesses us. There’s no question that God could have been in that. I also think of the scripture that the Apostle Paul talks about being shipwrecked and beaten and abandoned and flogged and God was in that too. When I was first starting Manhood Journey, I happened to be in London, England, and I was meeting with a wise sage, a guy who had been in the ministry business for 25 years. He was about 65 at the time and he’d worked as a lawyer first. And so he’d had these two careers, kind of same deal as me. First career kind of in business, second career kind of in ministry. He said to me something really interesting. He goes, “You know what I want to do with guys like you, Kent?” I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “I just want to tell you, man, I’m so proud of you and you need to go and go and go and God be with you and I’m a huge fan. And I just want to encourage you.” Then he had this sort of different, the conversation pivoted, and he goes, “However, I also want to say something else to you. Go looking through scripture at what happened to people who followed God’s plan for their life and ask yourself, ‘How did that work out for them?'” He goes, “In every case it worked out good for them spiritually, but, man, in many, many cases, it didn’t work out good for them materially, it didn’t work out good for them physically.” And he just said, “I just want you to know following God’s plan does not mean it’s all rainbows and unicorns and happiness. There could be a lot of challenge.” And so, for me, I’m learning. I’m learning. I’m still in the process of learning how some of those moments on my timeline that I think are all positive and all good might be moments where I’m tempted to put my faith in money or attempted to put my faith in popularity. And some of those moments that I think are all bad and all dark are probably the moments where God’s doing the greatest amount of work, on my character my ability to persevere, just like James 1, “Count it all joy, brothers, when you face trials of many kinds.” That word count is a word, I was looking at it last week, it’s a word that basically means to like direct or lead or command. So what James is saying in that verse is you take your trials and you command them to be joyful. You will tell the trial, “You’re not going to be a problem for me. You’re going to be a source of joy for me because I know you are causing me to be more perseverant, to be more steadfast, to be more diligent.” And so I just think of these moments on our timeline and how often I’ve probably gotten them wrong.

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s a helpful thing. I’m, for whatever reason, man, I’m wondering if someone’s listening who says, “Yeah, but your little losing of your job or your kid not making the team,” I hope that there is such a thing where when we get to heaven the beauty of God’s plan is revealed through whatever means. I’m sure our little silly thought about a divine flow chart room pales in comparison to what it’s actually going to be about. But for the parents who lost a child or the single dad out there who is, and pray that you’re hearing a little bit of encouragement from us through this effort, that you’re not alone, and that there is a bigger plan that is going to be played out but you may not have the answer until you get, until we arrive. And I pray for them that in the moments now where you just go, “There just can’t be a good reason. I just don’t understand. There’s no way.” And you’re in it or maybe you’re years beyond it, and you still can’t, you still struggle. I believe, wholeheartedly, that when we get there, it’ll all be revealed. And this time on earth, talk about perspective, our time on earth, this vapor that is going to be revealed as such a short time in the scheme of eternity, that you will receive the understanding of why that awful, tragic thing had to happen, so much worse than losing a job or whatever, whatever little trivial thing that we’re talking about. For whatever reason, it hit me, Kent, and you guys, if you’re out there and that is you, and I just can’t even understand the trauma and the challenge that you must be facing. I just want to encourage you that we will one day. You will one day know.

 

Kent Evans:

And what a great way to end this episode, Lawson. Thank you so much for taking us there. I think that’s a bulls-eye, perfect job, and you’re still hired. In that case, you got it back. There at the end, you brought it back. I appreciate you doing that, man. You’re a good man.

 

Lawson Brown:

You too.

 

Kent Evans:

And I hope, Dads, if you’re listening, that you have been encouraged by this episode.

 

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 the 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.

 

Voiceover:

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.