How Would Our Wives and Kids Rate Us as Dads?

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 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.

Lawson Brown:
All right, welcome to the podcast, dads. This is Lawson. We’ve got Kent Evans here as well. I want to … Man, I’m so excited about this one.

Kent Evans:
Yeah.

Lawson Brown:
This is the start of, I don’t know what, another seven or eight episodes. And we’re going to try to encapsulate what the coming ones are going to be about and how to break it down and all that. And I just want to tell you a couple things. This survival guide, which is what we’re going to talk about now, I’ll turn it over to you to do your explanations.

Kent Evans:
Both of them.

Lawson Brown:
Explaining. Dude, it just really resonated with me. I’m a camping guy. I love camping and hiking. And the way that this is put together, really smart, it breaks it down into an easy to understand and kind of grasp kind of way, whether you’re a grandfather, or not yet a father, and it’s about to happen for you. I think there’s a lot in here that God’s going to use to help unpack kind of the topic of conversation, which is we’re on a journey as fathers, and we need some things to help us along the way, so that’s one. Second, you asked me earlier before we started recording, how I’m doing. And the recording of this and being involved with the podcast, getting to work with you more often, has been a real great thing, seriously a blessing. But now that they’re being published, God is using my own podcast for me, to me. And it’s like because we’ve recorded them in advance, and now listening back, some of the things that have happened over the past however long, episode three really spoke to me. So I guess I want to say God is pretty creative that way. He’s clever in his ways. But it also has helped reinforce to me how optimistic I am and hopeful that what this is about, what this Father on Purpose Podcast is about, is actually going to be of help to other guys out there, and encourage other fathers, wherever they are on their journey. So all of that to say, I am stoked for this, for digging into the survival guide. So do this, talk about how it began and sort of the overarching strategy of why it even exists.

Kent Evans:
Earlier this year in 2021, we were putting together kind of a summary of: What are some of the things that dads have said they wrestle with? And what are some of the challenges dads have? And we were trying to put together a kind of a model, a framework, for dads to evaluate two really important pieces of the fatherhood puzzle. One piece is: Where am I going? So in other words, what’s the destination for me as a father? How will I know kind of what’s the true north? If you’re in Dallas and I tell you to go to New York, you know you’ve got to go northeast because you know where you’re going. But the other piece that’s implicit in what I just said is: Where am I now? Right? So if I tell you to go to New York, and you don’t know where you are now, and you just start heading northeast, well, shucks, if you’re in Boston, you won’t get there forever. Right?

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
So knowing where you are now and knowing where you’re going are two very important pieces of any puzzle in life. If I wanted to start playing guitar, or I wanted to start playing cricket, or whatever thing I wanted to do, if I were starting from scratch, I’d have to know, well, gosh, I’m a complete neophyte, or I’m completely ignorant, versus if I want to get better at something I already do, well, then I probably need an advanced course. And so that’s where we kind of started was: What are the things that all Godly dads have in common? What are those behaviors and traits and characteristics? And then where are we going? And where are we now? And so we took all that, rolled it up into this eBook we call Survival Gear. And the subtitle of the eBook is Seven Must Have Tools Every Dad Needs for His Journey. And we chose all those words very carefully in the sense that fatherhood is a journey, et cetera. So I’m pumped that it makes sense I think for you and I to unpack these over the next seven weeks on the podcast. And I can’t wait to dive in, brother.

Lawson Brown:
And so how did you land on the … I sound like I’m interviewing you. I’m not. I’m just curious for myself, the story behind it. How did you land on the tools themselves? Obviously, we’re going to get into those, but the compass for one, a flashlight, for one, a walkie-talkie, for one. Did it just crystallize in your mind, the hiking, or the orienteering thing? How did that come about?

Kent Evans:
Yeah. The way it came about was I remember years ago, probably 10 years ago, I read a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, one of the best books ever on how to communicate, how to get an idea from my head to your head. Right? The whole idea was why some ideas I think thrive and why others die, was the subtitle, really good book. If you’re in communication or leadership, I highly recommend the book. And one of the principles they talked about in the book, actually, I’m going to say two, one was you have the choice between being concrete and being abstract. And the closer you can get to concrete as opposed to abstract, the better. And then the second is, these are similar but different, the second one is, the closer you can get to being tangible versus intangible. And those aren’t the exact same thing. Concrete is it’s clear, it’s understood. Tangible is you can touch it and pick it up. And so we were looking for that. We were looking to try to infuse the idea with that. And we thought, “Man, fatherhood is a journey. If you’re going to go on a journey, you should probably take some gear.” If you’re going to take some gear, you probably need a backpack. And so why don’t we make all these things small enough to fit in a backpack, where a dad’s journey, if he’s got these seven things in his backpack, he’s ready to rock. So that’s how the concept kind of formulated over time. We tried several different metaphors and structures. And every one, we’re kind of like, “I don’t know.” And then finally, we landed on this backpack one and thought, “Oh, yeah. This actually makes sense.”

Lawson Brown:
That’s great. Yeah. I’ve gotten a lot out of it myself. And it’s interesting-

Kent Evans:
Out of the backpack? You actually got out of the backpack?

Lawson Brown:
I do have one. I’m glad you brought that book up. I want to go get that thing back out and read it again. But also, the imagery that he’s using is spot on for being representative of that tool. So I don’t know how deeply we want to get into this before we get into the first episode. But what should guys do? Let’s say you’re a listener out there, if I’m in their shoes, it would help me to go along as we begin unpacking this.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Well, and here’s the overarching idea here is if you’re catching this episode, either when we release it, or you just dove in and you’re on episode whatever number this is in our mix, this episode plus the next seven, so eight episodes total will be kind of a unit. They’ll be a series, a miniseries if you will. I had all kinds of miniseries flashing through my head. I grew up in the ’80s, and all of a sudden, so basically, I’m like Magnum PI, and Lawson is like … No, sorry.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah.

Kent Evans:
I’m a lot more like Tattoo from Fantasy Island. Okay, wait a minute. Listen. You’ve never heard me do this, Lawson. You probably won’t be able to recover after this, but listen. Okay, ready? Look, boss, the plane, the plane. Look, boss. That sounded just like him.

Lawson Brown:
You’ve aged out so many of our audience. Oh, my gosh.

Kent Evans:
If you’ve never seen the old Fantasy Island because I think there’s a new one now, I think there’s a whole new Fantasy Island coming out that’s [crosstalk 00:09:07].

Lawson Brown:
They’re going to mess it up. It can’t be better than the first one.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. It’s going to be hard because Tattoo was the best, dude, he was my man. I love Tattoo.

Lawson Brown:
That was funny.

Kent Evans:
I don’t know where that came from. So miniseries, back to miniseries, miniseries. The next eight episode, this one, we’re going to kind of tee it up, give you the framework and the understanding, and it’s almost like you’re going to walk into this room with us metaphorically speaking, and on the table will be this backpack. And these seven items laid out on the table, if you can imagine visually.

Lawson Brown:
Right on.

Kent Evans:
And we’re going to pick each one up, and we’re going to explain each one, one at a time. We’re going to do an episode per item. And there are two resources that you might want as you embark on this. So if you want, feel free after I say these next two things. You can hit pause, go snag these two resources, they’re both free. They’ll take you a little while to get them, but you can get them both. Number one, the eBook itself. There’s an eBook called Survival Gear. And I’m going to double check the web address, but I’m pretty sure I know it. But you can go straight to our website and download this eBook, and it’s at manhoodjourney.org, manhoodjourney.org/survival-gear, just those two words with a dash in the middle. Manhoodjourney.org/survival-gear. So if you go get it, you can get the free eBook right there. And you can follow along in the PDF if you’re not driving. Please don’t PDF and drive. Do not PDF and drive. That is very dangerous for your health. And then secondly, in the back of the Survival Gear PDF, you’ll see some links to various things you can do next, or also, and those things, you can go bouncing through all of those, there’s a ton of great resources in the back of the book, but one of which I would draw your attention to is The Godly Father Assessment. We have a 28 question survey that’ll help you get a sense for where you are now, where you are now. We break it down into kind of stages, almost like levels of expertise. And you can go take the Godly Father Assessment. So if you want to be a pro traveler and go on this podcast journey with us and really squeeze it for all it’s worth, first, go get the eBook at manhoodjourney.org/survival-gear. And then secondly, in that eBook, go down to the last page, second to last page, click on start the assessment, and you can go take the Godly Father Assessment right on our website. And you’ll be all set and all geared up to head out with us.

Lawson Brown:
Let’s dig a little bit into that, I don’t know, maybe after the first break because that goes in with: Where are you now? Where are you going? And where are you now? But before the break, I want to hit on a couple things. On the bottom of page one, it says, “It’s dangerous out there. Gear up.” And then the start of page two, this hits home for me, the lives of others will be affected by the choices you make. So along our journey, it’s dangerous, you need gear. You need tools. You need people. And it’s important because the lives of others will be affected by the choices you make, dad. So maybe after the break, we break down the concept of before the journey begins, you’ve got to understand first where you are. That’s the reference point upon which everything else is built. And then I do think it’s important to maybe talk about the stages.

Kent Evans:
Hey, dads, sometimes being a dad can seem like a very difficult journey for which you and I are ill equipped. And we need gear on this journey, so we built a seven part framework, and we call it Survival Gear: The Seven Must Have Tools Every Dad Needs for His Journey. We took these tools, and we wrapped them all into an eBook. And that eBook is entirely free. You can download this free eBook at manhoodjourney.org/survival-gear. That’s forward slash survival dash gear. Manhoodjourney.org. Come snag this free eBook and get equipped for your fatherhood journey.

Kent Evans:
So Lawson, as we were headed to the break, one of the things you were pointing out is early in the eBook, we talk about it being dangerous out there, and we’ve got to gear up as dads, and how the lives of others are affected by the choices we make. That can sound like strong language. But for real, if you want to be a Godly dad, you’re in a spiritual battle. You just are. I mean, you have an enemy, a spiritual enemy, who hates what you’re doing and who comes against you at every turn. And so it’s important that dads know we are in a battle.

Lawson Brown:
I mean, the world wants your children. And if you are not in this to protect them, that’s going to probably be a pretty easy journey because … You know?

Kent Evans:
Yeah, which is why it’s so important for us to understand kind of where we are on the journey. And again, we use language in our eBook that we think puts handlebars on this and makes the truth kind of accessible. But our eBook isn’t the gospel, so I don’t want to pretend at all it’s flawless. But here’s what I would love to say. So Dad, if you’re listening to this podcast, you may be thinking, “What are the seven things?” We’re going to get to that in a minute. What I’d love to cover first is: What are sort of the four stages of our fatherhood journey? Stage one, I’m going to go real fast, and we can cover the stages a little bit here, but then we’ll fly over the seven things. But the stages are this, number one, you might be a brand new traveler. And we’ll use journey metaphors to help us all out. So you may be a brand new traveler. The first time I ever went to Paris, France, I had a job that took me there quite often, man, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to find my hotel. I really don’t speak French. I couldn’t get a cab very easily. I couldn’t buy a train ticket until I finally figured out that the subway system has a little device you can roll and get to English, once I figured that out. I had to learn there were zones to the subway system, so that your primary ticket only worked in zone one, but our office was in zone three. You had to learn all that because I was a brand new traveler. Then stage two came, and you became a capable navigator. I got to a place where I could land in Paris and find my hotel, never looking up. Right? I knew right where I was going. I stayed in roughly the same places. I went to the same crepe place so often, the guy called me his American friend.

Lawson Brown:
There you go.

Kent Evans:
And I always got a chocolate and banana crepe. It was great. I would get a hotel intentionally somewhere near the crepe guy place.

Lawson Brown:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Kent Evans:
Stage three, you become a road warrior. And you did this, and still doing this to a degree in business, Lawson, where you just get really comfortable with going on the road, prepping your [inaudible 00:16:30] kit, your packing is the same. You pack in the same order. You kind of know the drill, man. I bet you’ve gotten really used to traveling. And then the fourth stage, you become a tour guide. You become the guy who can show people around. I remember actually giving someone directional advice one time in Paris, and they were American. And I think they thought I was French. They literally walked up and said, “[French 00:16:55],” like a real American.

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
And I just said, “Yes.” I didn’t even say, “Hey, I’m an American.” I just said, “Yes, English.” And I think they thought I might’ve been French. And they’re like, “How do you get to … ” And I’m like, “You go down there,” I might’ve even used a French accent. You go down the thing, and you take the train. [French 00:17:15], to make them think I’m French, but I didn’t know French. But all that to say as a dad, we kind of go through these stages of being a new traveler, a capable navigator, a road warrior, and then a tour guide. And what we want to help dads see, man, is: Where are you? There’s no shame or even accomplishment necessarily in any of these stages. It’s just a matter of figuring out. Where are we on the fatherhood roadmap? And how are we progressing? How do these stages kind of strike you, Lawson?

Lawson Brown:
So I’ve also thought while going through this kind of prep and thinking about it and praying about it a little bit has been: Where are your children on the journey? Where are you in your marriage? I’ve talked about my wife, she has a big family, and a lot of girls in their family. But some of their grandchildren, some of Audrey’s mom and dad’s grandchildren have now married, and the guys are like us brothers, brother-in-laws, are tight. And now we’re beginning to bring into the fold, some of the guys that our nieces have recently married. So we’re getting to see life through the eyes of, in my case, a couple of these guys, Dylan and Dan, who have … Dan has, I think he’s going on two years old now maybe. And then Dylan, they are expecting in October.

Kent Evans:
At first, I thought you were talking about one of your nephews-in-law. And you said, “He’s going on two years old.” And I thought, “Man, they get married early where you live. No wonder their families are so big.”

Lawson Brown:
They’re new travelers. And it’s been cool to be a part of seeing them experience for the first time. It brings back some good memories. They’re asking questions, and so that’s just fun. But what I said about knowing where your kids are along their own journey too is, I don’t know if this is true, I don’t know if this resonates with you, but yeah, there’s been times in my life where I did feel like I was a road warrior. And by the way, in that stage three, the underscore of that is I’ve learned my way around, and now looking to master the habits of fatherhood. Every word is important. In this sentence, the word habits is important. You’re not mastering fatherhood. You’re mastering some habits that lead to effective and Godly fatherhood. But I have felt like a road warrior in some instances. And then I’ve been a father for the same amount of time, but something happens with another kid, or me personally, and I haven’t felt like a road warrior. I’ve felt maybe like a capable-ish navigator, but it’s new to me. I’ve got some experience to rest on. So it’s not an, okay, I am done with stage two.

Kent Evans:
Sure. Right.

Lawson Brown:
And not going back, so that’s a little bit of what I’ve been thinking about.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Any kind of journey that we go on, where we’re picking up skills or picking up habits, you almost never totally freeze at one level and you never go, “It’s not like LeBron James never misses a shot, or Tiger never pushes a golf ball.” There are times when things don’t go the way that you planned. But you also know those guys are putting in the work. Right? They’re doing the practice every single day. They’re hitting the gym. They’re hitting all the golf balls. And so that work will make those errors less and less frequent and less and less dramatic. He might push the ball five yards wide of the green rather than shove it into the woods like mine. I play golf so infrequently, Lawson. I played about a month ago. And we’re on the 13th hole and the guy I was with says, as golfers would know, guys listening to this who golf, my ball’s up on the green. And he says, “What are you lying? What are you lying?” I just want to over-articulate in case people are listening and they’re not golfers. And what golfers mean by that is: How many strokes has it taken you to get to this point? And so you’ll say, “Well, I’m lying two, or I’m lying three,” and what that means is you’ve hit the ball three times. Okay, so it was your third shot that got you there. And so he said to me, “What are you lying?” And I said, “Three,” and he goes, “Nice. Putting for birdie?” And I go, “No, no, no. That’s my third ball. I’m actually three whole balls. I think I’m lying eight or nine. But I’m on my third entire golf ball this hole, this one hole.”

Lawson Brown:
All right. Glad I’m not alone in that.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. My golf game is out of whack, as they would say. So why don’t we do this? So guys are listening. We’ve started to talk about this idea, this idea that fatherhood is a journey. We’ve got to figure out where we are. Take some stock of sort of where we are in the journey. Are we never travelers? Are we capable navigators, et cetera? And now what I’d love to talk about for our remaining time we have on this particular episode is we’re going to fly over, or let me stick with the metaphor, we’ve got the room, and the room has a backpack on the table. And the backpack is going to have seven things that go in the backpack. We’re just going to walk around the table. I’m just going to take you on a quick tour around the table so you can see these seven must have tools. And you don’t get to touch them. Okay? Get your hand off of the tools. Don’t touch the tools. You’re going to touch the tools in the next episodes. We’re going to go through each one of these little cool things you can pack in your fatherhood backpack to keep the metaphor nice and tidy, so here’s what we’re going to do.

Lawson Brown:
Let me add something.

Kent Evans:
Hit me.

Lawson Brown:
Let me add something before you go through. The prep is important. If you’ve ever been camping, hiking, in my case, I’ve also had some memories of getting ready for a patrol, and you’re going to be out for a couple of nights. That prep is really important, yes for this episode, for sure, let’s just walk around the table, talk about it briefly because what we will do is next episode is tool number one, and break that down wholeheartedly. And then the next 30 minutes worth is going to be on just tool two. But the mindset of pre journey, getting ready, thinking things through is really important in general. Now if you’re a father, like it said, the lives of others will be affected by the choices you make. As a father, you’re going on this journey, and it’s really important that you know where you’re going because there are people following you. And if you’ve ever been out in the woods lost, it is a bad feeling for you if you’re leading. It’s really bad for the person that’s been depending on you to know the map, or to have brought the right gear. And then you go to get ready to set up and you’re missing something. And so what has resonated with me is it’s dangerous out there, gear up. The lives of others will be affected by the choices you make because it’s one thing to go on a hiking trip by yourself, and you go, “Eh, I don’t know if I’m going to need a flashlight, or both packs of matches, or whatever. I’m just going to … I’m good.” Because you’re going solo, and if you get out there and it’s a little uncomfortable, big deal. You’ll suck it up, tough it out, and make it back. But when Olivia and I went on a five day Appalachian trail, just she and I, no phones, well, I had a phone for taking pictures, but very little cell reception. And man, I spent a month, I spent a month thinking through every step and all the gear.

Kent Evans:
Wow.

Lawson Brown:
Quadruple checking the map along every piece of the route, because if it were just me, no big deal, but I had her with me. And so that analogy of, guys, we’re preparing to go and stay on this journey together with one another. But there are people whose lives are going to be affected by the choices you make, so this prep time is super important.

Kent Evans:
It’s interesting you say that. You reminded me of a time when, to go back to those travel days when I was going to Paris all the time, I was on trains nonstop. And usually, I was by myself, but one time, I was traveling with a colleague. And his name was Jacques [Ballacare 00:25:40]. Great guy, really good guy, love Jacques and he was a lot of fun to be with. And we were traveling, and all of a sudden, the train stopped at an odd time. Wasn’t supposed to stop, wasn’t moving. And then there was an announcement. And there was an announcement coming over these speakers. You never hear these announcements because normally things just happen. And we get out of the train and there’s hundreds of people out on the thing. And Jacques goes … Listens to the announcement, then he goes, “Okay, Kent. Come with me.” And so we start walking. And I’m like, “I don’t know where we’re going,” but we got off the train and we’re headed out of the station. We get above ground and I said, “What’s happening?” He goes, “They thought there was a bomb, so we left the station.” And I just remember thinking, “I would’ve had no idea what in the world was going on,” because it was all in French, and had Jacques not been there.

Lawson Brown:
Wow.

Kent Evans:
And so coming back to this idea, man, we’re leading our families and they’re trusting in our judgment to some degree. I mean, I know God’s sovereign, but they’re trusting that we lead in a way where we know the language, we know the dangers, we know what’s going on. And there is a really good, healthy, kind of no pressure is the right word, but a good, healthy impetus there to want to pack our bags, know where we’re going, and do the right kind of prep for this journey. That’s a great point, Lawson. So tool number one is trusting God. And we’ve chosen to kind of visually represent each of these tools with some kind of implement. And you guys know, you’re listening to this podcast. All metaphors break down at some point. But in the case of trusting God, we chose a compass for reasons that should seem relatively obvious, but we’re going to unpack a couple other reasons that may not be quite as obvious. Obviously, the compass tells you where to go. The reason compasses work is because of the magnetic field of our planet can pull things a certain direction toward the north, and so we can set compasses based on that magnetic field. Well, as dads, we also have other magnetic forces that act on us, that would seek to disorient us along the journey. And for those, you’re going to have to come back next week. Number two, number two, second tool is knowing scripture. And we chose to represent it with a head lamp. And the verse that would probably come to most guys’ mind would be thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. We’ll unpack that. And you might be asking, wait a minute, I’m just like a worker man. I’m not a pastor. Do I need to know scripture? See you in a couple weeks, man. I hope you come back because yes, yes, you do.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. Right on.

Kent Evans:
Number three, pray fervently. Pray fervently. In James, it says that effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. So the question becomes: Are we praying for our family? How can we pray for our family? I’ve never met a dad who goes, “Nah, I don’t want to pray for my family.” But I’ve met a lot of dads who say, “Man, I’d love to pray for my family, better, more, more intently, more intentionally. How?” Well, we’re going to cover the how big time when we cover tool number three.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I like the walkie-talkie image, communication piece.

Kent Evans:
Tool number four. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mention that. I didn’t mention that, walkie-talkie. Yes. Are we in direct communication and are we connected well to God? Thanks, Lawson. I forgot the visual. Tool number four, building relationships. And we chose to represent that, that was a tough one for us, but we chose to represent it with a box of matches. And the reason we chose to represent it with a box of matches is the warmth and the illumination that relationships can bring to our life, it’s almost like we wanted to tip our cap to: Are you ready to start the campfire that you could sit around with people? And it had to fit in the backpack, and so we couldn’t use logs for that. Because who wants to carry logs on the journey? It would be awful, even though that’s kind of the … Anyway, it matches. Tool number five-

Lawson Brown:
Totally get it.

Kent Evans:
It’s clear.

Lawson Brown:
It was totally, yeah, I love it.

Kent Evans:
It’s a hint.

Lawson Brown:
The campfire’s like a sweet spot. That’s a sweet spot.

Kent Evans:
It’s a nod. Oh, I love campfires. Love it. Tool number five, serving others. And for that tool, we chose to use a first aid kit. Part of the reason we chose to use the first aid kit is because not only should we as dads be ready to bandage ourselves on the journey, we should bring up enough supplies to bandage those with us. Right? So we’re kind of the medic on this trip to a degree, and especially while our kids are young, both literally and metaphorically, we can be the medic. And so tool number five, serving others, is represented by a first aid kit. Tool number six, stewarding our resources. Stewarding our resources. Dads, you don’t own anything. Probably, you already know that. But there’s nothing you own, I don’t care what your mortgage says, or what your 401(k) says, or what your car title says, you don’t own anything. God owns everything. And we get to steward it for a while, so we chose to represent this one with a canteen, an old school kind of canteen because the idea is we’ve got to ration the resources so that everyone survives. And sometimes there’s not a whole lot in the canteen to ration.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, the resources are precious. Guard them.

Kent Evans:
They sure can be. They sure can be. And then wrapping up our table tour here, tool number seven, make disciples. And we chose to represent that tool with a rope with a carabiner attached to it that suggests this idea of bringing others along on the journey. You’ve probably had the experience or seen on TV, where people are climbing, and they connect themselves to each other and to maybe a rock, a rock wall, or something, so that if one falls, the weight of the other people keep everybody from falling. And so some anchor points, but also some connection to other people. So dads, that is your backpack full of fatherhood tools. And we’re going to unpack those in the future episodes. I’ll tell you, Lawson, we did our father son retreat this past weekend at the time we’re recording this, and as I see that rope, it reminded me they have a high ropes course, where we were doing our father son retreat. And a dad got stuck at the top, and he had … Not fallen, is the wrong word, but he slipped and fell off of the wire. But he was connected with a pulley, but he couldn’t pull himself up, he couldn’t get back up to where he was, so he was stuck about 20, 30 feet off the ground. And this young man came out, he was on it, dude. He was the rescue guy. He scurried up there with his bag. He clipped himself on. He went out to where that guy was.

Lawson Brown:
Good for him. Very good.

Kent Evans:
He put a pulley up there. And about halfway through it, I go, “Oh, they’re going to just belay him down. They’re going to just lower him straight down.” And they did, they hooked him up. They had a pulley system. They got the guy all hooked up, and then five, six minutes later, there was a dude on the ground and they were shimmying him down. And this dad came down all the way to the ground from the very top. And I just thought, wow, what a great picture-

Lawson Brown:
Right on.

Kent Evans:
Of helping other people along in the journey, sometimes you need some tools like ropes and pulleys, and we’ll cover that in tool number seven.

Lawson Brown:
Yep. Man, I’m stoked. I can’t wait to get into this. I think it’s timely and it’s something that everybody will benefit from. One of the last pages of the eBook, it’s got a mountain scape I’m looking at. And it says, “Seek all God has for you. Lean into the challenge.” So that’s what I’d like to do is throw that out. You guys, come back. We are going to take our time with this and I think it’s going to be fun, engaging, and we encourage you. We hope you get a lot of hopeful ideas and tidbits out of this conversation coming up over this miniseries, as he calls it. But I do want to encourage you, lean into this challenge. We can all use it. We’re in this together. And we will see you next time.

Lawson Brown:
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 day. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose.