Is your mouth a fountain of life?

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:
I’m still laughing because Lawson’s a total goofball. Before we get on air, we should just next time, Hunter, let’s not even tell Lawson. Let’s just start the recording the minute we get on, and we can hear all this stuff about.

Kent Evans:
The room he’s got that’s too echoey, we can hear about his golfty time at the club with Beth and Bop, and whoever else he’s playing golf with today. He’s living the life of luxury down in Florida. Now that he’s on his 19th in one year.

Lawson Brown:
Are you recording right now?

Kent Evans:
We are, this matters. Our audience cares about your golf game.

Lawson Brown:
You sound very unprofessional right now. Go ahead.

Kent Evans:
What are you comparing that to?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, really.

Kent Evans:
This is typically how I sound. I don’t have another sound.

Lawson Brown:
Welcome, everybody.

Kent Evans:
We’re so glad you guys are here.

Lawson Brown:
Welcome.

Kent Evans:
Today, we’re going to talk about a particular verse in the book of Proverbs that I love and I hate, all at the same time. I love this verse-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I’m interested about this.

Kent Evans:
It’s Proverbs 10 verse 11. And the first half of it says, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.”

Lawson Brown:
How did you come to this, on the list of episode topics, how did this one pop in? What started it?

Kent Evans:
Probably the fact that my mouth was not a-

Lawson Brown:
Fountain of life? It was a fountain of?

Kent Evans:
Actually, I’ve gone through… Oh, man, a fountain of sarcasm, a fountain of criticism. Actually what’s funny is, do not unmute your microphone Hunter, but just yesterday I was on a call with Hunter and one of our other colleagues. And man, I was frustrated about something. And I can tell you that for moments on that call, my mouth was not a fountain of life. And so this is an issue where I have looked up, I don’t know how many verses there are in the Bible about what we say with our mouths, but there’s a bunch. There’s definitely a lot. And at some point in my adult life, I have looked up all of them, and spent time writing them out longhand, memorizing some, death in life are in the power of the tongue, and just different verses. Because what I’m finding is, I’m finding that, if I could graph the amount of sin in my life, some big chunk of it comes out of my mouth. I don’t know if it’s 50% or 80%, but this is a pretty high number. Where I say something, and then I go to bed that night and think, “Man, that is not what I should have said in the moment.” And as a dad in particular, man, I’ve had that happen over and over and over again.

Kent Evans:
So I have a few verses on speed dial. And one of those verses is Proverbs 10 verse 11, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.” It goes on to say, “But the mouth of the wicked conceals violence,” I think it’s a pivot conceptually. But today what I’d love to focus on is this phrase, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.” We’ve written about it on our blog before. And the question I have for dads is, does that describe your mouth?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. Would your children, would your wife describe your mouth as a fountain of life?

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Imagine, Hunter, if I pulled Audrey and your two girls aside and I said, “Hey, thinking of…” Or at Lawson, imagine if I pulled Audrey and your two girls, and I said, “Hey, listen, your dad’s mouth is a fountain of…” And I just have a blank line. And I offered them the opportunity to fill in that line with whatever word came to their mind first.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, really. Wow. That’s a really cool way to think about this. That’s a deep question, man.

Kent Evans:
It’s awful, isn’t it?

Lawson Brown:
Yes. It’s scary. When this one first came up, I was like, “Okay. The mouth of the righteous, I’m not righteous.” And so I even went and looked it up. The full definition of righteous is, acting in accord with divine or moral law free from guilt or sin. So I’m like, “Oh, well, okay, well that’s not me.” So I guess I’m just not going to be a fountain of life, but it is. It’s, “Are you striving?” I’m probably giving too liberal of meaning to this, somebody is going to write in and correct my naivety.

Kent Evans:
Or even how you say naivety.

Lawson Brown:
Don’t get me wrong, man.

Kent Evans:
You couldn’t correct anything.

Lawson Brown:
I’m almost over this COVID stuff.

Kent Evans:
Email us, correct our grammar. Correct all of this.

Lawson Brown:
Don’t let me cough. Am I in the right relationship with God?

Kent Evans:
Yeah. And we know this side of the cross, the only way we can do that is to be in Christ. We see all the scripture about…

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. It doesn’t mean that we do everything right.

Kent Evans:
Right. So spiritually from a standing standpoint, yeah, you and I are walking in righteousness because we’re clothed with Christ. However, somehow, my mouth doesn’t always know that. It seems my mouth tends to forget that, and I can have a mouth that’s a fountain of-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. Like you’re not representing that.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Exactly. I think of the verses that tell us about walking worthy. And they’re like, “Hey, now that you’ve been saved by Christ…” Colossians talks about it, so I think Ephesians talks about it, maybe Galatians as well. But it’s like you’ve been saved so that you can walk worthy. But I think it’s good to occasionally look and go, “Is our mouth righteous?” What did Jeff Kemp say at our board retreat, Lawson?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I wrote that down. Well, before I say that, I don’t know-

Kent Evans:
No. Say it now.

Lawson Brown:
I don’t know why, but encouragement came to mind, encouraging, like a fountain of life. I thought about, “What does that mean? What would that mean to my children? What does it mean in my work? Just in day-to-day walking around and meeting strangers,” anything. What does it mean for your mouth to be a fountain of life? And I guess encouraging came to mind, I don’t think that’s all-inclusive by any stretch, but that’s what first hit my brain. How about you?

Kent Evans:
Well, I’d like to tell a brief story about encouraging words, because I can think of a time when I was down. I was frustrated about a work situation, probably, I don’t know, 15 years ago, plus or minus. And I was really frustrated about something at work. And I remember being at lunch with a friend of mine named Glen. And Glen said to me, he goes, “Hey, I’m a Kent Evans fan. I’m a fan of Kent Evans.” And the way he said it, it meant a lot to me. I could probably take you to the booth at the restaurant-

Lawson Brown:
Cool. How long ago was that?

Kent Evans:
Oh, at least 10 years, maybe 15.

Lawson Brown:
Isn’t that cool, how you remember certain things like that? That obviously really meant a lot.

Kent Evans:
And you brought up encouragement. And I really think we live, in our society, I think we live in an encouragement desert.

Lawson Brown:
Oh, yeah.

Kent Evans:
Right? I think we are walking through.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. We live in a plethora, a jungle of negativity and criticism.

Kent Evans:
Oh my goodness. Everything you do gets scrutinized and pulled apart, and if you ever roll around long enough on social media, you’re going to find a lot of people screaming at each other. And you just think, “Man, we’re living in this like the jungle of just negativity and discouragement.” Which means, any encouragement probably has a disproportionate impact. Just like in a really big dark room, you just light one match, and everybody in the room can see the one match. If you lit a thousand matches, you’d just see a big, bright light, you wouldn’t be able to pick out any matches. But in the midst of darkness, one small, bright light, really illuminates and focuses our attention. So I guess-

Lawson Brown:
It’s so different.

Kent Evans:
Oh, man. I’m thinking of another guy. I had coffee with a business guy, who’s probably the most aggressive business guy I’ve ever been around. He’s just like, “Whatever is above type A,” I don’t know, is there a letter above type A? Total control, total aggression, total, “My way or the highway.” But I remember being at lunch with this guy, he has a lot of financial capacity, just very successful in terms of business terms. And he goes, “Hey, man, I want you to know something.” And I thought, “Oh, here it comes.” And great. And he goes, “You’ve already succeeded at Manhood Journey.” And I was like, “It sounded odd coming from this particular guy.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Have you helped any dads yet?” This was several years ago. And I said, “Sure, thousands. They’ve been on our website, they send us emails.” And he goes, “You’ve already succeeded. Even if this thing shuts down tomorrow, you’re already successful.” And I was like, “Okay.” I think that was his way of encouraging me, and that’s how I received it. And I just think, “Wow, I have a real clear ability to pull those out of my memory bank.” And I think it’s because there are so few, I don’t have thousands, I got dozens. And I think it’s super important that we remember as dads how powerful our words are. That’s why I both love and hate this verse because it’s very convicting for me to kind of walk in this verse.

Lawson Brown:
It’s also a pretty heavy duty. Jeff Kemp, at the border retreat, said, and I don’t remember exactly why this came up, but I wrote it down. And he said, “Be a father who mines the good for encouragement to our children.” And when he says, “Mines the good,” that put a word picture in my head of, maybe not exactly what we’re talking about with a rainforest of negativity in our world versus a plethora of positive encouragement. I think mining the good, is not everything that we all do is necessarily right, good, our children are doing things. And it doesn’t mean overcommunicate encouragement and have it be diluted down to where everything that’s coming out of your mouth is, like a cheerleader, it’s mine the good, there’s good there. So find it, call that out, highlight it, have a conversation with your kid. And not just kind of gloss over, or say, “Hey, that was good job.” Break it down, that’s mining, versus a kind of just a broad stroke of always being a positive person, “That’s cool. That’s great. Fine, whatever.” But think of, I’m thinking of like, in management, and just basic 101 business management, to give feedback at the end of the year, or twice a year, however often you do it. When you sit down with the person, you don’t go, “Yeah. You did a good job last year and there’s your review.” It means so much when you go into detail. In fact, just last night, my boss did something that I thought was super cool. He mined the good for encouragement by, his leadership team is spread across the country, and he sent each of us a Christmas gift in the mail. But in an email said, “Your gift is on the way, don’t open it. We’re going to have a happy hour and a gift-opening ceremony,” not ceremony, “Gift opening together on a video call.” Which is what we did last night.

Kent Evans:
Oh, that’s brilliant.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I thought it was fantastic. And so there’s nine of us on the screen, and everybody’s talking, it’s after work hours. Everybody’s got their little gift on their table, you can kind of see it there. And Brad, my boss, started by just basically kind of thinking everybody for the year, and going through some of the highlights of the year. And then he went person by person, all nine of us. And he had written out his thoughts.

Kent Evans:
All the things you did wrong. Lawson, your list is really long.

Lawson Brown:
I thought it was super great, man. And it was-

Kent Evans:
Wow. How thoughtful.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. It was not, he didn’t belabor it. It was kind of short and sweet about each person. But really took the time to provide specific, about each individual, encouragement. So yeah. I guess my point in saying all of that is, to mine the good for encouragement is pretty specific for it to be meaningful.

Kent Evans:
Well, when think of the work he put into that experience, got to plan ahead, got to get the gifts out, got to allow for shipping, got to send the email. That’s not a flippant kind of, “Oh, hey, I got five minutes, I’ll send them a Starbucks gift card through Amazon,” which is basically what I tend to do. So, Hunter, you got that to look forward to. But I think what’s amazing to me about that is, probably how rare that is. I don’t hear that happening super often, certainly not in business context. And I don’t sit around and do that with my family, I probably should.

Kent Evans:
But I don’t sit around and do that with my family, and go, “Hey, by the way, we’re all here…” I’ll have them all here today, today’s the day. At the time of recording this, it’s really close to Christmas. And so in the next few days, I’ll have all five of my boys and my daughter-in-law, all under my roof for a few days. And I’m going to take kind of the self-challenge of taking a moment and doing some encouraging and having my mouth be a fountain of life. What were some of the things, Lawson, as you guys went through that experience with your boss? How’d that make you feel? What’d it make you think of? And would you mind sharing, what was one thing he said about you? I’m just curious. Give us a Lawson Brown highlight.

Lawson Brown:
Specific about me, he said that he and I have known each other for over almost two decades. We worked together before a long time ago, and then there was a long gap, and things fell into place a few years ago for this to… We’ve never worked in this capacity together, where he’s my direct boss, and I’ve always wanted that. He’s one of the smartest guys I know, one of the best leaders I’ve had. He said about me that, I am a people-focused inspirational leader. And meld good with the other personalities and the team. Because what I did not bring to this party, was a whole lot of knowledge about this particular industry. I’ve still got a lot to learn. And so I’ve been leaning into a whole lot of other people on our team for that kind of knowledge.

Kent Evans:
Yeah.

Lawson Brown:
And so I was at a deficit starting this role because it’s just, you wouldn’t think there’s all that much to know about fire sprinklers, but it’s really complicated. It sounds pretty simple.

Kent Evans:
Is that where the water comes out?

Lawson Brown:
Exactly.

Kent Evans:
Is that where the water comes out?

Lawson Brown:
That’s right. But there’s a lot to it and I love it. And it’s also been, for me, rewarding to be in something where I’ve missed having a business purpose that is also serving a bigger purpose. Meaning, if the things that we do, if we do them right, and we take care of this equipment, and we build things correctly. When it’s called upon, that may be in someone’s kitchen, that may be in some little girl’s room in the middle of the night. When that system is called upon, it’s got to work. And so we call it our why, why does it matter that we get the welds right? Why does it matter that we don’t throw that box of sprinkler heads around carelessly? And so I’ve really fallen in love with, not just this business, but in our company, but with this team. So let me say one more thing. What I found myself doing, so there were nine of us. And he got to me second to last, because I couldn’t wait, I was really interested. Here’s why, because people want to hear from you. We as dads, in particular, you’ve got to do that with your family. A young family like yours is sitting around, you’ve got to put some time into it. And here’s the other thing. It meant something to me for the other people on the team to hear Brad talk about me. Likewise, I think it meant something to each of them for him to do it publicly. In the Marine Corps, they say, “Give constructive feedback privately, reward in public.” That’s why they do ceremonies. That’s why they read the whole citation in front of the crowd because it’s inspiring to other people. And it means something so much more, that encouragement means so much more when you’re not alone when someone else hears it. And there’s also another note, I think you’ve got to be careful not to do this inauthentically. But when you hear someone talking about you in positive terms to someone else and they don’t know that you’re there to hear it, you overhear it, that also means a lot.

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Kent Evans:
I had an experience like that, well, not long ago. I ran into someone, a lady who I had met through another guy. And I’ve never met her face-to-face, but I’ve known her for about eight or so years. And I went, “Hey, Julie.” And we talked for a minute. And she said to me, she said, “Hey, by the way, man, Will…” Our mutual friend, who introduced us years ago. She said, “Will cannot say enough positive things about you.” So it got back to me that he had said something to her over and over again, at least more than once, that was positive about me. And wow, what an impact, what a reminder of that kind of friend that that guy is to me. Behind my back, he’s telling people things. Tell me again, I want to double down on that phrase you said a minute ago about the Marine Corps. You do what in private, and you do what publicly? Say it again,

Lawson Brown:
Criticize privately and reward in public.

Kent Evans:
I think for dads, that right there is a really powerful concept, really powerful. Especially if you’re raising multiple kids, there are moments when any one of your kids will do something right. Maybe daily or weekly. And if you were to pull that kid aside and go, “Hey, good job. You did X.” It’s like you get one pound of benefit out of that. Great. Good. Definitely. If you got to go tell your kid something, go do it, tell them what they did right. But if you do it at dinner, when everybody’s sitting around you, “Oh, by the way I noticed today, Timothy, when you played basketball, you did really well during the game. But when you were on the bench, you cheered for your teammates like crazy. Man, that shows a lot of character.” And if I say that in front of my other children, man, I magnify the impact of that moment. And I boost him up. What did we say? When we had Chip Ingram on the podcast, a month or two ago, he said, “You get what you praise. You get more of what you praise.” And so as a dad, are we using our words-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. We’re being intentional in that praise too.

Kent Evans:
Absolutely. I think what’s also powerful, Lawson, about the story you just shared is that it’s your boss. So he is positionally in a role of authority over you, and so his comments carry a bit more weight. So given all things being equal, if your boss said, “Hey, you’re really a people-focused intentional leader, great team member, you’re inspiring.” If he said those things to you, versus if one of your colleagues came to your office and go, “Hey, by the way, Lawson, I’ve really noticed, man, you’re really a people-focused leader.” It’s not that that colleague’s opinion is less meaningful, but it just carries a little less weight because of the position of your boss. And I think dad, it is so easy for us to lose sight of the fact that positionally, we carry a lot of weight. Our kids will remember things we tell them, good or bad. In some cases, for their entire life.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I’ll tell you this. I’m going to remember last night for a lot of years, it was meaningful, it was different. Brad put time into it, he wasn’t reading it, but you could tell he had notes. So it was intentional, it was in public, it was in front of my peers who I respect. And I think, man, this episode right now is a good reminder to me of putting some time and effort. Especially now the year’s kind of winding down, some quiet time is approaching, some family time is approaching. I’m a kind of a natural encourager to a degree but giving it some real intentional thought.

Kent Evans:
Have you always been that way?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. My parents were, I’ve kind of modeled. My dad was, whenever he met a stranger, always a real positive dude. People gravitated to wanting to see him, he was good for people. So yeah. It’s something I’ve tried to do. Yeah. But I’m saying, like, “I need to write some things down. I need to give some thought and remember what is important to my daughters. So that when we’re together in some of these times coming up through the holidays, I’ll be able to hit the mark. And put some prayer into it, some thought into it.”

Kent Evans:
Yeah. I love that verse, man, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.” Sometimes I think we can understand a scripture by looking at what the scripture in terms of its opposite. So for example, you could easily conclude, right above it, it says, “A babbling fool will come to ruin.” And then it says right below it, “But the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.” And so there’s this idea that our mouth, as we’re walking out our righteousness, which to your point in Christ. I understand the spiritual dynamic of, “Right this minute, I am righteous in Christ.” That doesn’t mean I’m flawless, it doesn’t mean I never sin. It does mean that forever, that’s a set thing that can’t be changed. And for me, I want to be the kind of guy where my mouth gives life to other people. I want to be more like that. Because the opposite is, “The mouth of the fool brings death.” I’m not quoting the Bible here, but when we bring death with our mouth. And that doesn’t always mean like… Sometimes, I can remember when I was 12 years old, I’m 51. So this is almost exactly 40 years ago. I can remember not diving for a ball in practice as a shot stop. I kind of looked at it, and it went bouncing by. We were practicing, and it went bouncing by. And I remember Bruce Cutsinger, which literally I haven’t seen or heard that man since I was playing, 15 or 16.

Lawson Brown:
What in the world?

Kent Evans:
That name is in my head. He was the assistant coach, my dad was the head coach. And Bruce Cutsinger storms out on in the dirt, and he goes, “Hey, what was that?” And I said, “It was a ground ball, I couldn’t get to it.” He goes, “I don’t care if you catch it, I care if you try.” Brother, it’s branded.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. That’s funny.

Kent Evans:
I may lose my mind one day, and I won’t remember that. But if I don’t lose my mind, I don’t know what it would take for me to forget that moment. Almost 40 years ago, what he said was… And so what’s really funny is, I’ve tried a lot of stuff. Some has worked out okay. Some has worked out great. Some has failed pretty badly. But it’s like it burned in my head. And I think as dads, it’s almost like we’re carrying around a branding iron, and it’s red hot, and it’s our words. And as we say things to our children, in some ways, man, we brand their soul. I don’t want to overstate it, but wow.

Lawson Brown:
It can be really memorable. And that’s an underscore to the importance of us as dads, and how we use our words to be that fountain of life, to represent rather, that fountain of life. It’s because you want it to be memorable so that when your children are out and about, and they’re growing up, and they’re interacting in the world, that is in their mind. They want to model what they’ve been reinforced by through our words, through this fountain of life encouragement. So that when they come into a situation, it’s more natural. They know what to do, they know how to be, they know how to act, they know what to say. Because it’s been reinforced over and over, and it’s been burned into them, it’s been branded into them. Yeah. I think the fountain of life thing, I’m really glad we tackled this one, because it’s been good for me. And when we’re done, I’m writing some things down. I’m going to be better at this.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. I will too. Dads, you’re listening to this, driving down the road, or you’re on your commute to work, or you’re doing your workout, and you may or may not have a minute to do it right this second. But I would love it if you’d consider taking today’s episode, texting yourself a reminder, text the word, like, “Fountain of life,” to your wife, or just anything as a reminder. So that when you get home tonight, or this weekend, or whenever you’re listening to this, take a minute and pour some life into the people around you. You don’t need a degree, you don’t need a training in biblical counseling. You don’t need to be a theologian. You just need to say something positive. And it might be as simple as what I said about my friend, Glen, over lunch, where he said, “I’m a fan of you, man. This is going to work out, you’re all right.” Or maybe something a bit more elaborate, and well thought out, and planned ahead, like Lawson’s example from his work environment. Either way, try to find a way in the coming days or weeks where your mouth can be a fountain of life. Because you’ll be surprised how deeply those words will resonate. And you’ll be surprised how long they will bear fruit. So dad, get after it, Lawson and I have had a blast hanging out with you today. Lawson, thanks for that story, what a great timely story about your boss. I appreciate you brother. And I would validate everything your boss said. You’ve always been that way to me, we’ve known each other 20 years or so. And you’ve always a source of-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. You too.

Kent Evans:
… encouragement in my life. So thank you for that brother. And thanks a ton, Hunter, for being behind the scenes, you guys are awesome. And we’ll see you next week with a fresh episode for you dad. Hey dad, thank you for to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes @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 a podcast. 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 whenever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to @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 a completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose.