Sometimes Moving Forward is All We Need to Focus On

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, if 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 podcast. I’m Kent Evans, and I’m joined through the magic of technology by Lawson Brown. Lawson, how are you doing?

 

Lawson Brown:

At which I am a master at technology.

 

Kent Evans:

You talk about tech mastery-

 

Lawson Brown:

I can click the mute like nobody.

 

Kent Evans:

Right. There was a time when someone used Lawson and tech master in the same sentence and then that person disintegrated instantly.

 

Lawson Brown:

I actually kind of do dig gadgets and stuff like that, so-

 

Kent Evans:

Speaking of gadgets-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah?

 

Kent Evans:

Speaking of gadgets, do you remember Hernando Cortez?

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, my gosh, that’s crazy. I was thinking about him earlier.

 

Kent Evans:

What are the odds? What a terrible segue. Lawson and I… To get ready for the podcast Lawson and I trade ideas using an online platform. So I’ll wake up one morning and there’s an idea in the list of show topics. Half of them are garbage. I mean you’ll never hear those podcasts.

 

Kent Evans:

But every now and then Lawson has a brilliant idea. And, Lawson, you had a great idea today, because you were talking about this idea that when you first talked about it you were talking about it in a marriage context. It’s the idea of burning the ships.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

We’ve heard that sort of legend, it may have come from the Spartans or the Greeks or the Marines, but when you look it up on Wikipedia you see it was most attributed to this cat, Hernando Cortez, who lands in Mexico, Spanish conquistador, or I should say a Spanish conquistador, and he lands in Mexico, takes over, and in part of the way he went about-

 

Lawson Brown:

Where was it in Mexico?

 

Kent Evans:

I don’t know the details of exactly where the ships were burned or if it really matters.

 

Lawson Brown:

But it was more than a ship? It was… Right?

 

Kent Evans:

Well, yeah. Otherwise you couldn’t say burn the ships. You couldn’t say burn the ships.

 

Lawson Brown:

I’ve always said burn the ship.

 

Kent Evans:

With the [inaudible 00:02:26]?

 

Lawson Brown:

Well, the history doesn’t matter. Go ahead, Kent.

 

Kent Evans:

History matters. In fact, the boats were of made of a certain kind of wood-

 

Lawson Brown:

Burled zebra nut wood from South Africa.

 

Kent Evans:

They’re known for their ships to burn and you need this specific kind of pitch to set the fire.

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, my God.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. Sorry.

 

Lawson Brown:

Come on.

 

Kent Evans:

The idea was obviously he has this band of men, that he wants to go take this new land. Everybody is afraid of the Aztecs, and he says, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to give them no way out. There’s going to be like no back door to this experience, so the only option is kind of conquer or be conquered.”

 

Kent Evans:

You likened it to marriage, and on today’s podcast we’re going to talk about it in the context of fatherhood. But tell me a little bit about how you got there in this marriage, or when this first hit you mentally with you and your wife?

 

Lawson Brown:

I don’t remember exactly when it came up, but early on… I originally thought it was from the Marine Corps when they went ashore at Tripoli, but you’ve now since corrected me. Thanks for trashing my mythological-

 

Kent Evans:

Hey, Semper Fi, man. That doesn’t mean everything originated there.

 

Lawson Brown:

But where it came from, who did it, whatever, somebody can figure it out, but I just think it’s neat that it has lasted this long, hundreds of years. The intent is they were reluctant to go ashore and the leader said nope, there is no going back. In fact, turn around and look. Those ships are gone. They’re on fire. You can only go forward.

 

Lawson Brown:

My wife and I… Like other men’s Bible studies and stuff like that, I think we can apply it to fatherhood for sure, but in my life I’ve always remembered it as my wife and I burned the ship and there is no going back.

 

Lawson Brown:

We’ve talked about that with our kids. I’ve talked about it with other men, young married men, where I’ve gotten to be in their life or something like that. It’s a memory that just really rings true with me, that we’re going to go through hard times and we’re going to come upon obstacles and things that are trying to break us apart, and enemies, and our movement is always forward.

 

Lawson Brown:

We are not going back, because there is on going back. Like that marriage day happened. That was when the ship got burned.

 

Kent Evans:

Not that you mean that in a negative way?

 

Lawson Brown:

That sounded-

 

Kent Evans:

Honey, the day I married you it was like a ship burning. Now wait a minute. You’re not like-

 

Lawson Brown:

There’s a whole lot more to the story. Anyway, back in 1507 Cortez-

 

Kent Evans:

Look, here’s the thing. I look at you like the Aztecs and I need to conquer. Okay, so we got to be careful with the burning ships. No, I think to your point, man, there are so many folks who enter into marriage, for sure, and they think of the past as having some glorious past that they have to, quote/unquote, give up.

 

Kent Evans:

We hear these bad metaphors, right, used in the context of marriage, like the ball and chain, or that kind of thing, where it’s like you’ve entered into something that now restricts you or is worse, and now you have to give up all this past stuff. Man, what a failed way to walk into your marriage, huh?

 

Lawson Brown:

Well that, yeah, and also like it seems like it would be easier just to retreat and back back out of this situation, and that’s not possible. It’s no longer physically possible. You can’t get back on the ship.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, avoiding things, as far as like let’s burn these thoughts of the past, or these habits, or these whatever, but it’s also about you can’t retreat. You can’t avoid it. We have got to go forward together.

 

Kent Evans:

Man, that’s a great metaphor I think to set the stage for what we’re going to talk about on today’s show, and that is not so much exactly in the context of marriage, but I think a lot of guys who listen to this show definitely are married and they can resonate with this metaphor.

 

Kent Evans:

So if you’re out there I hope if you’re married you have burned that ship, any ships of other women, other past selfishness, all kinds of things that probably need to stay in the past and behind you as you’ve moved forward in your marriage.

 

Kent Evans:

Specifically what we’d like to talk about today, since this is the Father on Purpose Podcast, and we like to talk to dads about dad stuff, and what are some of those ships that as a dad we need to burn?

 

Kent Evans:

I’m going to kind of get us kicked off here by talking about I think one of the ships we have to burn early as a dad is the ship of what I would call selfishness. What I mean by that is if you’re a dad you’ve already figured part of this out, although you might still be kind of like fighting it. Your time is not your own. Your time is no longer your own.

 

Kent Evans:

That doesn’t mean you can’t have any hobby or you can’t ever watch a game or you can’t do anything. It just means that as a dad you’ve got to accept the fact that now you have this responsibility that for every minute you spend doing thing X is a minute you don’t spend doing thing Y, and so that trade-off becomes really important as a dad, especially if you are kind of like lamenting the trade-off.

 

Kent Evans:

I didn’t really have… I still have major bouts with selfishness. I’ll not pretend I’ve burned that ship all the way. I can still see it like half out in the harbor. There’s some smoke coming off it. I’ve tried to burn it.

 

Lawson Brown:

It’s like I bet I could put that out and get back on there.

 

Kent Evans:

Exactly. For sure. But I’ve never regretted having children. I’ve never felt like they were negative in the sense of I wish I could go back. I’ve never thought man, I wish I could go back before I had kids. I’ve never thought that. But, man, there’s been a lot of nights where I wish I had my time back.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. It’s not about you. When you become a dad you’re secondary. It’s just where it is. It’s not a bad thing, but you gotta understand that, and that’s a change for a lot of people. It’s a big shift, and it does come naturally.

 

Lawson Brown:

You see that baby and your world changes in that moment, but there’s also times where it’s like oh, gosh, I’m just tired, or I wish I could do, fill in the blank, whatever it may be. Well, yeah, it’s not about you. Your time is not your own. It’s time to put them first, like period.

 

Kent Evans:

What’s something that you can think of in the past where you had more time to do thing X? Because now what our listeners may need to be reminded of from time to time is I still have a bunch of kids in the home. I have a six, a nine, a 17-year-old, and right this second a 19-year-old, but this fall he’ll go off to college.

 

Kent Evans:

So I still have three kids, four kids under the roof. But you’re an empty-nester, so you’re probably pivoting a little back to some things that you might have given up for a season or a decade or two. What were some things that took a hit from a time standpoint as you became a dad?

 

Lawson Brown:

I guess… I’m trying to think back. Gosh, it’s been a while. That’s a good question. Work, the amount of time toward work. It wasn’t all that much of a hobby. I mean at the time doing some little small triathlons and physical activity.

 

Kent Evans:

Whoa, whoa, back it up. Did you just use the word small and triathlon in the same sentence?

 

Lawson Brown:

They are. Yeah. The smallest triathlons take under an hour. You could do that. You could work out for an hour, Kent.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, yeah. I can swim almost that long, but like here’s the question. Does that really count as a triathlon? Is it like the poor man’s way of saying, “I [inaudible 00:10:23] triathlon. I started like 27 minutes ago and now I’m done.” Does that really count?

 

Lawson Brown:

Compared to some iron man, yes, it does. It’s completely trivial.

 

Kent Evans:

Doesn’t a triathlon have to be like a near death experience for it to count?

 

Lawson Brown:

So back to the question, here’s what happened recently. They’re gone and Audrey went out of town, and I had five days where I was rubbing my hands together ahead of time, like I’m going to do this and this and this and this. That lasted about a day and a half and then I was like looking out the window, what do I do? I don’t know what to do anymore.

 

Lawson Brown:

So the pendulum has swung all the way and now it’s like talking about time management, it’s just weird, so I’ve got to find another productive and good use, hopefully God purpose related use of time.

 

Kent Evans:

Where would recording these podcast episodes fall in your scheme of God’s good use of your time? Are these like worth doing? Are they not worth doing?

 

Lawson Brown:

Do you have a pause? Hit pause on the recorder.

 

Kent Evans:

We need to talk offline for a minute. Just step into my office. Step into my office.

 

Lawson Brown:

It’s definitely on the… It’s way up there. I love it. This is-

 

Kent Evans:

Actually, it’s interesting though. If we go back five or six years… I mean podcasts aren’t brand new at the time we’re recording this, and you and I have been talking about a podcast for probably about five years-

 

Lawson Brown:

No kidding.

 

Kent Evans:

… off and on, and a couple things had to happen. Number one, technology caught up where we can do it more easily now in two different cities. That makes it easier.

 

Kent Evans:

Secondly, our kids have gotten old enough now where we are starting to reclaim a little bit of our time that we can give to the workday or on the edges of the workday if we have to. That’s been a little bit different, hasn’t it, for you?

 

Lawson Brown:

For sure. Yeah. I mean God’s timing is right on, as usual. I don’t know that I would have been ready to even contribute to something like this, nor was the ministry where it is today with the influence and the amount of hopefully potential listeners.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. And one thing, the jury is still out on whether you’re ready, so we’ll see. Yeah, I’m not ready to completely put that one in.

 

Lawson Brown:

Wait until the reviews come in. They’re going to be like the one guy, Kent, is just too goofy.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, here’s the thing. Please do us a favor and leave a review on this podcast, and when you’re reviewing the podcast only take into consideration what I say as you review it. I appreciate that.

 

Kent Evans:

One of the other ships we’ve got to burn… I’m looking out into the harbor of pre-fatherhood. We’ll call it the pre-fatherhood harbor. One of the other ships that we have to burn, one is selfishness. We talked a little bit about that. We’re going to just give up some of our time, but it’s for a good cause, so to speak.

 

Kent Evans:

One of the other ships we have to burn is the ship of what I call the good old days. What I mean by that… I want you to react to this, but what I mean by that, Lawson, is we tend to glamorize the things of the past and then sort of catastrophize the things of the present or the future.

 

Lawson Brown:

Interesting.

 

Kent Evans:

It’s the reason why that phrase good old days, like people know what that means because we use it a lot, and I don’t think that’s true, man. I’m currently in the middle of a challenging season as a dad, and I’ll just kind of leave it there. I don’t want to drag anybody through the mud, but the bottom line is I’m currently in the middle of a challenging season as a dad.

 

Kent Evans:

In my darkest moments in that season I wish it were different; however, I don’t want to go backward, like I really don’t. I don’t want to be out of this. I’m asking God to make me ready. I’m asking God to give me the skills and teach me what you need to teach me through this process.

 

Kent Evans:

I’m not trying to get out of it. I’m not trying to get out of it, and I’m not glamorizing the past, but some days when I wake up I’m like, man, another day. This is going to be a challenge. But I love the challenge. It’s almost a bizarre sort of thing, right, where the ship is burnt out in the harbor, the good old days ship is burnt, and I’m walking through the jungle and it’s a difficult jungle some days, but I enjoy the process of trying to move forward.

 

Lawson Brown:

Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean… Like Michael Scott from The Office said, “Don’t you wish that when you were in the good old days you knew that you were in the good old days?”

 

Kent Evans:

That’s a great line.

 

Lawson Brown:

Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not going to be good. You have to realize that. I appreciate you being able to say that in fact. I think that’s big. Maybe after the break let’s dig into that.

 

Lawson Brown:

And I also don’t want to forget a thought from a readiness standpoint… Part of the reason they burned the ship was because the people getting off of it to go fight didn’t feel like they were ready, they were scared. Well, when you become a dad it doesn’t mean you’re ready. It’s okay to be scared, but you do have to go forward.

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, man, great line. As the philosopher Billy Joel likes to say, “The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Like it.

 

Kent Evans:

Let’s do it. After the break we’re going to come back to a few other ships you’re going to need to burn to be a godly dad. There are some ships you got to burn, and Lawson and I will set a few more of those on fire on the other side of the break.

 

Kent Evans:

Hey, dad, sometimes being a dad can seem like a very difficult journey for which you and I are ill-equipped. 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.

 

Kent Evans:

We took these tools, 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 /survival-gear, manhoodjournel.org. Come snag this free eBook and get equipped for your fatherhood journey.

 

Kent Evans:

And we’re back. What you didn’t get to experience during the break… I’m glad you heard the ad for whatever was in there. What you didn’t get to experience was Lawson making a lot of fun of me, which is typical. He said what I said during the break was relevant, I should say it again, only to make it effective I think was the word that Lawson used.

 

Kent Evans:

So I’m going to take a stab at it. One of the things you were talking about, Lawson, right before the break was just burning the ship of like not being ready. As a dad sometimes we think I’m just not ready so I want to keep going back in the bay and getting back on the unpreparedness boat, because I’m-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

That’s true, I mean that we feel that way, and I want to play a mental kind of game with our listeners. We were talking earlier about triathlons, so let’s just say for a moment… I want you to feel how this lands in your brain.

 

Kent Evans:

You, dad, need to compete in a triathlon. That is an assignment. You need to compete in a triathlon. Now where does that land in your brain? What’s that make you think of? How do you feel?

 

Kent Evans:

Now let me change it just a little, I mean ever so slightly I want to change it. You need to compete in a triathlon 100 days from now. Wow, it does something totally different to your brain if you think, man, I’ve got 100 days to get ready. Your brain goes into timeline mode. You think about minutes matter more, hours matter more. You could probably build a quick schedule in your head of… The first thing I got to learn was how to swim. There are some basic-

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, gosh.

 

Kent Evans:

To that point, if you know it’s running and swimming and biking, you know one of three is probably your weaker bit. We can probably all get up and take off and run today. We’ve all probably ran. We may not have all biked much, especially long distances, and some of us have not swam any kind of distance at all.

 

Kent Evans:

So what’s that do to your brain? Here’s what I want to draw the correlation to, Lawson. I want to draw the correlation for the dads to the amount of time they have to be a dad to their child while they have them under their roof.

 

Kent Evans:

I heard a statistic, and I want to attribute it to somebody, but I don’t think I’m going to get it exactly right, so I’m going to botch it, but maybe a listener could email us and tell us the real stat.

 

Kent Evans:

But by the time your child is 10 years old you will have spent something like 75 or 80% of the time with them you will ever spend with them their entire life. So I’ve had guys come up to me before and they’ll say, “Gosh, my child is nine years old. I’m at the halfway mark before they move out.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

 

Kent Evans:

No, no. You’re kind of rounding the third quarter pole, as we would say in the horseracing part of the world where I live, and you’re coming down the stretch, my friend.

 

Lawson Brown:

Dude, that’s scary.

 

Kent Evans:

That’s the thing about readiness. If we wait till we’re ready we’re just going to hear the clock run out, because none of us are totally ready.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. And the amount of time you think you have is much shorter than that. Yeah. Your triathlon analogy, you made me remember back when we put our house in Atlanta up for sale and we were working on getting packed and boxing some things up here and there, taking some things to Goodwill, and then we got the offer, and they needed an early close. We were like, “Oh, that’s like in 20 some days we got to get all this done.” And before that, you know, the timeline was like this ethereal kind of a… You know, we got to do these things and what not and get a little ready.

 

Lawson Brown:

Then when it actually comes, you’ve got a hard date, like you said, everything changes. Everything hurries up. I’ve got a friend who just found out they’re pregnant.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. Woo. Good job.

 

Lawson Brown:

Exactly. We said that, and they were like, “Yeah, but we don’t want to be right now. Now is not the time we don’t feel like.” They have announced it and they’ve gone through the expectations and met with family and all that kind of good stuff, and it’s going to happen.

 

Lawson Brown:

When they see that baby it is going to be fantastic and life-changing and all that, but right now he feels like I don’t want this to happen right now. I’m not ready for this. I had all these other things in mind. That’s okay. That’s okay. You’ve said that out loud. Guess what? You’re going to have a baby. You are going to be a father, so put all that aside, because the date is on its way and there’s no turning back.

 

Lawson Brown:

When you said earlier about the harbor of fatherhood, I think that’s really cool. That was like you can fill that harbor with ships of all sorts. One of the bigger ones, one of the scarier ones is that unpreparedness. It’s like it can be scary, and when you… I don’t think you got it all completely wrong. I bet you’re probably right on the money, but by the time they’re 10 you’ve spent 80% of the-

 

Kent Evans:

It’s a lot.

 

Lawson Brown:

… total time. That is-

 

Kent Evans:

It’s a lot.

 

Lawson Brown:

It is like make the most of that. Accept it.

 

Kent Evans:

Have you ever seen the movie Ender’s Game with Harrison Ford?

 

Lawson Brown:

Uh-uh (negative).

 

Kent Evans:

It’s not one of his more well-known movies, but he’s a general in a kind of a syfy army. He’s training this young kid who’s kind of a prodigy, and another lady in the senior military says to Harrison Ford one time, “Is he ready?”

 

Kent Evans:

Harrison Ford says one of my very favorite movie quotes. He says back to his peer, “You don’t go when you’re ready. You go when you’re ready enough.” I just think ready enough, oh, that’s such a great line, right?

 

Lawson Brown:

I would own it.

 

Kent Evans:

I mean this podcast, we’re going to ship it and it’s going to be probably 92% of what either of us wanted out of a podcast episode, but if we wait for 100.0 we’d never ship any of them.

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s right. Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

So as a dad that’s super-important. I want to talk about one more ship that is out in the harbor. We’ve talked about selfishness, the good old days, being ready, the ship of not being ready.

 

Kent Evans:

The other ship I’d love to talk about is… It’s got a big old sign on it and it has like a flag, and the flag… If you can picture this ship out in the harbor, the flag says escape, escape.

 

Kent Evans:

What that ship is is all the things we escape to instead of the thing we ought to be doing. In fact, we have a good friend that folks don’t get to hear very often here on the podcast, his name is Hunter, and he’s in our tech booth helping us out. Thank you for that, Hunter.

 

Kent Evans:

Hunter and I were trading texts yesterday about this idea that sometimes we work on the thing that we feel really comfortable working on because it’s what we’re good at, even though there’s something else more important we probably should be doing, but that thing we don’t know well.

 

Kent Evans:

The example I used with Hunter was if you’re a pastry chef and that’s all you know how to do, you’ll stand in a kitchen making pastries with a leaky roof. Even though probably health code would tell you to go fix the roof you don’t know how to fix the roof, so you just make more pastries, but you really need to be fixing the roof, but you don’t know how and you’re afraid to ask.

 

Kent Evans:

So you go back and you escape to the things you’re good at, or the things that might even be illicit. Maybe it’s illegal or it’s immoral.

 

Lawson Brown:

Or unhealthy.

 

Kent Evans:

Or unhealthy. Or maybe it’s something that is healthy, like work can be a healthy thing-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

 

Kent Evans:

… but you just go escape to 70 hour weeks because that’s what you’re good at.

 

Lawson Brown:

We all do it in all aspects of life. You made me think of work. There are things that are my sweet spot. I like doing them, good at doing them, and then there are other things that-

 

Kent Evans:

For example, what are you good at at work? I’m just curious.

 

Lawson Brown:

… you want to avoid and escape from, and just kind of like-

 

Kent Evans:

You couldn’t say it. Lawson has no work skills. He just dodged that question because he has no work skills.

 

Lawson Brown:

My work skill is avoiding dumb questions.

 

Kent Evans:

Okay, that’s well played.

 

Lawson Brown:

But, you know, it’s like there are tough discussions that need to happen with your kid, and they are easy to find something else to do, find something easy, more fun, and not dig into that hard situation that you know is going to… You just wish it weren’t there, and wishing it away doesn’t make it so.

 

Kent Evans:

Remember that old thing we used to do as kids, where we would close our own eyes and then we thought that meant no one else could see us?

 

Lawson Brown:

Right. Right.

 

Kent Evans:

I can still see you. I just dashed some guy’s… Some guy is like 47 and he’s listening to this podcast and he goes, “No way. They can still see me?” It’s the first time ever. I also want to tell him something… Next week we’ll talk about the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. To that point, man, sometimes we just go back to that thing that is our A game over and over.

 

Lawson Brown:

Talk about… Without specifics, what do you tell somebody… What do you tell yourself when you’ve got something going on and you feel like it would be so easy to just… If this weren’t happening. But then you got to press on and… What do you do? Do you set some time aside just to deal with that and dig into it, and/or you’ve already done it, but you’ve got to do it again and again?

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, man. Dude, at the time of recording this episode I’m right in the middle of a series of conversations that I’d rather not be having, and quite frankly it’s not because someone is doing something wrong. It’s just because there’s like a pressure, there’s a challenge, there is a… I believe honestly it’s a satanic oppression that we’re just battling as a family.

 

Kent Evans:

It’s not pleasant. It’s not fun. I will tell you, every day I wake up… Not every… But for the last several months I’ll wake up in the morning and go, okay-

 

Lawson Brown:

Here we go.

 

Kent Evans:

Exactly. And I mean, again, I have nothing really to retreat to, so for me in a sense there is only one way forward. What I do each morning… Here’s what I’ve done each morning a lot more in the last month or two, and that is I wake up and just say, “Hey, God, this problem I have that I’m working through is bigger than me and I honestly don’t know what the heck I’m doing.”

 

Lawson Brown:

There you go. Right.

 

Kent Evans:

I mean, seriously, I just… I hear this thing about guys, and it says all guys, or men, or dads, they do what they know, they do what they know. Well, at some point in your past you didn’t know that thing, right? You might be an accountant right now, but when you were 14 you could not do a balance sheet. At some point you learned a skill.

 

Kent Evans:

The challenge is not that men or dads can’t learn skills. It’s that once we get one or two we just keep throwing those pitches our whole life. But over time even great athletes, in the first five or eight years of their career they’ll do that thing that they can do over and over again. In the last five or eight years of their career you see them build new skills, and that’s what makes them a Hall of Famer. That’s the difference between an average athlete with a seven year run and an amazing Hall of Fame athlete with a 10, 20, 15 year run, is they learn how to adapt over time.

 

Kent Evans:

So, dad, listen, you might be walking through a season right now with your wife, with your children, that you just wish you weren’t walking through. And, brother, let me tell you, kent.evans@manhoodjourney.org, kent.evans@manhoodjourney.org, email me.

 

Kent Evans:

Let’s talk about it, because here’s the deal. I’m with you. I can relate to that being there, and what you need is you need to ask God to help you through that. I don’t think there’s a better way, Lawson. There’s tactics and tips and techniques and… Get some better sleep, drink a lot of water, read a lot of scripture. All that stuff is important, but day-by-day, man, we need the infilling of God’s holy spirit or we’re not going to get there.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. You’re right. You’re not going to get it from this podcast. You’re not going to get it from a podcast. You’re not going to get it from anything-

 

Kent Evans:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This podcast has all the answers anybody needs.

 

Lawson Brown:

I knew I was going to say that and I knew you were going to say that. That’s so good. But you’re right, and I love what you said. You wake up in the morning and go, “This is so bigger than me. Just help, help, help, help. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how to handle this.”

 

Kent Evans:

And I’d love to leave the dads listening with a scripture verse that I think fits this topic so well. If you have a minute and you’re not driving in your car right now you can go to Hebrews 12, Verse 2… Hebrews Chapter 12, Verse 2. The book of Hebrews is a lot about our high priest, Jesus Christ, and how he sacrificed and died once for all.

 

Kent Evans:

This Verse 12:2 says this, “As believers we are to be looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who,” notice what it says, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

 

Kent Evans:

Part of the reason that we want to go back to fatherhood harbor and get on a boat and go back is because we don’t have our eyes fixed on the prize ahead. It says that Jesus said for the joy that was set before him… That he pursued and went to the cross for the joy set before him.

 

Kent Evans:

So, dad, listen, you loving your wife, you loving your kids, you leaning into their life challenges at the moments that are inconvenient and difficult and challenging-

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s right. That’s the priority,

 

Kent Evans:

… is the joy set before us. So I hope something Lawson and I have said today has encouraged you in that regard, because we have our model. We have our model in Jesus Christ, and for the joy set before him he endured the cross. And, dad, for the joy set before you go love your family and your children well.

 

Lawson Brown:

Amen.

 

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.

 

Kent Evans:

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.

 

Kent Evans:

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.

 

Kent Evans:

Finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show.

 

Kent Evans:

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.