The godly dad anticipates that trouble will arise

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:

Lawson, how are you buddy?

 

Lawson Brown:

Hello, Kent. I’m doing so fantastic.

 

Kent Evans:

Last week we left off right where we’re going to pick up this week. It was kind of a happy accident.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. We almost went a little too deeply.

 

Kent Evans:

I would love for our dads listening to think we planned this stuff. However, God is in control. Praise the Lord. Where we’re going to pick up is I was discussing last week how my friend, Kevin, I heard him pray one time at an event and he said, “God, please show us the enemy while he’s still far off and we can do something about it.” He prayed that out loud in an event. We’re going to talk today, Bring Your Hammer Book on Nehemiah. In the book… We’re on chapter 19, we picked certain chapters out. And today’s chapter is called The Godly Dad Anticipates that Trouble will Arise. So, that’s the topic today. But before we get to that, we had a high-water mark in the Father on Purpose Podcast that we want to share with our listening audience. And it was that one of Lawson’s friends actually sent us a text. This is Tom from Pittsburgh. Tom said, “So, I’ve been binge listening from the beginning of the show. This morning on the way to the gym, one episode ended and then went into an episode I knew I’d heard already.” And then, he says, “I’ve listened to them all. And now, I can’t wait for next Monday to hear more about how I should be like Nehemiah. You guys are awesome. I have really enjoyed the podcast.” And so far I’m with Tom. I totally am with Tom on this, okay? Right up until he says the next smart aleck thing in his text-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. I almost deleted that part to save your feelings. And then, I was like, “No.” Let’s let him read it.”

 

Kent Evans:

I have a fragile ego. And Tom says, “I got to say. I appreciate your attempts to reign in Kent’s giggling.” Okay. Tom, listen. Number one, men can’t use the word giggling in texts, okay? Seriously, Tom. Secondly, Lawson can’t reign me in no matter what he does. Third, no, I don’t have anything else to say. I’m just kidding. Tom, thank you so much. Dad, if you’re listening, go be more like Tom. The moral of the story is not that Lawson and I are awesome, but that you need to be more like Tom, you need to do two things to be more like Tom. Number one, you too need to go spend more time going to the gym. Secondly, you also need to send us an email telling us how great we are. And I probably… I’m going to start some kind of contest. Maybe, Hunter, we should do this. Hunter’s in the background today helping us manage the tech on this. We’ll call him the executive producer for lack of a better term. And Hunter, what we got to do is a contest of anyone else who can email me some kind of ridiculous slam on Lawson like Tom did on Kent. Maybe, we give him, I don’t know, a free copy of Bring Your Hammer. I don’t know, something.

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, my gosh.

 

Kent Evans:

The other thing, by the way, we recently received three new audio messages from our website, where… At the podcast page, we have manhoodjourney.org/podcast, that’s podcast. And on that page, there’s a button. You can click the button and you can leave us and audio voicemail. And if we like it, and if you’re not a smart aleck like Tom, we’ll actually probably use your audio on a future episode. And I’ve only listened to one out of the three we received. It was great. Super question from a guy about work and family. And we’re going to address that on a future episode. So, if you have a minute and you can head over to manhoodjourney.org/podcast and you have a question, you got a big fatherhood challenge or you got a fatherhood idea, tip, observation, leave it for us so we can share it on a future episode. That is all of the preamble Lawson. Let’s dive in to chapter 19 from our book, Bring Your Hammer about Nehemiah, lessons that dads can learn from Nehemiah. And The Godly Dad Anticipates that Trouble will Arise. Now, you’ve raised two daughters. We’ve talked about your daughters frequently on the show. Trouble is going to arise for our children, right, Lawson? And how has that shown up in your family?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Two things I noticed while I was listening to you. The title says that the godly dad anticipates that trouble will arise. So, that’s different than saying the godly dad anticipates each instance of trouble before it gets here, right? It says, and I agree with this, that trouble, you just recognize and realize and anticipate that it’s going to happen. That’s just a general heightened sense of not alert, not alarm, just a heightened sense of awareness, I think it’s really important for dads to be that kind of stalwart of keeping your eyes out, keeping the radar on super sensitive, depending on what’s going on in your children lives and in different ways.

 

Lawson Brown:

And dude, who is Kevin? Because that is… Where he prayed God, “Please help me and my wife see trouble when it is still far off.” I circled it in the book. I wrote it down when you told me, whenever it was, last week. And dude, I just love, “Help me and my wife see trouble when it’s still far off.” Now, we live in Florida, we know when a hurricane’s going to come, there’s just technology available. Anybody that gets caught unaware of a huge hurricane bearing down on us, they’re just trying not to pay attention. But then, there are like this tornado that hit New Orleans and then recently Alabama. And I just feel for these people because in the middle of the night and those things just boom, they come out of nowhere. And so, I’ve always pictured seeing a tornado from way far off. It seems like you would be able to spot that thing and load up the car and get out of there. I don’t know why that image came into my head when I heard you talk about this and then read it. But I do pray, I really pray, man. I want my spidey sense to know way in advance, as far as I can, that there’s trouble. I spot that. Even if it’s not… You spot the specific thing, that you know this is not a situation or we need to really maybe dig in or pay close attention to what your child may have just said or something they referenced about something that they saw at school or at work, depending on the age of your kids. And then, not just look at that as something that just happened and maybe you just need to talk about it, but have your alert up, have your awareness level up so that you can anticipate that that could be something of real trouble.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. And if you think about it, as a dad, the trouble we’re going to experience is there’s not this infinite list of kinds of trouble. What I mean by that is the situations are all going to be a little unique and the details may be varied, but we know the trouble’s going to fall into some buckets, right? There may be health trouble, for kids who are entering the teen years, there could be dating trouble, relationship trouble. We could have rebellion, especially if you’re having a house full of boys. There’s a possibility that they’re going to trip across an image of a female that’s inappropriate at some point. You’re not saying you just let your guard down and let it happen for fun. What you’re saying is I’m not going to be shocked if my little angel, my little perfect kid, all of a sudden, I get a call from another parent at school that says, “Your kid punched my kid.” We know that there are these categories of trouble that, as a dad, we can almost count on to some degree. If you’re going to raise children, guess what? They’re going to have some relational drama. And it could be real simple and light. “Joey at school took my gum.” Or whatever. And it’s something simple and you can manage it. It could be something super dramatic, that’s really painful and heartbreaking. I was literally just walking through on some phone conversations with one of my own sons about some relational disappointment that he is walking through right at the moment. And I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t beyond belief. And here’s what I find interesting about The Godly Dad Anticipating that Trouble will Arise is… And you made a really interesting point just a moment ago that we’re not going to know exactly when or what form it’s going to take. If I could tell you next Thursday at four o’clock you’re going to be in a car wreck. Well, then you know. You’re just going to not go to that intersection. But the readiness for our children with regard to trouble will not necessarily be situational. And here’s what I mean by that. What I mean by that is, the Bible talks a lot about where we anchor our hope and where we anchor our trust and that, “God is our shield. He is our Rampart. He is our refuge. His word gives us strength.” And all that stuff that we hear in the Bible about where we can anchor our souls. Then the exact flavor or trouble doesn’t matter quite as much. So, as opposed to trying to just head off financial ruin by teaching our kids the art of building a spreadsheet or how to invest in E-Trade or max out their 401k. Instead of only doing that, those might be great ideas, we teach our children, don’t put your hope and trust in money as a concept. And then, any flavor of money trouble that comes along, they’re probably going to be relatively well prepared for. What are some things, Lawson [crosstalk 00:10:51].

 

Lawson Brown:

Well, hang on. Here’s something that Eric wrote. “If we know what to expect…” Eric Ballard, coauthor, for you guys in the audience that may not…

 

Kent Evans:

Let’s back it up. If there is anybody listening to his podcast that hasn’t bought the book Bring Your Hammer, man, what are you doing with your life? I mean, seriously.,

 

Lawson Brown:

It is good. All right. So, Eric writes… This is the chapter that he wrote, thank goodness. “If we know what to expect, we won’t wind up as frustrated when it happens. We must align our expectations with reality.” And I wrote in the side column here, naive. And here’s what I mean by that, is let’s be astute dads, let’s understand reality and that way you can spot trouble on the way with vivid clear vision, because it’s not going to be mistaken as something innocent or you’re not going to take it too lightly. I was with my sister, recently. Well, we were talking on the phone. I’d seen them recently and then she and I were just catching up again on the phone. And she said that her son told her the porn addiction at his school is at an epidemic level.

 

Kent Evans:

Man.

 

Lawson Brown:

I know. And he said that now… He didn’t say necessarily that he has a couple of buddies, but he knows that there is such a thing as erectile dysfunction for these teenagers, these young to mid teenagers, because what porn… What they’ve been seeing and experiencing online is so crazy that just normal holding a hand or… I don’t know all the details of it, but it scared me. And he’s 16.

 

Kent Evans:

Wow.

 

Lawson Brown:

And I thought, “Man, I am naive.”

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah.

 

Lawson Brown:

Thankfully, our girls are gone and out of the house… Are not out of the house, but out of school. And I was just like, “Dang, dude. That is serious business.” And so, it made me think if you, as a dad, are unplugged from that and if that were to shock you and surprise you, then maybe pay attention to that and try to learn, “Is my story way off? Or is that the norm?” Go check reality.

 

Kent Evans:

In fact, you know what I saw? I saw something recently that… And there’re different studies, but the one thing that’s true of all of the studies is that the average age at which young kids are exposed to pornographic images has been dropping precipitously, essentially with the trends, right? With the internet and cell phones, unfortunately. But in some cases, it’s as low as eight years old. Some studies have it down around seven, eight, nine years old where that’s the first exposure, on average. Some are younger. And so, as dads, if you’ve got your head in the sand and you think you can somehow prevent every possible thing affecting your children, we got to play a lot of defense, but we’ve also got to be ready when an arrow does make it over the wall.

 

Lawson Brown:

And it does happen. And that’s another… I’m sorry to interrupt you. Something else that I didn’t want to miss is it is going to happen, okay? So, our kids are going to make mistakes, we’re going to make mistakes, but something, I think, that you can do… The chapter here and the lesson from Nehemiah is about anticipating. Anticipating that something, not necessarily that specific thing, right? That is going to happen, like you said, on that street corner on next Tuesday, but that something is going to happen. And what could that be? You need to think. Like you just said, things are going to happen. Okay. So then, when it does, what do you learn from that?

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, man.

 

Lawson Brown:

And sometimes you can discern wisdom by look back to plan ahead, I guess. Because there are times that the things are going to happen, you can learn from in order to then recognize when you’re in that situation or when something’s coming down the road.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know how many miles you have on airplanes lost, and it’s probably more than me, but I got a lot, right? I’ve probably been on, I don’t know, a couple of thousand flights, at least a thousand. And a bunch of them over the pond and internationally. And I think of that time when the pilot comes on and just says, “Hello, everyone. This is your captain speaking. And we’re about to encounter some turbulence.” And you know the reason he does that is so nobody freaks out. I still hate turbulence. Every time I’m in turbulence in an airplane, I think I’m going to die.

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, really?

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, yeah. Hate it. But having said that, I hate it a lot less when the pilot has told me about it. One time we were landing in Louisville, Kentucky and you could tell it was windy because you felt the plane move a little. You knew it was windy, but I didn’t know how windy it was. So, we get down and man, we are treetop level, you can see trees. And you’re down and all of a sudden the plane goes nose up, full thrust, straight up into the sky. We did not land.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

And the whole time… There’s this 50-second, minute long, “What is going on?” And because we didn’t know, and the pilot was doing his job, right? He was taking care of the safety of the people rather than talking to us. There was this super significant wind shear down at the ground. And so, the protocol is get back up in the air and then you’ll come down later. Hopefully, on the wheels and not nose down. And so, I just remember that. Part of the reason that was so jarring is because I didn’t know it was coming, right?

 

Lawson Brown:

Don’t expect it. Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

Completely unexpected. And I think about, if we got Bible students on the podcast listening right this moment, they’re playing in their mind that quote from Jesus in John 16:33 when he says, “In this world, you will have trouble.” He’s talking to his disciples, why is he telling them that? Partly, it’s one more proof of his deity, right? He can pinpoint. And when the trouble happens, they’d be like, “Wow. He must be able to see the future.” And then, secondly, so they wouldn’t freak out, so they could manage this situation as opposed to getting all enmeshed in the fact that there’s a situation.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

One of my favorite New Testament single verse quotes is in the book of First Corinthians, First Corinthians 16. And Paul is talking when he’s going to travel and he says, in first Corinthians 16:8, he says, “I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost.” And verse nine is so powerful. Dads, listen. Verse nine, “Because a great door for effective work has opened to me even though many oppose me.” And in some other translations, it will say, ” [inaudible 00:18:09] many adversaries.” And what Paul was saying is sometimes the very work… In fact, usually, the very work God has called us to do will be riddled with opposition and challenge. So, when you look, for example, at Nehemiah, Nehemiah was doing the work of the Lord. He literally was following the steps that God told him to do. Get the permission to leave, pray fast, go on the trip, rebuild the wall. And that process of carrying out God’s will for his life effectively, Nehemiah knew there was going to be trouble. And so, sometimes, dads or moms, we get all down in the mouth because our kids are having trouble or drama or there’s a problem or they did this thing or we find smokes in their locker or we find that beer can in their trash, whatever we find. And we think, “Oh, my goodness. What have I done wrong as a parent to allow my child to act like they’re human?” It’s not that we can always just go, “Therefore, I’m going to make sure we do a beer bash when they turn 21.” But what I’m saying is-

 

Lawson Brown:

Nor is it to lock them in the room and start a list of all the wrongs.

 

Kent Evans:

Right amidst the work God’s asked us to do, there’s going to be trouble. And so, the question is, can we… I heard a guy use-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. That’s a good way to say that.

 

Kent Evans:

The metaphor a guy used one time… I heard and I think it’s really powerful. He said, “Imagine you’re in your garage and you’re working on a car and you’re trying to fix the car and you hurt your hand. And so then, what you do next is as you get up and you kick the tools, you kick the parts, you scream and yell, you bang the car. What’s happening? Number one, the car isn’t getting any more fixed. And then, secondly, you’re actually making the fixing of the car more difficult later. Because now your tools and the parts are all strewn all over the garage.” So, how you react-

 

Lawson Brown:

You probably hurt your foot too.

 

Kent Evans:

How you react to the problem either makes the problem more fixable or makes the problem itself harder to fix. And so, I hope to encourage dads as they walk through these seasons, right? Where it’s like, “Hey, my kid did X.” Or, “My kid’s friend did X.” We’ve got to anticipate that stuff’s going to arise, so that in the middle of it arising we’re not overwhelmed and freaking out because all hands on deck. When our kids are going through relation drama, it’s not time to freak out, it’s time to help them walk through that trouble.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

How’d you do that with your daughters, man? As you look back and you think of some of the trouble that arose in your daughter’s life, without sharing any super-secret stuff. Can you think of a time? I’ll go first because I’m springing this question on you. We didn’t talk about it before the show, but I’d like for you to talk about a season or a time. For me, we had this interesting season last summer as we were recording this particular episode where we walked through a challenging time with one of our boys as he battled some just mental challenges. And what I found interesting was a counselor told me… At one point, he said, “Kent, you can’t parent your child’s anxiety with your own anxiety.” And man, what a great line. And I’ve really hung onto that because during the drama and the challenge that my son was walking through, I was really making it worse.

 

Lawson Brown:

Did he give you any practical way to not do that?

 

Kent Evans:

He said, “You know, Kent? Try being less like you.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Be more like Tom.

 

Kent Evans:

Be more like Tom. The practical stuff were a couple things. “One.” He said, “You need to be able to listen better. The second thing is you need to be able to not parent out of fear. So, imagine you’re in this situation, you’re playing it out into the future, whether you realize it or not. And as you play it out in the future, you play the darkest version. And that’s what you’re really reacting to in the present, is the darkest version of the future.” He said, “So, you got to stay in the present. You got to listen well. And then, there were just some reading he gave us that I read through and ways for me to be more a part of the solution and less a part of the problem.” And one thing he didn’t tell me explicitly, but came out of my conversations with my son, as he walked through this drama. He told me one time, my son said, “Dad, I know you’re trying to help, but pretty much everything you’re doing right now is making this worse.”

 

Kent Evans:

Hey dad, do you wrestle with anger? Man, I sure have and so have thousands of other dads in our email list. And so, what we did for those dads and for you, we built a special digital course called The Anger Free Dad. This digital course is chalk full of almost 50 assets, a bunch of teaching videos, a ton of PDF booklets and worksheets so you can walk through and understand your anger triggers, the expectations underneath and how to pull those out of your heart and mind so you can be a dad who is less angry and more at peace. If you take this course and you do not become less angry, you will get all of your money back. Plus, we’ll send you some boxing gloves so you can beat up the wall at your house with all of your mad anger. Dad, come take The Anger Free Dad course today at manhoodjourney.org/anger-free-dad. That’s manhoodjourney.org/anger-free-dad.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. So, your anxiety feeding into his anxiety. It’s like there’s a fire over there and you walk over with your own gas, right?

 

Kent Evans:

That’s exactly right. And if we anticipate that trouble’s going to arise, we sit down the gas can before and we’ve got a bucket of water. And that’s constantly our MO, is we’re walking around with this water ready to put out fires, not ready to make them explode. Can you think of a time when-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. That’s really cool that you had the self-awareness to be able to receive that too. I mean, and then go do something about it, knowing that about yourself.

 

Kent Evans:

I fired that counselor. Yeah. What I did about it was I said, “Last session, pal. This is it. One more time you tell me I do something wrong.”

 

Lawson Brown:

“Talk about me one more time.”

 

Kent Evans:

“Talk about me one more time.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Something we’ve talked about before is… So, I’m going to tie this. We want to encourage dads on this podcast. It’s not just, “Hey, there’s trouble out there and it’s going to happen. And so, look out.” The end. Let’s talk about some ways that we can just learn from each other. So, something we’ve talked about before is to… I’m going to tie it to seeing trouble for what it is. And that is how to spot a counterfeit by knowing the authentic, right? And we’ve talked about… In this case, counterfeit money. You don’t have to know what every fake dollar looks like. You need to know what the real one looks like.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah.

 

Lawson Brown:

And so, spotting trouble, I think it can be used against us and against our children when what’s going on is maybe just not recognized, you don’t really see it as something going on in your kid’s life. Maybe you’re busy yourself. Maybe it’s just cleverly disguised and just doesn’t seem all that bad or maybe you’re comparing it to some things that you’ve heard about with other children. And so, what’s going on with yours in the context of that doesn’t seem all that bad. You asked about our girls. I particularly remember middle school being really hard. And for you guys out there that have kids in middle school. Their bodies, they’re going through stuff. That age, they’re just not quite athletic or they’re having trouble in certain ways because they’re between little kid and bigger kid. And so, they just feel awkward in their shell sometimes. And for girls in particular… Because of the age of our girls, that was also when social media was beginning. And so, they were also trying to… We, as parents, they, as kids, our girls didn’t have anything for quite a while, but their friends did. And that brought a whole different level of jealousy and interpretation, third hand through their eyes, telling them what they had seen. And that just skews your view of yourself and of your surroundings and your environment, the world. And so, I think we maybe addressed that as trouble. We recognized it. We didn’t shy away from setting the tone that that just wasn’t going to be a part of their life, regardless of whether or not their friends did at the time. And so now, looking back as they’re adults now and we talk about it and they’re beginning to set some boundaries for their own selves and how they manage themselves. We’ve talked about that, we’ve talked about back then, how me and Audrey had protected them from that because it just didn’t… We had no proof that it was necessarily all bad by any stretch. But we just knew, I don’t know, “They’re too young. We just don’t like it.” And so, from a encouragement and maybe some practical app, you can take one or two of these, if you’d like to, from a… Okay. So now then, what we do? Because we can’t just say there’s going to be trouble and, “Oh, well. I hope you make it through it.” Let’s talk about some things that we can do. First, I would say engage and recognize trouble. Get in there, get in deeper, talk to your kids, visit the school. Maybe go visit them if they’re out of the house. FaceTime more often. Two, inspect and expect. Meaning, if you suspect something’s going on, or maybe they are insinuating that they’re struggling with something, then go look. Go get eyes on and talk to them and expect that there’s probably going to be something. And like you said, Kent, it’s not because you want to go catch them in the act and here comes the hammer and we’re going to put them in room arrest. They’re not bad. This world is tough and trouble comes at you from all kinds of forms and angles. The third, and this goes to the counterfeit, knowing what’s authentic, is pray and be quiet and listen. God is there to help you. I think it’s really important to slow down and take some time and be quiet and really try to discern his leadership. Because some of the stuff that we’re encountering as dads is complicated and we’ve never come across it. The world is just different than when we were kids. And so, how do you handle some of those things? Sometimes the best thing you can do is just go to pray and be quiet and listen, and ask for help.

 

Kent Evans:

Lawson, remind the guys listening, how far apart were your daughters in age? How old were they?

 

Lawson Brown:

Three and a half.

 

Kent Evans:

Three and a half.

 

Lawson Brown:

Three and a half years old.

 

Kent Evans:

So, as you had a 12-year-old, you also had an eight-and-a-half-year-old. And then, as your older daughter went through middle school, did it help you when the second daughter came around? Were you more equipped with your second daughter or was it different? I’m just curious.

 

Lawson Brown:

As any dad with multiple kids knows, they’re all different. You can’t parent one the same… Whatever you did with one, that may likely not work with the other. But something that I think helped us was we were in a really great small group at the time with two or three other couples who also had kids of varying different ages. Some that were much older and some same age, some of them, even in the same class, same grade as our daughters, even went to the same school. So, getting together with them for years, we did it weekly. And it was time to pray together. Maybe at times throughout the years, we’d go through some certain book study or something like that. But the greatest value was when we were sharing what we were struggling with. And as time went on, you get to know each other a whole lot better. The trust factor goes way up and we all had each other’s back and there were times where someone had gone through something ahead of us and we were able to learn from that. And that helped us, I believe, anticipate what could happen for our own family.

 

Kent Evans:

We’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast because my first book that came out in 2016 was called Wise Guys. And it’s about getting around other men who you can learn from and how to learn to pull wisdom from other men. And I think almost nowhere is this more true than in this game of anticipation and discernment. People who have kids who are older than yours, even though they’re not carbon copies, as you say, I loved being around and still do love being around guys with kids who are older than my kids. Every other Tuesday I’m on a prayer call with four or five other guys. And I think all of them have children older than mine. And some have quite much older where they’re all out of the house and they got grandkids. And so, there’s a couple guys on the call who are a life stage or two past me on the road. And man, I learned a ton from those guys. 

I was talking to Jeff one time and Jeff was telling me about his adult children and the phrase he would use with his adult children is, as it relates to coming to our home, you are always welcomed, but never expected. And what a great phrase, he was trying to remove… Always welcomed. As it relates to coming to our home, you are always welcomed, but never expected. And what he was trying to remove from his children was this drama that happens when you go, “Wait a minute. You mean you’re going to go to your in-laws for Thanksgiving? Why aren’t you coming here?” And whoa, time out. And so, what he was trying to remove was this pressure of, “We expect you to be here for every major holiday till Jesus comes back. And if you ever pick another family over ours, you are persona non grata. He just was like, “Whoa, I want to head that off. I want to head all that off.” And so, I’ve told my son the same thing. Who’s the one who’s moved out, he’s married and he’s finishing college, but won’t be coming back to live here. And so, I just told him, “Hey man, you guys are welcome here anytime, but you’re never expected.” And that phrase, right? I got from another dad, who’s several miles down the road from me in the parenting game. And it helps me anticipate trouble, right? Now, I might actually be one inch smarter about raising adult children than I should be, even though I don’t really have that many. And so, I hope dads are listening and they understand part of the way to anticipate is go get with other dads who are a click or two down the road and ask them, “Hey man, what’s the secret to walking your kids through their teen years with sexual purity? Or what do you do with your kids in porn? Or what do you do with your kids in money? Investing? Jobs? You name it. College choice.” Go find some other dads who are down the road and learn from their experience and leverage their experience to become a dad who can really anticipate well.

 

Lawson Brown:

And not necessarily when you have something going on. It’s never too early to start because you need to have a relationship going. You need to have some ground beneath you with a mentor like that so that your relationship is solid enough, strong enough, familiar enough. Because you know, we all know, we’ve been told, Jesus said it. Trouble’s on the way. And so, let’s start ahead of time.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. And as you look-

 

Lawson Brown:

And it’s ongoing.

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, man. Well, and the troubles change, right? I’ve told my boys… When you’re seven, the trouble is you’re going to bring home a yellow light from school and get in trouble and you don’t get candy for a week or whatever, right? That’s the repercussions of your rebellion. But I’ve told my older boys, “Hey man, the costs and the time impact.” Right? Think of most decisions you make when you’re five, six or seven or eight years old. Now, again, I’m not talking about walking out in traffic and killing yourself. The normal stuff that kids do, the impact of those decisions when you’re a little child, it lasts for minutes or maybe hours, right? Maybe weeks if I’ve told you not to jump off the roof of the house and you still jumped off the roof of the house, you might be wearing a cast for a couple months.But the time duration of the impact of your choices is usually minutes or hours or days, maybe occasionally weeks and months.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

But when you’re 15 or when you’re 18, especially, you can make decisions that affect not even just your own lifetime, but the lifetime of those downstream from you, right? So, it’s very interesting how now I’m still living, even at age 51, in some of the downstream repercussions, from a family standpoint, of decisions that my grandfather made, right? And I’m not talking about sins of the father.

 

Lawson Brown:

No, I know what you mean. Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

I’m talking about… Man. And so, what I’ve always told my boys is, it almost logs rhythmic. It’s not linear. As you get older, the amount of time that your decisions could affect gets longer and longer and longer. And so, when you’re five, it’s minutes. When you’re 10, it may be hours or days. When you’re 15, it may be months or years. When you’re 18 or 20, it’s decades or lifetimes. And it just keeps stretching out. And that’s part of what, I hope, dads understand, is that when we’re anticipating some of that trouble on behalf of our children. I’m not talking about clairvoyance or ESP or you can actually crystal ball, see the future. But look at the Nehemiah example, he had guys who would ask him, “Hey, come meet. We want to talk to you.” And he’s like, “No. You know what? No. I know what these guys are up to. They’re up to no good. And so, no, I’m not going to answer them, I’m not going to meet with him.” And he had this sense. And I think part of the reason he had that sense was he knew God’s word. He knew what mission he was on. He knew what was outside that mission. And he knew how to spot a bad apple when he saw one. You and I have the holy spirit inside of us who promises to guide us into all truth. He promises to guide us into all truth. So, as we’re making decisions or as we’re thinking about praying for our children, ask God, “What kind of trouble lies ahead for my daughter or my son?” Because to Lawson’s point a minute ago, it might be really unique. Each of your children are probably wired a bit uniquely. And I’ve told one of my boys, who can remain nameless on this podcast. But I told one of my boys, “Hey man, if you’re going to be a constant critic, just get used to not having a lot of deep relationships. That’s where you’re headed. And here’s the thing. It’s a free country. You have choice. You have free will. You can go down that path. But if you want deep friendships, you’re going to have to figure out how to be more accepting and more loving and not talk about people behind their back. That’s just how that’s going to work.” And so, for part of my council to him is, “Hey man, you don’t have to stop. Keep going, but I can predict for you what this road is going to feel like in the future.” And so-

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s really cool the way you do that, dude. I love it.

 

Kent Evans:

For me, I see it as my obligation. And how I serve it up, I’ve gotten much better at how I serve it up, right? In the past, I would say… If you were my son, Lawson, I would say, “Lawson, you have to stop this. You can’t do this. You must stop.” “No. No, actually, you know what? You can and you might, and it’s totally your call.” And so, what I’ve decided to do is just kind of go, “Hey, here’s the thing. If you invest all your money in Bitcoin, you might lose it.” You could. Look at the prospectus of every stock you’ve ever bought. It says nothing’s guaranteed. All your money could go to zero. Awesome. As long as I know that, I can make a wise choice. And so, what I’ve tried to do with my boys is say, “Look, man. Here’s what you’re doing right now. And here’s a way this could play out into the future. You might want to consider whether you are okay with the high probability that that’s the way this is going to work out.” One of the ways I’ve done this, just to close this, just practical stuff. One of my boys recently had gotten a third disciplinary thing he brought home within a few weeks. And the third one was probably a tweener. For real. The first two, you read it from the teacher and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. He totally deserved that.” The third one was more of like, “Everybody was laughing. Blah, blah, blah. Did he get singled out? Maybe.” So, what I told him was, I go, “Hey, do you know what a pattern is? It’s when the same thing happens over and over again. And you could spot patterns.” And he’s only seven and we’re having this conversation. And I said, “What has been your pattern lately?” And he goes, “I’ve gotten several red lights.” That’s what they call him at his school. And I said, “Interesting. Do you think you deserved this third one?” He goes, “Well, no. Everybody was laughing and she just pointed to me and I’m the one who got the red light.” And I said, “Also interesting. Have you had a pattern of being out of line lately?” And he kind of looked at the ceiling for a second and goes, “Yeah.” And I said, “Maybe the third red light-“

 

Lawson Brown:

What a good kid.

 

Kent Evans:

“Maybe the third red light was because you had put a pattern in your teacher’s head where she figured you were the instigator, for good reason. Because the last two weeks you have been.” And what’s amazing to me, here’s what’s amazing to me. He totally got it.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Well done.

 

Kent Evans:

Here’s how I know he got it. Because I said, “So, what do we need to do in the future?” And he goes, “We need a new pattern.” And I was like, “Yes, this is so great.”

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s awesome.

 

Kent Evans:

And I just remember thinking, “Yeah.” Dad, that’s our job. Help our kids know what kind of trouble they’re headed for.

 

Lawson Brown:

Perfect.

 

Kent Evans:

And what that might look like. Let’s just let them know. We don’t have to tell them to stop, necessarily. Just depends on their age. I hope today’s conversation has been helpful. I hope you too will be more like Tom, go to the gym, send us a nice email. Don’t forget. It feels like Bob Barker, “Have your pet spayed or neutered.” Go to the gym, send us a nice email. Thank you, Lawson, for taking time. And thank you to our executive producer, Hunter, for hanging in there even though today he did not feel very well-

 

Lawson Brown:

Super sick.

 

Kent Evans:

So, way to go.

 

Lawson Brown:

Good job hunter.

 

Kent Evans:

You’re the man. Dad’s, get out there and be a Godly dad. Hunter and Lawson and I have your back and we’ll talk to you next week.

 

Kent Evans:

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

 

Outro:

You’ve been dozing off to The Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson brown. Now, wake up, head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a Godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose.