The godly dad discerns true needs around him

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.

 

Lawson Brown:

Hey man. Good to see you.

 

Kent Evans:

Good to see you-

 

Lawson Brown:

I’m loving where we are. I love the book. I got the actual hard copy book. Bring Your Hammer that you and Eric Ballard wrote about Nehemiah. This is going to be good, man. Chapter 10. So you guys flip flop, Eric writes some chapters, you write some. This one you wrote chapter 10, “The godly dad, discerns true needs around him.” And it really resonated with me. In fact, the more I got into the chapter, the more I liked the topic. And you can see here, my book on video, I’m showing you all my handwritten scribbles. So talk about where you started in this about have you ever jumped to a conclusion and then realize later that you weren’t right?

 

Kent Evans:

No, I have never once jumped to a conclusion and then found out I was incorrect. What’s your next question?

 

Lawson Brown:

Doesn’t happen to me.

 

Kent Evans:

I mean, zillions of times, honestly, that’s probably one of my repeated mistakes over the years is just instantly something goes wrong and I jumped to some conclusion. What’s really funny is my oldest son, Alex is now 22, but when he was 10 or 12, he had two little brothers. So he was the oldest and then a couple of years and there was Jeremy and a couple of years there was Jonathan, and Alex would come to me and I’m a new dad. I got these three boys and Alex might be, I don’t know when he was younger, maybe eight, six, and four. And Alex would come to me and go, “Jeremy hit me.” And I would instantly start getting mad at Jeremy, and I’d be like, doling out consequences. It’s like, there was no ready. There was no aim. It was just fire, fire, fire. And so I would get all bent out of shut and start yelling at everybody. And then I realized there were big, huge chunks of the story that were missing. And so I started a new habit, and Alex would come to me and go, “Jeremy hit me.” And I would go. “That is very interesting. Do me a favor, rewind the story about a minute, and tell me what happened right before Jeremy hit you?” And there was always some kind of drama. It was like, well, I mean, “I stole his Fritos and I ran over his bike. And then I threw a firecracker in his ear or whatever. And then he hit me.” Jeremy woke up, got out of bed, and just punched Alex right in the nose. And I started to figure out, I was getting played and Alex was very shrewd and a bit manipulative. And he was just telling me part seven of a story, and I didn’t even ask about part one through six. I got last, I figured it out.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. That’s a young dad novice move

 

Kent Evans:

Classic.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Or you hear something going on in the other room and just assume, you know what happened as you bust the door down and take over because of the history of one of the kids. So you’ve already imagined what’s up and you jump to a conclusion. It’s something I underlined here. I’m curious. I wrote a note to myself. What made you write that? And the sentence is Nehemiah was a wise Shrewd and observant guy. He was thorough and always steps ahead of what was going on. And the story unfolded or the way that you guys put it out there unfolded better as I went through it. But you chose specific words when you’re writing stuff like this, you have a lot of thought goes into words matter, why Shrewd and observant? Why did you do use those two words?

 

Kent Evans:

Well, observant one, because I think as a dad because we’re writing the whole book to try to help dads. And so I think sometimes the pressures of life can make us unobservant. Not because we woke up in the morning and said, “Hey today, I’m just going to ignore all the important stuff.” But because it’s just the pressures of life. It’s financial, it’s time, the baby’s crying, the boss is calling whatever. In some ways, those might have gotten better with COVID because you get more home time. In some ways, those probably got worse with COVID because you get more home time and your working encroaches on your life. There’s no boundaries. And so it’s harder to be observant. And for me as a dad, I’ve had to really learn how to be observant. In particular, for me, I’ve had to learn how to be observant about matters of the heart. I have two settings. I’m either super happy or super mad. And other emotions like sadness or confusion or concern, I don’t tend to verbalize those as well or feel them as well. And so usually if you come to me with a heart problem, I’m like, “Hey, get over it, Jesus died on the cross, move on.” I’m flippant about that sort of stuff. And I’ve had to learn over the years and I’m still way much on this learning curve. How to be more observant as a dad and then shrewd for me, I think of Solomon in the Bible where we see the story of the two women fighting over the baby and Solomon discerns, wait a minute. I know how to figure out which one of these is the real mom. So he says, “Hey, tell you what we’ll do? Just give me a sword. We’ll cut the baby in half. We’ll give you half and give her half.” And then the real mom goes, “No, no, no, she can have it.” And then that’s when Solomon knew, the one willing to save their baby’s life and let another raise it. That’s the real mom.

 

Lawson Brown:

Interesting. I either forgot that story or never heard that story.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. To me as a dad, I want to be discerning and shrewd and Mia Maya was that way. You talk about politics and opposition, we thin-

 

Lawson Brown:

I think of street smart and savvy, with the word shrewd.

 

Kent Evans:

Absolutely. Nehemiah was like that. And that’s why we wanted to use descriptive words for Nehemiah, and I hope those encourage the dads that are listening. And there’s probably been a lot of times in your walk Lawson with your family, where you’ve had to be observant and shrewd.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. And I think the more observant you are, the better listener that you are, the more shrewd you become, it’s observant and observant leads over time and through experience into wisdom. And so I think, many times for dads, I know I’m guilty of it is as our tendency as guys, generally speaking, is to fix and come up with solutions and resolve things. Okay. That’s great. And that’s not a bad thing, but learning how to weave in and out of the situation. I guess I was going to say conversations, but observe first and really understand what’s going on before jumping to a solution. And then I think asking a lot of questions in a way that can help your child or your family, and yourself move from where you are to where the resolution can be through asking questions and getting them to think and leading themselves to that spot versus just, where it is, you proclaim it and they had no part in it in the thought process.

 

Kent Evans:

I do like the word proclaim. I do that a lot around my house. I issue proclamations. “Father has spoken, let it be so.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, I know. I’m sure they all listen, stand at attention and-

 

Kent Evans:

Absolutely. Well, what’s interesting for me about the… and I’m sure dads who are listening they’ve through this problem, where there is a problem that’s manifested itself, whatever that is, it might be dating drama or there’s friends at school that have hurt your daughter or your son, or there’s somebody stalking them. It’s real serious or there’s porn, or there’s angry outbursts or isolation, or there’s been just challenges with your kids. And often even with us as adults, there’s the problem we see, and then behind it there’s one or two or some larger number, sometimes a number of issues that we don’t see.

 

Lawson Brown:

So Nehemiah took off in the middle of the night. He got to Jerusalem for those you guys that have been following along in this little mini-series about the book with us, you know that Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem. If you haven’t been listening, go back and [crosstalk 00:09:31] catch up. There’s some episodes. And I didn’t realize he had been in the city for a few days already and hadn’t really done anything. people knew he was there. Back in the day, I guess he was famous as part of the King’s party or inner circle rather. And then that night he says, he didn’t tell anybody what God had put on his heart. He just got a horse and took off and started roaming around the city and looking at the wall and seeing what was going on, at night and very observant. It was in the middle of the night. He wasn’t pointing things out. He was just looking and putting his final thoughts together about the plan to go from that point forward. It reminded me, in the Marine Corps, I had a company commander that captain Schultz he’d been around for a while. He was-

 

Kent Evans:

[crosstalk 00:10:27] really captain Schultz? Because now I’m thinking that ’80s.

 

Lawson Brown:

I know.

 

Kent Evans:

I know nothing.

 

Lawson Brown:

I know, very different than that, but God, he was so sharp man, incredible. He had been every rank enlisted up to gunnery Sergeant and then went to college and became an officer. So before he was even a Lieutenant, he’d been in the Marine Corps 12 or 15 years. So by the time he got to captain, he’d been in for call it 20, 25 years, super-smart guy. And for inspections, the way it works is when you’re going to inspect the barracks where everybody lives, generally you either walk in or in our case, the base was pretty big. You had to drive over, park and there was company commander parking spot, was in the very front. Well he would drive around and he would not park there because that’s where everybody was looking. He parked in the back and would walk up the back, fire exit stairs because he wanted to see behind the scenes. He wanted to see what was… it was a test of authenticity so that he wasn’t greeted by the guy in charge at the time. And then hosted around and taken to the cleanest spot that he wanted to show him first, captain Schultz would come in the back, and walk up the steps and just start chit chatting with people and find out the truth. And so it’s another example, similar to what Nehemiah did of being careful, clever, shrewd, find the truth. And as a dad, I think it’s important for us to realize that a role that we can take is that calming influence that doesn’t jump to conclusions and make things worse, but rather take a moment, take a pause, check the situation out, understand the different points of view, ask some questions, get to the root of it, and then help guide whatever’s happening into a better place because you’ve then more so grounded yourself in the reality of what the situation is.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, and if I’m going from memory, but I heard an air force fighter pilot on a podcast and he was talking about the OODA framework they learn as fighter pilots. I think I’ve got it right?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, you’re right. They call it the OODA loop.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. And it’s observe, orient, decide and act. And it’s more common version. I used to always hear was ready, aim fire. And sometimes people are like, ready, fire aim, or ready, fire, forget it. There’s no aiming or readiness. In fact, I was working with a guy one time and we were trying to make a decision and he wasn’t slow to aside, but he was taking his time to decide. And he just told me, he goes, “Kent, you’re going to learn. I’m a ready aim, aim, aim, aim, fire guy.” And he goes, “So that can either drive you crazy or you can get used to it.” And because I’m usually a ready, fire, aim guy. And so we made a good team between the two of us. For sure man I love that commander’s approach, his sly way of getting the truth so to speak, without having the sheen of what people wanted to show him. Even in Nehemiah we’re in chapter 10 of the book Eric and I wrote, but it’s covering chapter two, basically, because a lot goes on in the first two chapters, and it’s chapter two, verse 12, Nehemiah is says, “I had not told anyone what God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem.” And I think that’s so interesting. I think it was John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach who said, “Don’t tell people what you’re going to do, show them.” I’ve talked to so many people, especially young leaders who say, “Well, I’m going to, and I’m going to, and I will. And I will. And I will.” And often I just go, “that’s great. That’s great. Why do you need to tell me? What if you just became known for the one who took the right action.” And I think Nehemiah, for me, it’s just fascinating. Anytime you write a book, it becomes a bit a research project where you learn a lot in the process. And I learned a lot about Nehemiah’s ability to be this bizarre, oxymoronic combination of two skills he had, he was able to be really patient and very decisive. And I think sometimes we think of those as being opposites, but man, in his case he mastered it. He was great at that.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, he was, he seems a ready aim, aim, aim, aim. And I think it’s cool. If you think about, he was there for three days, he hadn’t told anybody what he was doing. I wonder what they were saying. I wonder what they had to be wondering and asking. And if he’s just around, just checking the place out, that alone brings that mystique alone, bring a sense of, this guy’s getting his plan together and he is checking it all out. I think it raised his credibility, whenever the time did finally come, to begin to make decisions and begin taking action, had he just rolled into town and start it’s barking orders and pointing and directing, he would get it wrong. That’s fire ready, no aiming until the bullet’s gone. So really in reading through this and thinking about it more and more, and three days a long time.

 

Kent Evans:

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Kent Evans:

For the dad listening, I want to put this into some modern context. Let’s talk about relationships at school. A lot of us have children who are still in school at some level, they might be in college. They may be high school, elementary, and they come home and they have some story to tell us. Whether that is they got in trouble that day or something funny happened. Something sad happened. One of their friends, threw a book at him, whatever. I need our listeners to go find this verse. I don’t have it at the tip of my fingers in terms of the actual Bible reference. But there’s a verse that says, “One’s story seems accurate until another comes and examines him.” Pretty sure it’s somewhere in Proverbs. And for me, what’s very interesting, and again, go back to my son, Alex, my child comes home and says thing X, and then I just start making decisions. My teacher didn’t let me take the test late or whatever. And I think, well that rotten teacher that no good. And man, as dads, we get a lot more credibility, and we have a lot more influence if we take a minute to make sure we have gathered sufficient information. I was with a friend of mine last week and he said, he saw this cartoon and I’ll describe it and guys we’ll get it instantly. In 19, we had two pictures and it was 50 years apart, and it said 1970. And there was a parent with a report card and the parent was holding the report card up to the child. And there were bad grades on the report card. And the parent was asking the child, “Can you explain this to me?” And that was what the parent was saying in 1970. And then it was 50 years later, the parent had the same report card with the bad marks on it. But instead they were holding it up to the teacher and they were saying, “Can you explain this to me?” And we’ve become so quick to-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

 

Kent Evans:

… to blame teachers when our kids are probably undisciplined knuckleheads, like in my case, I’ve told my boys, man, “Hey trouble at school means double trouble at home.” That’s the way it works around here. And I’ve had a 100 incidences in the last 17 years of school-aged children. And 99 of them were because my child did something that was not okay or out of the bounds or late or wrong or incorrect. And there was one time when the teacher was probably a little bit overzealous, but for the most part, I’m going to side with the teacher and help my child learn that. And I’m not telling guys out there just always side with teachers, sometimes there’s bad apple. However, for the most part, what we need to do more of is gathering some information.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. That’s the point, it same with the… you started with the story about Alex coming and screaming in about getting hit. And then you learn over time, you got to start asking more questions. Dude, I think questions open up conversation better than anything. Something easy like, “What do you mean by that? Tell me a little bit more. Why?” And getting people, getting your kids to talk and questions are the key to getting that done. You wrote something in here too about, you want something fun to Google, put in questions Jesus asked. And so I did that. There’s a book. I didn’t know this there’s a book available on Barnes and Noble popped up. It said the 307 questions Jesus asked.

 

Kent Evans:

That is awesome.

 

Lawson Brown:

And then you get all kinds of stuff. It’s funny what good Google can produce sometimes, and 183 of them were open ended. I didn’t read the whole thing, but-

 

Kent Evans:

Could you do me a favor and just list all 300 right now?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, he was the ultimate teacher. He used questions in a way. God, don’t, you wish you could have been around, to watch and be a part of that? But as dads, I think we can take a lesson from the ultimate teacher in the way that we interact with our kids through inquiry.

 

Kent Evans:

I’d even do it. Let’s do an experiment right now. So dad, you’re listening to this podcast and you just heard what Lawson said. So you even have a head start. You have the ability to try to resist the power of the dark side. What I’m going to do is I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to ask a question. And I’m just going to tell you in advance, what’s going to happen and your brain will still react in a way that you’re going to be like, So here’s the statement, dad, you need to ask your kids better questions. Okay. There’s the statement. Now, let me ask you the question. “Hey dad, would you get closer to your children if you ask them better questions?” I know for a fact that it’s biologically proven that the second thing I did caused your brain to have more activity than the first thing I did. If I make a statement, I only engage one piece of your brain. When I ask a question, they’re learning through brain science, I engage a different part of your brain, that tends to be a little bit more active.

 

Lawson Brown:

You’re saying this for real, there’s real science-

 

Kent Evans:

Absolutely. And so what they’re finding is even the presence of a question can affect behavior. There was one study loss and I’m just going to butcher it a little bit. I’m going from memory here, but there was study 10, 12 years ago. And all they did was they had a control group and a test group, and they asked the people in the test group, “Hey, are you thinking about buying a car in the next six months?” Then they tracked the two groups, and there was a 30% jump in car purchases among the test group. They didn’t even tell them to buy a car. They just asked them if they were? And the presence of the question went to a place in their brain, they just couldn’t dislodge it.

 

Lawson Brown:

Wow. What’s that about? That’s cool.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, and that’s one of the reasons why Jesus asked so many questions. “Now, do you want to be well?” I mean, you’d think like, “Well, duh, I’m standing right in front of you.” Or he’d ask, “What do you want? Or who do they say I am?” He said more than once, “I am the Messiah.” He did claim that. However often he just asked people, “Well, what do you say I am?” Because he knew and he created our brains. And so he knew that questions did more. And so as a dad, when we’re going to discern the needs around us, we want to become pro-level question askers. And the other thing I want to make sure we give dads on today’s episode when it comes to discernment. I think of it as almost a series of locked doors, and you unlock one and you unlock another, you unlock another. And the first one often is the manifest behavior. So our child is rude or our child is selfish or our child is withdrawn or our child is scared. And sometimes we just stop at that door. And we go, “Hey, you’re not going to be rude to your mom. That’s not how this place works.” However often, if we can unlock that door, behind that door, there is another door. And it’s about what was driving? It might be situational. They were rude because they are tired and they just need a nap or they’re hungry, and they need some food. That doesn’t excuse the rudeness, but still we may find sometimes then there’s another door behind those doors, that’s not so much event-based or situation-based, but it is emotional. They’re rude because they feel like they’re not being listened to. And if we just took five minutes and heard them out all the way, the other day I asked my 19-year-old a question, and my 17-year-old was sitting on the couch, next to him. And the way I started the conversation was, my 19 year old was about to make a decision about something that I thought was not the wisest decision. And so the way I started the conversation was, “Hey, you weren’t seriously considering doing that thing. Were you? And my 17-year-old chimes in, even before my 19-year-old can answer and go, “Wow, dad. So is that how this is going to go?” And I went, “Yeah, I think it’s a stupid idea.” And I’m like, okay, wait a minute, time out. That may have not been the best way to start that conversation. I mean, that’s a bad example, but what I’m generally trying to drive at is what’s the driver? What is the thing behind it? Is it momentary, situational? Are you tired, concerned, scared, frightened, is it longer term? You feel you’re not being heard or you feel threatened or you feel lost or disregarded or unnoticed? Those things can often drive, especially our teenage kids as they get older, those things can really drive it. And so I think that the discerning dad tries to unlock all the doors and he keeps going through that hallway until he can unlock as many doors as he can to really discern what is the actual issue here.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. I love that man. And asking thoughtful, open-ended, authentic questions. And even to say, “I don’t know. What do you think?” It’s okay to not have all the answers, and it’s just our nature, we’re thinking about how we feel. We’re talking to ourself inside our own heads and for someone to… especially your dad to reach in and try to unlock that door and get you to explain what’s on your heart, and then take another few steps and talk through and ask some questions and open the next door and you get deeper and deeper. It can really provide some rich discussions, obviously as your kids age and get beyond four or five, six, little kids, but you can also have some pretty hilarious conversations with little kids, with asking them their thoughts and probing and getting them to talk. So it can be fun too. It doesn’t have to always be, like I had begun this conversation with problem resolution in mind, but it doesn’t have to be a problem at hand, get them to talk and think and ask questions in the quiet times. And when you find yourself with some moments it’s trust-building, it shows them that you care. If there’s nothing at stake, nothing in the moment going on. And you’re just genuinely interested in hearing their thoughts, man, I think that’s super valuable as well. And it shows them that you are very interested in them. And so later on down the road, maybe when something does come up, that you have to problem resolve, it’s not foreign to them that you would be observant and asking questions and getting them to talk and think.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah, well, and for me, I had someone recently this week, I’ll be up on a Zoom call in the evening with some friends on the West Coast. And they sent me a list of questions that they want me to address beforehand. And one of the questions was, “What do you do with a teenager who hate going to church?” And I just thought, man, what a great question? Number one, I appreciate it because it’s an honest question. And a number of dads I know have walked through that. And what I am going to encourage those guys to do is we can take the football eye formation approach where we just line up up and we go head to head on that issue. Where it’s like, “You’re going to church, Hey, I put a roof over your head?” And to some degree that is basically without the top spin and the anger, that is basically the message my kids got around my house. There was never some kind of church is optional on Sundays. There just was not, there were times when we didn’t go for our various reasons, maybe everybody was sick or something, but there were moments when we did not go. But there was never this kind of Friday voting system where everybody went, “I’m thinking, no. Okay, great, good for you.” That was not the baseline that we set. And so for me, it was easier because from the moment our kids were little, we just were there and they knew it. But what I’m going to encourage these guys to do is go look, you can either do the eye formation straight up the middle, off tackle and you’re just going to smash mouth it in.

 

Lawson Brown:

And there are times for that.

 

Kent Evans:

Sure. Absolutely. The other way you can work on that issue with your teen kids, is to try to get to the bottom of what it is about going that has them unenthused? What I find is that some high percentage of the time there is a friend issue at church and they don’t want to face it. Now it’s either they’re being ridiculed or being treated unfairly, yeah. Even at church sometimes, especially at church or there is a dating relationship or there’s some drama, and the drama is on Sundays because they’re all there, and that’s what’s really going on. Sometimes it is because you may go to a church and the preaching’s boring, who knows? Or it’s just not exciting. And they want to be more thrilled or excited, and they’re on the crack of their iPhone all the time. But I find if you ask more questions and if you get to the bottom of the issue, you sometimes don’t have to go down the smashed mouth approach. You can unpack that challenge over time. Did you ever have challenge with your daughters Lawson in terms of church attendance or something like that?

 

Lawson Brown:

I wasn’t thinking necessarily specifically of something like a church attendance, I think you’re right. Sometimes it was as a result usually of something else not having to do with, do they like church or` is their faith being built? It was something else. Something more petty or drama-related. Listening to you, it made me remember a guy that I used to work with, Ted Russ. Have you ever been around someone who… and I want to be a better dad at this. What Ted was good at was, if I didn’t see him for a week or so when I did, he remembered what happened or what was said before, and would ask me about it? “[inaudible 00:31:59] that your trip to so-and-so go?” Or he would ask me specifically about, maybe something was going on with someone else on a part of my team, and I had been kicking it around with him. Two weeks goes by, we’ve worked it out at work. And then I see Ted and Ted would say, “Hey, how’d the situation go with Christina?” And I’m like, [inaudible 00:32:23] dude, you-

 

Kent Evans:

Wow.

 

Lawson Brown:

… he remembered. And so as a father, I think asking questions and getting things out of your children, I want to encourage dads. And I’m talking to myself as well, encourage dads to really pay attention to, don’t listen with an ear just to get toward a path that you know you ought to be on or they ought to be on, but genuinely listen and care and remember, and even, I have to write something down. And then when you bring it back up and you have remembered those very specific things that they’ve said, it just provides more relevance to the conversation.

 

Kent Evans:

Are you saying Lawson, we got to be caring and thoughtful, wow.

 

Lawson Brown:

You’re right.

 

Kent Evans:

Shoot.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

This is a-

 

Lawson Brown:

Are you basically saying that?

 

Kent Evans:

This is a Father on Purpose Podcast. I mean, it’s not the father on Mars podcast.

 

Lawson Brown:

What?

 

Kent Evans:

I mean that’s out of this world. So man, to that point April and I will occasionally notice one of us is talking to the other and one of us is on their phone texting, somebody. And we’ve learned that we got to wait. So I’ll be talking to her and she’ll be right in the middle of something, and I’ll walk up to her and she’s talking to somebody on her phone. I mean, texting and I’ll just wait those two or five seconds. And I’ll just say, “Hey,” and I’ll just wait till I have her undivided attention. Usually, it’s the other way around. Usually, it’s her waiting on me for her undivided attention. So dads as Lawson and I conclude this week’s episode. I hope you’ve heard a couple of things. One is, I hope you’ve heard that Nehemiah was a very observant fellow. He knew God had given him a job to do, just like you and I have been given the job of being a dad, but he didn’t just [inaudible 00:34:18] it all out. He went and observed. And he observed very intently and very carefully. And then secondly, he was decisive, and he was able to discern the needs of people around him and read between the lines and not just give them what they needed, but give him what God’s best was for them. And that came through the powers of observation and listening. And we hope that today has been an encouragement to you, dad. With all the things going on around you, it can be very difficult to pay attention. However, you and I both know that these days are fleeting. My middle son just turned 18. So now I have more kids who happen to be adults legally than I do have children in my home, and [crosstalk 00:35:04] I don’t know how that happened. It feels it happened in 10 minutes ago, right?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

But [crosstalk 00:35:09] this time is fleeting, bro. This time is fleeting. And so spend time listening well to your kids, your family, and try as hard as you possibly can through listening and prayer to discern the needs around you. The true needs around you. So you can shepherd your family. Well, hope this has been encouraging to you. We’ll pick it up again 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.