The godly dad loves those under his care

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:
What’s going on, Kent?

Kent Evans:
Lawson, how are you, buddy?

Lawson Brown:
Fantastic. Coming off a great weekend. How are you?

Kent Evans:
Yeah, I’m coming off a great weekend if you consider being closed up in your house under a half an inch of ice a great weekend.

Lawson Brown:
Oh, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kent Evans:
Whatever, you Florida people. You don’t know what a great weekend even means.

Lawson Brown:
It’s pretty great.

Kent Evans:
I think we do. I think we do. Oh man, so last week, our last episode, we talked about the kickoff to the series about the book of Nehemiah.

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
Have you been reading Nehemiah non-stop?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. Oh, I thought you were going to ask am I reading the book that you guys wrote? And the answer is yes.

Kent Evans:
No, I’m more wondering are you wandering around like Old Testament clothing and eating-

Lawson Brown:
Over the weekend? Yes.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Like, do you have a Nehemiah outfit, I guess is my question?

Lawson Brown:
Party of three, please. I’m in my robe.

Kent Evans:
Nehemiah, party of three. Nehemiah. Let’s start doing that the next few weeks just-

Lawson Brown:
Let’s don’t do that.

Kent Evans:
We’ll go in restaurants. Golly, you killed that before it even had a chance to be warm.

Kent Evans:
So we kicked it off last week talking about the intro, the setting. We had Eric, the co-author of the book, on last week.

Lawson Brown:
Yep, cool dude.

Kent Evans:
And what a great guy. Yeah, I love Eric. If you’re ever down near the Northern Houston area, go find him and bug him. I took him to a swanky coffee shop when I was down there, and I think it threw him off. He’s like, “Man, I’ve never been here before,” in I think it was The Woodlands. Is that the swank, the nice part of Houston?

Lawson Brown:
It’s been a long time for me going to Houston. That sounds right.

Kent Evans:
Yeah, it was great.

Lawson Brown:
What do you mean, you took it? So he doesn’t go to coffee shops? That’s where you live.

Kent Evans:
Yeah, I know. I know. I think Eric’s more of a live in the woods kind of guy.

Lawson Brown:
Hey, I like it.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Yeah. So he’s yeah, he had to actually bathe for our-

Lawson Brown:
He probably brought his own coffee to meet you at the coffee shop.

Kent Evans:
In the thermos. In the thermos.

Lawson Brown:
Right, yeah. All right, so re-setup just briefly. We’re going to do chapter one, and we’re not going to do all the chapters in, maybe not even the order. I don’t know, maybe, but we picked and chose a handful of them. And we’re starting with one, but reset this up for everybody starting with you and Eric wrote a book called Bring Your Hammer. And it’s on Amazon now by the time this drops. And the reason is because you believe that the life of Nehemiah can be tied in some pretty interesting ways to fatherhood. And then chapter one is the godly dad loves those under his care, and we’ll get into that. Will you set it up first?

Kent Evans:
Yeah. I was just reading Nehemiah maybe five, six years ago. And it seemed to jump off the page at me that there were all these cool lessons for dads to learn from that particular book, even though Nehemiah we don’t think he was a dad. We don’t have any obvious record of his family or wife or kids, but he was like God the Father, right? He had these character traits about him that look a lot like God the Father to the nation of Israel and specifically to Jerusalem. And so we started to write this book several years ago, and it’s just now coming out. And then as you and I were talking about episode ideas, I said, “Man, why don’t we take about half the book of Nehemiah or the book that we wrote, Bring Your Hammer, and bring that into focus for the dads?” And if you want to dive in deeper, you can go snag the book on Amazon, feel free. That’d be great. It’s called Bring Your Hammer: 28 Tools Dads Can Grab From the Book of Nehemiah. But this won’t be so much of a book reading. I don’t have the leather patches on my elbows and a pipe, and I’m sitting by the fireplace. Gather around Bring Your Hammer chapter one. It won’t be that. It’ll be a conversation about the book of Nehemiah and the character of Nehemiah and what we can learn from that character in our effort to be more godly fathers.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. And it’s bite-size, meaning each chapter is eight to a dozen pages. And it’s a little bit of story, little bit of examples and thoughts, and then I have them handy here for whenever the time is right. At the end of each chapter are basically some questions and things to think about, maybe to have a discussion with your family. So I love it, and I think it’s going to be cool to go through this as a mini-series together. So start at the top, who is Nehemiah?

Kent Evans:
Start at the top. Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the king. And so he was in the capital city called Susa, and it was in some historical archeology they believe this might have been where the wise men came from. So it’s east of Jerusalem, and it’s quite a way as an east. And it might have been called the Eastern country or the far east at that time, even though there was a lot more land yet to go to the east. This was in Susa, and so Nehemiah worked in the King’s court. So he would bring the king wine most likely, and he would’ve tasted it before. So the role of the cupbearer is to make sure that the food and wine brought for a king is both tasty. He would know what the king liked, but also safe. And so at one level, kind of every day, Nehemiah risked his life.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. It’s called cupbearer, but that’s not a good enough title. I mean, what if it was poisoned? Dude! And it was more than… He wasn’t like, “Okay, hang on, let me go get your cup.” It’s like-

Kent Evans:
Yeah, it’s a serious commitment.

Lawson Brown:
He was a super-trusted person. And probably, what, did he spend every meal with the king? You’ve got to think to some degree, he was around him a whole lot more than all the people back then that want to be, they want to have the ear as the king. They want to have some time with him. And then meanwhile, here’s Nehemiah getting all kinds of trusted insight face time.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. You can imagine the number of people who came up to Nehemiah at some point and go, “Hey man, listen, I got this idea.”

Lawson Brown:
Right, right. He’s like, bro, I’m just the cup guy.

Kent Evans:
I bet he played it both ways. Right? So some days he’s like, “I’m the cupbearer, and exactly, I have a lot of influence.” And then other times he’d be like, “Look man, I’m just the cupbearer. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing.” I remember when I was a deacon at our church, and the way our church set up the deacon role, you really were just a servant. You took stuff to people, and you ran errands and you did things. We weren’t on some kind of voting committees. We weren’t really in charge of anything.

Kent Evans:
But every now and then a person at the church would think that we were, and so I’d ended up at a cup of coffee. At one point, I remember ending up at a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and the guy literally wanted me to go back to our pastor with some ideas about sermons. And so we get about 10 or 15 minutes into this cup of coffee and I go, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you working me? Are you trying to get me to take your ideas to the pastor?” And he goes, “Well, I mean, I thought maybe since your role.” And I’m like, “Okay bro, let me help you understand the role.” So I was like, “I have zero, and oh by the way, in the topics you’re suggesting, I also have zero interest. So you’re over too.”

Lawson Brown:
Yeah right.

Kent Evans:
I can imagine Nehemiah got worked quite a bit.

Lawson Brown:
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but yeah. I mean, you know he was, and I have honestly thought you taste it and nope, no poison.

Kent Evans:
We’re good. We’re good. I suppose they had other methods. Maybe there was some kind of pH balance thing they could do. Or there was a smell that certain poisons gave off, but certainly, Nehemiah would’ve been this trusted guy, and the story picks up and the first chapter of Nehemiah, and Nehemiah is getting visited. He’s getting visited from a brother. And so one of his brothers came to visit him at the castle or at the citadel it’s called. And I would imagine if I had a job where for example, let’s say I worked for some famous place where I could get you in to the cool place. I remember one time I went and visited a friend of mine who was playing Major League Baseball back in the day. And I went to the stadium, and he told me where to come. I’d pull up where the players could pull up. And there were like 150 people at the gate, and they were all hollering every time a player pulled up for autographs. And they weren’t mean, but they were just like, Hey Joe, Joe, Joe. And most of the players would get out of their car and wave, but have to go in. It was almost game time or a few hours. And I remember at one point I see my friend pull up in his car, and he pulls into the gate, gate opens, he goes in, and then he leans over and says something to the guard. And then he points at me and my dad. And so the next thing you know, the guard’s walking up to the gate and he goes, “Hey, you two, you two.” And he opens the gate and lets the two of us in, and everybody’s looking at us like who are these people?

Lawson Brown:
Who’s that? Yeah.

Kent Evans:
He must be famous. So we get to go in. So that’s probably what Nehemiah’s brother went through, right? This guy Hanani comes to the castle and they’re like, “Hey, what are you doing here?” He’s probably greeted by some guys with swords and stuff, and he says, “My brother works here.” And they’re like, okay. Yeah right, pal. Let’s see some ID. Let’s see some ID. I don’t know what kind of ID you produced in those days, but-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah right.

Kent Evans:
I don’t know, but either way, Hanani gets to go in and see his brother Nehemiah. Good times. Good times, right? Now he’s on the inside, and what is the first thing that Nehemiah says to his brother? He says, “Hey, how are things going regarding the Jews that who survived the exile and Jerusalem specifically? How are things going back at the city that I love?” And the story, the answer was not good, was not good. So Hanani’s like, “Well, here’s the deal. A lot of people survived the exile. However, there’s a lot of trouble. There’s a lot of shame. And by the way, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.” This is all in the first few verses of Nehemiah. And the trouble with that, Lawson, is we listen to that story, and it’s so hard to internalize and understand because we don’t have the same cultural context that he would’ve had. So for example, a city, by the way, was an amazing accomplishment, right? That you’d go from being just a bunch of farmers all scattered around to even having a city. That’s pretty remarkable to begin with. And Jerusalem was the city of all cities. It was all the city about prophecy and God’s place. And there was the tabernacle and the holy place. And then you had this city that could have a wall around it. Wow, now you’ve got the city. If you have a wall around your city, man, it’s like the best thing ever. And then one of the worst things ever would be to have a city with a wall that’s broken down, with a wall that’s broken down.

Lawson Brown:
And for him to have heard something about Jerusalem in bad shape with it being the city of all cities and the holy city, that had to be pretty, oh no, there’s some bad stuff going on in the world.

Kent Evans:
For sure. And so when he hears this news, I want to fast forward to this modern era where we have dads. Today, I have two kids in college. Right? And we don’t go more than probably three or four, five days without talking to them out loud. I hear their voice. I might see them on FaceTime. We’ll be talking over the phone. Yesterday I walked into my bedroom, and my wife was talking to our son who lives five hours away, and they’re on the phone. So we’ve kind of lost this idea that we could go weeks or months and not know the status of people that we love. We probably, I bump into people at Starbucks who might have seen a post on Facebook. I don’t even talk to these people. We’re not close friends, and they’ll be like, “Oh hey, congratulations on your son getting engaged or whatever.” And I’m thinking, how’d you know that? I’m like, oh right. In fact, the other day I went to send something to a friend, and he goes, “Oh, I already saw that on your son’s Instagram.” I’m like, all right. And so we live in this era where knowledge moves so fast, that it’s hard for us to appreciate somebody like Nehemiah may have only gotten an annual update on Jerusalem. He may go months or even a year or two or five and not really know what’s going on on the ground because you’ve got to travel to bring the news.

Lawson Brown:
And he deeply cared about it, so he probably couldn’t wait for his brother to get there to hear the actual firsthand understanding. To your point on today’s era, yeah, we may know a lot of stuff about what’s going on in someone’s life, but the very tertiary surface-level activity versus where I think this chapter went is going deeper. From a standpoint of a dad, spending time with your children and hearing what’s going on in their lives and hearing about their innermost thoughts and feelings and ideas and hopes and dreams, that sort of thing. What I liked about the way that you guys used the Scripture, and then I guess therefore the analogy of a well, a water well, drawing water out of a well, that really struck me. If you think about how can you as a dad help guide decision-making through prompting, through questions, through thought-starter kinds of questions. The Scripture I’m talking about in chapter one is Proverbs 20:5. The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insights draws them out. And then the analogy of the well where you don’t just throw the bucket down there, scoop it up, and then hurriedly, haphazard fashion rake it up the side, and it’s bouncing and knocking against the walls of the well, and by the time you get it at the top, there’s nothing in there. That’s kind of what we see on the Facebook posts. You see the very, very most bare bone part of it. But to do it right, it takes time.

Kent Evans:
Yeah.

Lawson Brown:
And you’ve got to take care to ease that bucket up, and make sure that you’re keeping as much in there as you can. And so those questions that you ask of your children. In fact, last night. So my oldest has been in New York City doing some auditions in this past week. She got home, and so we were just sitting around catching up over dinner, all of us. And then dinner’s over, the plates are out, and we’re just still sitting around talking. And of course, well she’s always wanted to live there. And so of course, after having spent a week auditioning, staying with a friend, seeing some other friends, she came back here all fired up, ready to go, and I don’t blame her. And I think it’s going to work out eventually in her life for her to move to New York and go for this thing. There’s not a better time for her to chase her dream than right now, so we’re with her. But what was in my head about her leaving us and moving to New York, that’s daunting. I’ve got some anxiety about it. It’s New York. It’s bigger than life. It’s all this stuff. Forget about the career part, just the life and her being that far away from us and being in a big humongous city like that. What was in my heart was to ask, thinking about the well and drawing insights and thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams out of her is my question wanted to be, “You’re not thinking you can leave soon, are you?” Right? But thankfully I’ve slowed my roll a little bit and said, “So what kind of considerations are there for you to narrow down the timing on this thing?”

Kent Evans:
Wow, that’s a great question.

Lawson Brown:
And then shut up and be quiet. She’s smart. She’s thought this thing through. I know her pretty well. And like I expected, she had a lot thought through. She had some good questions of herself, and I would be defensive if somebody comes at me with that question saying, “You’re not thinking you can leave soon, do you?” I’m like, well, hang on. Do you think I didn’t even think about that? And so she was able to talk it out and unpack in her own mind the, all right, so money and timing and what I’m doing here and finding a place. And she did it. She’s got a great handle on, I think the timing. And the answer was not, “Oh, I’m leaving as soon as I can, like within weeks because that’s not thought through, and that’s not realistic. And that was my fear. It was unfounded fear. But I guess my point is, ask question. Thankfully that one landed well, and then stop. And then, Dad, stop talking and let them answer you and maybe prod a little bit here and there, but you’re discrediting them when you come at them with an answer already formed in your mind. And you’re asking the question, but really you’re trying to get them to bite on the answering that you’re feeding them.

Kent Evans:
Well and kudos to you for thinking thoughtfully about the question itself. Because oftentimes the reason we say, “Well, I asked him how it was going, and then he lashed out at me.” Well, if you go back and ask, well, how did you ask the question? There are some ways to ask that question that incite a response, right? I think one of the verses that’s burned into my brain is Proverbs 15:1. It says a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. \
And I just often think about, yeah, a lot of times the reason my kids lash out at me is because the way I provoke them with the kind of question that I ask. Right? And so what I’d love to do is as you’re doing a great job, Lawson, of pulling out this idea of how do we pull out of the heart and mind of those that we love what’s going on, what I’d like to do is let me pivot for a second and ask the dad listening to this podcast. When Nehemiah asked about the status of Jerusalem, and Hanani’s answer was less than glowing, Nehemiah says as soon as I heard these words, verse four, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And then he says he fasted and prayed for the God of heaven. So here’s the deal. There’s a question that Nehemiah asked, and the answer actually broke his heart. The answer broke his heart. So here’s the question I’d love to experiment with on our podcast today, Lawson, is what questions or what answers could our kids give us that would affect us emotionally.

Kent Evans:
So for example, I have a son who lives in Tennessee, and he’s going to take a job this summer in Wisconsin, and so he was walking us through that process of this two-month engagement on the music side. And imagine if he had called me, he got the job, he got the job, right? And so he’s really pumped. He and his wife know what they’re going to do right after graduation. First couple of months, they’re going to head up and do this gig for a few months. But imagine if he’d called me and said, “Hey, I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the job.” What would my response have been as a dad? Would I have said, “All right then what’s next? So then what job are you going to have? You can’t live on dreams, man, let’s go.” And so like what would my response have been? Or would I have been able to be sad with him? Would I have been able to say, “Man, I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry, son. I know you wanted to get that gig and you didn’t.” And so the question I have is what areas of our kids’ lives really touch our heart, really touch our heart? So let’s say your daughter comes back to you in a month, and this audition did not go the way she wanted. And she has to tell you, “Dad, I’m not going to get it,” or this particular thing. Now she can go try again, and you may encourage her to do that, but will your heartbreak? Will you be able to be sad? Like, do you care enough about the status of your family and what their hopes and dreams are, where when they don’t go as they planned, you can actually feel it. Because man, a lot of times I don’t really feel stuff like that. I just think. Like it’s mostly head stuff. And then I think about, all right, well then plan B, one door shuts, next door. Let’s go. And I’m already into planning mode, but we see Nehemiah go into this moment, and it’s not a short moment. “For days,” he says, “I continued fasting.” And then we see some timing where this goes on for a while, where he just feels the emotion of the sadness of his people. And I wonder how many dads out there are listening to this podcast where they’re like me, what they do is they think, they process, they strategize, they don’t feel.

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 chock-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:
That’s a daunting question. I think that’s worthy of pausing and spending some time on. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Yeah, I would tend to go into logistics mode and okay, well then that tough. What are we going to do about that? Let’s solve this, let’s get into solutions mode, and God’s got something different in mind. And so let’s go figure out what that is, keep walking. And sometimes you do. You just need to rest in that and see what all you get from it. I like the way you put that. I thought too that reading through chapter one, you put in here about asking your children what more do you need from me? How am I doing as a dad? That’s another kind of, I don’t think I’ve done that in a long, long time. And it’s not like, hey, on a scale of one to 10 rate my fatherhood. We’re not going to be keeping this anonymous. What’s your answer? What do you need from me? What can I do more, different, less maybe? And I think that would help guide your thoughts on maybe even coming back around to what you were asking, am I in your life enough to know when things are going really great and we celebrate together and then when they aren’t. Am I in that with you long enough, or am I just like, oh, well? Listen, I’ve got a busy day today too, so let me get back to my own self.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. And if you think about, to the point we made earlier, Nehemiah’s job was a constant risk, high profile, and he himself was kind of on the line every hour or two or five with tasting something that, and I’m not sure the threat of poison was every single minute, but it’s important that even if he were tasting it and it had too much salt, the king could kill him. There was no recourse for the King’s decisions honestly. There’s no Supreme Court you could appeal to. And so in a real sense, Nehemiah had a high-stress, constant pressure job. However, when his brother shows up, he immediately asks how other people are doing. And what I hope dads don’t miss in this conversation is can we live, especially as we’ve become like an empty-nester, so to speak, can we live outside of ourselves? Like I’ve got a podcast to record today. I’ve got some donors I’ve got to go ask if they’ll give more money. I’ve got a book to write. I’ve got to go yell at Hunter about something. Whatever my is on my plate for the day, I can be so focused on that that I think what’s really remarkable is when Hanani shows up to the castle, and we don’t see every single play by play. Maybe this did happen, but when his brother came in, it says, “And he asked them concerning the Jews.” It seems like Nehemiah’s default setting was, “Hey man, how are things going?” As opposed to my default setting, if you showed up at my job, and I worked at the White House, just to use that as an example, and you came in, I’d be like, “Man, you want to see the Oval Office? I’ll show you.” And I would’ve been so eager to focus on that you’re in my house, you’re in my house, and let me show you something cool. And I think that the temptation for dads, and one of the ways Satan wants to get us off track, we can be so focused on our high-pressure job, on our daily responsibilities, on all this stuff that we don’t even take time to ask. If you’re listening to this podcast, and you have kids living outside of your house, you have adult children or teenagers who have now gone to college, when’s the last time you texted them and just said, Hey man, how you doing? Or how’s school today? Or how’s your wife doing? Or how’s your husband doing? Or how can I pray for you? Do we have that default setting as dads to want to know the status of our kids’ lives?

Lawson Brown:
Right. Yeah, so an underlining intent behind chapter one is to realize about Nehemiah that he was in the seat of all seats, just outside the king. And yet when his brother showed up, his primary first and for what we know genuine concern was about his people and what was going on in their lives. I’m totally making this up. It’s silly, but I see his brother showing up and Nehemiah going outside to greet him, and rather than escort him inside to the beautiful King’s court, they sit outside on the steps. Hey man, how’s it going back at home? And then just being heartbroken for the news and spending time out there on that. And not even worried about, let me show you how big I’ve made it here. And so, yeah, I think as a dad, asking those questions, getting their thoughts. And something else that I got out of this chapter was about interruptions.

Kent Evans:
I’m sorry, what were you saying? I was doing something else.

Lawson Brown:
Tying it to Nehemiah I didn’t, but I did think about how do you act and how do you respond to interruptions? I don’t have little kids pulling up my leg anymore, but I did at the time. And sometimes now even, but I know there are a lot of dads that, especially we’ve been working from home maybe more than usual. And do you have the space? And it’s just tough to balance a lot of a lot of that stuff, but how do you respond? And we’ve talked about this before, Kent. How do you respond differently to your children that are interrupting you than say your wife, your coworker? Like on a scale of polite and accommodating, and there’s kid, wife, coworker, I’m even more polite, boss, even more polite if he interrupts, and then there’s things like an emergency. It just trumps everything. Something happens, and so how do you handle that sort of an interruption in Nehemiah’s case? I don’t think back then you didn’t set an appointment. There was no way to do that. His brother just showed up.

Kent Evans:
More than likely, yeah.

Lawson Brown:
And he dropped everything and wanted to hear and wanted to spend time with his brother and get caught up. And then for days he’s mourning the news. I think that is indicative of a character of genuinely caring, and just staying steeped in the emotion of what your family is going through over and above whatever it is that you yourself are going through as a dad.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. I love the idea that you just had of the polite interrupt ability scale, the willingness to be interrupted scale and how it tends to go up with those people that we either owe something to, or we have to be polite to. Not that you’re polite to your boss because you’re just a two-faced servant. I don’t mean that, but if a policeman pulls you over, all of a sudden it’s yes, sir, no, sir. That’s not teaching my boys, right? But what was wrong, sir? How do you know? One time quick story, I got pulled over, and I was trying to be super polite. Right? And so I often believed that if I just owned the problem, that that would be better. So the policeman walks up to me, and I was in a flat hurry. I was trying to drop something off by a certain time. And so I was driving, what I thought was really fast. And the policeman walks up to my car and says, “Hey, do you know why I pulled you over?” Which is a trick question. I mean, you’re better off just saying no. But I thought I would be polite and just own up to it. And I said, “Yes, officer, I was going too fast.” And then this look comes over his face and he goes, what? No, man, you slammed on your brakes right in front of me and almost rear-ended it. And so what actually happened was I was going too slow. Evidently, I was going too slowly too quickly. And so then I thought I was going to get two tickets, one for speeding and one for stopping too quickly. But we’re always trying to be polite to those that we feel we owe it to, or we’re in trouble if we’re not polite. And then sometimes at the end of the spectrum, our kids get the very other end of the spectrum where it’s like, “Hey Dad, can you do X?” And you’re like, “Ugh, fine.” And there’s just this kind of attitude of, I was busy. I was doing something else. And I think back to the times, we’ve touched on this before, but the times in the New Testament when Jesus was interrupted, and he seemed to always have time for whoever interrupted him. Like he kind of said, “Look, I’m going to go down to earth. I’m going to go for about 33 years. I’m going to save everybody, go to the cross. And along the way, I’m just going to let people mess with my schedule all the time.” And that is so opposite of how we tend to think of it in Western American culture, right? We’re going to own the day we’re going to carpe diem. We’re going to make sure that our schedule is the driving schedule, and we’re going to be efficient and those kind of things. And I heard somebody say one time, I wish I could attribute this, but they just said with people, going fast is going slow and going slow is going fast. And what they meant psychologically was you can’t rush relationships. You really can’t. And the degree to which you’re willing to throw it in neutral and slow down and have a conversation with whoever’s across from you is probably the degree to which you’re going to be influential. With people, going fast is going slow and going slow is going fast. It’s just this idea that for the people we care about, if you were to map, if I were to give you a diagram and it looked like a target, like an archery target, and I were to say, “Hey man, put in the center of the bullseye, the people you love the most. That may be your wife, maybe your children.” And I say, “Okay, go one ring out. That might be your extended family. And go one ring out, that might be your friends and one ring out. So if you have to give somebody five minutes, what’s their hierarchy? What’s their priority?” And my hunch is most guys listening to this podcast would put their family toward the center of that bullseye and then looser acquaintances or people on social media further out on that bullseye. However, what’s interesting is how does that align to your willingness to be interrupted? So if your child calls you at work, and you’re right in the middle of a meeting and you take the call because you saw it ring in three times and you think there may be an emergency, what’s your tone on that call? Hey, what do you need? I saw you ring in. I’m in the middle of a meeting. What do you need? And you’re like, get it over with versus, Hey, how’s it going? How can I help you? Which you might have that friendly tone if it were your boss ringing in three times. And so I think for us, it’s a bit of a gut check for me as I read the first chapter of Nehemiah to go okay, in the midst of my amazing job and my busyness, what am I willing to be interrupted by? And then secondly, what could my kids ask me? What could my family ask me or share with me where my heart would be in it, where I would be sad for them or I would be happy for them? And do I have the right level of heart investment with my family?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, I think that’s the key question there. It’s a balance of time, spending time with them, really listening, and then really feeling it and being there in it with them. Some practical insights I think are, if you are a guy, like I am, I live and die by my calendar. I note take and organize and to a fault to where it bugs me when things get out of calendar sync. And unfortunately that includes time with family that can become a hindrance in not a good way. And so maybe flexing a little bit more and being really present when you are there. And then I tell you what, man, more than I think anything out of this chapter one, what I got was that word picture of drawing water out of well. That sums it all up. I think it is slow, to your point, slow is fast. It’s careful. You’ve got to be diligent with it. And that takes time, and you got to be really present. You’ve got to focus on what you’re doing. And I think as a dad, our kids clearly, they need that, but you’re right. Something you said earlier was a gut check to the audience, and I think it’s fair for us all to take a gut check question. Are we doing those things? And thinking of what Nehemiah did is for me, a great reminder.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. So, Dad, over the next nine or 10 weeks, if you’re listening to this podcast in sequence, walk through the book of Nehemiah with us. Feel free to read ahead. We’re going to roughly go in chronological orders. So every week should be sort of picking up where we left off. Not exactly, but we won’t be going completely out of sync. Dive into the book of Nehemiah, start with chapter one, and just look at this guy Nehemiah as a parallel to you as a dad, and then look at the city of Jerusalem and the Jews as a parallel to your family. So what Nehemiah is to dads, the city of Jerusalem and the people of Jerusalem are to your family. So just think as you go through the book of Nehemiah, what kinds of characteristics of Nehemiah do you already have that you want to double down on and that you want to pour some gas on, and what kind of characteristics of Nehemiah do you look at and go, oh man, I really don’t operate in that way? And I hope over time, over the next nine or 10 weeks, depending on when you’re hearing this particular episode, that you will join us in looking at the character and the person of Nehemiah in order to become a more godly dad yourself and become a dad who can live others first and care deeply about your family. Remember the godly dad loves those under his care. The godly dad loves those under his care. And Nehemiah set a great example for us, and we look forward to unpacking this a bit further with 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 manjourney.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.