The godly dad praises God through worship

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:
All right, Kent. You silly man. Here we are, Chapter 25 of Bring Your Hammer, the godly dad praises God through worship. And when I think of worship, I immediately think of music. And that’s true and we’re going to talk about that, I think you’ve got a really cool story. And I had something happen this past week with my youngest daughter, the beautiful and talented Olivia, that I want to talk about that she witnessed in another family that I think was a good reminder for us. And it touched my heart and it was about worship.

Lawson Brown:
Tell me this, young, wise Kent Evans? All right. So if worship is not only music, obviously, is it fair for me to think of worship as praise and trust? Just the general perspective and mindset and reaction sometimes to things happening in all things of our lives that we worship him through just praise and trust. And that can be manifested in many different ways, music being one of them. But that wasn’t the case. I mean, I want to jump into this too, in the story of Nehemiah, where the wall was finished and dude, they had a humongous worship concert and I didn’t know that. Had we not been diving into this book, I would not have gone as deep into Nehemiah as I have now. And I thought it was super cool because I love music, my family loves music, my daughters and I are always sharing things. So anyway, I got a lot out of this. But praise and trust in all things, is that worship? And how does that manifest in various ways?

Kent Evans:
Well, for starters, I don’t have enough time to correct all of your theological mistakes, okay? So many errors with what you just said, Lawson, I mean, so many. I’m just kidding. You’re brilliant. I think we see a lot of examples throughout this Bible of what worship can look like. So even if you go back to Abraham taking Isaac up to the mountain and he’s going to sacrifice his own son and he says, “Hey, we will go up and we will worship at the mountain.” So this idea of him sacrificing his son was going to be an act of worship. And so we’ve got plenty of examples throughout the Bible that tell us worship is simply how we relate to God and we give him glory and honor. And to your point, man, it’s praising. It can be how we handle our money. Me loving my wife is an act of worship, not of her, but of the God who gave her to me because our marriage is a picture of the gospel to a lost and dying world. And so it’s really from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, we’re probably worshiping something.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I think that’s more what I had in mind, the way you said it and something that was written here in Chapter 25… Let me see, who wrote this? Oh, you wrote this one. So here’s what you wrote in Chapter 25.

Kent Evans:
He’s completely surprised. Well, this is actually semi-valuable.

Lawson Brown:
I actually got a lot out of this one, that’s strange. It says, “Songs as a reflection of our beliefs and behaviors and out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Or I would just substitute out of the overflow of the heart, worship is, I guess, part of your reaction, maybe, to things happening in your life, you’ve just got this grateful heart. Or even when something happens that’s not good, you know that God’s going to use it for good. And so your perspective on all things, because you have this deep- seated faith in his protection and your trust in him, that the overflow of your heart, when your mouth speaks is worship.

Kent Evans:
Well, you think of even the 10 Commandments when God said, “Hey, for starters, number one, don’t have any other God’s before me. Let’s just start here.” And I can’t remember who it was, it might have Billy Graham or someone who said, “You can’t break Commandments Two through 10 without first breaking Commandment One.” Really clever theological perspective on when we get out of whack with what we’re worshiping, whether we’re worshiping God or we’re worshiping money or sex or power or influence or being right all the time, whatever we’re worshiping is what we’re giving honor and time and intention to. And so clearly as dads, this is both good news and bad news for most dads. There’s something every day, maybe it shifts every minute or 12 or every hour, we’re worshiping something. Are you worshiping your favorite sports team? Are you worshiping financial security? Are you worshiping-

Lawson Brown:
Celebrities, political authorities?

Kent Evans:
You name it. There’s all these things where it’s like, “Huh?” And we may go, “Oh, I’m not worshiping that.” Okay, fair. It’s not like you’re going to make a golden image of your favorite football coach and actually bow down before it. However, have you ever been in that position where you’ve neglected your family because you wanted to go do thing X more than take care of what needed to be taken care of? And yeah, you could make the argument at that moment that you put something above, that your family came in second or third or fourth and maybe they should have come in first at that moment. And so you put something above it that’s really an indicator of idolatry to a degree. I know those words all sound really heavy and really super threatening language but-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. It sounds kind of old testimony.

Kent Evans:
A little rough. But the question becomes, do we give God the glory and the praise, even as you said a minute ago Lawson, even when things aren’t going well? Yet my soul will praise him. And so as we dive into this, it is interesting coming back to the music part, how Nehemiah celebrated. A lot of folks think of the Book of Nehemiah as being all about the rebuilding of the wall and they stop there. That’s really the first half, there’s another whole half of the book that’s about governance and administration and the Sabbath and the tithe and the offerings. And all the stuff that Nehemiah does in the second half to kick-off, so to speak, that second half of the book, he has this massive worship concert where they’re praising God for the completion of the wall and it’s music. And you see all this in the Book of Psalms where you see all this music. David had a worship leader, Asaph who’s like the Chris Tomlin of the Psalms era or the Phil Wickham of the Psalms era. And these worship songs became part of the vernacular and the jargon of Israel, where they would be able to sing things we can remember. Most people who are listening to this could probably sing the national anthem, at least if you’re in America, without any instruction. If I just started playing the song, most people could probably sing 80%, 90%, maybe 100% of the national anthem and most of us have never, ever seen it written down. We’ve heard it enough where now it’s burned into our long-term memory and we could sing the national anthem from memory. The question becomes, man, can we do that with God’s word? And that’s why part of the Psalms was written is to put God’s promises to music so we could remember it better.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. It’s easier to remember and I think music speaks to people. I don’t know this 100% for a fact but it seems like the way the Book of Nehemiah is written is like there’s that intermission. There was a bunch of accomplishment and then the second portion describes the governance, the process, the systems that he put in place, things like that. But in the middle there, and this wasn’t like, “Hey everybody, all 40 people of you gather around and let’s sing a song together.” This was multiple choirs and they had instruments back then and they got on top of this wall and it says, “One choir and a whole group of musicians went left,” were up high on the wall, “and the other went right.” And so I’m just picturing this amazing, big, beautiful thing that all together they put their heart and soul into for all that time and then celebrated. And in the Bible, it says that you could hear it from far away. So just imagine how inspiring and how fun this feeling of accomplishment but they weren’t praising each other for their hard work, they were praising God that they are where they are now. And I just thought that was super cool. Music is a big part of our lives. And you said something showing that study that was done, was it LifeWay that did that study?

Kent Evans:
It’s about five years ago, they did a study on what are the things that predict the spiritual health of young adults. So putting it in the dad context, it’s like, as my kids start to leave my home and they’ll be getting to those 18 to 25 year old years, what are the things that before they were 18 would have the most positive contribution to them choosing the faith? And then what are the things that would have the most negative contribution? So they did the positive factors and then the negative factors and the most prevalent positive factor was that the child spent time in Bible study. So number one, and we talked about that last week on the episode on God’s word.

Lawson Brown:
And that was ahead by a mile.

Kent Evans:
Oh yeah, it was double the next three. But what’s interesting was, two, three and four all had roughly the same amount of impact. So there was this three-horse tie for second place. One was prayer, the child regularly prayed. The second one was volunteering or the child regularly served at church. So prayer and volunteering. What a lot of people would be surprised to learn was the other thing that tied for second place was that the child regularly listened to Christian music. And when you got down to the negative factors, either the second or third most impactful negative factor was that the child regularly listened to secular music. And so it is at least one indicator that music and what our kids are exposed to throughout their childhood can have either a very positive impact on their future trajectory as a young adult in owning their faith or can have a significant negative impact. It’s almost like another way to say that Lawson is that music is not neutral. It’s either going to have a great, positive impact or a negative impact depending on the content of the music. And your daughter experienced this to some degree with a family. Tell us the story about your daughter?

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. And I’m going to read something that you wrote here as well. It says, I’m not trying to convince you that listening to non-Christian music is evil or is going to send you to hell, I’m trying to remind you of this, and here’s what I think is a major point of this episode, and that is what you allow into your mind matters. So let’s be purposeful about that. And I think it’s interesting to study prayer, spending time at church, serving in some capacity, that’s twofold. They find the joy of serving but I also think it’s time around other people of like-minded values that are pointing themselves and their activities toward helping other people. But then that worship music piece-

Kent Evans:
Well, and right before you tell the story about your daughter, I want to make sure we don’t forget to mention. Because you just said something that triggered the thought as you and I talked pre-show, there are so many factors about being a dad or mom that we can’t control. Our child’s DNA, the exposure to certain things, et cetera. There are a lot of factors that we’re not in control of. And even if we could be in control of all of them or if we were the perfect dad or perfect mom, which is crazy, our kids aren’t going to necessarily turn out perfect. This is not a vending machine. There was one perfect dad, Garden of Eden, his own children rebelled. So even in history, there’s been that one perfect dad. However, for those of us who do want our children to have a vibrant adult life and a faith in Christ, there are some things we can control, there are some things we can lean into. And if I were to tell a dad, “Hey look, man. One of the top, most influential environmental factors for your child turning out to love the Lord is the kind of music they listen to.” At least on road trips and around your house, and maybe not when they go to school or when they get an iPhone, but on road trips and around the house, that’s something you can control. And for me, that’s exciting because as a kind of a control freak who really wants to control everything, which is part of my both strength and weakness. I can be frustrated by the things I can’t control and the things I have no control over. But man, here’s one that’s pretty simple and pretty straightforward. Dad, you want your kids to love Jesus when they’re young adults? Have them read the Bible, pray and listen to Christian music and volunteer at church. These are pretty straightforward things and I find a lot of hope in that because it at least gives me something I can sink my teeth into.

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:
And to me it’s about stacking the deck. Do you want to do things that are going to put more odds in their favor? Or the opposite of that is, it’s hard to be a kid, it’s hard to parent and odds are, if you do these certain things, it’s not a guarantee, it’s not 100% that your child is going to grow into adulthood and become this perfect faith-filled person. So since it’s not a guarantee, why do it? Why try? But it’s about setting them up in a way, and there are some things that show over time, that do make a difference. And so I had a really cool, it was either Tuesday or Wednesday of this past week. Olivia and I, Olivia’s my youngest, we were running some errands and were coming back home from the store, she was driving, she was driving her CRV. And as we pulled out of a busy area onto a straight stretch of highway, she goes, “Oh gosh, I’ve been wanting to show you this worship song,” which was super cool. Both my daughters and I, we’re always sharing music. But she said, “I heard this at…” So she nannies, both my daughters nanny around here and Olivia has been with this particular family for months and months now. And they have four young kids under, I’m guessing, around 10 or 11 or so. And Olivia was there while the mother was there as well, it was kind of a transition, she was getting ready to leave, I think. And the kids were sitting at the table, the two older ones were doing their homework and the two younger ones, aged three and aged four or five were coloring or drawing or something. The point is, they were all at the table and worship music was going on in the background and that is what happens in that house every day. And Olivia was just really touched. This particular song gets called Dancing On The Waves by-

Kent Evans:
Do you want me to sing part of it? Do you want me to sing it real quick?

Lawson Brown:
Do I want you to sing? I do not.

Kent Evans:
Me.

Lawson Brown:
No, I do not. Not at all. Not a bit of me wants that. Dancing On The Waves by Bethel Music. It’s just a super sweet song, it really touched Olivia. It’s super cool how timely God is in that we are talking about this now, for this particular episode and literally two, three days ago, my own daughter was a part of witnessing a family whose playlist for their home is worshipful while they’re sitting doing their quiet time catch up around the table together kind of work. And so it impacted her and because it impacted her, it really hit home with me too.

Kent Evans:
I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s and I loved the music of that era. ’70s rock, ’80s music, probably my all-time favorite non-Christian band is ELO. So if a guy’s listening to this and you’ve never heard of the Electric Light Orchestra, where have you been? How have you lived? How have you managed to make it this far in your adult life without having listened to ELO? Get on Spotify now and listen to their greatest hits. I’m just telling you, best band ever. I love ELO. What’s interesting is, we all know there’re tons of music from that era but there’s a lot of it that doesn’t make any sense at all. Like A Flock of Seagulls, I Ran, what’s that song even about? What is it even about, for real? A lot of music you go back and listen to it and go, “Wow, that song doesn’t even have a point. No point at all.”

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I love finding out lyrics and you’re like, “Oh, that’s what they say.” You’ve had it all screwed up for years and years.

Kent Evans:
Absolutely, man. I thought there that one song by CCR was There’s A Bathroom On The Right. “There’s a bathroom on the right.” That’s what I thought. The soundtrack in my home, my mom loved this old singer, Kris Kristofferson who was an influential country-pop crossover singer back in the day and we listened to Kris Kristofferson’s albums all the time. When we weren’t listening to Kris Kristofferson’s albums, true story, we were listening to wax LPs, the big wax albums of Adolph Rupp, the former University of Kentucky basketball coach talking about being a basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. For real, it would be so loud in my house, my mom would have the album going and he’d be going, “Yeah, we were pulling into Mississippi State and we were down 10 points.” And I’m going, “Why are we listening to this? What in the world?” Anyhow, that’s the soundtrack of my home as I grew up. And then I had Sony Walkman and I had the disc player and all that. The interesting thing about it though, is if you look at my life, it’s broken into two big chunks. Before Jesus, but up until about age 21 and then since Jesus. So it’s 20-something years on the left side and about 30 years on the right side. And early in our marriage, I married this young woman who had grown up on Steven Curtis Chapman and DC Talk and the Newsboys and Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant. That’s what April grew up listening to all the time. And so the first several years of our marriage, I was always flipping the channel to the classic rock station and she was always flipping it back to the local Christian music station. And over time, I realized some of the inputs of those ’70s and ’80s songs are not necessarily good inputs, the themes of those songs are debauchery and drinking and premarital sex. There’re all kinds of themes of music from that era that it is not necessarily healthy. And so over time I still got some great ELO playing from time to time, I love ELO. Having said that, I have gotten to a place where I do care about the content of the music that I listen to and I care about the content of the soundtrack of my home. If I were to ask the dads listening, if you’re a dad listening to this, if I were to go take a poll real quick of your family and say, what’s the soundtrack? Is there ever music playing around your home? If there is, what would your kids or your wife describe it as predominantly? And this is not like, “Certain music is evil and if you ever listen to it, it’s bad.” You already said that Lawson, I just want to double down. This is not like, “Feel bad about your music choices.” What it is, is there may be an opportunity you might be missing. It’s like if I told you about Apple stock 20 years ago, you’d have been really smart to buy all of it you could afford. Now, go ahead but the gold rush may be over. Point is, this is an area as a dad that you can have some degree of control over, especially when your kids are really young. And it’s an area that has a super high predictive outcome is the kinds of music that we’re playing around our home.
Not to be confused with worship across all of its other dimensions but I think it’s super important for dads to realize those things that we think are happening in the background might be planting seeds for the future. April and I did that with our oldest son, we played worship music in his baby room all the time. We kind of sensed there was just spiritual challenges to raising kids and so one way we tried to combat that was we had a CD in his room and it was always playing some kind of Christian music.

Lawson Brown:
You wrote, “When we routinely played worship or Christian music in our homes and cars, we’re sending sound waves. We’re scattering audible seeds into the minds of our children. And over time, those seeds take root and produce fruit.” And it makes me think, you’re describing with your son, like Olivia saw and in this home where she nannies, those ongoing seeds are getting fertilized, you’re just playing it, why would you not? If this is something, I’m thinking of the guys listening, if this is something that maybe you do well or maybe you haven’t thought of, it’s certainly not going to hurt and it’s almost absolutely going to help. And so there’s music for sure when I think of worship, we started by saying, it’s not just that, it’s a mindset, it’s a heart setting of things that happen in your life you are just worshipful, good and bad. But besides music though, that’s a big one. What else? What do you think of?

Kent Evans:
One we talked about was Abraham where sacrifice is worship. So for example, you go to a local church and you tithe and you sacrifice or you give money to that missionary, that’s a form of worship. It’s really important that we put our resources where our heart is because we’re declaring who’s first in our life and that’s God. Another one from the New Testament, I love this verse, one of my very favorite verses in the New Testament, Romans 12:1, Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So Paul’s talking about this idea that as we don’t do things with our body that are bad for our body and that’s not just eating too many Fritos, that can be bad for your body but it’s where I put my body, physically, in what environments, what I put in my ears, what I put in my mouth, what I put in my eyes. Oh man, Psalm 101:3 says, “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” Aka A Flock of Seagulls song. Sorry, Flock of Seagulls but most of that song. I hate the work of those who fall away and shall not cling to me. I will not set before my eyes, anything that is worthless. The input into our body, eyes, ears, mouth, those things and where we choose to consume or not consume them are a major act of worship. Paul says in Romans 12:1, “Which is your spiritual worship.” And so as the themes go throughout scripture, worship is one that you almost can’t get away from. I mean, it’s all throughout scripture and we call it worship music and that’s probably a really good way to say it. Worship music? Yeah, it’s music that can worship. Worship isn’t music but it can be. And I think that’s so powerful. I’ve had moments, I’m sure you have too, where you hear a song at a time, at a moment or you’re at a concert, maybe you’re at church and there’s a certain song that gets sung. And you just have a moment where it’s like the heavens almost open up and you just have a really spiritual moment. And I think we’re just wired, man. I think I’ve got things I want to ask God about when I get to heaven. And one of them is, tell me about… If I could get this question answered right now, I’d love to know the answer. Tell me about the spiritual fabric that you’ve woven into music and the human heart? There is some almost mysterious connection between music, even the fact that it’s mathematical, there’re numerical components, there’s sound waves, there’s the Fibonacci sequence. There’s this depth to music that I think is fascinating. Even if you just study music throughout scripture, you just find angels singing and worship music and the sound of the horn and just different things that somehow our hearts are wired to receive sound waves. And I would love to know how it all works because there’s something there.

Lawson Brown:
I hope in heaven there’s an answers room where you can just go and find out stuff.

Kent Evans:
I’m going to ask about why he let Christian Laettner make that shot in 1992. That’ll be in the answers room, for sure.

Lawson Brown:
No, dude, this was good. I think it’s super important, I want to think more about this in my own life and explore. Christian music has come a long way and I know it’s not all about worship music and I understand that, we found a church down here where we just moved, Destiny Worship Center and oh my gosh, dude, the worship team at this place, it’s not a humongous church, but they are uniquely blessed with an abundance of resources of people that can play music. They have their own songs on Spotify even. And one of the first times we went was around Christmas and more than 30 minutes was just worship music. And multiple times with tears running down my face. You’re right, it touches us in ways that other things just don’t. And so I’m encouraging dads and I’m speaking to my own self too, is to think more about this and you use opportunities on the road, in your car, maybe when you’re out taking a walk and you and your kid have EarPods in, share a song and share some good things. More of our values are caught than taught, like you wrote, and what we allow in our minds, in our ears matters and what we keep out of our sight and out of our ears also matters a lot. And so I’m encouraging us all, myself included, to think more about this and find some ways to send each other cool songs and lift each other up. If you are someone who is a real audio file, music junky, use some of that energy and help your buddies out and send them cool worship songs that can be played in their house.

Kent Evans:
Well, and as a fun tidbit, as we wrap up the show, when you listen to the front end of this show and then there’s some middle advertising sometimes or we talk about opportunities for you to get more engaged and then at the very end, you’ll hear some music on our show and that music was created by Alex Evans, my son, who 22 years ago as a baby, we were playing worship CDs in his crib. That doesn’t mean every child you play worship CDs for will turn out to be a good musician. But it just is cool for me to see at the other end of this parenting timeline that I’m at right now, how now I get to be blessed by my own kids who can play some music. One of my sons can sing really well, two of them can, one plays the drums. We’ve had music rolling around this house for a long time. And so dad, I would just encourage you, mark some moments in your kids’ lives like Nehemiah did, with worship. That worship could take all kinds of forms and it might take the form of music and make sure that woven into the soundtrack of your home is plenty of the Electric Light Orchestra, ELO.

Lawson Brown:
That joke fell flat everywhere. Can you end on a different note than ELO, please?

Kent Evans:
End on a different note?

Lawson Brown:
I think we get it.

Kent Evans:
Oh, Lawson. That’s a funny joke. End on a different note.

Lawson Brown:
I think we get it, you like ELO. No, dude. Hey, dads, take some time outside of researching ELO, which I had gone into my Spotify and followed them because it’s been a long time. I think now I’m I’m going to unfollow just because I think you’ve ruined it for me. No, I’m kidding. Yeah, I think we’ve covered it, dude. Let’s go find some good worship songs and incorporate that into the soundtrack of our homes.

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 or wherever you listen to podcasts or just call a person up and 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 or 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 hope 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.