The godly dad protects loved ones from danger

Show Transcripts:

Voiceover 1:

Welcome to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran Lawson Brown. This is a show for you dad. You want to be a Godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson

 

Kent Evans:

Lawson, parenting kids today, being a dad today means that we have many, many dangers around corners. Some of which we never had before and dads have to be very intentional but yet not live in constant fear. And that’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s show. By the way, brother, how have you been?

 

Lawson Brown:

Hey, man. I’m doing so fine. How are you?

 

Kent Evans:

I’m doing great. For a little personal context, Lawson is in the great state of North Carolina babysitting at home and his family is liquidating. And he’s kind of saying goodbye today. Are you going to kiss the doorpost on the way out or is there a ceremony coming?

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, I don’t know, man. I’m going to miss this place up here in the mountains. It’s nice little stream here. I sat out by yesterday for a minute. I’m going to miss it, but it’s all good. It’s time to see what the next chapter holds.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, I don’t know where you’re listening on earth, but if you’ve never been to the mountains of North Carolina, the Asheville Area, Boone, these places I’ve been to before, man, what a beautiful part of America,

 

Lawson Brown:

It is so beautiful. And there is a mountain here that you can either drive up or walk. You can drive up to like call it two thirds up and then walk the rest of the way. And there’s a 360 view. You can see three states and it is hard to not be up there and feel like you’re not closer to God. I’m telling you, man, it’s like nature. Is it for me?

 

Kent Evans:

That’s awesome. Well, today we’re going to talk about, we’re still working our way through selected chapters, not the entire book, but the new book that Eric and I came out called bring your hammers, it’s on the book. It’s a book about fatherhood lessons from Nehemiah, the old testament character. And today we’re going to talk about what is in chapter 15 of that book, which is that the Godly dad protects his loved ones from danger. You and I were talking as I’m prepping for this particular show, Lawson, it’s a bit of a slippery slope. Isn’t it? We want to be vigilant and aware, but not living in constant fear. How have you maybe struck that balance as a dad yourself?

 

Lawson Brown:

I don’t know. I don’t know that necessarily I have because there are times when I can sense the family is maybe a little too like, and [inaudible 00:02:47] especially right now with what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine and our economy and it wasn’t long ago when there were riots across different cities, just so much friction in society about COVID and the handling of it and the election. So I guess all that to say is there were times when I personally felt like, “God, where’s this world going?” And it’s hard to go yourself and your, the Bible talks about guard your hearts and minds. And as dads that means that we also, I believe, help our children do that, and help our families do that. And I’ve needed to reach out and talk to other dudes and huddle up with my wife, because what you don’t want to do as a dad, there are a lot of dangers in the world for children from, I don’t know what. Call it three or four years old through when they’re in their 30s and on. I mean, the danger is everywhere. And being alert to it but not hyper alert, understanding it but not being afraid to walk outside or interact with people and you don’t want to lock your kids in a room and keep them there.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, not to guard them from the danger on the outside. There are times when I did want to lock them in a room. It wasn’t cause the problem was outside that room.

 

Lawson Brown:

This is an interesting topic. And I read the chapter a couple times, pulled some things out of it that I hadn’t thought of before that we’ll get into. But for sure, I know a buddy that early on in his kid’s life, I think, was maybe a little too sheltering. And he and his wife realized that and began to go the opposite direction. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m saying, just parented different because they saw that their kid was becoming too afraid and thinking that it’s hard enough in this world with everything coming at us just like I just ran through the list. They also, I want my children, I need them in my own life to help me be bold. And to see them go boldly into the world knowing that they’re not alone and that aware of risks, aware of dangers and then equipped to a degree to help themselves and to guard against it.

 

Kent Evans:

I think of the verse in Matthew 10, when Jesus is sending disciples out and he says, “Hey behold, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” And he was telling us, I think, in many ways and even goes on. The very next verse says, “But beware of men, they will hand you over to their councils and flog you.” And so He’s saying, “Look, let me be really honest with you. This is going to be dangerous and this is going to be unpredictable and this is going to be a challenge. You have to know that. You have to be totally aware of that. However, be innocent as doves.” And we see thousands of other, not thousands. We see dozens and dozens of other scriptures where He talks about they’ll know you by your love and there’s things that we you’re supposed to do. So we’re not supposed to walk around in complete fear, but we’re not supposed to walk around in complete ignorance either. And sometimes that can be a tricky balance to strike. And it moves as our children age. So like when they’re two years old, man, you got to protect them from everything. You got to protect them from falling down the steps, walking out the street. I mean, you have to protect them all the time. Physically, emotionally. And as they age, it’s almost like you let them experience some of that difficulty and let life be their teacher to a degree. I now have boys who are 22. I have boys who 22, 19 and 17. And each of those cases, there are things that life is teaching them. It’s the best way for them to learn. My son 19 year old-

 

Lawson Brown:

Like what? You made me think of, I can hear you going, “I bet you won’t do that again.”

 

Kent Evans:

No, it’s not even necessarily bad. It’s not that they necessarily fail. But for example, recently one of my boys wanted to come home and his car had broken down and we had shipped his car physically on one of those multi car platform things. You can tell how much I know about that technology. It’s like a car thing, but there’s not just one car. It’s [crosstalk 00:06:47]

 

Lawson Brown:

[inaudible 00:06:47] Multiple Car Things.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. I think they call it a MCT, a Multiple Car Thing. And so we literally shipped his car here and then he had to get from Chicago to Louisville. And we were calculating our options, airplane tickets were a lot. His friends were only going to come two thirds of the way. I’m driving Indianapolis and I was like, “Hey, wait a minute, you should take a Greyhound bus.” And he did. And he did. He took it from Chicago to Louisville. And I asked him when he got home I said-

 

Lawson Brown:

There’s a life lesson.

 

Kent Evans:

Exactly. I said, “How was the experience?” And he goes, “Man, some of those bus stations are sketchy.” Here’s what’s so stinking hilarious about this. So he has a picture of himself walking around downtown Chicago before his bus loaded up.

 

Lawson Brown:

How old was he Kent?

 

Kent Evans:

19. So he took a picture of himself in one of the windows on Michigan Avenue so you could see his whole body and he looked kind of like he belonged in downtown Chicago. He looked like he was a little roughy. And I asked him about it later and he goes, “Oh yeah, man, you got to dress like somebody who would mug people so you don’t get mugged.” And I was like, “Oh my goodness. [crosstalk 00:07:49] That’s pretty smart. Matthew 10:16, he’s a sheep among wolves. He’s as shrewd as a snake, innocent as a dove. I mean, I’m kidding. Our real life issues with our kids aren’t all always that funny or can be laughed at. But I do think it’s a microcosm. It’s a picture of what we’re trying to get our children to do that is learn how to live in this life that really will throw some big, big challenges at them. I think a couple that come to mind for kids especially as they hit their teen years, some are as old as the hills, some are not brand new. Like friends and drama and relationships. That’s always been around. Some that are more new for example, related to technology, for example. I don’t really believe that “kids today” are necessarily that vastly crazily psychologically different than kids of 1,000 years ago. But their access to technology is putting them in a very, very different environment as they grow up. Well, you go back 100 maybe 150 years, we wouldn’t have known about this war in the Ukraine. And we wouldn’t have seen pictures. We wouldn’t have seen pictures of people being carried on stretchers. And we wouldn’t have seen real time video of bombs going off. Those kind of things are fairly modern era access. And so that kind of stuff can really flood our kids, man, and it can be really unhealthy, especially when they’re young. As your daughters grew up, how’d you guard against some of the technological challenges that maybe even are unique to young women?

 

Lawson Brown:

I was about to say as dads, part of our job is to help guard against dangers. And just because something can be dangerous doesn’t mean everything about it is bad. But particularly for young teenage girls, our experience was that the level of comparison and commenting about physical attributes and what they were able to afford or where it was just an easy avenue for feedback, things that don’t-

 

Kent Evans:

That’s a nice word for it. Feedback.

 

Lawson Brown:

Well, you put yourself out there and you get feedback. So we limited it. We, I think, did a fair job of holding the line on how quickly they were able to get an iPhone back then and talked about it a lot. And where we had full access to their accounts and full access to the codes on their phone. And so-

 

Kent Evans:

So, did you not trust your daughters?

 

Lawson Brown:

No. We had very candid conversations about that. And it’s not that they were like, “We trust you because you’re a bad person. It’s because you don’t yet know everything you need to know to be fully trustworthy in protecting your own self and so that’s what we’re here to help you with.” And oh, by the way, I traveled a lot for work back then, had young kids and worked in all kinds of different cities, different customers, events, and all this. And Audrey had, still does full expectation. Ask me specifics about what I did on those trips. And our girls knew that. And so did Audrey not trust me? It was part of protecting our marriage and protecting me, and giving her a piece of mind and a sense of ownership and control that nothing was off limits. No question was out of bounds. So I think from a technology standpoint, as a family I think we did okay in the beginning, but it’s still kind of a constant thing. I was really proud Olivia brought up months ago, I guess, by now that she set limits for herself. Like your phone can now have settings and deleted some apps that she was just like, “It just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel healthy. And so why have it?” So I was like, “All right, well, good for you.” And it actually encouraged me to do the same thing. But what else? Like what Eric wrote in the book about equipping your kids with a sword, I had written a shield because I think they go hand in hand, but I’m curious to know what you and Eric talked about, about equipping our kids to combat the dangers.

 

Kent Evans:

I think of the armor in Ephesians where a lot of it is defensive and then the word of the Spirit is an offensive weapon. As an example. As an example. And I think often in the area of technology, we think of it as just 100% defense. And to be fair, a lot of it probably is. There may be internet filters or there might be access limits like your daughter put on herself or the fact that I can go in anytime. My sons all knew this as they were living in our house. Number one, they didn’t get cell phones. They fairly old compared to their peers, probably around 16. And they knew their text messages were 100% on limits. 100%, all of them. At any moment I can pick up my son’s phone, open it up, just scroll through his texts to anybody. And part of that is, I don’t even hardly ever pull that card. I don’t hardly pull that card. But part of that is, teaching them not so much that dad’s looking over their shoulder or mom is, but that things they think they can do in private can be brought into public. So for example, your cell phone is completely subpoena a bull by a court of law. Your social media posts are completely fair game for an employer to go check you out before they decide whether they do or don’t want to hire you. And so some of that tech stuff that’s pretty new to you in my life, like we’re the first generation of parents raising these digital natives basically. And we got to teach our kids, man, what you think is in secret is being kept somewhere forever. In most cases it can be used against you. So, you got to live your life out on your tech device as if you’re living it on a billboard on the highway. This is not a secret space.

 

Kent Evans:

Hey dad, do you wrestle with anger? Man, I sure have and so have the 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:

You reminded me of something that happened in middle school, not to my daughters but to someone that they knew. It was pretty bad where someone got hold of photos or video of one of their girlfriends, put it out there and it was horrifying and heartbreaking and that poor little girl just was awful. And I’m not by any stretch glad that that happened. But we did learn something from that and it really shook my girls and they were like, “Whew, man, I can see now, vividly see how that can be used in that horrible way.” And it made them more careful.

 

Kent Evans:

I remember a friend of mine who was raising daughters as well. And when his daughter was about, I don’t know, 16 or 17, there was a guy who was essentially stalking her but she didn’t quite understand it. She thought he was a friend and all this, and it was not healthy in the day. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but the daughter was confused. She was, it wasn’t some random guy on the internet. And her dad finally one day she had one of those flip phones, the first gen Motorola phones that flipped open. And her dad took her phone, said, “Hey, give me your phone for a second.” She gave it to him and he snapped it in half. And he said, “Listen, you are in danger. And I just cut off this person’s access to you because you’re in danger.” And she didn’t like it for the first hour, but it wasn’t more than a day or so she came around and was like, “Dad, I get it. Thank you.” And she got a new phone. He snapped it in half and I’m like, “Bro, I love it.” What’s the most loving thing to do to somebody headed for a cliff, right? Grab them. And so that’s some way. So here’s what I’d love to do Lawson. Let’s pivot just a little. I think most dads agree now’s a tricky time to be raising kids. It always has been tricky for different reasons. We got technology as our trick and 100 years from now if Jesus doesn’t come back, there’ll be a different trick that the Satan wants to play on us. But I’d like to spend some time talking about the offense we can play. Going back to your question about the shield versus the sword. Let’s talk about some offense we can play. I’m at a particular place in Louisville where I can get a cup of coffee before we record and the gentleman who served me my coffee is a stud musician. He plays here in Louisville. He’s a really good musician. And he has known my oldest son as long as they’ve been alive practically, but definitely since they were about 11 or 12 and they both started playing in the middle school band. And so they’ve grown up together as musicians. And this guy, Connor, says to me, “Man, I keep up with Alex a little bit on Instagram. Boy, he has really become a great guitar player.” And so we were talking about Alex and we were having a good time and he gave me by the way, a free Americano, thank you, Connor. One of the strategies my wife and I had as our boys hit their teen years was total offense here. If they developed an aptitude or a passion in an area that wasn’t illicit, if they developed an aptitude for shooting basketball, an aptitude for playing guitar, an aptitude for playing chess or whatever they got really excited about, we saw all the time they spent doing that thing as a great use of their testosterone and energy as a teenage boy. So like, Alex didn’t even totally know we were doing this. But every time he’d go downstairs to practice his electric guitar, guess what he wasn’t doing? A bunch of other things that probably weren’t good for a 14-year-old boy to be doing. And I loved it. And I looked at it like back in the day before the shot clock, if you got any listeners who remember Dean Smith at North Carolina, he was the four corners guy. So he’d get a lead and then they would pass the ball around four corners of the offensive of half and the other team couldn’t catch him. It was called the four corners of offense. And all he was trying to do was run out the clock. And that’s what I viewed some of my teenage years as with my boys-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. I see what you’re saying.

 

Kent Evans:

… is they were burning time practicing their guitar or their drums or whatever. That was time they weren’t flirting with girls, or surfing the internet. And so for me it was really healthy. That was one offensive strategy. Instead of saying, “Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do this.” It was, “Oh man, you want to be a stud guitar player? Go for it. Here you go. I’ll invest in a new amp for you.” Were there other kind of offensive strategies you and Audrey might have employed throughout the years? Or did you have a question?

 

Lawson Brown:

I like what you were saying there, it’s not so much, I want to be careful how I say this because there are values to having some pretty guidelines, strict guidelines and rules and stuff like that in your household. I guess what I would say is that it just can’t be all about that. Like living within the rules and if you break them there’s, without getting churchy, it’s like, “God’s…” They shouldn’t hear or feel from you every time they’d make a mistake God’s watching. And He’s judging and you’re in trouble. And like we talked about another episode or two, it’s the inverse of the negative of that is creating space. And like your son was doing, he was focusing on something good. Therefore, not having too much idle time that he could get distracted with something that you didn’t want him doing. I think there’s intentionality that has to happen with that. Versus just leaving them to their devices. It’s a silly example we’ve maybe talked about already, but like, “Let’s put our phones down and go outside,” kind of thing. It can be as simple as that. So, I don’t have a specific thing that we necessarily did out of-

 

Kent Evans:

Why not? Were you guys just disengaged Slack parents-

 

Lawson Brown:

Pretty not.

 

Kent Evans:

Oh, okay. Do you ever think you might be doing a podcast on parenting? Come on man. Time to bone up. Let’s go. No, I mean, for us, I’ll give you an example. It has nothing to do with kids. Specifically my wife has been on a really interesting health journey the last five or six years. And as part of that journey, she’s gotten really smart about food and what’s good food and bad food, and what’s good for you and bad for you. And instead of just going, “Hey, no more sugar around this place.” Even though that’s been said more than once, she is the master of the delicious healthy alternative. I mean, like for real. There are things I eat at my house. Last night actually, we ate a meal and as I was eating it I just said, “April, can I eat this same meal for the rest of my life?”

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh wow.

 

Kent Evans:

Like, it’s so good and is healthy. All healthy because she’s figured out. And here’s the thing. It’s about, and God does both for us, to your point, God puts up the guardrails, but He also puts up the promise. There’s the guardrail, there’s the danger. But then there is the promise. Do this, that it may go well with you. Do this, that you may live long in the land and prosper. And that’s part of what we have to do as parents. If we’re going to protect our loved ones from danger, not only do we say, “Don’t drive off the cliff.” What we also say is, “Look, man, there’s a line in the center of this road. Stay really close to that line and you will be safe. You will be safe.” And then if we see them drifting, then it’s the rumble strips and we start to push them back a little bit. I think that balancing act is not always easy for dads to strike, but it’s really essential.

 

Lawson Brown:

I think a weapon to arm your kids with is truth. And what I mean by that is, for sure the Bible and prayer, but also just like there’s so much misinformation around us all now that really getting to the bottom line root facts of things can sometimes dispel the fear and help outline where the danger truly is. I think for us, at least in our society today, there’s so much coming at us that it’s just super hard to know what’s real and what is dangerous. What’s disguised as good but it’s really pretty dangerous.

 

Kent Evans:

You know what’s interesting you would say that because just recently I was walking through something. I can’t remember what it was exactly. It was some kind of flyer or direct mail or something. And my son was reading something and he showed it to me and goes, “Dad, can you believe this?” Now I don’t want to go too far into it because too many people will get all been out of shape. But I would say that the thing we were reading was from a particular ideology, particular leaning that I would tend to subscribe to. Like I kind of buy what that guy is selling. I’m going to lean his way in what he was saying. But my son looked at that and was like, as if it was absolute truth. Absolute truth. And I just said to my son, “Now, you know that guy is writing from an organization that is bent this way.” It’s like on my side. So I’m a UK fan. I’m a Kentucky Wildcats fan. And if you ever listen to UK Wildcat Radio, you can hear those commentators. They’re not unbiased. They’re like, “Cats win, Cats win.” They want them to win. And as long as you know that, as long as you know going in that the commentators are going to be biased for Kentucky. Then when they go, “Aw, I don’t know if that was a foul on [Tshiebwe 00:23:18]. I don’t know if that was a foul.” You know he is selling his bias a little bit. And I think for us as dads, we have to guard our kids around, at least I believe, I believe. And we might get some hate mail over this. But I believe that even if a particular ideology or belief system is one, I tend to subscribe to, I do want my kids to become good critical consumers, everything they read and hear. Because in they got to hold it up against God’s word. They got to hold it up against the truth of scripture and say, “Does it really hold water? Even if you tend to agree with it, does it really hold water? Is that true 100% of the time? Is that person purely selfishly motivated. Or is that…” I wish that most people in information outlets like I’m a Christian. I love Jesus. I believe the Bible is an inspired word of God. I think you should stay married forever to one woman. Like I got all kinds of belief systems. I should just have a button that has all my biases on it. And just let you know, if you’re listening to this podcast, that’s the angle I’m coming from. I’m not even going to pretend to be unbiased. It does not happen.

 

Lawson Brown:

I want to read something here I love in a book. It says about your kids hearing from their friends, “When their friends tell them the clothes they wear and the way they look are the most important things, they’ll know that’s not what the Bible says.” And it goes on to say, “When few people like their posts, pics, comments or give them hate, make them feel bad about themselves, they’ll know the God who formed them with His own hands has gone to great lengths to declare in His word how loved they are.”

 

Kent Evans:

Did I write that or did Eric Ballard write that?

 

Lawson Brown:

You did not write that.

 

Kent Evans:

Tag on it. Man, that’s good stuff. Way to go, Eric. Scrub that part out and put by Kent.

 

Lawson Brown:

It made me feel better to read that. I think that’s a really wise thought and good reason for bathing our family and scripture and talking about it and joining them in prayer with the word so that as they are interacting and encounter danger, their lens through which they’re perceiving it, they can see it really clearly because they know that up against what the Bible says it’s completely counter.

 

Kent Evans:

So, to your point, man, one way we help our kids be guarded against lies is to have them be saturated with the truth. I heard this one time they say that there are people who will study people at the US Mint who are in charge of identifying counterfeit bills and patterns and counterfeit bills. And one of the things they do early in their career is they study real US dollars. They study the real thing. One of the reasons they study the real thing is so they know a fake when they see it. So if I try to learn all the fakes, well, then the target’s always moving.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right, right, right, right, right.

 

Kent Evans:

But if I just know the real one, if I know the real one, ah, the fakes come flying at me it’s obvious that these are fakes. And guys will resonate with this in their job. I want you to think about whatever job you have, whatever you do for a living, odds are I don’t do it. Using just simple math, whatever you do for a living I don’t do. And if I sat down and started talking to you, Lawson, you’ve worked for years in the fire suppression and safety and sprinkler business. You would know you, I mean, in 45 seconds, if I knew anything about that business. Just by, I’d walk in and tap something and you’d be like, “Cool, don’t tap that, the whole thing’s going to go.” Like I would be so ignorant, it would be that obvious that someone who knows the truth about that business, you can instantly spot a pretender. And so you touched on something I want to make sure we don’t leave this episode without talking a little bit about, and that is, their friends. Their friends. I see a couple big almost like magnetic forces in the lives of my children. And I do think of a them literally I think of them just like this. I think of them like a death star and they have a tractor beam to them. Sex and porn, once you start down toward that path, man, that’s a hard thing to get out of. I remember telling my oldest son who was trying to walk in purity up until his wedding. I was like, “Bro, you got to avoid situations that make crossing the line a possibility.” Because once you get in that situation, probably too late for you to get off that slope. And so one is sex and porn. The other is music. I think music is magnetic. I think God’s wired our hearts to resonate, it’s a musical term, to resonate with music, because I think we’re going to have music in heaven. God is a God of worship. Angels will sing and proclaim. So, okay, I think music has a magnetic characteristic to it. Our children can be pulled off sides by music that they listen to. Music they listen to. We would play worship music as bedtime music when our kids were in their bedrooms, we still do with our two youngers because we’re trying to soak their hearts with musical truth, sex, music, technology, for sure, and I think friends are a big, big, big deal. Big deal. And I think the challenge for us as dads, and I want you to think for a moment, I’ll come back to you, but I want you to think, Lawson, about maybe some of your daughters and their friends. Maybe we don’t say names, but you may have a story or two. And I think one of the things we try to do is keep our kids away from that bad kid. “Don’t hang out with Billy, man. Billy’s trouble. Can’t you see the way he dresses? Oh, he’s got a tattoo.” We have all these prohibitions on our kids’ friends. One of the offensive weapons that we can put in our kids’ hands is, “Do spend time with the good friends.” Do spend time… So like we want our house to be, one of the reasons I’ve spent money on a really expensive basketball goal and we dug a four foot hole in the ground to anchor the dumb thing in our backyard was so that I would be a partly a house that is attractive to my teenage boys’ friends. I want them over. I want to see how they act. I want to see how they interact with my wife. I can learn so much about my boys’ friends by the way they interact with my wife. Man, I get a read on their character. Whether I’m right or wrong, I read their character by how they treat Mrs. Evans. And so for me, I want to create a space where the friends are coming around the Evans house. I want to be that guy. I want to be that dad who’s enough fun to be around, but I’m not just a total goof off. So for me, man, that’s an offensive weapon because often when your kids start to pivot in their teen years, something has started to draw them. It may be chemical. It could be drugs and alcohol. But often, it’s emotional, it’s musical, it’s sexual, or it’s relational. Those are the things that tend to pull our kids into places we don’t want. And for me, I want to play offense with their friends, man. I want their friends to know me and I want to know them. How’d you do that with your daughters?

 

Lawson Brown:

Well, Audrey was the best at it because we had daughters and our house was always a place where they felt safe. And Audrey was a big part of their life. Audrey was a substitute teacher at their middle school and at their high school. So she could see things that even our kids didn’t see about their other friends. The way you said that about currency and spotting a counterfeit made me think. That was a really cool analogy. It can also be applicable to friendships because especially at that age, you’re learning how to have relationships. You’re learning how to be a good friend. You’re learning what a good friend looks like. Audrey was really good at having deep conversations with them about their friends and about things that she saw at school, maybe behind their back or things like that-

 

Kent Evans:

Oh yeah. Because Audrey had kind of a lens on what was going on in the friend scene.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. And she talked to other teachers that knew those kids. So, she was just generally in the know. She was in the weeds and she was miss Audrey everywhere we went. “Miss Audrey. Miss Audrey.” Their good friends loved coming to our house and just hanging out with, it was like this group of sisters. They weren’t blood sisters but in fact, one of these girls that are now in their early 20s just came and visited us for the week. She was on spring break and came and stayed at our house and it just felt like, it felt like old home week to have her around with us. It was real relationships. And so I think to your point about counterfeit, when they were burned by something a friend did that they didn’t expect, or the friend didn’t have their back or maybe intentionally did something to hurt them, you find out, that’s what a counterfeit friend looks like. So you don’t need to be able to spot all the different versions of counterfeit. You need to know what the truth looks like and what the real friendship looks like. And then from that, everything reflects off of it in a way that you can spot the ones that are fake.

 

Kent Evans:

I think of when Jesus was about to be crucified, and I’m pretty sure it’s John 17 and he goes through this long conversation, the prayer and so forth with his disciples and he warns them. He’s like, “Hey, this is going to get really bumpy. This is going to be a problem. You think they hated me? Wait, do you see how they treat you?” And He’s going down this list. And that was to honorably and that was to carefully prepare them. And so for us as dads, we need to… I had a guy tell me yesterday, he goes, “Yeah, I’m not raising boys I’m raising men.” And I was like, “Yeah, it’s awesome.” Mike Fabarez has a book called that, Raising Men Not Boys. And I love that idea as a dad of boys. You’re raising future women, I’m raising future men. And if I’m going to do that, I don’t want them to get to 23 years old and be shocked that one of their friends might have said something behind their back. Or they’re shocked to find illicit pictures on the internet. And you’re like, “I told you. We talked about this.” I want to be the guard and I want to be the shepherd. And Nehemiah is a great example. He knew that where they were going to try to rebuild that wall as his first big task and then he did 10 other really important things, which we’ll talk about later. He knew that that was going to be, they were going to be opposed. And so dad, I want to encourage the dad listening. If you feel like society is against you and you feel like there’s a lot of trouble with being a dad and your wife feels the same as a mom and you feel like there’s constant danger and threats for your kids, spiritual development, that’s because there are. I mean, welcome to the club. And the fact that you sense that danger, one of my friends, Kevin used to pray, “God, will you please show us the danger while it’s still far off enough we can do something about it.” What a great prayer. I heard him pray that one time at an event he was speaking at and I just thought, “Man, that’s a brilliant prayer.” God show us the danger while it’s still far off enough that we can do something about it. So, dad, I hope that is, I hope today’s conversation has been encouraging to you. And I hope that you’ll be praying that over your family. Your marriage, your finances, your kids, pray that prayer this coming week and see what God shows you and see if you don’t have some work to do in the area of protection and danger for your family. And we pray that God will go with you and go in front of you and behind you. Thanks for joining us today. Lawson and I had a blast as usual. We hope you did too. We hope you have as half as much fun on these podcast episodes as we do. That’d be great. And if you don’t, hey man, we’ll give you all your money back. We’ll see you next week.

 

Lawson Brown:

Take care.

 

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 podcasst 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.

 

Voiceover:

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