We are not chained to our past, thanks to forgiveness and mercy

Show Transcripts:

Intro:

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

 

Kent Evans:

Hey, so Lawson. One of the coolest things I think that is going to really shape the podcast in the future is comments from other dads. I want to hear from you. Hey, dad listens, if you’re driving down the road and you want to tell us something a struggle, you have a piece of advice you have… No dad jokes seriously, we can Google those. But tell us something that you’re walking through as a dad, a current challenge you’re having, something you wrestle with as a dad, something you failed at, something you succeeded at. We would love to hear from you. You can do that at manhoodjourney.org/podcast, manhoodjourney.org/podcast. There’s a button there that says, “Start recording” and you can send us a voice file. You can just use your phone, start talking into your phone. This week on this episode we’re going to feature our very first submission that we got from our friend, Caleb.

 

Lawson Brown:

Okay. It’s so exciting. I’d like to see this actually come together and work. I’m looking at the website right now and I see the button and we’ve talked about it before, but thanks a lot, Caleb.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. So let’s hear from our friend Caleb and what he shared as one of his big challenges right now, one of the things he’s walking through as a father, let’s go to Caleb right now.

 

Caleb:

Really struggling with that. God loves me. I was raised by an angry dad who said that he loved me all the time, but his actions didn’t portray that. I recognized that he used to tell me that he loves me just so that he could hear it himself. It was manipulation. So I recognized that. I think about God, that way, that he really doesn’t love me when the chips are down. I have this head knowledge that he loves me, it says it in the Bible over and over and over again. But that knowledge is not where it needs to be. If I don’t have it, if I don’t know it in the core of my being I can’t give it to my wife and children. So I need prayer. I am praying about this to get this knowledge in my heart, my inmost being where it needs to be. So that I can forgive as well. Forgive myself, forgive my dad, forgive those who’ve hurt me, and walk in freedom.

 

Kent Evans:

Man, Lawson, how cool is that? I mean, I hope that the dad listening to this podcast heard a few things in what he just heard from Caleb. Number one, how courageous and who is it that Caleb is willing to talk into his phone, and let thousands of us literally into his world? That is amazing.

 

Lawson Brown:

It’s good stuff. That he took the time to go onto the website, he thought, give some thought. I really appreciate that he’s our participant along with us. I hope there’s many more. I will say this, you know what Caleb mentions… he talked about it a little bit more than just one thing. But I had a great dad, he was loving, he was my biggest fan. There were things about our relationship, that I won’t get into, and he wasn’t a perfect dad. We talked about the perfect dad syndrome, there’s no such thing. But to hear Caleb man, I feel for anyone who is in a situation where, as a boy, I guess or as even a man, that their father was not striving to be a representative of our heavenly father, and gotten away of that representation of that reflection. But I do know this, Caleb is not alone. There’s a lot of that. You hear from so many often. So I hope that when this episode wraps that you guys out there listening who may have what Caleb talked about really resonated with you. I hope that you are encouraged in two ways when this thing wraps. Is one, that you’re not alone and Caleb that’s to you as well. Second, that you’re not stuck there.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. I think even Caleb hints at this idea that he’s mentioning in the recording that he knows, it has the potential, his challenges with his earthly dad have the potential to hold him back as a dad now if we let him, those things. Yet what we see in scripture is so encouraging in this regard, right? I think of a verse like 2 Corinthians 5:17. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new his come.” You think of the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul talks a lot About his past before he became a believer in Christ. So he doesn’t just forget it. He doesn’t just go on with his life and forget all that stuff that happened to him in the past or how he treated Christians in the past. But he acknowledges that even though that is true, that is in fact his past, that doesn’t have to fully define his future.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, that’s right. It didn’t define his future right on.

 

Kent Evans:

Caleb was hitting at that. Caleb’s like on it. Going, “Man, I know this is like bondage. This has the potential to feel like handcuffs.” I’ve talked with Caleb through email and so forth. I know this guy, what a cool dude. Well, in fact, what’s interesting about Caleb is… and I think he wouldn’t mind me sharing this. He lives in Bermuda. So I feel the call of the Lord. I feel the burden for my brother in Christ that I need to go minister to Caleb.

 

Lawson Brown:

Oh, just you?

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah, pretty much just me. I mean, we don’t got an unlimited budget here, Lawson. So pretty much just me. Well, and my wife. My wife and I as a service to the body of Christ need to go spend a couple of months ministering to Caleb in Bermuda. I think that’s actually the least we could do.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Okay. Go for it. That’s where we had our honeymoon, actually.

 

Kent Evans:

You were hitting on this a minute ago though, where I know for sure, Caleb is definitely not alone. There is something in what he said that is both encouraging, and also really convicting and challenging. If you’re a dad listening to this podcast… and you probably are. We tend to attract dads who are trying to become better and more intentional godly fathers. If you’re a dad listening to this podcast, Lawson and I have good news and bad news, let’s start with the good news. The good news is you get the opportunity to shape how your key kids relate to God as their father. Now the bad news. The bad news is you get the opportunity to shape-

 

Lawson Brown:

Right. Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

We all know this is true. We all know this is true, right? How I relate to my kids either makes their ability to relate to God… Especially early, when they’re six, eight, 10, 12 years old, makes their ability to relate to God, their pathway, either more or less kind of thorny and troubling as they get older. That is one of the coolest things about being a dad. It’s also one of the scariest things about being a dad. But what I hope we can do in the context of today’s podcast, using Caleb’s comments as kind of our jumping point, I hope we can help dad see it shouldn’t be scary. It really should not you, that you get the opportunity to kind of be the godlike representative of sorts to your family. Because here’s the deal. God has equipped you to do it-

 

Lawson Brown:

And you’re not alone, he’s right here with us, right? Yeah. Staying on the same topic of just because that’s what our father did, doesn’t mean that’s what we have to continue to do. Ezekiel 36:26, I’ve not heard this one before. This is worthy of me writing down in my notebook. Maybe putting it in a little frame. It says, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Something Caleb said that resonated with me was he said, “And with that head knowledge missing, he’s worried that he can’t give to his wife and children what he wasn’t sure”… I’m paraphrasing kind of, I’m sorry Caleb, I’m putting words in your mouth. But if he didn’t really believe it himself, he’s not going to be able to pass that on or show that. I get that, I totally get that. The other thing I love that he said that sentence and then said, “And so I need prayer.”

 

Kent Evans:

Exactly.

 

Lawson Brown:

I love it.

 

Kent Evans:

What a great line. Exactly. Galatians 2:20 kind of piggybacking on what you said a second ago about Ezekiel 36. “I have been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” This all points to this regeneration that happens when we trust the Lord. When we trust in Christ, a lot of spiritual things happen. We are redeemed. We begin the process of being sanctified. We’re set apart and all of those things are true. But you see in scripture, you see this tension, like Caleb talked about, like Paul says. Paul says, “Man, why do I do what I don’t want to do? And I don’t do what I know I’m supposed to do.” So we’re still living in the flesh. We still have this flesh, we got to live in. But at the same time, Paul will tell us in several spots in the New Testament, “Put off the old self. Put off the old self and put on the new self.” So there’s this constant war. This battle that’s being waged between our fleshly nature and the spirit that wants to work in and through us. Sometimes we’re the problem. Sometimes it’s temptation from the outside. Sometimes to Caleb’s point, it’s just memories of the past. Sometimes guys are really weighed down by memories of the past. My son Titus is six years old and for reasons, we’re not totally sure we understand, but he’s always needed a lot of stimulation, a lot of input. Part of it’s I know guys are going, “Oh, well he’s six.” Well, no, I’m on my fifth, six-year-old, right? So he’s a little unique. I’ve raised four more before him. One of the things they talk about as being potentially a helping asset for a child like that is a weighted blanket. You actually buy a blanket that is heavier than a normal blanket, and you can actually order them in various weights. So you can order like a five-pound weighted blanket or an eight-pound weighted blanket. So we got him kind of a lightweight but weighted blanket. When he goes to bed, we toss the weighted blanket on him. He’s like, “Ah”, it makes him feel more cozy and more secure than a normal blanket. Well, for a lot of dads, the weighted blanket that we’re laying under the whole time we are ourselves a dad, is the weighted blanket of our past. We’re laying under that weighted blanket. It could be your past sexual sins, your past alcoholism, your past debt, and money management, your first wife, your whatever it could be. Jesus wants us to be released from that, the weight and the heaviness of that past. That’s why I is so encouraged hearing Caleb’s voice on the recording because even in disclosing to somebody else, “Hey man, I really need some help. I really want to get better at this.” It’s almost like even just that the process of doing that, doesn’t that already start the process Lawson, of him releasing a lot of that weight?

 

Lawson Brown:

I hope so. Yeah. I mean, he did it on our website, which I think was brave. He didn’t know if we’re going to pick him apart or… This is our first time doing it, I hope we have more. But so yes, that’s the short answer. But then also like we’ve talked about before, find somebody in your life, find a handful of other fathers in your life who are either kind of right there with you and whatever steps in your journey you’re on. But then also someone who’s maybe been there, done that and talk about that. You mentioned, that two concurrent things can be true, that our earthly father could have potentially put a fairly major roadblock in our way that gets between us and God. Then also, because of Jesus, you don’t have to stay there. You don’t have to stay shackled. You don’t keep the handcuffs on, you’re broken free, but you’re not alone in that. Jesus is right here with us. You have guys who want to be better godly fathers along with you. So talking it out loud makes it real, you get it out. Then if you have somebody in your life who can receive that in the sense of them wanting to be here with you and help, then you’re going to be able to do something with it, to get out of that rut, or that ditch, or out of that handcuff that you feel bonded by, your past.

 

Kent Evans:

Hey dad, do you wrestle with anger? Man? I sure have and so have thousands of other dads in our email list. 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 chalked full of almost 50 assets, a bunch of teaching videos, a ton of PDFs, 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 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.

 

Kent Evans:

Absolutely, one of the things I love about kind of where Caleb was going, I look at it almost like somebody’s… they’re digging for buried treasure. We’ve all seen that in the movies where they’re digging and then they hit something. There’s the moment where they go, “clink”, and then they look around like, “Uh oh I think I found it.” Then they dig real fast. Right? Then they speed up because they’re like, “Wow I’m close.” I feel like in some ways for a lot of dads this idea that, “Hey man, maybe I’m still living in the shadow of what happened to me as a kid and maybe I don’t have to.” Just the idea, the idea that says, “Maybe there’s a way out of this bondage, maybe there’s a way beyond this, the shackles of this.” That to me, kind of to maybe make the metaphor try to work too hard, is kind of like hitting the edge of the treasure chest where we go, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you saying I can live past that? Like I can be a different dad than the one I had?” Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because here’s the beautiful part, right? Whether your dad was the one Caleb described, and the anger was so predominant that you just had big dissonance between what your dad said and what he did, and you could never quite resolve it. Maybe that’s your dad, maybe that’s your story. Maybe your story is more like mine where my dad was responsible, and helpful, and taught me how to fix cars, and how to cuss at them, that was really handy. Taught me how to manage money, taught me how to be a relational… Like I’m kind of a relational networker, I’ve always been way. Part of that is my dad’s influence on my life. I had a lot of real positive aspects to my life. There wasn’t a real deep like spiritual component. I didn’t learn Bible from him. I didn’t learn Jesus from him as much. That doesn’t make me like mad at him, it’s just, that’s just the way it was. Yet God brought men into my life, that Jesus gap, right? For me in that regard. Or you might be like Lawson, where your dad was kind of a role model. He was a great guy and connected with you, and on spiritual matters, he was an example of some sort. I was recently giving a talk Lawson and there were maybe, I don’t know, 100, 150 guys in the room. I said, “Hey show of hands, who in the room you would say your dad was an example, a role model? I don’t mean perfect. I don’t mean like he was flawless. But you say, man when I grow up, there’s a lot of things about my dad I want to be like?” I would bet you a 100 was there probably 40%, maybe 50% of the hands went up in the room. So roughly half of the room would say, “Yeah, my dad was a solid dude.” But that means 5%0 to 60% of the room. We’re at a different place. They might have been first-generation believers. They may. So what I found though, was that a lot of these guys in the room, I knew them personally, a lot of dudes at my own home church, I know them well. I see examples at both ends, of a guy who grew up maybe like you, where you had a good relationship with your dad and a good spiritual foundation to build on. But then there’s a lot of guys like Caleb. So what’s the difference? Is the difference just our earthly dad? No, probably not man. Probably not.

 

Lawson Brown:

Not at all. No. In fact, it could be a separate topic. But my dad was a great guy, super nice. I did not get the spiritual grounding from him in Christianity. So that came later and it came from completely other places. To your point, if we’re open into it and maybe even looking for it, like you mentioned finding that buried treasure. Part of finding that buried treasure is that I was able to come into contact, and I was open and seeking help from other men and [inaudible 00:19:48] were my wife, who basically saved me, put me in the right places at the right time, and helped foster my faith. So to Caleb and the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of men who feel like at some point, maybe their father was a reason, or maybe even a major reason that they attribute to why they have felt like they were going down a certain path, to realize the freedom in Jesus. And realize that, like you said, and the good news? Your family is looking to you. Bad news? Your family is looking to you. You got to step up and find ways and pray about… like Caleb said, pray about how you get over that. There’s so many resources out there today. The number one being prayer and scripture.

 

Kent Evans:

That’s two things. How can the number one be prayer and scripture?

 

Lawson Brown:

Well, they go together. They go together to me, sorry. You’re so dumb. There I got it.

 

Kent Evans:

I got it. [crosstalk 00:20:57] I was just teeing you up baby.

 

Lawson Brown:

I’m so teasing, man. It’s funny. We’ve done I don’t know how many of these and I still find myself just listening to you. When you get on these rolls sometimes I’m like, “Yeah, that’s so good.” I’m just soaking it up. Taking notes. I hope the guys out there are feeling the same as me man. You hot good stuff.

 

Kent Evans:

I would love to maybe end at a place on this particular episode, I want to end on one kind of topic that we pull out of what Caleb shared with us. The topic is, forgiveness. A lot of us are kind of living in the shadow some past experience. Whatever that is, it may have nothing to do with our dad, it could have to do with the boss or a teacher who knows, our spouse. We’re living in the shadow of that because we have yet to forgive the people connected to that event. In some cases, it’s really small and insignificant. That guy took my parking spot, something super insignificant, and you’re still bent out of shape. There are probably guys listening right now who are pulling their car into a parking spot, and they are just angry right now at the guy who took their parking spot because they were too busy listening to you and me, they didn’t pull in first. So there’s some insignificant things that we tend to hang onto, especially as a culture. Anger is a huge topic for a lot of dads. It’s the reason we created the Anger Free Dad Course because it’s such a hotbed issue for so many dads, because there still angry about something in the past. But for some guys, it’s super significant. It was a major, major wrong that someone did to them. Whether that was financial, emotional, sexual, who knows. Right? So I don’t want to minimize the work sometimes it takes to emotionally, completely forgive someone. But I do want to encourage, I want to encourage a lot of dads with one of the verses that we see on this topic. Jesus is talking Mark chapter 11 and he says, Mark 11 25, “Whenever you and praying, forgive.” Forgive. “If you have anything against anyone”… Now that’s a pretty powerful little stretch right there, right? Where it says, “If you have anything against anyone.” That’s pretty inclusive. We’re not going to find some, a Greek word there that means “Well if anyone who wasn’t a Republican, or anyone who wasn’t an Alabama fan.” We’re not going to find some out. “… so that your father also as in heaven may forgive you of your trespasses.” I know a number of people who are still shackled to some degree or another by some person or some past event. The only doorway through which they’re going to walk to get rid of that shackle is the doorway labeled forgiveness. There’s a door in front of you and that door says “Forgive”, and the longer you stand on this side of that door-

 

Lawson Brown:

The longer those shackles stay on you. As soon as you walk through, they just fall off.

 

Kent Evans:

Oh my word. So for me, I want to encourage you, get to where Caleb is getting. Get to where Caleb mentally is getting, that you understand what are some of the things that have shackled you from the past? What are some things that man, you just kind of wonder, “Am I living in any kind of bondage or lack of freedom? Is that because of what that person did to me?” No, it really isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s because we have yet to forgive that person. I think of the words that Jesus said really late in his life man, as he hung on the cross and he said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” They don’t know what they’re doing. Odds are you stand a doorknob turn away from dropping these shackles. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not trying to be flippant. I don’t want to minimize it. But I remember that video from years ago of that guy who had accidentally… He had driven drunk and he had accidentally killed a young girl. The mom of that young girl came into the courtroom at his sentencing and she told him that she forgave him. It was fresh. It was not that long after. That relationship started a relationship between that mom and that guy that really was redemptive for him and for her. Should her daughter have died that night? Absolutely not. Should that guy have driven under the influence? Absolutely not. Does life sometimes cause things to happen to us that are just so unbelievably painful? Yes. But man often, often the door between us living under the shadow of that forever and us finding freedom past that is usually an often labeled forgiveness. So I don’t know who you have to forgive, but I know there’s some dad… Man, we have enough guys listening to this podcast where there’s a dad out there. There might be hundreds of them who are pushing back right now, mentally, emotionally there’re pushing. They’re saying, “You don’t know what happened to me. You don’t know what she did. You don’t know what he did.” That’s true. You’re right. I don’t. But God does. God does promise that you can forgive. You have the ability, you have the capacity, you have the capability. You also have the mandate, you have the command to forgive. So we hope today, especially with our man Caleb… Let’s hear it for Caleb in Bermuda. Yeah, it would be hard to be oriented correctly if you lived in the Bermuda Triangle, I don’t know if it’s harder for Caleb than others, but if today’s show has helped you, that is the holy spirit. Lawson and I, we prayed before this show because we want you to know, God loves you. God has forgiven you so you can forgive others. We’re super grateful to our man, Caleb for kicking us off and for his transparent and vulnerable comment that he made. So do like Caleb man, head over to our podcast and share with us what’s on your heart in mind so we can use it as a jump point for one of our future episodes. That’s at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. Dive in, let us know what you think and share anything with us and we’ll dive in later. Thanks a lot for being with us this week. We’ll see 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. If you really liked it, please consider doing 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. Finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org, or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

 

Outro:

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