SPEAKER_00 0:00

God, thank you so much for this time together tonight. And we just thank you that you have been working in our hearts. We thank you for thank you for what you've done this weekend in the hearts of men in particular, just the way that we saw men getting free, uh men getting uh practical next steps to walking in purity and leading their families to walk in purity. We just praise you, God, for that. Just for your powerful Holy Spirit continues to teach us. God, I pray over this time tonight and pray, God, that you would help us as parents. We need your grace, and we need your truth. We thank you so much that you brought Jim as a gift to the body and using the message that you've been giving him for years now to convey your heart for us and for our sexuality and for uh just how to walk with greater intimacy with you, God, for your glory and for your name. So we uh we uh just invite you to speak to us. We pray to your name. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

All right. Um thank you for coming up just all to the guys, and I I took a 30-minute nap where you set the alarm and you just go and then you just by the time you're waking up, you don't know if it's morning or night or what it is. I'm just kind of like and then driving across town. And um you know, parenting is an interesting, it I think it's so funny. The church we're we're we bought the lie of the culture regarding sexuality. One of the lives of sexuality is sexuality is all about the physical. So every time the church is gonna do like anything with sexuality, everybody thinks we're gonna talk about body parts today. You know, it's kind of like, well, you know, what are you gonna, we're gonna talk about body parts. And it has soul, I mean, that's one element, and that's what the world emphasizes. Everything, you know, everything about sexuality is about the physical, and it completely ignores the other two dimensions. And so much of life, uh, the large part of intimacy, the three parts of intimacy, is uh that spiritual oneness, that soul friendship oneness, and the physical oneness. We see this even in youth groups where they're emphasizing purity all the time. It's and it's really important. We want to protect our 11 and 13-year-olds and 15-year-olds from making any choices. But you know, when we emphasize physical purity only, then what do we do with a daughter coming home from college who lost her purity? She's forever, she's in a caste system of the church where she's forever uh a second-class daughter. She's in the back row of God's garden. You know, I mean, it's like that's what we create, unknowingly create that by not having a larger picture of this whole area of sexuality. And I think even coming today is like that because it, you know, having the sex talk and about body parts and you know, what when what words do you is it's pretty elemental. You can buy, there's resources you can buy, but I think to me, a larger understanding, I'm gonna try to give you more of a larger picture in which to plug that into because uh creating uh a structure, you kind of have the scaffolding in the life. Look at let's look at Ezekiel this really quick. And this is I'm I'm giving you kind of philosophical. I'm not I'm not a here are the three answers you need to solve this problem today. I'm more of a let's get a way of let's change our way of thinking and let God start moving in our life to kind of but the the one kind of the basis of how I'm looking at a lot of truth, if I can find my Bible. How many know that Ezekiel's third Ezekiel 37 with the valley of the bones, right? You guys familiar with that at all? Uh Ezekiel 37. I just I really like it. Uh and it's just talking about uh 37, right? 37. No, that's Jeremiah. Let's get to Ezekiel. That would help. Just the valley of the bride bones. He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, he sent me down the middle of the valley, and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the service of the valley, and they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord, you know. Again he said, Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God of these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin, put breath in you that you may come alive, and you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I command, as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and bones came together bone on bone, and I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, flesh grew, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, breathe on these slain, they may come to life. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life, and they stood on their feet an exceeding great army. And I always I'm always talking about the two parts of that, and it's kind of the structure, and then what happens inside the structure. And that's we can say that for the church. There's, you know, there's we can get we can have structure in the church, programs, you know, and then but once we build that, then is there gonna be life inside of that? Is there gonna be life inside the structure? And I think that's the same with family. You know, we can we can have I I was I'm thinking about my own thing. We can have structure in the family, but the really the real issue is do we have breath? Do we have the life in the family? And we always have the this the struct we can have lots of structure and no life at all. We can be going through the the wheels can be turned, just like in Ezekiel. The bones come together, there's lots of noise, you know, and it's like church people are coming in and out of the doors, you know. But the real issue, once that happens, once we get the structure and the parking lot attendants are there and everything, then there's is there life? Is there like actually is is God's presence come? Is there that that that kind of that intangible sense of reality? And the family is just like that. We we can have the the structure of family. We could have, and there are some components to help create that. There's there's like scaffolding, there's there's components to help create that, and then God wants to breathe life into that family. So I want to kind of just talk a little bit about my family and kind of how I wandered into this. I mean, we have eight kids, if we can show everybody my eight children again, if we want to do that. There they are. There's the lineup, you know. And my kids are, you know, all serving the Lord. I mean, they're doing crazy things. They're all over, I kind of sad, they're all over the U.S., South Carolina, North Carolina, New Jersey, Minneapolis, Spokane. That's not too far apart, I guess. That's only four or five places. And uh, but there, they all have a heart for God, and they're running after the Lord, and they're I I say they're their sharp arrows and they're finding their target. And but one of the things early on we uh you know we we realized is that that part of having kids is is about a like a values transfer, is really what we're trying to do. It's like we're trying to transfer values. It isn't like we're trying to just give them facts about sexuality. I mean, we can do that, but we really want them to value. We want to we want to transfer values. And the way values are transferred to children is we you have you get their heart, you kind of you you have their heart. I mean, God gives most kids when they're born into a family, mom and dad are their heroes. I mean, they're you can't fail, mom and dad. It's just like, wow, bigger than life. Dad is everything, mom is everything. And it's you, you, you have their heart and you keep their heart. And part of this is, you know, at some point sometimes you might lose their heart. And then you have to do whatever it takes to get their heart back. I mean, that's I'm just saying that because you kind of assess that and you think, okay, uh, we're having trouble, there's some struggle going on right now. You know, the question is, did you lose their heart somewhere? You know, do you have their heart? Do you have the child's heart? And I think that's just a quote, it's like an assessment question. I was talking to Nick, and I say, you know, we can sometimes we want to reach the world for Christ. We need to reach ourselves for Christ before we try to reach the world for Christ. And sometimes we want to have our kids get squared away, but we need to reach ourselves for Christ so then our kids can have some models and examples. The greatest form of learning is modeling, and like I was kind of joking with Nick too, again, or one of the brothers, I saying, you know, my you know, uh dads think we're gonna teach our kids to drive when they turn 15 and a half, they get a permit, we're gonna teach them to drive then. They don't realize they've been teaching them to drive since they were eight years old because they rode with them everywhere they went. My wife says, You've been teaching our kids to drive already. I go, Oh, I have. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, you know, because they've watched all my kids drive just like I do. They're kind of like passive, aggressive, uh defensive, but I call it defensive, let's see, defensive anticipatory drivers. That's what my kids are. They're just that's a careful way to say they change lanes a lot, and they don't get behind the bus. You know, they go around the bus. So that's that's how I am. But my girls drive that way too. But they've been watching because I've been modeling. A lot of a lot of times when we think about raising kids and parents, you know, it's I'm again I'm talking about just general principles of connecting with your kids because it's value transfer about sexuality, it's one place of value transfer. It isn't just the sexual the nuts and bolts of sexuality. You can use so many different tools and they're they're on the market, but if that relational dynamic of creating a value transfer paradigm with your kids, where you've won their heart, you're keeping their heart, you're building their heart, you're speaking into their heart, if that's happening, then you can transfer lots of things to them. And sexuality is one of those. Now that sounds like, well, why did I come to this then? But I just want to I want to emphasize that so much because this is this is where it started with us. We we've got the eight kids, and we homeschooled them. And uh one of the things early on that you see in, and this numbered a bunch of different things, so I'm just gonna try to go through them, but one of the things that uh you see in a lot of the a lot of the revival literature is this thing, it's this it's this thing called the family altar. And in today in the modern kind of Christian world, we've lost that a little bit because we have we get good youth groups and good youth leaders, and we kind of hand our kids off to them and they're gonna do a great job with them. Or we have really great young child curriculum, and we're gonna bring them to church and we're gonna hand it off to them. And that that role of parents sort of having interaction with the kids on that spiritual level, kind of from the beginning on up, where there's kind of a family altar, that's been sort of lost to the church. And man, I don't know what it was. I we just stumbled across stuff when I was a young parent, and I'm so grateful. I just I just heard about it once. It piqued my interest. I began to pursue it. Um, I think it was a guy, Bill Gothard, talked about the you know, the family altar or something, you know. And you know, I understand there's been accusations against him, and you know, but you don't want to throw the baby out with a bath weather. There's there's different leaders who have done things and had some revelations from God and they came under attack. Maybe they failed, but that doesn't mean I'm never gonna follow or do anything that he suggested. So we began to have, we began to create uh both a family id, we wanted to create a family identity. We began to talk about what values, what do we want to have, what what do you want our what do we want the Anderson name to represent? And our kids are gonna be part of that. What we're we're raising a family. This is an adventure. Like we were we were crazy, we had a couple of kids, and then we just jumped off the cliff and we just said, okay, here we go. We're just gonna see how many kids the Lord gives us. That's what we did. I mean, we literally decided to jump off the cliff together, kind of the adventure, you know, and we didn't know what was gonna happen, and then we thought, well, gee, we could teach our kids at home. That was just a this choice we made. So I'm not I'm not saying that that's that's the gospel. I think the issue is for us, we wanted to begin to give our values to our kids. We wanted to give our values, so we we began to create uh uh an identity, a family identity, and one of the tools we use was uh what we call the family altar, where we began to spend time together and and talking and praying and creating a little just a family time together. That what this is something we do as a family. And when the kids are the kids, they don't know any, they don't know any different. They just their kids are kids. You just start doing that and you make it special and you focus on it, and it becomes something really important to them. It it becomes something that you do as a family. It's a family value, and you just you just do it. And I remember, I mean, I remember the argument. We when we started this, some of our kids are a little bit older. And you just think, he, I mean, hell, just I mean, we would leave my wife and argue. I mean, the day we were gonna do this, we're arguing, we're you know, or the I mean the kids are doing crazy things, you know. We start out and it's a disaster, that we we the kids seem bored, they seem, you know, it's just like this is not gonna work. But we just we just stuck with it and we had some components in this in this time of family uh this family time. And we tried to have the kids help give input, but we always had some time in scripture. We always had some time where we play some worship music, you know. We had some time where we would pray together, and it was just we wanted to break the firewall between the the churches where we do spiritual things, and then we're Christians, of course, but we just and then the rest of the time we never at home at home we never did anything like that. And because we wanted to have an integration between church and uh outside the home and home. We we wanted to all it we wanted to have a seamless integration so there wasn't just this firewall, and it put some responsibility on me as a dad. That was the other thing that began to challenge me, and it wasn't like I needed to prepare for hours and hours, but I just I just I had to begin to give my heart to, and then we did that as a team, and we would talk about it, and we just because we wanted to impart something. I remember this comes out of Deuteronomy. Let's look at Deuteronomy 4. These are key scriptures, you've heard them before. It's part of this principle of the teach, what I call the teachable moment, and Jesus was the master at the teachable moment. I mean, you see him walking and encountering people, and he didn't treat any two people the same way. You know, it's kind of you you you'd see him uh just interacting with people, but it talks about training our kids, Deuteronomy 4. And uh it's the the Hebrew parallelogram way of saying all the time is what really what it boils down. Four, nine, and ten. Let's see if I got this right. Um I got a new Bible. It says Deuteronomy 4, only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently that you will do not forget the things which your eyes have seen, and you do not depart from your heart all the days of your life, but make them known to your sons and grandsons. So there's the command to do that. Okay, four, nine, and ten. Let me get that. In six, six through nine. Let me see that. I know you've heard these before. These words which I command you to you shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons, and talk of them when you sit down in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up, you'll bind them a sign on your hand, and they shall be, it's frontlows on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorports of your house and your gates. So this symbolic now that we're writing them on our forehead, on our hands, on our doorposts, you know, that the word is in us and on us and in our spirit, and we teach them when we sit down, when we rise up, when we go out, and we come back. So, in other words, all the time we're ready, we're kind of operating with a teachable moment, and that's that's really with kids, kids in sexuality. I mean, it's like I remember giving baths, you know, and one of my kids is extra curious and inquisitive, and he's very he notices the girls are missing some things that he has. So it comes up, and it's kind of like, and it is like this is a teachable moment. And you gotta take a deep breath and say, very matter-of-factly, this is what, you know, it's it's like this isn't a weird thing. Very matter-of-fact, it's like a teachable moment. If they say and they point and they ask, then you say, Oh, it's just, it's not, this isn't shameful. This isn't like, oh my gosh, you said that word, or oh, you know, you just say that boys have this and girls have this, and this is what the girls are called, and this is what the boys is called, and God did this, God made this very special, and you might ask some cautions about it, it might open a door to talk about it, talk about you know, private parts. You just you it's the teachable moment, and you begin to enter into the teachable moment as sometimes the kids will set that agenda, other times we introduce that, you know. One of the things that we were very careful about is having our kids go, you know, and spend overnight time with people, and that sounds horrible, but with the amount of things that go on, and we we don't know what's happening. We you could have the nicest family in the world, but they have their neighbor boy that's coming over for a sleepover, and you don't know. And so it's called diligence, and it's called, and and we're trying to find that sweet spot between being realistic about what the culture is doing in terms of that sexual spirit, but not being suspicious and judgmental of every single person. But we also have to be very alert and very careful, and we have to be very intentional in terms of kind of governing the atmosphere in our children's life. I don't think, I don't know if any of my girls stayed overnight with anybody ever, you know. And you think, well, not even the cousins. No, not even the cousins, because it was it was just a little different household. There was all boys and one girl at the cousins, and there's hockey players and neighbors and baseball players over there all the time. I just thought, you know, they can stay, they can have fun, and we'll be happy to sacrifice and drive and get them. And, you know, if the cousins think we hate them, you know, I mean, I'm thinking uh that's not the point. I am not gonna sacrifice my children or create have a moment where something can happen to them, just so my cousin the cousins will like us and we'll have to talk it through. You know, I mean the real question then would be their level of government in their own home. And that would, you know, that may create friends or that may create enemies, but sometimes it's easier just to say it's not gonna work out. And that's what we did. We we we were very careful about that. Um, in creating this family time, you know, we we started it at dinner, you know, this kind of bite, we we call it a Bible time is one of the things we did, and we would start memorizing scriptures, and I remember I would be uh sitting down to dinner sometimes, and like like or listen to me to a teachable moment, teachable moment, I'd be fasting, you know, and so I'm sitting, I'll sit down, and I'm you know, I'm fasting and I'm not eating, you know, dinner, and so I'm sitting down, and Lisa's made this really nice dinner. And my girls, I got about seven and five-year-old, you know, and then I got the other little ones at that time, and maybe three or four or five. And I'm I'm fasting, and so mom, mom has made dinner, and I'm sitting down, and the girls are looking at me, and I have this glass of juice in front of me, and they're just they're kind of incredulous. They go, Dad, don't you like mom's dinner? And I go, Well, and I I didn't know, and I I began to try to explain what fasting was to my daughters. And just try to, and I began to talk about Jonah, and I tried to, I just, and I learned more about fasting and more about I got more revelation going very slowly trying to explain that to my kids than I would have doing a Hebrew and Greek study on all these passages. It was like I saw as I had the opportunity to try to open up the word to my children and let it come into me in a way and and it describe like, well, how do you describe a nation that's in trouble? You talk about God spanking a nation. And then I begin to understand God's judgment more for myself for our own nation. Things began to happen with me that would never have happened as I had the opportunity to connect with them. It's almost like, God, did you do this on purpose so that I would grow and learn in some ways that I would never have learned by trying to explain things to them? You're trying to explain Jonah to keep, you're trying to try to explain Nineveh and God's enemies, you're trying to explain the judgment of God, you're trying to explain fasting and prayer and putting sackcloth on the animals and what kind of noise would the kids be making after three days of no water. And, you know, it's like, wow, that you there's this, there's the kids we're shocked. And so I got so much revelation on that. And but it created created a connection. We would memorize scripture at the dinner table, we would repeat, you know, we would say, okay, who wants to do the verse? You know, I'd read it and they would repeat, and we would just one after another, we'd just pick a psalm, we would just go through it, kind of routine, and man, the kids would love it. They would love doing. Something like that. It was amazing how much they loved it. You know, Psalm, you know, you know, 20 is it 20 said, My The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my of my life. Whom shall I be afraid? You know, when my adversaries, my enemies, my you know, it and they just so who wants to do it? You know, and so the older one always does it first, and they repeat it. The little ones, okay, your turn now. Who wants to try? And we would just lead them through it, and they began to take this stuff into their spirit, and it was so cool, man. It this came from to me when I was like a young single man, and I had an Indian family, a missionary family, living with me. And they had a two and a four-year-old. And so I uh I was kind of this single guy with a couple other roommates, and this, you know, the Vargeese family, George and Maliwaraghese from Kerala, India, and they these little boys would stand up and start rey reciting the Proverbs, the Proverbs of Israel, to know wisdom and to gain instruction and training and righteousness. They would just rattle off this whole chapter of Proverbs, chapter one. I thought, oh my gosh, that is they didn't know how to read. And I thought they were putting something into their spirit, and they began, I thought, I thought, I'm gonna do that when I have kids, I'm gonna, we're gonna do that. So we ended up doing about 15 different chapters in Psalms, and the kids could stand up and read them off before they knew how to read, and it's kind of in their spirit, but we just began to create that, and that became part of our family, um, our transferable values family atmosphere. So it's a family identity and creating a values transfer environment. One of the things early on, um let me mention this, and I I've got a handout for you. One of the most powerful things I also stumbled onto as a young dad, I mentioned it to the men, uh, is these the the mom and dad have a huge opportunity to imprint something into the life of their children and or form identity. And so much of sexuality is identity, where you are literally, it says God spoke, he said, let there be light, and then you know it says, and there was light. So we literally can speak purity and character and courage into the heart of our children. I I believe this. I believe we can literally prophesy and create things in them by speaking to them. And I can and we talk about these three, the three A's that moms and dads do, the three A's, the affirmation or words, the affection or nonsexual touch, and the attention or time. And what this does is it creates that bridge from the heart. Creating a bridge from the heart. I remember I was, I'll come back to this in a minute, but I remember I was downstairs studying. Um Russia had just opened up to us, and we were starting to go to Russia. We've been there 35 times now, but early on, I'm like, I'm gonna preach in Russian. I'm gonna learn how to preach in Russian. I'm so excited, man. I'm down there doing, I'm down there Saturday afternoon, you know, doing my memory cards. I'm studying, you know, I'm working full time, and so this is my and I'm and the Lord kind of said, What are you doing? I go, I'm learning Russia, I'm gonna preach in Russian. He goes, put those stupid cards down and get upstairs and go play catch with your son right now. It's like God rebuked me. He corrected me. He goes, I'll take care of Russia. You take care of what you can take care of, I'll take care of Russia. But it was like a reset for me because I had I had seen more value in my own spiritual growth than turning my heart toward my children. Malachi 4, the spirit of Elijah. I will I will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the children to their fathers, so I don't come and smite the land with a curse. We have this curse of fatherless on the land, fatherlessness, father's presence, but still children that are orphan-spirited, because that dad has not turned his heart toward his kids. And that team of mom and dad have not said, we're gonna live for you. And so that was the day. I mean, those those those Russian vocab cards are still down on my shelf, down in my office. They've been untouched for I don't know how many years. My son was maybe six or seven, he's 30 now. They've been sitting there for 24 years untouched. And I got to go to Russia 35 times, and I don't preach in Russian. I know a few words, but you know, God's taking care of Russia. And you know what? And my son isn't resentful because God stole his father from him. You know, if I wrote this down, if a dad or mom, you know, loves God and loves their kids, there's a really good chance the kids will love God. If a dad or mom loves things and loves their kids, the kids will love things. If a if a mom or dad love God but ignore their kids, her kids are gonna resent God. There's gonna be like and and what child can say to a mom or dad, will you please not serve the Lord so much? And what Christian wife might I might I add, say to her husband, honey, will you please not serve the Lord so much? You know, without feeling like a second class or a third class citizen. We have to have lots of discussions and be very careful to under, you know, and this is where we want to talk and have conversations because the this is you know that that's this is a story of the wife that says after five years, I'm done. It's me or the ministry, you know. I'm I'm through. Because there wasn't that that that and and and same with the kids, you know, we have to discern the spirit of our kids. I'm an archer. Oh, almost time for questions. 15 more seconds. I'm an archer, and there's this thing about the arrows. And Psalm 127 says, as arrows are in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. It's very interesting because there's a thing on a on an arrow called a spine weight, and it's and it's it's it's how much pressure or how many pounds of force the arrow can take and still do its job, be shot straight. And if you take too much, too much weight, like you have a 50-pound bow and you're shooting a 30-pound arrow, it literally under kind of electronic uh photography, you know that you know I'm talking about the arrow, the arrow does this really weird thing where it just you know literally doesn't go straight. It it the force literally drives it away from the target. And and and a harsh spirit, a harsh spirit in a child, or an improper not discerning the temperament in the spirit of a child, not winning their heart and understanding them, discerning every different child. Some are really strong-willed, they need that force, or they won't penetrate and fulfill their destiny. Others need very sense, you eat so it's every child is different. People would ask me, like, you just like, man, well, how'd you live? You know, you just 15 minutes every day line up. No, I would dig a well of love in my house and fill it with water, and we would all swim in the well of love. And occasionally my wife would say, I think so-and-so needs special time with you. I didn't schedule an hour with every kid every day, eight hours a day, man. I would have gone crazy. I I I dug a well of love in our house, and we all swam in it together. And it was it was kind of that atmosphere of the home that we created. We created an atmosphere in the home of spirituality. We had to be intentional and uh I think that's the other thing is too. It's it isn't about homeschool or public school or Christian school, it's about the level of intentionality and how much we're gonna, are we really understanding what's going on? Are we there to listen? Are we there to interact? Are we making sure we're there at those divine moments when kids are coming home going and they're gonna talk about the day? Because things are gonna come up, and that's the moment, that's the intentionality we've got to work for. We we don't we don't want to condemn, you know, it's we're not gonna create that because I think I've seen parents really understand the spirit of their kid. They've prayed and they are in public school and they're doing that, but there's a level of intentionality where there's relationship, they've won their heart, they've kept their heart, there's interaction going on, they're seeing influences in their kids' lives, they're talking about it with them, making choices as they assess that and monitor that. Same with Christian school, same with homeschool. So it's really about intentionality in the parent. So I I don't know if I stirred anything up or disappointed everybody with Nick's introduction this morning. I thought, man, I'm gonna solve everybody's problems in like 45 minutes. This is gonna be really awesome. I I hope I'm gonna listen to myself. Uh so let's let's do some questions. Let's be frank. Uh just try to pepper these, hit these questions just because we really want to try to help. My my heart is just I really want to help if you have something. I really, I really do want to. Yes. Yeah, Bible time was not while we ate. We could we would talk about stuff at the dinner table. We would have dinner con dinner conversations. It was kind of odd. My one daughter, Bethany, sometimes the kids say, Dad. One of the things my wife had to really warn me about is is like the dinner table wasn't my pulpit. Because dad is this, you know, dad's gonna preach, and I'm getting, and and my wife just said, Hey, this is the time for all of us to interact, okay? You know, it's like, and she would just, because I'm gonna, you know, and then and some of my girls say, Dad, can we just do we have to talk about these kind of things? Because I'm talking about sex and somebody else just fell, and you know, this is happening, and you know, and and some of my kids say, Can we just have like a normal dinner tonight, Dad? You know, and it's kind of a joke, but that was that's what they got with living with me. You know, it's like, man. And um, but what we used to do, we would we would do the Bible time, or uh, or we get done with dinner, and then we'd go, I'd go and be the faithful dad, you know, like Lisa would work all, make a beautiful meal. We do do a little something, and I'd go wrestle with them in the living room, you know, and Lisa would spend an hour cleaning everything up. And one day she looked at me with tears in her eye and said, Could I get a little help in the kitchen? And I said, This is a team cleanup. It it God birthed in me team cleanup. So from that time, we we created team cleanup where everybody, at the end of dinner, everybody would do just kind of everybody would do team cleanup. And I wouldn't leave to go be dad and play and wrestle. We would do team cleanup first, and uh that was we instituted that, and so mom could be part of have a life, really, you know, because she worked so hard. And so we we instituted team cleanup. It trained my sons, it trained my daughters to expect that kind of thing in their future. We created that, it became part of our family culture, team cleanup, teachable moment. We serve mom, we lay our life down for her. This is what and we would teach right at the table, we would sit there and do before we did clean team cleanup, we might do our verses and we're still talking and and we're repeating them, and uh that's kind of that was kind of our format. Other times we would just have a family night where we, you know, the Mormons have something to teach us. I'm serious. I think one one time I heard somebody teach about cults saying this, that every cult has an aspect of true biblical kingdom of God reality that we we can rip off from them in in, you know, the Jehovah's Witness man, they they have a they have an aggressive, you know, now their motivation, we understand it, but they're out there, you know, reaching out. You know, they um the the Mormons have a you know take care of our own and this family thing, you know, and we need to rip those back off. They're really right out of the Bible, you know. I mean, like, wait a minute, you know, we got the real Jesus, and let's take some of those tools. Let's don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because they're weird, they're the cult that does this, so we don't do it, we won't have anything left to do. We'll have nothing to do. Because every one of those is emphasizing something that we should be emphasizing. And uh so I think that was short enough. Is that I mean, yeah, it it or the family night, we would do that, and then we would we would institute uh prayer, you know. Does anybody and sometimes we would just share? Do we want to worship tonight? Do we want to just share reports on our week? How's our week going? You know, how how are you doing? Start doing that kind of age appropriate, and giving them a chance to share, and then who wants prayer for anything? And we would literally, and when you have the kids lay hands on each other and we would pray for them, and we just do real Christianity. We we we do this at home, but we do this at church, we do this at home. No firewall between church and home. And uh, I know we had a good, we had a great family, and but I know who raised my kids. It was me and my wife and the church. That's who raised my kids. Hillary said it takes a village. The Lord always knew that it would take the church, God's family. And every couple, every adult friend of ours, every young adult college student that served in the maybe the high school youth team, every one of them had an impact on my children. So it wasn't like me, I can raise kids on my own. I don't need the church. Man, I'm very dependent on the church. It's the vibration of the body of Christ, plus our diligence, I believe, equates and helps us create the sons and daughters of the kingdom of God that we want to see birthed through our lives. And man, am I grateful for just the body of Christ. I mean, my kids are there, they're being taught by them, they're being served by them. There's some spiritual aunts and uncles and grandpas, and uh it's it's we need each other to do this, you know, and we really help each other raise our kids. And that's literally what we did for our lives. So yes, yes. Yeah, jump really deep in. Because I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not getting everything. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about sexual desire, lust, you know, uh boys waking up, you know, with an erection, you know. I mean, all this kind of stuff is part of it too, but that comes up again with a natural discussion. You just begin to you begin to talk about, but you talk about it because you've established a p a this paradigm of value transfer where you have their heart, you've won their heart, and we've been talking about this stuff, so it's it kind of incrementally evolves. It it just keeps evolving. Like my son now is 19, and we've been talking about this. I took him on some trips, and we talked about, we had some talks about you know, men and women and bodies, and the word I mentioned a minute ago there, and then women in their body parts and and uh reproduction and how that worked. But we we we started talking about his life, and we we began to kind of walk in a in a covenant. He, you know, as he got a phone and stuff, and we're monitoring that. And but a lot of what I I inculcated to him was this this these original design declarations of a young man. And and this was a way, this is something, because what do you do when kids are doing something wrong, and you say, you shouldn't be doing that, you know, you shouldn't be like, what do you what do you it's like I wanted a way to create a positive identity statement about them and what they sh what they God wants them to be without super amount of criticism about how they're not living up to that. So when I said you were designed by God to do what's right instead of what's easy, it was telling him what he is, calling him up to that standard, and giving a picture of what he could be. And so I began to talk, we begin to talk about sexuality as a as a young man. We talked about the man of honor, we talked about what you do in terms of your sexual desire and what lust is, and and we talked about his sisters a lot, and and what what you know what kind of man would he want to be caring for his sisters? What what how would he what is he seen with me? How what have you seen me do with your mother? You know, and we were really plain talking about what would you want for them and how a woman is designed, how a woman isn't designed for just sexual experience. We began to talk about this design of a woman that we've written on this thing also about a woman was designed for safety, security, permanence, and commitment. You were designed by God to be loved for who you are as a person, not what you can give a man sexually. Those are the core, and those run completely counter to the culture. I mean, those are values, and that and and even the stuff in the culture can be teachable moments. You know, the billboard with a lady with hardly any clothes on is like, what's that saying about a woman's value? You know, we can kind of like we're gonna have to be cultural commentators. We're gonna have to make, we're gonna have to poke back at the culture, and and we're gonna have to be students of it ourselves. And it's not gonna be osmosis, it's gonna take some work. We're not just gonna be able to do this without reading some of the books. You know, you hear some stuff, you think I need to hear more about that. You know, that's why I wrote that book. I filled it up. There's like a hundred sermons in there, and there's language in there, and there are values in there, and there's a philosophy. It's it's it's a it's another kind of philosophy to be added to all the other great books. But we should probably, as parents, if you have a burden for your children to be reading a book on sexuality, about sexuality, almost all the time, just to just to get one paragraph, to get one chapter, to get one sentence, or to say, Man, I love this whole thing. Invest and read. And because it isn't going to come by osmosis. We you get what you preach, you are an expert at what you've practiced, and we have to give ourselves to it. I mean, this is this is what we have to do. It won't come otherwise, and I think we have to be willing to give ourselves to it. And we were uh so James and I we we got this thing where we made this kind of pack where he'll just text me, you know, like the lust spirits coming after me today, dad. I'll call him right away wherever I'm at, and we'll just pray together, you know, we'll start praying together, and and uh I'll re you know, do some verses with him, and I'll I'll check back with him. And I'm I'm right when we're walking through this together, you know. We're we're we're in this together. I'm fighting. I've I fasted for my sons for 20 years, Thursdays. I told them every day, I said, I'm I'm I'm fighting for your soul. I'm running interference against the spirit of darkness for you. They'd see me. They'd see me not eat breakfast, they see me not eat lunch. A few years later, God said, Jim, I want I want you to begin to, because remember it said Job that he's he made an altar for his children in case they would have sinned, you know. And but God just said to me, I want you to do some extra prayer and fasting to run interference for all your children for all their lives. So I'm trying to do it monthly, but just another like three days. And I'm just I'm talking to the dads here for a minute, because dads, part of this is us getting in and fighting the fight. And fasting is a way to reduce a sexual appetite. We reduce our natural appetite and then it becomes transferable to the sexual appetite. You know, and the way God wanted to train us to have that spirit of lust not be as strong is he gave us the opportunity to deny another appetite regularly through fasting and drawing near to the Lord. I went on a long fast one time, like you know, 21 days, and and I remember when I got done, I was talking to my wife, and I go, honey, you know, you I we I love your cooking, don't get me wrong now, but food is overrated, you know. It's just like I don't need it even. I mean, it's like it's overrated, it lost its grip on me. And I go, honey, let me tell you something else. You know, I like it when people like my preaching, but you know what? That praise is overrated. I can't live for that. I can't live for the the audience clapping. And I said, honey, now please listen to me. And I love our times together of intimacy, but you know what? Even sex is overrated sometimes. It's like some people just live for this, that's all they pursue at this moment. We kind of look at each other sometimes and man, that's all they have. They live for this. It's overrated. And fasting will help put those secondary realities in the right place. Start slow, guys. If you've never done get a lunch and just, you know, if you're working with, well, I want to be a witness with the guys, you can be a witness four days a week with the guys and have one day where you go off with God in your truck, in your cubicle, out walking along the river. You find a little shady spot, get your word out and say, God, I'm crying out to you. Will you hear my cry? And begin to build and just say, you begin to deny that appetite, and God will make it transferable. He'll transfer transfer it right into that sexual area of your life. That that appetite reduction is transferable. I've seen it. And I think so many leaders in America they're trying to fight this, so many men trying to fight this spirit without all the tools that God's given us. And one of them, I believe, with all my heart is that spirit of fasting. So another question. And they're gonna go, Dad, thank you for that revelation. Now, were these original design things or right? Okay, and let me just say six years old, okay, and the question is sixteen. Yeah, um that's a little different, you know. I see some of us have to kind of reset and say, Lord, how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna begin to, if if it's new, um find up enter their world, find a pathway, building bridges. Like I said this about my parenting is I've I've been building bridges with baseballs so that the burden of the Lord can walk across that bridge at the appropriate time. I have to discern the capacity of my children for spiritual truth. And they have different capacities based on their own hunger or how we've trained them or what we've exposed them to. Some of them don't have much capacity at all. And you know, sometimes they're just like that. They they don't hate God. We can push them to God because of our own low self-image, and we got to have spiritual kids that look good with our peers, and that'll that'll that will send them away from the target, won't it? That forcefulness will, like the arrow, send them away from the target. Or we can be appropriate about it. And and and I think it's winning their heart. The real issue with it, we're back to those three A's, affirmation, affection, attention. We begin to enter their world. We begin to communicate, and it isn't even so much, instead of telling them those things, maybe we just there's different ways we can affirm that daughter in her, that you love her, that you, you know, you you begin to move your heart toward her and and do things, say things. I had to do that a little bit with my daughter, and she kind of would she was kind of like pushing me away, you know. And I I believe a daughter doesn't know how to say, Dad, I need your attention. I don't, I don't think it's a rare daughter that is gonna be able to say that and feel like kind of like a wife. Wife wants men to be mind readers, you know, like, you know, because it's not it's special unless he just figures it out on his own. And if she has to say it, it's like, oh, it's a disaster, then it's not really genuine. Well, I I'm not a mind reader. Well, well, guess what? A daughter is just a daughter who's gonna be a wife of some man. She's already operating like that all the time. And so we've gotta we've gotta believe God for a way to into her heart. How do we find a way into her heart? Is it flowers? Is it taking her to coffee? Is it is it listening to what she loves? I mean, I love horses, I like riding. We're gonna go do this for you. I wanna, I wanna begin to, and you know, even starting with repentance. I mean, uh, for years I've never told you how I felt about you. I feel so, I can't believe I just wouldn't didn't break the sound barrier, you know, and you sat silent. I and maybe it's writing a letter to her saying how you feel. Maybe you're not, maybe it's hard. It's like with that flesh is right in front of you, you know. Then write them down and say, honey, I I I want to read something I wrote the other morning. I was thinking about you, and it doesn't have to be like everything you've ever thought positive about her all at once, and you have nothing left to say for three months. You can just do a little bit at a time, you know. But the the scripture is in Esther on this Mordecai, it says in Esther, I don't know what chapter it is, and I don't have my Bible. It's uh 211, I think. And it says every day Mordecai went to the harem to see how Esther was and how she fared. Every single day he was moving toward her, inquiring about her. That's symbolic of the heart of a daughter designed to be loved and valued. And this is our movement toward daughters. Young adult women all the time, they're apologizing. They look at me like, I just feel so bad, but I just want someone to like pay attention to me. I want my dad. It's like women are designed for a movement toward them. How do we know this? Because the church is a woman. And what does God, the Father, do? He's he has his mercies that are new every morning, and he speaks to us how he feels about us, and his word is speaking to us, and he affirms us and he blesses, he tells us how special we are. I mean, he wants to commune with us every day. Well, how much more? A daughter that, you know, and that and even daughter with a feminist movement, you know, it's like this word that is it it implies dependence, it implies relationship, it implies some sense of assistance might be needed. And there's a lot of rejection of that. And that's one of the most beautiful identities a woman can have. It does not mean a daughter, my daughters are capable wives, gifted and intelligent, and I protect them, and I bless them and speak into their life. It's not an either-or, it's a both and. And we can have capable wives, gifted, intelligent women, and who are gifted with treasure to heal a broken earth, but we fuel, we fuel them with our words and our non-sexual touch and our time. I think that's so important. The reason daughters need protection and that input is the nature of the battle and the hatred of darkness for them. They have been, they are peculiarly vulnerable because the power of darkness has targeted them with this demonic assault against their identity and with the hopes that they will take on a sexual identity because of the empty hearts. And if the enemy can get our daughters to take that sexual identity on, man, it will be the pathway to the destruction of their dreams and their hopes. Nothing but a heartache for them. They can be restored from that. Some of you have older daughters. One of the greatest phone calls you could ever make to an older daughter is to call and say, I've been thinking of you a lot. And even if it's just kind of a so-so relationship, a letter saying, you know what, uh, will you forgive me for not telling you how I felt all these years? You know, I mean, something where you're in humility reaching out, trying to trying to create that bridge to her heart. And we've we've seen reconciliations and new kind of starting new, you know, a a relationship that gets to start anew, you know, and that's what restoration is so cool. God can do that. So was there another question?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

I think there was so the question is about soft heart, hard heart.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

I'm not sure exactly what the setting is, like a daughter that maybe's got the soft moments and kind of hard moments, and it's probably those other influences, you know, peers, you know, and I I think we've had a little bit of that, you know. Um I don't know if I even have an answer. I think it's just that that's where prayer and that's where discernment and I think sometimes just addressing it, say, you know, I mean, you you we have to parent. I think one of the greatest challenges of parents is we want to be their friend before we're their parents. And we don't want to we don't want to risk that rejection. We already deal with rejection ourselves and we want our kids to like us, and so we end up not parenting, we end up losing them as a parent and as a friend for the rest of their life. Rather than I'm gonna take the risk, I'm gonna parent them with a hope that I will parent them and that they at the right time will be our friends for the rest of our life. But you we've got to be their parents first before we're their friends, and that means sometimes we confront them. Sometimes we display it's that tough love, it's that it's and especially in these areas of sexuality and relationship, you know, we uh we we we create the dialogue, but sometimes we have to sit down and talk to them, talk to them about their attitudes or something we might see in their behavior, or you know, question some of the friendships. I mean, we we we sometimes we have some young people who are their friends, and they're they're very wounded young people who are their friends, and we it's very obvious, and we without you know gossip or anything, we just say it's apparent, you know, that you know, boys are really, really important, you know, to this what your friend and begin to introduce that, talk about that. And uh, you know, it's just it's it's it's the teachable moment, it's having the discussions, it's taking time, creating an atmosphere in your home. We turn the TV off, we change some things, you know. We just we just had to change some things to create an atmosphere that would help us transfer values and create kind of a family identity. And uh, and we talk with others, we kind of huddle with other people and coach, and wouldn't it be great if our some of our fellowship was around, you know, what's working, what isn't, you know, with the men, what's working in loving our wives and loving our children, and what's not working, you know, and comparing notes and encouraging each other and and sharing, like man, I I did, you know, I did this with my daughter, and man, it just really helped, or you know, sharing and bearing each other's burdens in this area. You know, a lot of there's a danger sometimes when our kids start not doing well, and it's so painful. And we watch some parents, they they begin to question, is it even worth it, you know, even thinking generationally. I just want to go find a church that doesn't talk about young people. I'm there's so much pain. And I just say, listen, don't don't do that. These young people you see in this church, they're the future best friends of your soon-to-be-restored son or daughter. I mean, think about it that way. Don't let you seeing young people on fire for God hurt you. Let it be a hope and a promise that your son or daughter can be restored. And that's that's our message, you know, is that they're the future best friends of your soon-to-be-restored son or daughter. Let that be a hope for you, and let that be a uh something that that uh don't don't harden your heart when you see that through pain. And uh, and where you say, I'm I just I'm just gonna find a unigenerational church where it's just me and God, and you know, I think we never talk about family, we never talk about the kids, we never talk about it's just you know, and I think that's I I think sometimes that that is because of so much pain. Some of the joy of the kingdom of God is building together. Is the God of Abraham, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He he kind of referred to himself that way for a reason, like three generations together serving God. There's something about that, you know, but we can do it through love and laying our life down and serving not a heavy hand in this based on our own insecurity that we've got to have our kids looking really sharp so we have spiritual status among our friends. That's gotta get flushed down the toilet, and we've got to just be able to care and bear one another's burdens in this process. Yeah. We um I was the principal. I I had taught third grade for two years, so I under I I had a little we had a little advantage that way. Um we uh we were at the eclectic, we took a lot of different things and we put them together, and um we were just trying to be positive, and we we did it pretty short, you know, because a lot of education, when at least elementary, is about organization. And so really with us, the amount of one-on-one time that my wife would spend in with each of the kids when they were ready, you could get so much done. You get so much, you get 10 minutes like multiple times a week is more than a kid would get, you know, in two weeks at a regular school. I mean, so it wasn't about doing it from eight to five and feeling like I really did the job because it was eight to five. I put all my hours in or eight to three. We just we we we planned lessons out all through the year, kind of through the the chapters, how many pages she'd look at the pages about how far we needed to come get along, and and when we got that done, we were done. And then we did some other creative things. We did field trips, we'd go places, we would uh just try to do enrichment kind of things. And early on, there were the homeschool co-ops where other families were doing things, and and uh and we just kind of wandered into it again. You know, we didn't we didn't even know what we were doing, but we were on an adventure with the Lord, and we were really grateful. We by homeschooling, one of the things that happened, we felt like we became the primary place where they were receiving values from us rather than their peers. I think that's the difference. I think in elementary school, you're not gonna get too much, you know, uh whatever you would call maybe a liberal or non-biblical kind of uh content, you know. Uh certainly there's the environmental theme, you know, we went from pink erasers to green erasers, you know. I don't know when that happened, but you know, it's kind of like here it comes, you know, they're gonna come and get our kids, you know. But uh when the green eras when the green erasers showed up, I thought it's starting, you know, it's starting. But uh but too there's not too much of that can happen. It's it's knocking on the door now, really big time. I mean, you need to fasten your seat belts, folks, because if uh the LBGT laws get passed and they begin to criminalize thinking or even speech or value, you know, then and then with a you know, we're gonna create citizens that have tolerance and think the right way, to teach a child that God says this is a wrong lifestyle, even though they're loved, is gonna be, you know, punishable by removal of children. I mean, this is where we're headed. I'm not trying to scare anybody, but this is where we're headed if things don't go right. And so I think we have to be really ready, you know, to uh we gotta be on the alert, and uh that's why I was joking about moving to Texas, you know. I mean, I'm I don't know where we're gonna go, but uh there's some things I've decided in in my own life. If things turn this way or that way, I I think I've read too much history, and I'm gonna, you know, and that's what that's where our country started. I mean, they left England, they went to Holland, and they left Holland because their children were being influenced by the Dutch young people. And they were losing their salvation and their purity and their they said, we're gonna take another risk now and go to find a place where we can worship God. And uh so I think that's that may be in the in the works for us, and we're believing God, you know, you're gonna move through your church, you're gonna the leaven of your church is gonna affect the nation. Our prayers, we're gonna, we're gonna see some change. We're gonna we believe that this this the great awakening of young young people is gonna happen where they're so tired of sin. We're starting to see that. You know, that picture on the book cover is a picture of a young woman who is so tired of what she's had to live. She's doing things she didn't want to do, she's become someone she didn't want to be. And and you can only go into so many parties and so many get-togethers and get dragged into a room and do sexual things with somebody weekend after weekend after weekend until you think, is this my life? And they come into an atmosphere where God's presence is and the worship of the Lord is, and suddenly they're awakened to what they were made for. And I think we the devil's theology, if the little is good, more is better. He's not patient. Patience is a fruit of the spirit, so he just piles it on. And I think it makes a whole generation ripe for God's spirit to move. I think we're just on that edge. I just believe that. The kind of young people starting to come into the church, and their level of brokenness is so profound. You know, YWAM is just, you know, they're going crazy trying to figure out because they can't get them healed fast enough to send them on a mission trip. The four-month window doesn't work anymore. The leaders are going, we can't do this. They're they're too broken. We can ignore their sexual brokenness and just send them out. But we don't know if that's healthy. And so the wineskin is changing, and they're we're they're having to address things like that because of the level of what's that they've experienced in the culture. So I want to help you so bad. I well, and I'm I believe, you know, I'm uh maybe on the controversial one. I just believe it's part of that psychosexual uh suffering and self-denial. And I uh I really believe that uh because Jesus defines, you know, that he that's committed adultery when but anyone that thinks a woman that way is lusted already in his heart. And there's so much uh projection and kind of fantasy, imagination, imagery in in that act, and usually, you know, directed at woman and you know, imagining a woman, or you know, even with the pornography scene, it's pretty hard to think you can participate in that with a pure heart, you know, without without a lustful spirit towards someone. So I I'm an abstinence guy. I believe there can be victory over that area. We talk to guys about it a lot. Um, I believe God, you know, part of the release, you know, of dreams and what we call wet dreams is part of God's way of kind of uh reducing the intensity of that in terms of the body. I mean, it seems to be a natural way without the guilt of that, without the self-initiation or the self-stimulation, you know, and and and and just I think just talking about it and saying, you know, that that we're we're to be men of honor and this is a sacred part of who we are. Uh and uh you know begin to say this is we don't live for a feeling. That that you know, the ultimate end of that is is living for a feeling, you know, that that becomes our focus, you know that and uh that that becomes something we live for. And I think I think the psychosexual part of man and suffering is part of manhood. That we uh train our son. We they're in husband training because because they're gonna need to have self-control all their life. The fantasy that I'm gonna get married and have free lunch, you know, is it's a fantasy because we need self-control more after we're married than before sometimes. I mean I mean, we're right there, one minute it's right there, right in front of us. And the next minute something goes wrong. You know, we get in an argument with our wife, and then we're really mad. I mean, every young man from newlywed to 40, 50 years old, has screamed into his pillow in anger and thrown his sandals into the couch, you know, some nights. Because it was there one minute and it disappears in front of us the next. And and it's just, and you know, and in uh, you know, the three levels of sexuality is the fireworks night where no one knows where it comes from. You can have an argument in the morning and have fireworks at night. It's like, where did this come from? And then there's the go-ahead honey night, you know, which is don't pout, take what's offered to you and don't pout, but I'm not there. And then we're both tired night, you know, and then so it's kind of like there's the range of marital sexual experience, you know. And literally we don't know where the fireworks night come from. We really don't, you know, and so I think talking about some of those things, you know, with sons, about who they are, what's this for, you know, and kind of that that living for a feeling, and I think we begin to train ourselves. You know, I believe the Hebrews get this. The Hebrew men were on ice two weeks out of every month based on the laws of purity during their wife's cycle and the week after. That means their whole married life, two weeks out of every month, there was no sexuality for the Hebrew men, period. None. And that's after they made a covenant to their wife. It's a revelation of a daughter's heart. She needed to be affirmed even after covenant that the reason he wanted to marry her because of who she was as a person. And that interaction during that time and that tenderness and that communication and that that valuing of her reaffirmed that to her. Plus, it trained him not to live for a feeling. It trained him to understand that I don't need, I don't live that. It's a privilege, but it's always under this self-control. And I think, what a weird thing you did, Lord. Why would you do that to the Hebrew man? You know what? No, it's it's it's really part of God's reality. And we're the ones that want to have one long drab sexual experience, you know, our whole life. Rather than two week honeymoons, you know, like the Hebrews do. Orthodox Jews have the highest level of sexual satisfaction because of the two week honeymoon. And you know, just that how we're designed, you know. And uh it's something to think about. I'm not advocating, you know, um all the men go, you know. I'm saying this more out of philosophical, you know. Uh you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I think we just talk about it with them, you know, and use the M word, you know, say it out loud. My son just texted me that he's he had struggled with a lost spirit and he fell. I'm I'm texting him back, saying, look at a righteous man falls seven times and rises again. You know, you get back up on your feet and you worship God. He goes, I'm worshiping God right now. And I go, that's good. I'm proud of you. I'm so proud of you for being honest, for being transparent with me, for contacting me. I believe in you. You're a great leader, you're an example. You know, the enemy. I said, Let's learn from this. He's down selling textbooks down at WSU, Washington State University, for a Christian guy who buys textbooks, but he entered into that atmosphere of the university system. I go, are you learning something? You went into an atmosphere of all this, man, and so it intensified. So you you you okay, let's do the math, let's connect the dots, let's begin to understand atmospheres and what's going on. And that's part of his maturity as a 19-year-old. And we're talking about it. And uh I'm very proud of James. I don't um, you know, we're gonna we're gonna get we're gonna walk this out our our life together. And he's texting me, and we're in it, we're in it together.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:42

So, I think um I I I you know, I am on I'm kind of on the m female end of the male spectrum, I have to admit.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:18

There my wife is on the male end of the female spectrum. So I'm going to the movies and I'm crying at the movie, and she's walking out going, like, oh my gosh, you know, like, you know, and I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm the weep, you know, I'm the weeping prophet. I'm the Jeremiah. She's the administrator. She's administrative, she could run the world, she ran our family instead, uh, in terms of organization. Uh so my temperament is like that. I'm probably uh either I'm a melancholy or I'm kind of a sanguine, it's just you know, talk obviously I talk a mile a minute and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and long answers to short questions. And but I just begin to understand I I can create something in my children. I just, I just, I guess I wanted to do what never happened to me. I just said I'm gonna do what never happened to me. My kids are gonna know what I think about them and how I care about them. I'm gonna let me let me just read what I I gotta just do this. Hope I can get it quick here. Uh help me, Lord. You're gonna help me now, Lord. Here we go. Come on, Lord. Okay, now I gotta find it. Okay, I gotta find it. I gotta find it. It's a really good thing I'm gonna read to you, okay? It's really worth it. It doesn't really answer the question, it just kind of shows you that I'm a softie. Uh I just think, you know, the this the spirit of affirmation, it's just like what does God say to us? He he over and over tells us how he feels about us. And I just I believe we need to be able to do that with our kids and bless them and find them doing something right and affirm them. One of the love languages is words of affirmation. And you know, that and that's just uh again, uh whether that's you think that's biblical or not, but man, the Lord gives us words of affirmation and he he tells us how he what he thinks about us and who we are, and it's an amazing uh the word of God to us. I might be in I might be doing team failure here if I don't get this off. Okay, just a couple more, and I'm gonna give up. Lord, please let this come. Here it is, right here. So Maggie's leaving to go help with a church plant. And I kind of we got in a little, I missed her and I she left, and I was I got a little bit angry with Maggie. I I just said, Maggie, I'm sorry I got angry with you before I left. It's kind of I was very wrong to be angry with you, or rather to take out on you some of my anger on you because other things I was dealing with. Let me just say this about parenting. One of the greatest things you can do is repent to your children when there's been anger. Any kind of anger, any friction between you and mom, or any movement, sideways anger. When you're mad at mom and so you get mad at the kids, that's called sideways anger. Father's sideways anger is you're mad at your wife, so you're mad at the kids. It's it's weird. It just it's called sideways anger. It's real. But the greatest thing you can do is repent. The greatest thing you can do is repent both to your spouse, if it's her, and then all the kids for dishonoring her and just recovering their honor and respect. To be angry and say nothing and be angry and say nothing and begin to create this wall of the father who don't get near dad, he's like a porcupine, is gonna invalidate everything I'm saying. It cuts off that bridge from heart to heart, that bridge you're building through all those other things and gets destroyed in a moment of time. And I think the greatest thing we can do besides our words of affirmation, our non-sexual touch and our attention is that when we're wrong, that we go to them in a spirit of repentance. And do that freshly. And the joy of being wrong, I call it that, the joy of being wrong, the privilege of being wrong, to be affirm that we're a sinner and that we need God, you know, and just get used to it. Do it. Look your wife right in the face, you know, the joy of being wrong. I mean, just suck it up and be wrong. And the honor will come to you. Voluntary honor will come to you. Or you can demand, you know, you can be the boss and demand an involuntary honor will come to you that doesn't satisfy your heart as a man. Because we were only designed for voluntary honor, never involuntary honor. So anyway, I was uh, Maggie, I'm I it was wrong to be angry with you because of those things. I want to ask you to forgive me. I had a very difficult day, and I think I'm dealing with you thinking about you being gone. She's gonna go to New York and help start this church plant. She's 22 years old, leaving my home. So it's kind of stupid and wrong for me to have treated you that way. Why would I treat the person I'm going to miss in a way that is like that? It's kind of the opposite of what I should be doing. I should be telling you that I love you and that I'm proud of you, and that I think about you all the time. That when I'm when I'm gone, it's suffering for me because of missing my family. That when I come home, one of the best parts is seeing you again. I should be telling you I'm going to miss you, that I'm going to miss playing tennis and bike rides and going for drives and seeing you beat everyone in basketball, and that I'm going to miss your piano where I can sit in the dark and touch the heart of God while you're playing. That I'm going to miss you, miss walking into your room and seeing beautiful artwork and flowers bursting with watercolors. I'm going to miss your contagious enthusiasm and joy. I'm going to miss your passion to improve things and find the best way for things to operate. That I'm going to miss that angelic voice that worships God in the valleys and gives hope to valley dwellers that sit in darkness. That I'm going to miss that gang of girls gathered by that deep shepherding heart in you, the junior high girls that meet at our house every week. I'm going to miss you springing into action to find whatever I've lost, and that I probably will never drive anywhere ever again once you're gone, because I'll lose my car keys and I will never be able to find them again. I'll miss looking at you and calling you MJ or Margie or Mag's or MJ's company or Margaret, but mostly just my Maggie. My Maggie loan to me from heaven. Then you'll go and I'll realize that I'm not going to lose anything or lose you. I realize I'm just giving you back to God to serve his purposes, and that you were just on loan to me from heaven, and that really I didn't lose any of these beautiful and precious and powerful and world-changing parts of you, but rather I just get to share them with the broken and the lonely that Jesus died for. Thanks for forgiving me, honey. You always do. Now, I know every father in here has something, stuff like that in his heart for his kids. Everyone differently said, said said in the style of who you are. And you're their hero already. So for you to etch out some things or write some things, if you need to read them or say them, you look at them and you prophesy identity into them. And you create a bridge. If that daughter is designed to be loved like that, and you start doing that, it it'll create a pathway for her to come to you to receive that. She's made for that. She needs that. She's designed. A woman who fears the Lord shall be praised. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. The sexual power to attract is all. But the woman who fears the Lord shall be praised. And there's that movement. And we begin to honor and praise her. And oh man, I wish I could take every little daughter on the earth and just remind them how special they are. That's something in my heart that wants to do that because I know they are that way. And I know the Heavenly Father feels that way about them. I I had to practice, I had to learn, I think. I knew that if I didn't do it, it would begin to create an empty heart in them. And I didn't want to create a vulnerability in them. I wanted them to, I wanted to fill their heart as much as I could with with my blessing and praises and my my words and my non-sexual touch. We we created this thing about touch called it like an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So we coined this corny thing called a hug a day keeps the bad boys away. And uh that sounds like all the boys are bad, but you know, it keeps the bad boys. I mean the good guys can be around still, but you know, but it was corny, you know. And I remember Molly was 13. I tried to get her to give me a hug, and she would give me a fish hug and just kind of hang her arms. I go, Molly, that's not a hug. You know what? I'm putting you in hug training if you don't start giving your dad hugs. And I made it kind of corny. And I'd run over to the window and look out, so I go, Molly, they're out there. The bad boys are circling the house right now. They're out there in the car, circling the house right now, and she's doing the junior hug kind of oh dad. You know, she's just you know, I'd look out the window, I'd say, get over it for your hug right now, hug training. I made a game out of it, but she needed that. I needed to figure out some way to get her to embrace me. So I did all that crazy stuff, and she would give me fish, and then she'd I then I'd finally get her to give me a hug, and then I could feel something shift in her. I mean, she would she would receive that from me. And then I'd run over to the window and look out and go, They're gone. They're gone. It works every time. They're gone. And it's so stupid, it's so corny, it's so ridiculous. If if there's a bent of you like that, be corny and ridiculous. Push past those barriers that say, I don't want you. They don't know how to say, Dad, I don't know how to ask for you to tell me that you're that I'm important to you. They don't know how to do it any more than a wife. So we've got to practice with our wives and then extend it to our daughters. It's the same with sons. And it's not so much, but for sons, it's the magic words, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. Every son on the earth, every every son on the earth is waiting for those words from their dad. And that is, I believe with all my heart, why there's so many alcoholics and so many workaholics they're looking for the elusive blessing from their father that never came to them. And so now it's their peers' chance to say, Wow, you do that so good. Your golf swing, your investing, the woman chasing, your car collection, I don't care what it is. Wow, you do it so good. And it's kind of like hoping to fill that, you know, and but only the father's really blessing can create that identity, and then we we get healed from that. He's a father to the fatherless. All of us, in some sense, are fatherless. We've had unperfect dads. There's some parts of us that still need that healing, and God wants to give us that so we can then give that to our kids. And the the glory of God is that our kids are gonna grow up differently than we did. We're gonna improve on what we had. We believe that God, that's how it works. And uh, you know, that's that's that's the glory of God. You know, we we we need the Lord to do what we're we're doing. We need it. I always say to men, you're here, and man, I I'm not here to say you don't love your children. I'm just saying they just they just really want to hear it. If you can do anything, break the sound barrier. Do it once, do it again. Have your wife be a teen and say, have you have you spoken those words to to the kids today? Or you go in and just find them doing something right and speak it again. Sometimes you need to do it just based on what they are, not so much what they're doing. It's it's kind of a careful line because you'll create kind of a performance in them. You know, it's kind of like if it's only for praise, if it's only for straight A's, you know, it's I don't know if you've seen some of the students from Japan that come for for and the the level of performance and fear and almost at times like a neurotic, just like, you know, it's just like there's so much pressure on them, and and you know, the family culture there, you know, really and not like boy, we the Anglo family culture, the Hispanic family culture, black family culture, America needs a lot of help, I'm telling you, but but you know, we we see the utter blind spots, but certainly there we see that family culture with the work and the jobs and and man, it's intense. We've had little girls leave our church, you know, after two weeks on a on a home stay, hanging onto the legs of the home dad they had for two weeks, and they're just sobbing and weeping because they're gonna get on a plane and go back to a culture where they're not, they're never gonna hear those words of blessing or being in that atmosphere again. And they just it's almost like they're just and they're just we have to literally peel them off the legs of the house dad and put them on that airplane, and they're just sobbing because it's they'd never have experienced that or touched that before. And I believe that's what the church is to do. I mean, Esther was a an orphan daughter that came into the church. And I believe God wants to raise up Mordecai moms, I call them Mordecai moms and dads, the spirit of Mordecai in the church, to father and mother, the orphan sons and daughters that are going to come into the church through the moving of God's spirit, and that we're gonna be able to fold them in and begin to father and mother them and bless them. We start practicing one of our own kids, man. We start affirming some other people, man. I want to I want to tell Jackson what I see in his spirit as a father and a young man and a strong man and a zealous man. I want to I want to bless him. I want to bless, you know, Matt and his being a principal. I want to I want to bless him. I want to I want to speak blessing to as many people as I can to remind them how awesome they are and how proud the Heavenly Father must be of who they are. You know, I mean that's my job as a dad. That's not really the highest glory I can have. Preaching a sermon, that's like that's cool. But man, if I can bless some sons and daughters and encourage them and remind them. You know, that's that's to me, that's there's a great joy in that. I want to be remembered as a dad instead of a preacher. I guess that's why Paul said there's many teachers, but not very many fathers. So let's get rid of all the professional ministers, fill up the church full of moms and dads, and go get the world for Christ with our kids right with us. You know, let's do it together. So more questions, or I don't know. I know we're way over time. I know we're way over time.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

Well, more questions will be here for a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:14

For what? For single parents. Yeah, and yeah. Yeah. There's single parents from death is very different than divorce because sometimes that that interrupts, and there's often a a a positive memory of that parent who is deceased. So it isn't there isn't the same kind of pain or sense of loss. There's a sense of loss, but there's this image, a remember a remembrance, a positive imprint. So that is different for children that you know that that mom or dad that is gone. There's, you know, with the divorce, you know, that setting, a single parent, it's uh it's it's really challenging. And I I think I think this is where you have to have God vindicate you, you know. I mean, a lot of times there's acrimony, there's a lot of words, there's the huge temptation to turn the heart of the children against that parent, you know. I mean, just out of our own hurt. And I think before the Lord, if if there's you can find a place of forgiveness, and as hard as it would be, is to speak well of that ex-spouse, that you would find the things that are positive about them and be the one to speak blessing. The kids are gonna get older and they're gonna understand someday. And they're gonna see that you didn't poison and lie and manipulate their heart and try to turn their heart against. And if if if as they grow up, they'll mature. And sometimes it might take some years where there's hurt and rejection, and there's that war going on, you're being poisoned and and having character black, you know, character assassination being done against you, but you hold steady. And I believe, I believe that in in God hears that cry. I believe He can He can do some restoration and reconnect, you know. I think He can do that. Um, because they're gonna see that you know, Dad never said one thing about mom. And they they grow up and start seeing mom as you know, maybe there's brokenness, maybe she's involved with drugs or alcohol boyfriends, or just it's just you know, characteristics, who knows what it is, you know, whether it's some lifestyle kind of things. And they just the kids are pretty sensitive, they connect the dots, they see what's going on, you know, you wait it out, and you'll have a relationship with them, you know. Maybe in later years. I think if there's pretty much some harmony, then you just have to own your own. I think the second thing is to own your own as much as you can, own where you failed. And that's kind of age appropriate. You know, you get older and you say, I need to tell you some things about how I failed your mom. You do that when they're starting, you get older, and they understand. When they're little, they don't understand. You say, I love, you know, I love you. I want to spend time with you, and we're gonna do things together, I'm gonna sacrifice. It's a huge sacrifice financially and time-wise. There's a lot of pain. But to spend that time to try to to keep you know a connection with them and spend time doing things together, you know. I mean, my heart aches, you know. I mean, I but I think we can do that and and believe for miracles, you know, believe for God to keep their heart open and and make plans, you know, to to seek permit. Can we can I bring them, you know, if it's appropriate to to the church? You know, maybe the other spouse is not, you know, doing that. And on your time, do you have permission to bring them to Sunday school and have them be part of the life of the church? And And then you've got some other people helping influence them. You know, it's like maybe the Lord's going to do something out of this after all. It doesn't have to be all. And then you're seeking, you're seeking encouragement from your brothers, you know, in the church. You know, you're not walking through this alone, some of the pain you're sharing. And so it's just not all you. You know, I mean, it's you need to be surrounded. You know, you are not intended to walk through what you're walking through by yourself. And God wants to put a team around you, either a restoration team. We we have people separated, even divorced, where we put a restoration team around somebody, and these are people that pray and will fast and believe God, because that spouse has said, you know, I just believe something can shift, and I'm still. We get a restoration team around them and begin to pray. And some days that person's leading the charge, they're so full of faith. Other days they can't get out of bed. It's like I'm like hopelessly depressed. But they're carrying, they're carrying that person. The pastor knows, but they they can't, the the staff can't carry everything. Restoration team is some faithful people who are not gossips, who are who are gonna surround you, you know, to a couple couples, some singles, some grandmas, you know, three, four, five, seven people that know what's going on. You you give them email update, you know, we keep it very personal, but you know, that you're just not alone in this. And they're and they're walking with you. And we've seen like miracle restorations. I had a guy that was a part of our worship team at one of our churches, and he just went crazy. He just left his wife and moved to Michigan from Washington and was gone for a year and a half, and his kids and we got a restoration team around that wife and the kids, and the kids were in church, and and you know, all of a sudden, after a year and a half, he calls up like two weeks before Christmas and says, Can I come home? And we had been working with her heart, you know, just that she said, Yeah, I I've been praying and I I I I I've been seeking God, and he said, If I if you call, my heart is already, I've been practicing forgiveness, and I'm I'm gonna forgive you, and we're gonna build our marriage again. And he was there for Christmas, and they were restored, and the boys had their parents together after a year and a half, and that happened every time, no. But you know, there's that possible restoration, and then there's the possible or just the continuation. But you know, I think it's just relationship with the kids and doing what you can. And uh and I think the body, I think the body is just part of that, you know. You're not meant to be alone in that. And it's important. I think, you know, when there are single, you know, more uh more intact families, what a great opportunity for us to in the body include, include them, you know, like do you want to come over? We're doing a barbecue, do you want to come over? You want to be with us, you know, we're doing something. It's not just intact family with intact family, and that's easy, but we we we we uh uh consciously um deliberately include, we're aware, and we're included. And that and you make that need known. I I I need this, I need this, I need to be invited, I need to be part. And uh you're sharing that with leaders, and they were creating an atmosphere in the church for that kind of uh that kind of inclusion, you know, because that loneliness, you know, that that diminishes, see that that sexual part, you know, that there's there's there's needs being met on that relational level that diminishes that loneliness that could lead someone to do some more, to do some things that are gonna be unwise. And you get in, you know, here we're in trouble, get in trouble again. You don't need that. We need to we need to surround each other and be connected. And I think that's part of our part of that. So can you kind of get my a kind of a way of thinking instead of like here are the three things, just do these three things. You know, I I'm trying to get it so you're just thinking, kind of a thinking, a way of thinking. Yeah, a revelation, a way of thinking, and and then take tools to put inside that and resources and so is there uh some more? Um I know it's gotta be like way past six o'clock. I mean like way past six o'clock. I'm a hyper I'm hyperactive, man. I am uh I'm in on I am on the female end of the male spectrum. And uh yeah, yeah. I uh I just honor you for coming out. I know men, you guys are tired, and I uh I know when we have a if we get a way of thinking, it releases us into some kind of it's a new freedom, you know, of relating to the Lord and taking taking truth and letting it kind of fit into that that's that kind of that that scaffolding, that structure, you know, that God's given us to operate in. Kind of he he kind of paradigms us. And I I know some of the men began to hear about the daughter's heart for the first time, and not the first time, but you know, just brought it so it kind of shifted their thinking. You know, it's like I'm it's shifting my thinking. And it was so exciting for me to hear that. I was I was thrilled because of just a sense of that beginning, you know, some of that having, you know, and you know, increasing, it's already begun, but increasing and growing. So just want to pray that over you. And Lord, we we thank you for families, and we thank you for the need to train our kids. That is really a gift to us. Help us to be strong and grow in you, Lord. Thank you that you never intended the church to raise our kids, but you it was to be us and the church together to see our kids come up into maturity. Lord, I pray for the Deuteronomy 4, the teachable moment when we rise up and we sit down, we go out and we come in, that we are to diligently train our kids. And that means all the time. I mean, you know, that's that's 24-7, you know, it's the teachable moment, Lord. And I pray every parent here would have discernment for those teachable moments, and it would be uh easy for them to just begin to speak into that moment. I pray for courage for parents to be parents first and friends second and be willing to risk even rejection. I pray for moms and dads to have to break the sound barrier and that there they would speak words of affect of affirmation. There would be the non-sexual touch of affirmation, of affection, and there'd be the the time and heart focus of the attention of mom and dad. I pray that that this there would be a new level of movement toward the kids. I pray for the sound barrier to be broken for especially for the dads. And Lord, I pray they would hear that what I'm saying tonight is that you don't care about your kids, but what they hear, they hear what I really meant to say is I know you care about your kids. They're just waiting to hear it from you. And and so, Lord, I pray for ways that can happen. I pray for spontaneous ways. I pray for moments in the morning where they write notes or write letters that they read letter or send the card. I just pray for lots of different ways for those messages to be transmitted to the heart of sons and daughters. Lord, I pray for places where the heart of the son or daughter has been lost. Somehow there's been a disconnect. There's some anger or frustration or rebellion. And Lord, I pray that you would speak to mom and dad and a blueprint from heaven would come on how they can win the heart of their son and daughter back. And Lord, I pray for courage when some of that is actually going and asking forgiveness and righting wrongs and repenting to their children. In other cases, I pray for courage to confront behaviors that are just rebellion. And the missed moments in the past of discipline now are more difficult because of maybe some years, and that they would be willing to risk and confront and correct. Lord, I pray for a spirit of unconditional love and then appropriate discipline. I pray for discipline, Lord, to come quickly and efficiently and to be finished and ended so that unconditional love can begin again. Just so that so that the baseline is constant, unconditional love with interrupted moments of discipline and then back to unconditional love. That there wouldn't be no discipline and simmering frustration against the kids because of lack of discipline. Lord, I pray you'd give courage and structure to mom and dad to do that. Lord, we pray for a revelation of identity in terms of sexuality for young men and young women, and that you would take what's been said and other things, and I ask for you to birth vocabulary and a way of thinking. And I just pray for these design declarations too, Lord, that they would find their way into declaring uh kind of identity and roles for sons and identity and understanding of the of the beautiful nature of what you've created in a woman's heart, Lord. That daughters would understand, begin to understand this and see who they are. And we pray for that identity to be so strong, Lord. We that that that identity, that that that setting identity in sons and daughters, Lord, would be linked to this, their own sexuality, but their roles, their identity. And uh we'd see sons and daughters raised up. Raised, Lord, in the church. Lord, we we know that uh we talked about the Babylon spirit this morning, and we just thank you that it's it's been defeated, that you are greater than he that's in the world, that there is a sexual spirit, but you are able to, and you have destroyed the spirit of Babylon, that Babylon has fallen, and that your grace and your mercy and your cross and your blood and the sword of the spirit are mighty against that sexual spirit. And we thank you for that. And thank you that we can give that to our sons and daughters, and thank you that your mercies come, Lord, to watch us that a righteous man and a righteous woman fall seven times, but they rise again. And Lord, let us rise every time, no matter how great our failure, let us say to you that you're you're worth getting up for You're worth getting up for, Lord. We're gonna get up. We're not gonna look at our sin and stay down and condemned and ashamed. We're gonna, every time we're gonna rise up and say to you that you're worth getting up for. So we say that tonight, Lord, we're gonna rise up again. That's what my son's doing today, this very day. He's rising up and saying to you, you're worth getting up for, Lord. I'm living my life for you. I'm gonna get up and serve you with all my heart. Thank you for this church, thank you for this city, thank you for this state, thank you for our nation, Lord. I pray blessing upon it. I pray blessing on the leaders, the moms, the dads, the families, Lord. Thank you so much. In your name, amen.