Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 184 | Fatherhood Insights from Job 1

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Ep. 184 | Fatherhood Insights from Job 1 · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I think one of the job of the parents too, of parents is to like, kind of like receive words for your kids and like ask, seek the Lord for a vision for them on their behalf.
• 0:15
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:36
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we love to tease out different verses, passages that seem to have implications or applications for fatherhood. One of them is in Job chapter 1. There's tons and tons of things to apply from the book of Job to children. But there's something that says at the very, very beginning of the book that I always found interesting. And it says in Job 1, 4, and 5, His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
• 1:06
  And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them. And he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continually."
• 1:26
  So first of all, how cool is it that all of his siblings were going to each other's houses constantly to have parties? I don't know. Job's family was pretty epic. I couldn't understand why this was really a hard thing for him to lose. But I love what Job does here. You know, it's an interesting decision to say, you know, these appear to be adult children, and he was interceding for each one of them because he saw that the biggest problem—
• 1:53
  that his children were going to have in their life was whether or not God engages them directly. And so he did not want to see a rift develop between God and any one of his children. And so individually, he would go through and offer burnt offerings for each of his children after these different feasts that they were enjoying. And so it's really cool to have an intercession strategy. So maybe yours isn't going to involve...
• 2:17
  burning animals. But I want to give you guys three quick examples of different ways that I have developed intercessory strategies for my kids. And so I had a season where I did what I think of as the card method. This was a book I read about prayer a while back, and a man just had a card for each of his children. I did this for a couple of years, put their name on the top,
• 2:37
  And then as I prayed for them, I would add things to the card and just pray through the card. And as I got more and more full, I would just pray and intercede for those things I felt like the Holy Spirit was inspiring me to do. That was a super awesome season for interceding for each of my kids. Then there's the passage method, which is where you actually find oftentimes a prayer in the Bible, and you really assign that prayer to each one of your children, maybe a different prayer for each one of your kids. If you listen to the podcast I did with my dad, you're going to
• 3:07
  It really ends with my dad praying the prayer over me from Colossians that he'd been praying my entire life, which just happened also to be the prayer that my wife was also praying for her future husband. That's cool. I got a double dose while I was growing up of that.
• 3:22
  this prayer from Colossians, which is awesome. And then the verse right after that is actually when I was a teenager. I didn't even know this was happening, but it became kind of my life verse. A whole other story there if you want to listen to that podcast. The third one, the one I'm using today that I really am enjoying...
• 3:38
  is that I just call it the rotation method. So every single morning when I pray, I have different things I pray for on a daily basis. But what I do is I put one of my kids' names down in my journal, and I just listen. And so I pray over each of them. I write some things down.
• 3:54
  And so I just, today is all about, you know, this one child. So today I'm going to pray for Kyra. And so I'm just thinking about Kyra during my prayer time, just going deep. And then I just do it in age order. So like I go back and then after Kyra goes Kelsey, Jackson, Sydney, Lisa, Kyra, you know, that's how I do it.
• 4:10
  And so I'm just constantly praying, and I can flip back in my journal, similar to the card method, and look at things I'm interceding. But you guys, our children have an enemy, and they have a relationship with God. And what it means to intercede is to stand in the gap against their enemy, and to stand in the gap before God. Job is such a powerful example of this, of course, because you see that God is there in a courtroom, and people are coming and saying various things. And our children need an advocate before the throne of God on their behalf.
• 4:36
  against their enemy and pleading for God's favor. And so I just take this responsibility of interceding very seriously. Samuel said about his relationship with Israel, he said, far be it from me that I would sin against the Lord by stopping, ceasing praying for you. And I think that it's like we cannot cease praying for our children, individually interceding for them before the throne of God, taking whatever...
• 5:01
  equity we have in our relationship with the Lord, and really constantly advocating on behalf of our children the way Jesus does for each one of us, interceding for us. And so I really encourage you guys to develop an intercessory strategy for your children. I think it's a really important part of being a dad. But yeah, Jeff, how have you thought through this one?
• 5:18
  Yeah, I mean, I'm very similar to what you just said, so I wouldn't add much more. I think the two things I think about is, yeah, I kind of see it as like two different prongs. So I try to, in the morning, I feel like I would almost call that the receiving prayer. I think one of the job of the parents too, of parents is to like, kind of like receive words for your kids and like ask, seek the Lord for a vision for them on their behalf. And so I feel like in the morning, it's less about me saying, I pray for this and this and this for them. Um...
• 5:45
  and more about just, Lord, what do you have for this child? And then it usually turns into, yeah, this is what I need to kind of change to be able to bless them or encourage them. Like, it's more of a, it feels more receiving. And then at night, I'll do more of the other one where I feel like at night over them, you know, and it's usually pretty quick and stuff, but I'll just, you know, pray for them and for who they are and the strength and all these different things in them. And so it's a little bit more of like for the need-based prayers. And I think that kind of
• 6:09
  two sides that were really helpful for a full story. So yeah, really huge. But I think you have to develop a strategy, like you said, and keep molding it and evolving and growing it. But as long as you're doing it, that really is the main thing.
• 6:21
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense. And about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.