Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 194 | Fatherhood Wisdom from Colossians

Transcript

Ep. 194 | Fatherhood Wisdom from Colossians · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  One of the things we always have to monitor is the power and influence of our voice in our kids' lives. 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.
• 0:30
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we love to look at specific verses in the Bible, and there are a couple of verses in the New Testament that directly tell fathers what we're to do or what we're not to do. There's a famous one in Ephesians 6 we've talked about before, but there's also one in Colossians 3.21. I want to read this to you guys because I think this is super practical. It says, It says,
• 0:54
  And I thought a lot about, okay, what does this really mean to, as fathers, obey this command? And what this command is saying, you guys, is that we are supposed to monitor personally the individual discouragement level of each of our children and make sure we don't push them past a certain point where they're like, oh, I can never please him, you know, and they just start to give up.
• 1:15
  And so we have to be connected enough with our kids' hearts to fulfill this command, to understand when they are feeling discouraged. And I know that there was a time recently where I really violated this command. I was in a situation with one of my kids. I corrected them in a really—
• 1:30
  really like dramatic way, I thought, oh, this will help them snap out of the situation. But two days later, when I was sort of checking on their heart, you know, they were really discouraged. And I was like, oh, I could tell I crossed the line. And again, the line wasn't necessarily in what I said. It was the way it was received. And the level of harshness was just
• 1:51
  it obviously pushed it beyond what was actually encouraging them to step up and began to really discourage. And so that's something we have to monitor. In that case, I had to like apologize, like really understand where exactly the line got crossed, you know, kind of back off of that particular line and make sure that in my discipline and my correction and my encouragement, that I'm not crossing these lines and discouraging my kids. And where a lot of dads, I think, struggle with this is when they
• 2:19
  when dads struggle with winning the battle and losing the war, right? They get in a situation where they're like, I'm not getting through, and so I'm gonna bring out the big guns, whatever that might mean in your family. And so you have to understand that there is a limit where you can't cross this line where your kids are really getting discouraged. And oftentimes the way that I can tell the difference is a day or two later, you check in with their heart, right? And if it's with really little kids, you need to do a lot sooner than a day or two later. Older kids, you can do it a day or two later.
• 2:48
  But see how they're feeling. Is there a distance between you and them? Are they more excited to obey and to follow these instructions, or are they less excited now because of whatever happened? Did they misinterpret what happened during the correction and became discouraged? And so one of the things we always have to monitor is the power of...
• 3:07
  and influence of our voice in our kids' lives. And this is what can really drain your voice of influence, is if your corrections or your interactions with your kids are creating discouragement. And this doesn't just happen with discipline. This could happen with little tiny comments. But just, you know—
• 3:22
  five negative comments for every one positive comment, your kid gets bummed out and they start to tune out your voice and they become discouraged. And so we have to be monitoring this level for each of our kids because we don't want to cross this line. Paul says, this is a really important line not to cross as fathers. But yeah, Jeff, what does that start for you?
• 3:41
  Yeah, I mean, I agree. I find it fascinating. It's kind of one of the only children commands in the entire New Testament, you know, and so and then I think because it's so heart centered. Yeah, I mean, I think when we're like I was telling you, we have little kids. I think we're always wrestling through what is that line because it's harder to communicate with them when they're five and three on this level. But you have to just ask the spirit for help, ask the spirit for kind of like his eyes and be thoughtful and be thinking. I think what I think of is.
• 4:03
  Just make sure you're doing the opposite, right? The opposite of discouragement is encouragement. Like, are you really just speaking life into your kids, right? And do they know that? I think one thing with our oldest, I'm always saying a lot is, hey, you know, especially in those moments that could maybe be a discouragement when I say, hey, I expect a lot of you because I believe in you and I know you have what it takes.
• 4:23
  I know you are gifted. I know you're strong and kind and I know you're a gentle kid. And so I think that's kind of like trying to soften those harder moments that can maybe be discouraging with encouragement. And then like you said, and then just making sure you're not like, I don't tend to, we don't tend to struggle with a ton of our family, but I know some personalities and I, you know, we have our own frailties, but just like the nitpickiness of like comments. Yeah, just be really careful with that. I've seen that like, you know, it tends to be a little bit more of like a type A parent, almost like a more like perfectionist parent. And you just like, you don't realize how much
• 4:53
  you're just like, kind of like nothing's ever good enough, you know? And I just think be really sensitive to that because that is a common problem. And we can do that too. We, all of us do that. But I think, yeah, just being mindful of that. So I would say that the best thing you can do fathers is mitigate against discouragement by actually making sure you're encouraging your kids in an active way.
• 5:14
  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 in 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.