Latest / Equipped for Impact / Rhythms That Last- Built to Last Part 3

Transcript

Rhythms That Last- Built to Last Part 3 · Equipped for Impact

• 0:00
  Luis: Most families listening right now made some kind of plan before the school year started.
• 0:05
  Luis: Oh, everybody makes a plan before the school year starts.
• 0:08
  Luis: Yep.
• 0:08
  Luis: We get back into our rhythms, right?
• 0:10
  Luis: So family devotions get going.
• 0:13
  Luis: Hopefully they've always been going, right?
• 0:14
  Luis: But it's sometimes it's easier when you're in a routine.
• 0:16
  Luis: Getting started back.
• 0:17
  Luis: Yep.
• 0:18
  Luis: We we decide we're going to eat dinner together.
• 0:21
  Luis: We make a plan to put our phones in the basket.
• 0:24
  Luis: We have real intentions that are good intentions.
• 0:27
  Nate: And then you ask them about those routines and intentions in November, and not much has happened, right?
• 0:35
  Luis: And that's what I'm getting at, right?
• 0:37
  Luis: Because I don't think anybody decides to quit, right?
• 0:40
  Luis: Nobody sits down and formally cancels family devotions.
• 0:44
  Nate: Aaron Powell You don't just call a family meeting and say, we're not doing devotions anymore.
• 0:47
  Nate: Hear ye, hear you.
• 0:48
  Nate: Yeah.
• 0:49
  Nate: That's not what happens.
• 0:50
  Nate: It's just it stops, right?
• 0:52
  Nate: There's a day where it doesn't happen, and then that turns into a week, and then it's just not a thing anymore.
• 0:58
  Luis: Aaron Ross Powell And I think most parents assume that that's a discipline problem.
• 1:02
  Nate: Trevor Burrus And I'd say it's almost never a discipline problem.
• 1:14
  Nate: Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation, to stand firm in their faith, and influence the world for Christ.
• 1:25
  Nate: We're your hosts.
• 1:26
  Nate: I'm Nate.
• 1:27
  Nate: And I'm Lewis.
• 1:28
  Nate: And we are glad you're here with us today, where we are in our final part of the series built for the long haul.
• 1:36
  Nate: We started talking off about marriage.
• 1:39
  Nate: And if you miss that one, that's a great one, right?
• 1:41
  Nate: Marriages, strong marriages, are the foundation to a strong family.
• 1:47
  Nate: Everything in the house sits on top of that relationally.
• 1:50
  Nate: And then we talked about you as parents with your children, and sometimes there's a handoff that happens.
• 1:55
  Nate: Nobody's deciding it.
• 1:57
  Nate: You just start outsourcing your child's discipleship to somebody else.
• 2:01
  Nate: And today we're closing out this series with some practical advice talking about rhythms.
• 2:08
  Luis: And let's be careful how we frame this, right?
• 2:10
  Luis: Because I think when people hear the word rhythm, their initial thought is that rappers and there's like a beat that you've got to hit the rhythm.
• 2:18
  Luis: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Luis: I didn't even think about that.
• 2:20
  Luis: Or the Simon Says game where you have the rhythm that you have to beat it, bop it, twist it, pull it.
• 2:25
  Luis: Remember that?
• 2:26
  Nate: That's not Simon Says.
• 2:27
  Nate: What's it called?
• 2:28
  Nate: Hold on.
• 2:29
  Nate: What is it?
• 2:29
  Nate: I don't know.
• 2:30
  Nate: I'm gonna look it up.
• 2:31
  Luis: Bop it.
• 2:32
  Luis: Bop it.
• 2:32
  Luis: There we go.
• 2:32
  Luis: Bop it.
• 2:33
  Luis: Yeah.
• 2:33
  Luis: We're not talking about that kind of rhythm.
• 2:35
  Luis: We gotta bring back that.
• 2:36
  Luis: That's a 90s toy that needs to come back.
• 2:38
  Luis: On our trip to camp this summer, somebody brought a Bopet.
• 2:41
  Luis: You had a Bopit?
• 2:42
  Luis: We were passing it around on the drive down to camp this summer, which is pretty cool.
• 2:45
  Luis: There we go.
• 2:46
  Luis: But that's not what we're talking about.
• 2:48
  Luis: We're talking about rappers, we're not talking about Can you name a rapper?
• 2:51
  Luis: Is Forrest Frank a rapper?
• 2:53
  Luis: I don't think Hansen's a rapper.
• 2:54
  Luis: Toby Mack?
• 2:55
  Luis: Nope.
• 2:55
  Nate: Okay.
• 2:56
  Nate: No, I can't.
• 2:56
  Nate: Sorry.
• 2:57
  Luis: All right.
• 2:57
  Luis: We're not talking about rappers.
• 2:58
  Luis: We're not talking about Bopets, right?
• 3:00
  Luis: But we're talking about and we're not even talking about schedules, right?
• 3:04
  Luis: We're not we're not we're not gonna talk about schedules because I think that's what people immediately jump to when they think about rhythms, right?
• 3:10
  Luis: Daily rhythms.
• 3:11
  Luis: Oh, you're going to give me a schedule.
• 3:13
  Nate: Yeah, and we're not doing any of that, right?
• 3:15
  Nate: Here's here's kind of where we're going with this l uh podcast today, is is your family already has rhythms.
• 3:22
  Nate: You've been running them for weeks, months, maybe even years.
• 3:25
  Nate: You've got a rhythm, and every household has a shape to its week, whether you've designed it or not.
• 3:32
  Nate: And so the question is, are you gonna pick your rhythms on purpose or are you gonna live in them by default?
• 3:39
  Luis: Well, that's really good.
• 3:40
  Luis: I feel like if we should have had a sound effect there, that something like would have come in at that point.
• 3:45
  Nate: Again, I'm not a professional audio editor, so we need to do that.
• 3:48
  Luis: We have to get our sound effects.
• 3:50
  Luis: We do need to sound effect.
• 3:51
  Nate: You know, they make like little like sound effect boards that you can plug in with our our recording permanent.
• 3:57
  Nate: So we need to do that.
• 3:58
  Luis: Our production team and the budget and get all of that figured out.
• 4:02
  Nate: I think we just talked to the production team.
• 4:03
  Nate: All right.
• 4:04
  Luis: Because it's it's you and me.
• 4:05
  Luis: And now when you talk to the budget people.
• 4:06
  Nate: Okay.
• 4:06
  Luis: I think that's also you.
• 4:07
  Nate: Is that also you and it's that's it.
• 4:08
  Nate: All right.
• 4:09
  Nate: The conversation just happened.
• 4:10
  Luis: So let's start here, right?
• 4:11
  Luis: Because I think most people want to skip straight to building something new, and that's usually a mistake.
• 4:18
  Luis: Nate, why is that a mistake?
• 4:19
  Nate: Well, because you can't add anything to a week you haven't looked at, you haven't audited, right?
• 4:25
  Nate: You've got to look at what your week actually looks like.
• 4:27
  Nate: Pull out your calendar, you know, l actually look at what it looks like.
• 4:31
  Nate: And most of us have never done that, right?
• 4:34
  Nate: We've got a kind of idea of what our week is like, and maybe you've got, you know, an aspiration of what you want your you assume your week is like.
• 4:42
  Nate: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Nate: But usually you're being generous with yourself, right?
• 4:46
  Luis: Yeah.
• 4:46
  Luis: And so what should they actually do?
• 4:48
  Nate: Well, uh, I think you should walk through a weekday, right?
• 4:51
  Nate: Not, you know, uh one that you think is perfect, right?
• 4:55
  Nate: Because that's a trap, right?
• 4:56
  Nate: And it turns into an ideal, which I think it's good.
• 4:58
  Nate: Like you need to have an ideal that you're kind of going towards, but no day is ideal.
• 5:04
  Nate: So just like take a random day of the week and just see what happens from the alarm going off in the morning until the time everybody's in bed and you're turning the lights off.
• 5:13
  Nate: Like, what was your day actually like?
• 5:16
  Nate: What are your normal rhythms?
• 5:17
  Luis: And here's what you need to do, right?
• 5:18
  Luis: You need to be honest about the gaps, right?
• 5:21
  Luis: Where did the time actually go between 6 30 and when you got in the car to come to school, right?
• 5:27
  Luis: Between getting home and dinner, between dinner and bedtime.
• 5:31
  Nate: And really that that is your curriculum.
• 5:34
  Nate: Like, we're we're in a school setting here, and so we talk a lot about the curriculum, and and curriculum's not textbooks, right?
• 5:41
  Nate: Curriculum is everything that goes on in the course of a school day because that's teaching something, right?
• 5:47
  Nate: And so in your home, what goes on on a normal day of the week, like that is what is teaching your kids, right?
• 5:55
  Nate: And it's not the plan you put in place, it's just what's actually happening to them.
• 6:00
  Nate: That's what's forming them.
• 6:01
  Luis: And here's one thing that I would encourage you to ask, right?
• 6:03
  Luis: During during that day that you're looking at, when was the moment when your kids were most likely to talk?
• 6:10
  Nate: That's a good one.
• 6:10
  Luis: Because every family has one, and a lot of parents, we haven't identified it.
• 6:14
  Luis: In some houses, it's the 10 minutes in the car, right?
• 6:17
  Luis: Between home and school.
• 6:19
  Luis: In some houses, it's at bedtime before, you know, while you're trying to put your kids to bed, and the kid suddenly becomes a philosopher at 9 40 at night, right?
• 6:28
  Luis: Yep.
• 6:28
  Nate: And that is that that's a big one, right?
• 6:31
  Nate: Especially if you've got teenagers.
• 6:32
  Nate: Yeah.
• 6:33
  Nate: I heard some some wisdom once where it was like, it doesn't matter what time it is, if your kid's ready, if your teenager's ready to talk, you need to listen.
• 6:42
  Nate: Absolutely.
• 6:42
  Nate: Because it's gonna change as they age.
• 6:44
  Nate: We talked about that last week, right?
• 6:46
  Nate: With parenting your child, the child you have in front of you, and don't like remember way back when your kid was a chatterbox and would tell you everything, what's your kid doing right now.
• 6:55
  Nate: That's good.
• 6:56
  Nate: And if they're ready to talk, you need to be ready to listen.
• 6:58
  Luis: And because like when you figure out where the opening is, you can protect that opening, right?
• 7:03
  Luis: If you don't, then you're gonna find yourself scheduling something right over it, and you're gonna start wondering why isn't my kid talking to me?
• 7:11
  Luis: Yeah, it's because you're never listening to it.
• 7:13
  Luis: So let's start with daily rhythms, right?
• 7:14
  Luis: Okay, daily rhythms.
• 7:16
  Luis: Let's go back to a verse that we've read multiple times.
• 7:19
  Luis: I think we could call it our theme verse.
• 7:21
  Luis: Our theme verse.
• 7:22
  Luis: Or passage.
• 7:22
  Luis: Theme passage.
• 7:23
  Luis: Our theme passage, right?
• 7:24
  Luis: Because I don't think that that we said everything about it.
• 7:27
  Luis: In Deuteronomy 6, right, it says when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
• 7:35
  Luis: And Nate mentioned earlier, right, that's not a curriculum.
• 7:38
  Luis: It's it's not a program.
• 7:39
  Luis: It it becomes a pace.
• 7:41
  Luis: Those are just the four ordinary movements of a day.
• 7:45
  Luis: Sitting, going, lying down, getting up.
• 7:48
  Luis: God is describing something that is woven into the day.
• 7:52
  Nate: Yeah.
• 7:52
  Nate: That's right.
• 7:53
  Nate: And and it's not you're adding something on top, right?
• 7:56
  Nate: I think that's genuinely freeing when you think of it that way because we've we've said this forever, right?
• 8:03
  Nate: You know, you're just you're just taking advantage of the moments God has put in front of you, right?
• 8:09
  Nate: You know, you you might hear a podcast even like this and think, oh, I need to add a family devotional into my already busy schedule, and then I'm a failure because I'm not doing this, and you've got that mom guilt of you're not doing enough.
• 8:21
  Nate: No, just take advantage of those daily rhythms and see where God opens the door for you to have conversations with your kids.
• 8:28
  Luis: And we're not here to guilt trip you, right?
• 8:29
  Luis: Like, like, like we're not trying to tell you if you're not doing a family devotion yet, that you're doing that you are doing something wrong or bad, right?
• 8:37
  Luis: We are for family devotion.
• 8:39
  Luis: Absolutely.
• 8:39
  Luis: You should be doing that.
• 8:40
  Luis: Absolutely.
• 8:41
  Luis: But I've also seen a lot of families kill themselves trying to run one that looks like a small group meeting.
• 8:46
  Nate: They'll even like call it family worship time.
• 8:49
  Nate: Family worship time.
• 8:50
  Nate: And and the dad's like, I can't even play the guitar.
• 8:52
  Nate: How am I supposed to worship?
• 8:54
  Nate: Come here, gather around, gather around, in there.
• 8:56
  Nate: Oh, I can't play the guitar, so let's play a YouTube video of a hill song worship, you know, whatever, and it just crashes and burns.
• 9:04
  Luis: And if you are a parent at the school where Nate and I have the privilege of leading, contact us because we can get you set up on a school subscription of Right Now Media.
• 9:15
  Luis: Yep.
• 9:15
  Luis: That has some really good worship.
• 9:18
  Luis: It's true songs.
• 9:19
  Nate: So if that's something you want to do, we've got it for you, right?
• 9:22
  Nate: But you don't have to do that.
• 9:23
  Nate: Especially if you've got little kids, like if you've got a four-year-old, there's no way that's gonna survive through the end of the school year, and you're just gonna be stressing yourself out.
• 9:33
  Nate: So cut yourself some slack and take advantage of those normal moments, those windows God has already opened for you.
• 9:40
  Luis: Yeah.
• 9:40
  Luis: And some of you will remember when we had Chad Hartwell on our on our podcast several episodes back.
• 9:46
  Nate: Shout out, Chad.
• 9:46
  Nate: If you want to be back on, Chad, let us know.
• 9:49
  Nate: We'd love to have you.
• 9:50
  Nate: Podcast at waynechristian.org.
• 9:52
  Nate: All right.
• 9:52
  Luis: And anybody else, like if you're listening to this and you think that you are a worthy contributor.
• 9:58
  Nate: Or if you just have questions, podcast at waynechristian.org.
• 10:01
  Nate: Send us it, send us an email.
• 10:02
  Nate: We'd love to hear it.
• 10:03
  Luis: And so here's the thing, right?
• 10:05
  Luis: Chad said that the goal isn't the event, it's the atmosphere.
• 10:09
  Luis: And then we've also talked about the daily pause before, right?
• 10:12
  Luis: Which is just as simple as it gets.
• 10:15
  Luis: Read, review, request, read a little scripture, review the day, make a request.
• 10:20
  Luis: That's it, right?
• 10:21
  Luis: It's not a 30-minute small group setting.
• 10:24
  Luis: You can fit this in into 10 minutes at the dinner table or after dinner.
• 10:27
  Nate: Yeah.
• 10:28
  Nate: And here's the thing about short moments like that is that those will survive the chaos that happens in you know, May Cember or December or whatever.
• 10:41
  Nate: Yeah, May Simber.
• 10:42
  Nate: Yeah, that's the end of the school year when it's as busy as Christ as Christmas, but without the presents.
• 10:47
  Nate: Yeah.
• 10:48
  Nate: May Simember.
• 10:48
  Nate: But the present's the end of the year, right?
• 10:50
  Nate: That's exactly right.
• 10:51
  Nate: The present is two months off of school.
• 10:54
  Nate: But you know, the the the short things, if you can compact it, that's great.
• 10:58
  Nate: You can always expand if you've got more time, but if you have so much stuff that you have to have 25 minutes sitting down, you know, you're not gonna be able to it you'll cut it and you won't do it.
• 11:10
  Nate: So simplify so that you can have something that that will survive those busy times where it's just a quick conversation, a prayer, something that's meaningful, but not something that's so elaborate it won't survive through the end of the school year.
• 11:24
  Luis: And here's what I would tell you like if you figure out a routine where you're doing it 10 minutes a day and you're doing it most days, you're not gonna get to the end of the school year and be like, oh, our devotions were too short this year.
• 11:36
  Luis: Like that's exactly that's not gonna happen, right?
• 11:38
  Luis: Yeah.
• 11:38
  Luis: Here's the other piece that I would say is look at your two hinge points, right?
• 11:42
  Luis: The first few minutes of the day and the last few minutes.
• 11:45
  Luis: In most of our homes, both of those we give them away, right?
• 11:48
  Luis: The morning goes to rushing and then the evening goes to the screens.
• 11:53
  Luis: And those are the moments where our kids are most likely to talk to us and say something real.
• 11:58
  Nate: Yeah, that's uh what's funny is that tired kids talk.
• 12:02
  Nate: Sometimes I mean, I guess maybe they're they're losing a little bit of the self-control, which can drive you nuts as a parent.
• 12:08
  Nate: Yeah.
• 12:08
  Nate: But especially for your teenagers, they're more likely to be open to an honest conversation because their guard is down.
• 12:15
  Nate: They're tired, maybe they're a little more emotional, and so you gotta you gotta keep that in in check.
• 12:20
  Nate: But then you gotta just use the opportunity when God opens it.
• 12:24
  Nate: So that's our daily rhythms.
• 12:26
  Nate: Lewis, let's let's switch over to weekly.
• 12:28
  Nate: What what would it look like to to have a weekly rhythm in a Christian home?
• 12:33
  Luis: Yeah, I think it's important to Nate, you've talked about this before, just just setting aside a Sabbath, right?
• 12:39
  Luis: Now, as Christians, we know that Sunday is not the Sabbath, right?
• 12:42
  Luis: Not in the context of the biblical, but for most of us, that Sunday is a time of rest.
• 12:48
  Luis: It's when we go to church together, it's when we spend time together as a family.
• 12:53
  Luis: And unfortunately for a lot of Christian homes, that's eroded and it happened kind of quietly, right?
• 12:59
  Luis: We just it's not that we stopped believing in it, it's just that we kind of just outsourced it or something better came along.
• 13:06
  Nate: Yeah, we've we've really we've uh got something else competing with our time where we come together as the body of Christ and worship or you know, take that time away to just rest.
• 13:18
  Nate: You know, I heard there was a study and I'm blanking now on where it was done, but it was like an academic study that said, people, it's good for your mental health to take a 24-hour period of rest once a week.
• 13:32
  Nate: Yeah.
• 13:32
  Nate: And it's like, wow, social scientists just invented the Sabbath, which is you know, whatever.
• 13:38
  Nate: You know, they just discovered the Sabbath.
• 13:40
  Nate: So but we've filled it.
• 13:41
  Nate: We fill it with so much stuff.
• 13:43
  Nate: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:44
  Nate: Travel ball, tournaments, work email, housework, just activity of stuff.
• 13:50
  Nate: And and they can be good things and they can be reasonable things, but there's never a moment where you feel like you you can rest and then you end up realizing you've traded something sacred for the ordinary.
• 14:05
  Luis: And I can actually speak to this recently because our family has recently had two back-to-back weekends of soccer tournaments, and so Friday, Saturday, Sunday games, right?
• 14:16
  Luis: And so we're feeling it because we haven't been able to have a Sabbath as a family.
• 14:22
  Luis: Like we left early on a Friday af after school, and we had soccer Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
• 14:29
  Luis: Then we did school, then we had soccer Saturday, Sunday, right?
• 14:34
  Luis: And then now it's this week and we're back in school, right?
• 14:36
  Luis: And so we haven't had a day.
• 14:38
  Luis: Now we built some of that into our weekend, right?
• 14:42
  Luis: Like we had we had a really cool family dinner on Saturday, and then we had a really cool thing on Sunday, but it wasn't your typical like, hey, let's just let's just Sabbath today, let's just rest.
• 14:53
  Luis: Let's just enjoy going to church together, let's just enjoy being together.
• 14:57
  Luis: And the fourth commandment is interesting on this, right?
• 14:59
  Luis: Because God ties it to creation.
• 15:01
  Luis: He says, six days you labor, the seventh you rest, because that's how God made the world, which means that rest isn't a reward for finishing your work.
• 15:10
  Luis: It's built into how God made things to run on this planet.
• 15:16
  Nate: And I think it's also interesting.
• 15:18
  Nate: So he it's built in there, you know, the fourth commandment, take a Sabbath, remember, it's holy, and it points back to creation.
• 15:25
  Nate: But then when that's repeated later in the Pentateuch, that's the first five books of the Bible, he doesn't go back to creation.
• 15:32
  Nate: He goes back to the fact that they were slaves in Egypt.
• 15:35
  Nate: Yeah, and it was like you literally had to keep working to stay alive.
• 15:39
  Nate: And God was reminding them now hey, you have the Sabbath because you don't have to keep working to stay alive.
• 15:46
  Nate: Like you are not sufficient, God is sufficient.
• 15:49
  Nate: And it's a reminder there of like I I don't have to keep achieving, I can rest because God said that.
• 15:55
  Luis: Say more about that, Nate.
• 15:56
  Nate: Yeah.
• 15:56
  Nate: So just think about the fact that your kids, you know, they're learning your theology of rest, whether you physically like actually teach it or not.
• 16:05
  Nate: So when a kid grows up in a house where every single day is optimized, you know, we've got our routines down to and trust me, if you know me, I am very optimized.
• 16:16
  Nate: Like I wear the same thing every day, I have the same lunch every day, ham and cheese, carrots, like literally every single day.
• 16:22
  Nate: We have optimized our house.
• 16:24
  Nate: You might be optimus prime.
• 16:25
  Nate: Don't think so.
• 16:26
  Nate: But that would be cool though, if I could be like a robot.
• 16:29
  Nate: Anyway, but if you're so optimized, right, and there's never that time to just be, they're learning that God they're learning incorrectly, right?
• 16:40
  Nate: That God is is wanting them to earn, right?
• 16:44
  Nate: And they need to do these things, and then you know, they they just have to keep working and keep grinding, and it's this hustle culture.
• 16:52
  Nate: And in chapel a couple weeks ago, here I told our students, like talking from John 15, where Jesus says, you know, I'm the vine, you're the branches, abide in me.
• 17:01
  Nate: And it's this idea that you know branches don't hustle, they just they abide.
• 17:06
  Nate: That's really good.
• 17:07
  Nate: They they rest in him.
• 17:09
  Nate: And so we want to teach that.
• 17:11
  Nate: And so, you know, we need to model that for our kids that it's okay to just abide.
• 17:16
  Nate: It's okay to just be and rest in who God is.
• 17:21
  Luis: And look, we don't want to be legalistic about this, right?
• 17:24
  Luis: We're not we're not trying to tell you what to do with your family on a Saturday, right?
• 17:29
  Luis: We're not trying to tell you what you need to do with your family on a Sunday.
• 17:33
  Luis: Yes, we are pro-church.
• 17:35
  Luis: We think you should find a daily rhythm where you are setting time aside for you to be in church.
• 17:42
  Luis: For most of us, that's Sunday.
• 17:44
  Luis: Yep.
• 17:44
  Luis: Now we know that we have listeners who have split homes.
• 17:48
  Luis: We know that we have listeners who maybe are nurses or they work Sundays and there's churches now that have Friday night services.
• 17:56
  Luis: Like it's we get it.
• 17:57
  Luis: We it may not be Sunday for you, but here's the thing, right?
• 18:01
  Luis: Something is better than nothing.
• 18:05
  Luis: Yeah.
• 18:05
  Luis: You need to protect a block of time and whatever that is for your family.
• 18:10
  Luis: Like for me and our family, usually it looks like Sunday afternoon.
• 18:14
  Luis: We try to protect our Sunday afternoons.
• 18:16
  Luis: We we try not to schedule anything on it.
• 18:19
  Luis: We try to make sure that we take time to get things ready for the week.
• 18:22
  Luis: We try to make sure that we watch a movie together.
• 18:25
  Luis: Sometimes we watch Little House on the Prairie, you know, like that's kind of our our thing.
• 18:30
  Luis: But even that's not always perfect.
• 18:33
  Nate: Yeah, and and really the point is that you've just got something that's protected.
• 18:37
  Nate: Your kids can look forward to it, they can enjoy the goodness of God in that time.
• 18:41
  Nate: And it's a rhythm, and so just build it in.
• 18:43
  Nate: And we've talked about this a lot, right?
• 18:47
  Nate: And and you really can't add a rhythm like this to an already full calendar.
• 18:53
  Nate: So subtraction has to come before addition, right?
• 18:55
  Nate: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 18:56
  Nate: And so if your week is at capacity, you need to go back and look.
• 19:00
  Nate: Again, we started with that, like what does a normal day look like?
• 19:03
  Nate: Look at what does a normal week look like, and then you can decide now what comes off your calendar while you're calm, while you're rational, not waiting until halfway through the year and you're super busy and now you're trying to throw Christmas activities on top of your already busy calendar.
• 19:20
  Nate: So make those decisions now.
• 19:22
  Luis: All right, so let's look at the things that eats your other rhythms, right?
• 19:27
  Luis: Because we're talking about making time for these rhythms.
• 19:32
  Luis: Let's talk about the phone.
• 19:34
  Nate: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
• 19:35
  Nate: Because this is this is the the one thing, and we said it a lot, but it's really those small moments, right, that are some of the most precious in interacting with your children, right?
• 19:49
  Nate: And I would s venture to say that the single biggest predictor of whether any of your other rhythms survive this year is what you do with your screens.
• 19:58
  Luis: Wow, that's like that's a bold statement, Nate.
• 20:00
  Nate: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:00
  Nate: And uh but it think about it, right?
• 20:02
  Nate: The phone doesn't take a slot on your calendar.
• 20:05
  Nate: Like you don't have scheduled this is my phone time.
• 20:08
  Nate: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Nate: If you do, let us know.
• 20:10
  Nate: Podcast at wangchristian.org.
• 20:11
  Nate: It's weird though.
• 20:12
  Nate: It is weird.
• 20:13
  Nate: Not as weird as people who don't like breakfast for dinner, but it's weird.
• 20:16
  Luis: You know, I need to I need to confess something.
• 20:18
  Nate: Yeah, did you have breakfast for dinner?
• 20:20
  Luis: I did not have breakfast for dinner, but I unintentionally had breakfast for lunch, and I was so annoyed.
• 20:26
  Luis: We went to Cracker Barrel this past Sunday.
• 20:29
  Nate: I love Cracker Barrel.
• 20:30
  Luis: And we had an 8 30 game in out of town.
• 20:33
  Luis: Yep.
• 20:34
  Luis: So our next game wasn't until 1.
• 20:36
  Luis: And so the plan was for us to go to Cracker Barrel between games, thinking that we would have it to get there early enough to get breakfast.
• 20:43
  Luis: We did.
• 20:43
  Luis: We got there with plenty of time to get breakfast at a reasonable time.
• 20:46
  Luis: It was like 10, 10 15, I think.
• 20:48
  Luis: Yep.
• 20:48
  Luis: And so perfectly reasonable time to get breakfast.
• 20:52
  Luis: And we sit down, or we go in and it's like it's gonna be it's gonna be a 20-minute wait.
• 20:56
  Luis: So we finally get sat down at 10 30.
• 20:58
  Luis: We order our food.
• 20:59
  Luis: I think it'll be there at a reasonable time for me to consume breakfast.
• 21:04
  Luis: So I ordered their uh pancake specials.
• 21:07
  Luis: Okay, there we go.
• 21:08
  Luis: So two pancakes and I think a piece of the little mini bottles of maple syrup?
• 21:11
  Luis: Yes, that's those are the best.
• 21:13
  Luis: So so good.
• 21:13
  Luis: And they had really good pancakes.
• 21:15
  Luis: And then the time changed to eleven o'clock.
• 21:20
  Luis: And our food didn't come out until 11 15 name.
• 21:23
  Luis: It was the worst pancakes I have ever eaten in my life.
• 21:27
  Nate: But here's my question if you didn't look at the clock, would you have known?
• 21:32
  Nate: Would they have tasted any different if you hadn't have looked at the clock?
• 21:36
  Nate: They taste terrible.
• 21:37
  Nate: I think my body just naturally rejected them.
• 21:39
  Nate: I don't know about all that.
• 21:40
  Nate: But that's not what we're talking about.
• 21:41
  Nate: Okay.
• 21:42
  Nate: We went back to phones, okay, and and or screens in general.
• 21:46
  Nate: And think about it, it it's just gonna take up the margins, right?
• 21:50
  Nate: And and it takes the ten minutes in the car, the last twenty minutes before you go to bed, that space between dinner and homework or homework and bedtime or whatever it is, all the places Where actual conversations are going to happen, you can unintentionally fill those with screen time, right?
• 22:08
  Nate: So you gotta guard that time.
• 22:09
  Luis: And I think that's what Deuteronomy 6 is describing, right?
• 22:12
  Luis: Like it's the moments that a phone is most likely to occupy, right?
• 22:18
  Luis: Those small moments, like before bed, in between games, right?
• 22:24
  Luis: While you're at the doctor's office.
• 22:26
  Luis: I'm guilty of it.
• 22:27
  Luis: I was at a dentist with both of my daughters a couple of weeks ago, and you know what we're all doing?
• 22:31
  Nate: On your phones.
• 22:32
  Luis: On our phones.
• 22:32
  Luis: I'm checking work email, right?
• 22:33
  Luis: Because school days just ended.
• 22:34
  Luis: It's after school.
• 22:35
  Luis: I'm making sure everything's okay.
• 22:37
  Luis: They're on their phone.
• 22:37
  Luis: I don't know what they're doing, playing a game, right?
• 22:39
  Luis: But we're all on our phone, right?
• 22:40
  Luis: But we had 20 minutes together in a waiting room by ourselves, and so that's what happens.
• 22:46
  Luis: And we've talked about this before, right?
• 22:47
  Luis: In the book The Anxious Generation.
• 22:49
  Luis: It's not just that that it it's it it's not just that phones are a distraction, it's that they are displaced uh displacing the things that our kids actually need sleep, unstructured time, face-to-face contact.
• 23:02
  Luis: And so it becomes a subtraction problem more than an addition problem.
• 23:06
  Nate: Yeah, so we've talked about this before, and if you want some practical tips on this, you can listen to some of our previous episodes where we've talked about you know the the you know wait till eight and different different organizations or movements like that.
• 23:19
  Nate: Hang 10.
• 23:19
  Nate: We did a couple of series on the hang 10.
• 23:22
  Nate: Yeah, so so you we're not gonna rehash that.
• 23:24
  Nate: You go back and and and listen to those episodes if you're interested, but just protect that time.
• 23:29
  Nate: Be intentional and don't just fill any, you know, moment of boredom with with your your phone, right?
• 23:36
  Nate: So let's get to this last piece of our rhythms and talk about what happens when you miss it, right?
• 23:41
  Nate: You're gonna miss it.
• 23:42
  Nate: Yeah, it's it's gonna happen.
• 23:43
  Nate: You'll miss a week of devos, you'll, you know, skip a, you know, you'll have a busy stretch like you just had, somebody gets sick, we get it, okay?
• 23:52
  Nate: And what we've seen over and over is that, you know, families don't fail at the rhythm, they fail at restarting it when they get off.
• 24:00
  Luis: Yeah, and so what that means is that you miss two weeks, and then there's this thing where restarting feels like it requires an occasion, right?
• 24:07
  Luis: Like like you need a fresh start.
• 24:09
  Luis: So so you need a new month, you need a new semester, and some kind of line to cross.
• 24:13
  Luis: And so they wait, and then the waiting is actually what kills it.
• 24:18
  Luis: And the reason we do that is because there's shame underneath it, right?
• 24:22
  Luis: So we've we we started devotions, we did good for a couple weeks, then then we fell off in the middle of September, and so we're like, okay, we're gonna restart October, right?
• 24:30
  Luis: And so October comes around, you don't do it, and then November, you're like, okay, and then you just start feeling that shame.
• 24:37
  Nate: Yeah, and and really this this can even be you know coming back to our own hearts, right?
• 24:44
  Nate: And and we can see where the gospel actually touches this conversation because you know we've talked about pr the performance trap, and and we want to perform as parents, and but your relationship with God doesn't run on that performance.
• 24:57
  Nate: So it falling off the rhythm feels like you're falling out of favor with God and and picking it back up feels like you're groveling for his forgiveness.
• 25:06
  Nate: No, right?
• 25:07
  Nate: The gospel says he loves you even when you are most unlovable.
• 25:11
  Nate: Yeah.
• 25:11
  Nate: And so, you know what?
• 25:13
  Nate: It happens.
• 25:13
  Nate: We mess we miss it.
• 25:15
  Nate: Let's just start again.
• 25:16
  Nate: You can start on a Tuesday, you can start in the middle of a month.
• 25:19
  Nate: It doesn't matter if you've fallen off that train of whatever your intentions were, just get back on.
• 25:25
  Nate: And you don't really have to even explain it to anybody, just keep going.
• 25:29
  Luis: Just do it.
• 25:29
  Luis: And here's the thing, right?
• 25:30
  Luis: A family that restarts badly and as often is teaching their kids something more valuable than a family that never misses, right?
• 25:38
  Luis: Because no kid is going to grow up and they're not gonna have a perfect walk with the Lord, right?
• 25:43
  Luis: Not one.
• 25:44
  Luis: And so what they need to see is what it looks like when a home fails, right?
• 25:50
  Luis: Yeah, like they need to see, Dad, you messed up and you got off the tracks, right?
• 25:54
  Luis: And you haven't done devotions in a month.
• 25:57
  Luis: Okay, start over, start now, right?
• 25:59
  Luis: Your son needs to see that it's okay to mess up and get back on, right?
• 26:04
  Luis: And they're gonna see a home that is trying and continually comes back because that's what the gospel teaches us.
• 26:12
  Luis: Yep, that's exactly right.
• 26:13
  Nate: So, Lewis, let's wrap it up here.
• 26:15
  Nate: This series about, you know, built for the long haul, the rhythms, your marriage, parenting, all of that.
• 26:20
  Nate: Give us some encouragement as we're we're finishing up this series here.
• 26:25
  Luis: Look, here's the temptation, especially if you've heard all three episodes, and I hope you have, right?
• 26:29
  Luis: You listen to these episodes and you walk away with a project, right?
• 26:33
  Luis: You're gonna go home, you're gonna reorganize your family.
• 26:35
  Luis: Look, I get it, right?
• 26:37
  Luis: That's my instinct too.
• 26:38
  Luis: But a rebuilt schedule can't do what needs doing in your house.
• 26:43
  Luis: You can protect the Lord's Day, you can put the phones in the drawer, you can run devotions every night for nine months, and you're still gonna raise a kid who knows the routines of Christianity but doesn't know Christ.
• 26:54
  Luis: And so the rhythms are worth having.
• 26:56
  Luis: They put you in the room where God works, but they're not the thing itself.
• 27:01
  Luis: What your kid needs most from you this year, it's not a better-run household.
• 27:06
  Luis: It's a mom and a dad who are genuinely walking with Jesus and aren't afraid to show them.
• 27:12
  Luis: And if that's not where you are, like if you're building the Christian house without ever having come to Christ yourself, then put all that down and start there because that's the only foundation that everything else is built on.
• 27:25
  Nate: That's some good stuff right there.
• 27:27
  Nate: So thank you all for listening to Equipped for Impact.
• 27:30
  Nate: If this podcast uh you know helped you or you enjoyed it, please share it with another parent who needs to hear it.
• 27:36
  Nate: And maybe you guys can can build some of those rhythms together.
• 27:39
  Nate: Um, and we'd love you to subscribe so you don't miss our next episode.
• 27:44
  Nate: But until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.