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Aim Your Discipleship: Prioritizing Family with Dave & Sydney Clayton · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Welcome back to another episode on the Real Life Theology Podcast. Today's
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  episode features a breakout with Dave and Sydney Clayton where they will talk
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  about aiming discipleship efforts to the family and the significant importance of
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  family discipleship. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. It's fun to have the
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  after-lunch moment like I don't know if you've ever had to talk in front of a
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  group after lunch, but let me tell you, this is the most coveted spot. And not
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  just after lunch, but in a big room like this where it feels distant. I mean, what
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  a gift to be with you. Like you said, I'm Dave. This is my wife Sydney. And it's
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  such a blessing to get to be in a space like this with other leaders, especially
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  in the midst of what's been such a tiring season for so many. And to kind of
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  just take a minute to breathe and to go, okay God, we know you're not done. We know
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  you still have something for us. And we're excited. They asked if we'd come
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  and spend just a little bit of time talking about what it looks like to aim
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  our discipleship efforts specifically on our families. And here's what we mean by
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  this. Remember years ago, Sydney and I have been married just over 16 years. We've
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  been together a little over 20 years and we have three kids, three boys. Our
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  oldest is 11. Our middle son is nine. Our youngest son turned seven this week. And
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  kind of early on in our journey of marriage, I remember one time coming home
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  and I'd just gotten back from a vision retreat where I'd taken our staff away
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  and I was just casting vision. Here's where we're going. Here's where we're
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  going. Here's where we're going. And I remember getting back, we didn't have any
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  kids at this point, and sitting down with Sydney for dinner. And the
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  Spirit of God just convicted me. I thought, man, I've got more vision for my
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  ministry than I do for my marriage. I've got more vision for where we're trying
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  to take things on campus. I was working with college students at the time than I
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  do in our own home. And it wasn't one of those moments of conviction where I was
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  just like shrouded in shame and fear and sadness. It was just this sweet
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  invitation from the Spirit of God to just wake up. And so over the years, we've
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  really gone, man, what a shame it would be if we discipled the whole world,
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  discipled our whole church, and missed our kids. One of the most sobering
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  passages in Scripture for me is Judges chapter 2, verse 10. Maybe you know this
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  verse well. It says, after Joshua died, an entire generation was raised up that
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  neither knew the Lord or what he'd done for Israel. And I thought, man, how is
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  that even possible? How is that possible that a generation can come right on the
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  heels of everything that had just happened and they not know the Lord or
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  what had been done in Israel? I went, man, but isn't this so often the context
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  for what happens in real life? You get busy, you get overwhelmed, you get
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  driven. And so this afternoon, we want to take just a little bit of time to give
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  you a framework for how we're thinking about discipleship in the context of our
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  home. And so for some of you, you have young kids at home. Some of you, your
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  kids are grown. Some of you don't have kids at all. And what we'd encourage you
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  is wherever you find yourself, whatever season you're in, take what we're talking
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  about and really apply it through the filter of your current spiritual family.
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  Who are the people in your closest context and what is God
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  inviting you into? And what I say here, and we'll jump in to this and get
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  after it, is what we're going to share, this is not a formula in any way. It's
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  just a framework. And so these are some things that we're experimenting with, and
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  we hope that you'll find them helpful. So let me pray over us, and we'll jump
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  in to just five things that we found to be really helpful, and then maybe we'll
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  have time for some questions. So Father, thank you for the gift of getting to be
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  with your kids in this place, our brothers, our sisters. Father, thank you
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  for the way that you love us. Thank you for the way that you love this group of
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  people. And God, no matter where we find ourselves on the journey, all of
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  us, we are wrestling with the reality of our own insufficiency. God, as I look out
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  at the future, there's going to be no scenario in which I get there without
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  some measure of regret. It's just part of being human. But Lord, this
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  afternoon, would you just push out any of the work of the enemy, where he would
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  just try to come in with condemnation, with comparison, with anything that would
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  cause us to feel less than? Father, would you open up our imaginations to the
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  possibility of what could be? And would you help us to embrace the reality of
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  what is, that we're living in a moment where we can still take next steps with
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  you, with the people that we love the most. And so, God, we give you praise. We
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  give you thanks that you're among us. Would you lead us in this time? In the
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  name of Jesus, we pray, and all of God's people say, amen. So, Sid, you can jump us
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  off of the first of the five things. So, we just want to share a little bit of our
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  heart. On Sunday, one of our friends from church had been praying over us, knowing
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  that we're speaking here this week. And she said, you know, I have a word for you.
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  It's magnifying glass. And that's what I've just held on to all week. She said,
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  you know, the magnifying glass, nobody pays attention to the magnifying glass.
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  What they're doing is they're using it as a tool to look through. And so, we just
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  pray that today, as we're speaking, that you would not see us, but you'd see what
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  God has been doing through us, and in us, and even the source of light, that as
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  light comes through a magnifying glass, it can catch things on fire. So, our
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  prayer is that it would catch fire in your home, and it would translate into
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  whatever you need to do with your family. So, that's our heart for you today. So,
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  these principles that we want to share with you are just guidelines for you,
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  just kind of how we think in our framework. And the first one that we
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  discovered pretty early on in our marriage was that we needed to get away.
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  And we really see Jesus doing that over and over again in the Gospels, right? He
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  says he withdrew, he retreated to the wilderness, he spent time with his father.
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  And so, we realized if that's what Jesus is doing, that's what we need to be doing.
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  So, we retreated away and decided, hey, let's spend time independently on
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  retreats, let's spend time together. And the first time we did this, it was
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  awkward. You know, we didn't know what that would look like. We had our four
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  month old with us. We're like, we're at a bed-and-breakfast, so we're like, shh, don't
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  cry, don't cry, you'll wake everybody up. We're like driving in the car and it's
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  like, are we going to have a speaker come in and talk to us at our spiritual retreat?
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  Like, it's mainly just in worship, you know. We brought like eight devotional
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  books, we didn't know what we were doing. We were just grasping at straws. But in
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  the years of just practicing that, God has blessed that. And so, the first
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  principle is get away. If you don't make space to get away and be with the Lord,
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  how are you ever going to hear him, right? You've got to come into close
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  proximity, intimacy with him so he can speak into you and give you a vision,
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  cast vision for your family and where you're headed. And what we found on these
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  times together is he aligns our heart. And I distinctly remember when our
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  second son was born, we took a retreat shortly after that, and God just kind of
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  downloaded nine areas that we wanted to be praying through together. We're going to
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  be praying over our children's mental health, their spiritual health, their
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  physical health, their sexual health, their friendships, their spouses for the
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  future. And for that next year, it really gave us a place of alignment that I knew
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  he was praying over the same things that I was. And would it look different? Yeah,
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  yes. But were we united? Absolutely. And so, you know, this kind of this first
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  picture, you know, very practically what we do is a couple times a year, Sidney
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  and I would try to get away on our own for 24 to 48 hours. Even there's seasons
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  where we haven't had money to do that. We haven't had the help, you know, to do
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  that. And so, sometimes that 24 hour getaway will be me going to sit at a
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  coffee shop 30 miles outside of the city that we're in all day long. And then I'll
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  come back home at night, late at night, and do it the next day. It doesn't have
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  to be fancy. But we go, hey, let's just get away for the purpose of seeing ahead.
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  Like, how do we get away so that we can see ahead? Like, take some time to not
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  just work in our family, but to work on our family, but to do that with God. And
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  what we found is when we escape to those lonely places, God so often will give us
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  vision for the future. And one of the questions that we like to ask the Lord on
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  these times when we're away is, hey, God, would you help us to imagine what life
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  could be like with our family 30, 40, 50 years from now? And this has been such a
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  practical part of these moments of getting away. And so, we'll literally just
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  sit there and we'll pray and we'll say, hey, God, would you show us what our
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  family's life of worship could look like together when our kids are 40 and 42 and
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  44? And we'll just start praying and we'll ask God about that. And I remember
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  one of the first years we did that, I was imagining, I'm like, okay, I imagine
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  our boys coming home and, you know, hopefully they're married with kids and
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  who knows what that looks like. But I imagine us being able to share our
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  hearts and to share the scriptures and to pray together. And I imagine us being
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  in our living room just worshiping, but it not being awkward. Like, oh, dad brought
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  the guitar out again. It's like, you know, just this like heartfelt, joy-filled
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  like worship. And I thought, whoa, if we're going to get there in 40 years, we
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  better start now. Especially if you're tone-deaf, because it gets real awkward.
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  Oh, we're the worst singers. We're the worst singers. And so, we'll start singing and like,
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  see if we're trying to harmonize. I'm like, you're ruining it. I'm not trying to harmonize, FYI, I'm just thinking. And so, we get away and we come
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  back. We come back with this sense of, okay, God, like, thank you. You've given us a
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  vision and now we know what to work toward. And so, one thing that we'd
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  really encourage you to do is set aside significant amounts of times throughout
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  the years to get away and to ask God for a vision for your family. The second
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  thing, kind of the second guiding piece of this framework, would not just be
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  getting away, but coming back and setting clear goals. To really set some clear,
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  measurable goals. You know, I love what the writer of Proverbs says, where there
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  is no vision, the people perish or the people cast off restraint. And what we
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  found is, you know, when you aim at nothing, you will hit it every, every
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  single time. Like, if you're aiming at nothing as a family, you will always end
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  up hitting nothing. And so, we come back from our spiritual retreats and we'll
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  set goals. And we know that when we set goals, there's some things that we're
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  gonna miss. There's some, there's some things that we're gonna try to
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  tackle that, you know, in the long run, we're not gonna hit exactly as we
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  intended. But what we have found is when we're at least aiming at the same thing,
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  we are, we are more certain to at least land in that direction. And so, every year
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  we'll come back from these retreats together and we'll set goals, typically
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  two types of goals. Some of those goals are around character and some of those
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  are around competency. So, in other words, we'll say, God, who are you trying to
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  help us become in this season as a family, as character? And secondly, what do
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  you want us to be able to do as competency? Like, what are some practical
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  things that you want to develop in our boys before we send them out into the
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  world one day? And what are some things that you want them to be able to do? And
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  so, we, we literally just kind of went, okay, here's some goals, some character and
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  some competency goals. And we try to work those character and competency goals out
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  in four realms. We call these our RPMs, not original to us, but the relational
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  realm, the physical realm, the mental realm, and the spiritual realm. We go, how
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  do we help our boys in each of these areas of their life thrive in both their
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  character and their competency? And so, we'll, we'll set some goals together. And
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  I love what you do with this, Sid, with the boys at the beginning of each
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  semester, kind of bring it down to the ground a little bit. So, like a lot of
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  families, about two years ago, we were thrust into homeschooling. Surprise, right?
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  And so, we started doing that a few years ago, and we realized, hey, we've got
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  to have some strategic goals here if we're going to be successful. If mom's
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  gonna survive, we're gonna have to have goals, is what that was. And so, what I did
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  is I said, hey, let's take what we're already doing, how we typically think,
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  relational, physical, mental, and spiritual, and let's make this fun for
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  the boys. So, I decided at the beginning of each semester, we were gonna set goals,
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  and I took them to Topgolf. I was like, they're gonna enjoy goal-setting. They
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  don't know it, but they're going to. So, we went to Topgolf. We played golf. I let
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  them have Dr. Pepper. I'm like, sugar yourself up, enjoy. Let's order
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  nachos. Nachos make everything better. So, we ordered nachos, and then I set them
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  down, and we started making goals. And at first, they're kind of like, what are we
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  doing? I was like, a goal has to be measurable. And I'm like, wait, no, no,
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  that doesn't work with them. Hey, what are some things you want to be able to say
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  you did this year, right? And then, I helped them take these huge, God-sized
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  dreams and take them down just a chunk at a time, right? And, you know, we're
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  talking about character and competency. So, what that looks like is for our
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  six-year-old this year, for his spiritual goal, I try to get them to do two goals
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  in each one of those little areas. And his two goals, one is going to be reading
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  through the Action Bible. It is fantastic for boys, if y'all have never seen that.
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  It's amazing. It's comic book Bible, but it's the Bible. It's amazing. So, hey, you
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  and I are gonna read through the Action Bible together, but I don't just want to
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  create knowledge in you. I want it to come out in transformation and an
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  application to your life. And so, his goal that he wanted to do that was actually
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  transformative in action is going around our neighborhood in a prayer walk and
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  praying for our neighbors once a week. Simple, tangible six-year-old can do that.
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  And what we do is we just go back at the end of each semester, hey, how'd you do?
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  Did you hit those goals? And then, we reset them again in January and let them
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  start over again.
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  And so, you know, we kind of have them in these bite-sized moments like this,
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  but we'll talk about this a little bit more here in a minute. But with our
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  community, we have a group of guys we pull together that we're working to disciple
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  these young boys. And every single month, we just have one big thing that we're
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  aiming at, one big goal as a little community. And so, you know, as dads,
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  we say, hey, here's the target that we're aiming at. And your goal is to,
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  as we're aiming at this target, have a conversation with them about this as
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  you're developing their character and as you're building their competency.
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  And so, we're just trying to pull in the same direction. And so, we get away,
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  that's principle number one, how do we get away and catch a vision of what God
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  is doing? We come back and we set goals as we live into that, and that brings us
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  to the next one.
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  And the third one is guardrails. You know, the function of a guardrail,
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  when you're on a road, it's not that you wouldn't bump into it,
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  it's that you wouldn't what? Go off the road, go over the edge of the cliff,
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  right? It's to help keep you on course. And when you think about a map,
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  you always have to put in where you are and where you're going, right?
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  So, that was our goals. We said, okay, this is where we are,
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  where we're going is our goals. Well, the guardrails are kind of that ping-pong
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  back and forth, keeping you, the kind of pinball machine,
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  keeping you on the road. And so, what that looks like is, you know,
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  biblically, it says, hey, get rid of all these things that don't bring purity
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  to you. Get rid of all unselfish desires, anger, bitterness, all these things.
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  We try to help them call those things out of their life, but even preemptively,
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  keep them from getting in and infiltrating their life in any way that we can.
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  And one of those ways sounds simple, but our calendar. You know,
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  we had a parent fail this year, as in our family. We let our middle child do
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  all-star baseball, which sounded like a great idea, and come 4th of July,
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  when he was still doing tournaments, we're like, what did we just do
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  to our summer? Our summer's gone. And we were very vocal about it.
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  So, by the end of that tournament, my middle son that was doing it,
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  he was like, you know, mom, baseball's fun and all. He said,
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  but that was a mistake. We haven't even had summer yet.
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  A little biased there because he'd heard our dialogue. But, you know,
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  we just said, all right, let's redirect. Let's reset. If that was a mistake,
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  how do we change that? And so, for our calendar, I just sat the boys down
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  and said, hey, there are four seasons in a year. You get two seasons to be able
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  to play whatever sports you want, and one of the seasons cannot be summer
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  because we're going to keep our summers. You know, it comes from a place of us
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  making a mistake, and then quickly, with the guardrail getting back
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  on the road, we're going to make those mistakes. But for our family to thrive
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  and for us to have time to invest in them, we have to say no to even good things
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  on our calendar. So, calendar is a guardrail for us.
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  Yeah. So, we set some guardrails around calendar. We set guardrails
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  around consumption. You know, what are we taking in as a family?
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  What are we listening to? What are we watching? What are we reading?
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  What are we partaking in? And, you know, what we found is, man,
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  you can try to disciple your kids, but if there's no guardrails around what they're
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  able to consume, they will be discipled so much more quickly by everything
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  and everyone else. And so, we've tried to be really, you know,
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  just intentional as a family. We could talk now. We'll just keep moving.
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  Another one is just connectivity. And this is the struggle that we're all trying
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  to navigate. It's technology. You know, how do you create guardrails
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  around technology? And so, that looks like, honestly, really tangibly,
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  he went from a smartphone down to a flip phone. It's a little bit annoying at times,
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  right? He doesn't know where he's going. He's the one that's printing off Google
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  Maps before we leave the house so that he can actually get somewhere.
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  But he's modeling what's important to our boys, right? And so,
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  around technology, they don't have free access to our iPad. They have a code.
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  They ask us every day, mom and dad, why do we have to have a code to get an iPad?
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  Because I love you.
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  We don't trust them.
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  So, you know, we just don't let them have free reign. We put guardrails in place
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  to protect their mind, their heart, their ears, their body, right?
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  And so, we get away to hear from the Lord. We set goals. We put some guardrails.
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  And then, kind of this fourth principle for us is we work really hard to help them
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  build and maintain and establish a group in which they can grow.
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  So, this is about community.
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  And this is where things really began to accelerate in a good way for us several
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  years ago. Sydney and I had gotten away on one of our retreats.
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  We felt like God had given us a vision for what formation looked like in our boys,
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  you know, over the next 12 to 15 years of their life, some things that we wanted
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  to aim at together. And we had this epiphany on that retreat.
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  We said, man, if we disciple our boys, but we never disciple their friends,
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  there's a moment when they're going to quit listening to us and they're going
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  to only listen to their friends and we're going to be in trouble.
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  And so, we decided, hey, let's put together a spiritual pathway for their friends.
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  Let's make this really fun. And so, I took a group of dads out to
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  dinner that had some boys in our neighborhood, some boys in our church,
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  some boys from different areas of life that were all kind of the same age as our
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  kids. And I took these dads out to dinner and I said, hey, here's the vision.
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  We want to go on a 12-year journey together. Can you do it?
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  And they're all like, 12 years? We thought we were just eating wings
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  together tonight, you know? And I said, yeah, we want to go on a
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  12-year journey together. And we're going to each do it in our own
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  way, just a little different, but we want it to become normative in our boys' life
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  and in their friend group that it is normal for them to be disciples of Jesus
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  and for that discipleship to be working out in the context of their home.
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  And if my boys think that what they're going through is completely foreign and
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  alien and weird, there's going to be a moment where they're going to hit the
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  eject button on it, even if it's what they need. So, I said, if we can just kind
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  of stack the deck, you know, if we can begin like kind of bringing up some
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  people alongside. And so, these dads said, hey, we'd love to jump in on this
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  experiment. And so, we put together this group. And one of the things that we just
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  said, you know, I could give you all of the studies, but you know this to be true.
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  So many kids and young adults right now, they are just painfully lonely. They're
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  so connected, but they're painfully lonely. And so much of that is because
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  they don't have any idea. No one's taught them how to find a friend, how to make a
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  friend, how to keep a friend. Even the definition of friend has been
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  fundamentally changed by our digital connectivity. And so, we call people
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  friends that aren't actually friends. It takes 50 hours of meaningful face-to-face
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  time for someone to go from feeling like an acquaintance to a friend. It takes
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  200 hours of meaningful face-to-face time for someone to feel like a close
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  friend. That's a lot of time. And so, we're going, how do we really stack the
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  deck? How do we build a disciple-making group around our boys from a young age?
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  And so, we begin calling together these groups, and we get together once a month.
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  And once a month, we do something really fun together. Like so, this last week, we
• 20:23
  got all of these dads and these boys together, and we eat dinner. Everybody
• 20:27
  brings their own dinner. We eat dinner, and the dads will stand up and in the
• 20:32
  group talk about the ways that they and their boys were walking out their
• 20:36
  discipleship, where it went well and where it went poorly. And we'll cheer,
• 20:39
  whether you were struggling or you were successful, we'll cheer for it. And then
• 20:43
  we went and played dodgeball for an hour and a half. And then at the end of
• 20:47
  dodgeball, we get these boys in groups of two to three, and they spend time
• 20:51
  sharing their highs and their lows and praying for one another that the Spirit
• 20:55
  of God would break in. And one of the things that we'll say every single month
• 20:58
  is we say, guys, it is normal for men to laugh together, to play together, to
• 21:02
  share their hearts together, and to see God together. We want to make that
• 21:07
  normal. And it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be crazy. It
• 21:12
  doesn't have to be, you know, this amazing thing. It's simple. It's intentional.
• 21:17
  And we go, how do we create a group environment for you to grow in? Because
• 21:21
  what we've all learned is we all grow together best in groups. But so many of
• 21:26
  us, we feel totally alone in the work of discipleship. And so even in the
• 21:30
  context of our own family, we're going, hey, how do we do this? And so we do it
• 21:35
  on kind of a big scenario like that with our boys. But I've even watched you do
• 21:39
  this, like, just interrelationally with families and schools and in the
• 21:42
  neighborhood.
• 21:44
  I'd even draw what you had said about the guys and the dads. I don't know if
• 21:47
  you guys caught that, but he took the dads out to dinner, got to know them and
• 21:51
  needed buy-in from them. And I think that's just an important piece that some—
• 21:55
  well, that was a slip-up. Uh-huh. We'll just acknowledge that.
• 21:59
  Edit that one out.
• 22:02
  I'll just acknowledge it, right? Humble, right? So it's just—and I'm gonna have
• 22:07
  to watch myself now. An important piece that you have to have is engaging the
• 22:13
  parents and the family. You can't just assume that your kids can just go play
• 22:17
  with anybody. And so I see with the dads, investing in the dads and making sure
• 22:21
  you know, hey, what are they really stewarding in their homes? And as our
• 22:25
  kids entered a different school this year, were homeschooling and doing a
• 22:29
  co-op, you know, I had to get to know families, a whole new set of families, so
• 22:33
  I knew who my children were interacting with. And that took time and energy on
• 22:36
  our part, but if I knew I wanted them to be part of a meaningful group, I wanted
• 22:40
  to make sure I knew what that group looked like and what it was forming and
• 22:43
  shaping to be. Yeah, so we get away with the Lord to catch the vision from God.
• 22:48
  We set goals to aim toward that vision. We put up guardrails to try to keep the
• 22:54
  enemy at bay from anything that would rob us of that vision. We build group. We
• 22:58
  build community. And some of you are going, I can't believe we chose this
• 23:01
  session. We know all this. You do all this. But we go, okay, how do you apply it
• 23:05
  to your family? Whether your kids are six years old or 16 years old or 36 years
• 23:11
  old, what's it look like? And this last component for us is really important.
• 23:15
  It's that you embrace your responsibility as a spiritual guide.
• 23:23
  And so it's great. It's great to get away. It's great to have the goals. It's
• 23:27
  great to set the guardrails. It's great to have the group. But man, there's this
• 23:30
  moment where you have to embrace the role that God has given you as a spiritual
• 23:36
  guide. And your role and your function as a guide, it changes in every season. It
• 23:40
  looks different when they're little than when they're old. It changes. We all know
• 23:46
  that. But God has given you an unbelievably significant role as a spiritual guide.
• 23:54
  And I love 1 Corinthians chapter 4. Paul says, so many of you have had lots and lots
• 23:59
  of teachers, but you haven't had many fathers. You haven't had many mothers. You
• 24:03
  haven't had many people that have taken you all the way into their heart and shown
• 24:07
  you what this stuff looks like in real life. And so, you know what? We so often
• 24:12
  tell other parents as we're coming alongside one another, we say, hey, number
• 24:17
  one, when it comes to being a spiritual guide, don't assume that your kids know
• 24:22
  that that's what you're trying to do in their life. Don't assume that they view
• 24:27
  you as a spiritual guide. Like, name it for them. Like, ask their permission if
• 24:32
  they're older. You know, like if your kid's 47 years old, I wouldn't recommend
• 24:37
  knocking on the door tonight and saying, I am your spiritual guide. Probably
• 24:41
  wouldn't go well. You could do that with a four-year-old, not a 40-year-old. Know
• 24:45
  your season. Know where you're at, but to name it. Like, in each season, we
• 24:51
  literally, like, we're trying to take our boys on a walk around the neighborhood
• 24:53
  and just name, hey, part of our longing is to, with Jesus, by the power of the
• 24:59
  Holy Spirit, help disciple you. I want to walk with you. Can we do that?
• 25:06
  Just name it. You know, we go on almost nightly walks as a family, but once a
• 25:11
  week, we'll take our boys on a discipleship walk. It's the same route
• 25:14
  that we walk every day, but when we go on a discipleship walk and say, hey,
• 25:18
  we're going on a discipleship walk right now, I name it. Hey, there's something
• 25:21
  purposeful that's about to happen right now, and so what I'd say is, when it
• 25:25
  comes to being a guide, name it. Number two, don't outsource it. Don't outsource
• 25:33
  it. Lean on everybody, but don't outsource it, and so part of the reason we
• 25:39
  build a group around us is because we are not sufficient on our own. We're so
• 25:43
  insufficient, so we need lots and lots and lots and lots of help, but we know
• 25:47
  that for whatever reason, God has entrusted us, and so we're not going to
• 25:51
  outsource it, and so we're going to name it. We're not going to outsource it,
• 25:58
  and then kind of the last piece of this with being a guide is, despite all of
• 26:03
  your personal insufficiencies, all of your insecurities, all of the areas where
• 26:08
  you think you've gotten it wrong, with humility, just stick with it. Just stick
• 26:14
  with it. Just keep showing up humbly and gently with the people that God has put
• 26:20
  in your spiritual family, and say, hey, I want to play a role in guiding you on
• 26:27
  the journey that Jesus has taken you on. Yes, for us in our home, what it looks
• 26:31
  like just tangibly in being a guide is they see us model this, but we also sit
• 26:35
  them down, and we verbally tell them, hey, we're stating to you, this is what we're
• 26:39
  going to do, so when we have people come into our home, before they come in, we
• 26:43
  sit the boys down, we say, hey, how do you make people feel welcome when they
• 26:46
  come into our house? Like, well, we meet them at the door. Okay, good. What else
• 26:50
  do you do? We look them in the eye. We ask, how are you? Okay, good. So do you
• 26:54
  talk all about yourself and all the Star Wars stuff you're loving right now? No,
• 26:58
  no, no. Okay, so you ask them, how are you? How was your day? What did you do
• 27:01
  today? You engage them, right? And then you ask them, hey, would you like a drink
• 27:06
  of water? And over time, it starts to stick with them. They realize, oh, this is
• 27:10
  what you do, and I know that sounds like, are you raising 40-year-old adults that
• 27:13
  are greeting people at the door? No, it's basic of making someone feel welcome when
• 27:18
  they come to your door. One night, we were busy doing something in the back
• 27:21
  room, like, we'll be there in a minute, but the boys already went to the door,
• 27:24
  welcomed the person in, and already had given them a glass of water, and they
• 27:27
  were sitting at the island. And we're like, it's working. It's working. You know,
• 27:32
  that's just a small example, or we invite them to serve with us, but we don't just
• 27:37
  drag them along. We invite them in. Hey, can you help me make this meal? Hey, why
• 27:41
  are we taking a meal to these people? Because that's what Jesus did, right? He
• 27:46
  cared for them physically and spiritually. That's what we do. Or when we are going
• 27:50
  to go serve the homeless, hey, do you guys want to jump in on this? Yeah, okay.
• 27:54
  Well, what part of your money do you want to give? And kids actually are really
• 27:59
  excited to get to have ownership in it. So they're pooling their money together,
• 28:03
  and then they start spraying $1. Hey, I got more money. Like, they start pulling
• 28:06
  it out of everywhere, right? Yeah, it's a competition for our guys. And so they're
• 28:10
  putting it in, but then we go to the grocery store and say, okay, here's the
• 28:12
  list. Keep track of how much money you're
• 28:15
  spending. You've got about this much. Here's your cart. They've got the cart,
• 28:18
  you know, the ankle biter carts, the short ones, you know, with the flags on
• 28:21
  them. I'm like, please don't kill anyone. And so they're going through the store,
• 28:24
  but they got to shop by themselves with their own money, and they checked out on
• 28:28
  their own. They were bought in completely, but it took stating it and modeling it
• 28:33
  as their God. I'm not going to forfeit that opportunity to show them how to
• 28:36
  love someone. You know, another example of this is, each
• 28:40
  week we have our house church that meets in our home or a small group, and
• 28:44
  we just thought, hey, this is an incredible moment to just, over time,
• 28:48
  train them how to lead, how to lead. And so we tell our house church, hey,
• 28:55
  we're going to let our boys help us with this. It's going to be messy. At times,
• 28:57
  it may go off the rails. We'll try to fix it quickly, but we just need you to
• 29:01
  kind of help us. And so we invite our house church even into the formation
• 29:04
  process with our kids. And so we have our kids. They'll help do things. They'll
• 29:09
  lead conversation. They'll pray. They'll be a part of it. And we've just found
• 29:14
  that to be so significant, because so often what happens is, over time, Jesus
• 29:19
  has taken you on a journey, and what used to be difficult becomes intuitive for
• 29:24
  you. And you no longer think about what you're good at, but the problem is you
• 29:28
  cannot transfer intuition. You transfer what has been made intentional. And so
• 29:35
  there's so many things that God has done in you that have now become intuitive,
• 29:40
  and we're going, okay, how do we take everything that's intuitive and turn it
• 29:43
  into intentional ways of training our boys and helping them see that the
• 29:48
  Spirit of God is at work in them and through them and that He's doing
• 29:53
  significant things? And so it's amazing. One of the coolest moments we had this
• 29:57
  year in our life, in our house church, came when one of the kids in our house
• 30:05
  church got healed by the Spirit of God when another kid laid hands on him and
• 30:10
  prayed. It was unbelievable. We were flabbergasted. Yeah, it was
• 30:15
  unbelievable, and I wish we had more time, but we don't have a lot of time,
• 30:18
  but it was so cool. It was so cool, because here we are, a bunch of adults,
• 30:25
  and this little kid just lays hands, prays a short little prayer. This amazing
• 30:30
  moment happens. It felt like it did in the New Testament where the moment
• 30:35
  happened, and people didn't jump for joy. Everybody was confused. It was weird.
• 30:39
  Like, what just happened? I'm like, I'm not sure. Let me pray, and let me end this
• 30:42
  thing, and we'll investigate. So I pray, and everybody leaves, and I'm like,
• 30:45
  what just happened? We're trying to figure it out, and we're like, whoa, God
• 30:48
  did a miracle. And so then the next morning, we woke up, and we were thinking,
• 30:52
  I wonder if that miracle stuck. Did it take? We were doubting, and sure enough,
• 30:58
  God had done something significant, and here we are months later, and every
• 31:02
  now and then the joke is, hey, he still healed. Yeah, still healed. God is still
• 31:08
  God. That's amazing, but it came through the hands of a kid that was being invited
• 31:15
  into a kingdom moment, not on their own, but they had been guided there.
• 31:21
  I hope you hear our heart that, you know, when they're younger, we really want to
• 31:24
  instill God is good, that they don't doubt that, and as they continue their
• 31:28
  journey in our household, and we're their guide, we want to create opportunities
• 31:31
  for them to have their own experiences with the Lord that they can have as kind
• 31:35
  of their mile markers. They go, God is real. God is real. God is real. God is
• 31:39
  real. So when they leave our home, there's not a question of their faith
• 31:43
  as they're walking out the door. So those principles we told you, hey, get
• 31:47
  away, right, and we want you to make goals, and we want you guys to have guard
• 31:51
  rails for them, and we'd love for you guys to have a good group, you know, and
• 31:55
  then we'd also love for you guys, what was the last G? Step in as a guide.
• 31:59
  Guide, that's it, okay, yeah, and then to guide them, not forfeit that, but
• 32:02
  honestly, just the easiest next steps, one, just get away. Make time to be with
• 32:08
  the Lord, right? That'd be the easiest thing you could do, step in to just get
• 32:12
  away and be with the Lord. Cast vision, get vision for your family.
• 32:17
  Second thing is just start small. The joke is, how do you eat an elephant? One
• 32:22
  bite at a time, right? It feels daunting if you're not walking in this, that's
• 32:26
  okay, but you've got to start somewhere and start small, small, and the last part
• 32:31
  is just consistency over intensity. You know, it's a marathon, not a sprint. If
• 32:36
  you come out guns ablaze and you're gonna wear out at the beginning, even if
• 32:40
  you just walk that marathon, you're gonna finish, right? So if you can just be
• 32:43
  consistent in what you're doing, it's going to be so much more impactful than
• 32:47
  coming out guns ablazing and then done. Yeah, you know, we so often overestimate
• 32:51
  what we can get done in a year, and we underestimate what God will do in a
• 32:55
  lifetime. So we've just said, hey, if we could just walk this same path for 20,
• 33:01
  30, 40, 50, 60 years, what might God do? And so, man, I wish we had time for
• 33:08
  questions, but I know we're running out of time. What I would love to do
• 33:13
  is to take just a little bit of time and to just pray and to ask God that, for God
• 33:19
  to activate something in each of us. And so the way that we're gonna do this, I'm
• 33:22
  gonna encourage you to turn, to get in groups of three or four people or one or
• 33:27
  two people. Some of you don't wanna pray with anybody, that's okay. Just cough on
• 33:31
  your hands, tell them you're sick and they'll stay away from you. But what I'd
• 33:35
  encourage you to do, take a few moments and pray for the people that you're with
• 33:39
  that God would bring about revival in their family. God, would you bring about
• 33:44
  revival in their family, whatever that spiritual family looks like right now.
• 33:48
  And so I wanna just turn you loose right now. We're gonna take three or four
• 33:51
  minutes to pray in groups, and then Sidney and I just wanna pray a blessing
• 33:55
  over you as we wrap up our time. So you can pray out loud, get in groups, and
• 33:58
  then I'll call us back in and wrap us up. I wanna invite you to stand up with us,
• 34:04
  and I just wanna pray a short blessing. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I know we
• 34:09
  could pray for a long time, but let's stand together. And if you feel
• 34:14
  comfortable, I just invite you to just extend your hands out in front of you
• 34:18
  with your palms open, just as you, this posture of receiving. Father, I just
• 34:25
  thank you for every man and every woman in this room and for all of the folks
• 34:31
  that they represent. Father, I just ask for every person in the room that
• 34:38
  is feeling the regret or the heartache of what feels like missed opportunity or
• 34:43
  maybe a kid that has gone in a direction they would have never desired or seen
• 34:49
  coming. Father, would you yourself just be their comfort today? God, I just
• 34:56
  declare Psalm 112 and Psalm 128 over every man and woman in here, over every
• 35:03
  child, God. Lord, in the name of Jesus, we just pray that by the power of the
• 35:06
  Holy Spirit, that every kid that is raised in a Christian home would not just
• 35:12
  return to church one day, but that, Lord, they would return to King Jesus, that
• 35:16
  they would know you deeply. Lord, we pray that every kid in here, that one day,
• 35:21
  whether we see it right now or we see it in the future, we pray that every kid
• 35:24
  represented, that their parents' spiritual finish line would be their starting
• 35:29
  line, that their parents' ceiling would be their floor, that, God, you would do
• 35:33
  more than we could ask or imagine in the next generation. Lord, we pray that it
• 35:37
  would not be a judge's 210 generation, that, God, despite everything that we see,
• 35:42
  that, God, you'd raise up men and women that know you deeply, that love you
• 35:46
  fully, that walk with you joyfully. God, I pray in the name of Jesus that there
• 35:51
  be a fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit on these men and women, there be
• 35:54
  an anointing to hear your voice, to see your ways, to set our hearts on things
• 36:01
  that matter, and then to guide the next generation into those things. Lord, I
• 36:05
  pray for every person in this room that their public ministry would pale in
• 36:11
  comparison to their private ministry, that their public ministry would never
• 36:15
  be as significant as what happens behind closed doors with their kids in their
• 36:19
  home, with their spouse, that their conversations, that the depth and the
• 36:23
  joy and the life at home would far exceed anything that could happen in the
• 36:26
  pulpit. So, Father, we ask you for these things in the name of Jesus by the power
• 36:31
  of the Holy Spirit. God, would you give us the ability to dream big and to walk
• 36:35
  small, to take next steps. God, give us the spiritual gift of perseverance. Help
• 36:41
  us to walk in faith when it seems like there's no fruit on the tree. And, God,
• 36:46
  when we hit difficulty, would you help us who, just like Jesus, who for the joy
• 36:50
  set before him endured the difficulty, knowing what it would bring about. So,
• 36:55
  Lord, we thank you that our kids are yours, that you know them, and that you
• 37:00
  love them. God, we entrust them to you in the name of Jesus. And together we all
• 37:05
  say, amen. Hey, we love you guys. Thanks for being here.
• 37:08
  Thank you guys for listening to this episode on the Real Life Theology
• 37:16
  Podcast. I hope you guys have enjoyed this content. Please comment, like,
• 37:20
  subscribe, and check out some of our other podcasts at renew.org. I hope you
• 37:27
  guys have a great rest of your day.