David Zimmer: Hello and welcome back to the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast, my name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: It is great to have you here. This is part two of a conversation that we were having about how… Is there a difference between our stage persona and our personal persona? [chuckle]
BK: Yeah.
DZ: Are we living consistently and with integrity in our marriages and how we raise our kids? And so I was hoping that this episode, Bob, could be more dedicated to… Yeah, you’ve been given a family, and how you think through that and how we continue to talk about that integrity.
BK: Yeah. Yes, this is one of my favorite topics, and I think it’s good to just lay out the problem, which I think is so many times, so many of us know or familiar with or maybe are ourselves, parents who seem to be fruitful in ministry, but with young kids, that… It’s not happening. There’s anger in the home, there’s, yeah, frustration. What you see on a Sunday morning, talk about the public persona versus private, what you see on a Sunday morning, joy, faith, just hope and just Jesus, you don’t see in the home.
[chuckle]
DZ: Right.
BK: Get these kids out of here.
[chuckle]
BK: And, “Can you take care of that?” and all that for younger kids. And then older kids, the preacher’s kid, the pastor’s kid, and no that a worship leader… Not necessarily a pastor, but there can still be this stereotype that, well, if you’re the child, the middle school child, the teenage child of a person in ministry, well, then, you’re gonna be a little disrespectful, or gonna be a little on the sly, you’re gonna be little rebellious. That’s just, “Oh yeah, you’re a PK.”
DZ: Right.
BK: I don’t see it in the Bible. Even though, again, we’re not speaking… When we’re talking about those who lead the music, not necessarily an elder, they’re in a leadership position. In Sovereign Grace, we would certainly see that ideally as an elder position, but there are a lot of guys in our churches who are part-time or volunteers, and I know that that’s true for a lot of churches, but just look at the qualifications for an elder. In 1 Timothy and Titus, both of them mention the family. This is 1 Timothy 3:4 and 5, “An elder must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if one does not… ” This is the key, “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” So the way we treat our family, our kids, is going to be indicative of how we’re gonna treat God’s family.
DZ: Right.
BK: There will be a relationship, they’re not totally distinct. So I may think I’m fruitful in ministry and doing a great job leading people, but the way I treat my family, that’s gonna come out in the way I treat people. And then you have in Titus 2, very similar, “An elder must be above reproach.” This s Chapter 1:6, Titus, “If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.” Now, there’s some question. Do his children have to be believers? When the ESV puts in the notes, are faithful, his children are faithful. I don’t think you can… I don’t think the Lord is saying there that your children have to be believers, but they do have to be submissive, they do have to be… What does he say, “Not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.” And of course, as they… As kids get older, they are responsible and kids can make their own choices. But there is a connection so I welcome the opportunity to do this podcast. I think it’s needed. There may be some listening, watching now who are just thinking, “Yeah, maybe I’m not connecting those two.”
DZ: Right, right.
BK: Or maybe you know someone who’s not gonna connecting them.
DZ: Yeah. Well, and what would you say are some of the signs, or maybe some of the lies that we tell ourselves to miss this, to… Yeah, to prioritize the wrong things?
BK: Oh, wow. Well, I don’t know. If people haven’t seen other podcasts we’ve done…
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I have six kids, the oldest is 42, youngest is 20… Oh, let’s see, 27, and four girls, two boys. So we’ve been through it. And by the way, if you hadn’t seen the first part of this episode that I think we forgot to mention, where we talked about marriage and loving your wife, the thought occurred to me. If you are a wife who had listened to this or might listen to it, don’t use that to like, bash your husband.
[chuckle]
DZ: Yes.
BK: No, it’s for conversation and that would be the aim for that. So anyway, yeah, the lies, I could tell you the lies I told myself, like with my kids growing up. So we had five and 10 years, then we had two miscarriages, and then we had McKenzie is the last one five years later. What I’m doing is really important. I’m really important. I think we just love the public acknowledgement. We love the public praise, we think we’re doing God’s work. As we’re on a Sunday morning, leading people in God’s praise, praying for people, and doing various spiritual things. And you know, life in the home, it’s a lot less…
DZ: Glamorous.
BK: Glamorous, yeah, yeah. It’s just answering a toddler for the 10th time, “Why, why, why?” Serving your wife as she’s seeking to.
BK: Take care of things.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: It’s just not glamorous. And so we think, “Well, this can’t be important. And what God values is the stuff I do publicly.” No, God values our relationships with our wife and our children. He makes it very clear we’re to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We’re to do it with kindness and patience. So yeah, I think it’s the old sin of just pride. Just thinking, “God values my public ministry, so what I do privately doesn’t matter.” It’s the same thing that God spoke to the Israelites about, your public ministry is so great, but your private lives, they have nothing to do. They’re totally at odds with what you say you believe when you come before me.
DZ: Right. And as a parent, I imagine you’re building habits into your kids of how they see the church.
BK: Yes. Oh, totally.
DZ: You’re bringing all that home with you, not just the glamorous, the bad, the hard, the very difficult. And you can carry that weight into… I know I do as a dad, you can carry that into the home. And yeah, it gives them a perspective of the church.
BK: So describe that.
DZ: Yeah. So I would say that if your public ministry is just a job and it’s where you put in the long hard hours and you bring it home with you, and there’s a disconnect between that being a job and being actually an extension of your love for the Lord and how you’re serving and doing that in humility, the opposite of pride, you can carry that into the house, and I think it can… Especially as a PK, it can, yeah, affect how your children see the church.
BK: Yes.
DZ: I’ve had a lot of friends that have walked away from the church because they didn’t want to be a part of the hypocrisy that they saw. And so I think there can be greater implications for there being that disconnect that you’re talking about.
BK: Yeah, there are massive implications. Yeah. And that’s a sobering word, that our children aren’t just seeing the church as the window to view God, they’re seeing us. And so I wanna make sure that what they’re seeing is truly representative of who God is towards us and how He thinks about us, how He acts towards us, and how Jesus acts towards us. And I know so many times, as I was saying earlier, that I think the counsel I give about parenting is based much more on things that I didn’t do well.
[laughter]
BK: And so I got a lot of grandkids now, and we have three living with us, and there are sometimes… We have one Ruby who is a toddler and very verbal. And the other day she came in and I was doing my devotions or work or something, and she just came in and asked me to listen to animal sounds. “Can we listen to animal sounds?” And that’s her thing, like, “Can we listen to animal sounds. Can we listen to animal sounds?” [chuckle] And I realized I just felt this little thing in me going, “I don’t wanna have anyone ask me about animal sounds again.”
[laughter]
BK: It wasn’t real strong, but I felt it.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And I thought, “Oh, okay, that’s still there.” So the issue is I don’t wanna be inconvenienced. I don’t wanna be… Yeah, her mom took her. She wasn’t supposed to be asking me all the time. I love it. I don’t hate it, I love it.
DZ: Yeah, totally.
BK: But it’s the issue of, what’s going on in my heart? What do I desire? What do I want? And with our families, we want to see Christ glorified. We should wanna see him glorified there as much as we do on a Sunday morning.
DZ: Amen. That’s good.
BK: So just how you look out and wanna see people singing and raising their hands or engaged and just fully involved, “Yeah, they’re worshiping the Lord,” well, we wanna see our kids like that.
DZ: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah.
BK: So that’s kind of what we wanna talk about.
DZ: Yeah. And what are some of the practicals that you might have for parents raising small kids, maybe older kids? Maybe you’re listening to this podcast and you go, “Oh my goodness, that’s me. I feel like it’s not going well at home.” Any words of wisdom?
BK: No.
DZ: Alright.
BK: No.
DZ: Thanks for tuning in. It’s been great.
[laughter]
BK: Too many words. I don’t know if they’re of wisdom, and Julie would be much better at this than me, but I will do my best. Yeah, when your kids are young, I think they need three things. Actually, kids always need three things. They need your authority…
DZ: I’m writing this down.
BK: [chuckle] They need to be aware of your authority, your affection, and your attention. Especially for young kids, they need to know they’re not in charge. They need to know they’re not the king, they’re not the Lord. The Lord is the Lord. And that’s why we take time with them, that’s why we take time as they get old to discipline them. We take time to train them. We take time to give them boundaries and rules because there is an authority that is beyond them. So I know well-meaning parents sometimes read a book like Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp, which talks about… It’s a great book. It talks about well-worn paths to the Cross and…
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Helping your child understand the gospel. They tried to do this with a two-year-old and it’s just not very effective because a two-year-old isn’t gonna understand justification so much as they’re gonna understand. Oh, there’s a rule and…
DZ: Don’t touch that.
BK: It stops here.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: Right.
BK: So they need to know your authority. They need to know your affection. Those aren’t opposite. You know, the Lord disciplines, those, he loves so authority is not opposed to affection. We can do both. And were I think we’ve created that disconnect is when we think, oh, if I’m gonna be an authority, I have to be like this and no, you don’t, you can be loving. You can be patient you can be kind.
DZ: You should be loving. You should be patient.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But you can do still be an authority.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So affection is just, you don’t make your affection dependent on their obedience. You…
DZ: That’s such a hard one.
BK: And that’s like the Lord treats us.
DZ: Yes.
BK: It is but because we think, you know, we get personally offended.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: By our children’s disobedience, we think, oh, this is against me. No, it’s against God.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And they don’t even know it yet when they’re young.
DZ: And I don’t even… Does that. I don’t even think that goes away.
BK: No.
DZ: I mean, especially when they get older and more rebellious and…
BK: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
DZ: Yeah But to see it as rebellion against God, first.
BK: It is, and we’re there to help them. To help them understand that rebelling against God is a bad idea. That He is the king. He is in charge. And that we are to run to Him. He is both the one who judges and the one who is our refuge from judgment.
DZ: Right. Right. Right. Right.
BK: That’s what the gospel is. Jesus died in our place to take the wrath of God for us so that we could run to God as our Father, forgiven cleansed, redeemed, saved, justified. It’s wonderful.
DZ: That’s wonderful.
BK: That’s the gospel.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So the affection we show our children is not based on whether or not they did everything we said, you know, they were supposed to do, we can still hug them. We can still love them. We can still feel in our hearts towards them. We’re grateful for them. And then attention is the third thing we need to give them. And this boy, this is so much more necessary to say than it was when we were raising our kids in…
DZ: For sure.
BK: The early 80’s and 90’s. It… Yeah, we have so many distractions. You cannot parent a child through your screen.
DZ: That’s a word.
BK: You cannot be constantly distracted, whether it’d be by social media or by games or by Netflix or by emails or whatever it is and give attention to your child. So I mean, I’d recommend just, if you’re getting down to play with your child, just put that phone away. Just, it can be helpful. I mean, depending on your temptation, give them your attention, look in their eyes. You know, when you teach them the importance of attention, giving you attention.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: You know, when you call their name, teach them to say yes, Mom. Yes Dad. Yes Mommy and Daddy.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Yes, sir. Whatever. Just so they know, oh, I’m paying attention because our world is saying, Hey look everywhere, look everywhere.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: You can look everywhere and it’d be okay. We can’t.
DZ: Yep.
BK: We can’t. We have to focus. And that’s part of, I think, you know, the world’s Satan’s scheme is to just get us distracted.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: We don’t have to intentionally do something evil. We just need to be distracted from what’s good.
DZ: Yep.
BK: And there are a million distractions so as they get older and this is… These are all broad brushes, broad brush strokes you know, we sought to involve our kids in ministry and not make it a… Okay, this is what daddy does. This is what Mom does this. No, you guys do this, you know, so bringing them in to help set up or to help serve in some way, bringing them with you, you know, kids learn so much just through hanging out and again… You want be aware that you’re a model during those times, if you’re angry or frustrated or discouraged or church is just a chore, they’re gonna see that.
BK: That’s what they’re gonna pick up. Just bringing them won’t help them.
DZ: Yep.
BK: You know, bringing them while arguing on the way to church is not, what is it teaching them? Well, this is, you know.
DZ: This is what we do.
BK: This is what we do. That’s right.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: It’s a joy, it’s a joy to serve the church.
DZ: Yep.
BK: You know, and that should be communicated through our lives, through our conversation. Yeah. So involving them in any way we can.
DZ: Yep.
BK: You know, as they get older, I would say you know, walking alongside them.
DZ: Yep.
BK: As kids get older, you know, 13, 14, 15, they’re still under authority, but they’re moving to this place where we’re being more of a council. And so we wanna walk with them during those years. We wanna… We found one of the most effective things to do is just to take… I took the boys and Julie took the girls out for dates, you know it could be Starbucks, it could be a meal, it could be sitting in a park, it could be anything, but where you’re just having focused conversation and you’re asking them questions.
BK: You’re saying, how does this affect you? What do you think about this? What do you think about boys? What do you think about girls? What do you think about this show? What do you think about this song? What do you think about this person? What do you think? How do you think about school? How do you think about church? What do you… You know, what’s bothering you, what’s encouraging you. What… Just, there’s so many questions we can ask.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Without jumping into critique, but learning where they’re at. And then talking about how the word of God applies to that, how the gospel applies to that. You know, one thing I found really helpful in terms of schedule, as the kids got older and as our family got bigger, was just to always make sure that our family time was the first thing we planned.
BK: So we had a family night on Sunday night and had a date night on Monday night and then a family night on Wednesday night. So the Wednesday night was the fun one, or I think the Sunday night was the fun one Wednesday night was the more serious one. But those were in the calendar, those were in stone. And then we homeschooled for many years. So that was helpful in terms of me being there with them for breakfast. So that was a part of our kind of family time.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: But those things were always there first. So our family should never feel, and I think I might have said this in the last podcast. They should never feel as though they are fighting our ministry for attention or time or affection.
DZ: Right.
BK: They shouldn’t feel that. And that… They are our ministry.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: You know, it’s not like here’s the ministry and I got my family. No, your family is your ministry. That’s what God has given you the privilege of caring for and communicating the gospel to and raising in His word.
DZ: Right.
BK: And sometimes I think families can… Leaders get into trouble because they haven’t sewn into those things.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Family, hasn’t been first on the calendar.
DZ: And they’re so busy.
BK: And so when real sacrifices have to be made their family feel like they’re already operating at a deficit, so it’s like, why are you doing this? And if that’s not being taken care of in the calm times, and the regular times it’s gonna be a problem.
DZ: Right? Yeah, absolutely a problem. When you say, how you’re prioritizing that Sunday night and Wednesday night. Are you talking about like family devotions? Are you talking about just getting together, doing a meal together? How are you intentional in those times?
BK: Well, I think, one of ’em would be just doing something fun. Just having fun.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Our kids should know we love to have fun.
DZ: Yes.
BK: And so if someone’s out for ministry like six nights a week it’s gonna be hard to communicate to your family that you really care about them. [chuckle] if they never see you.
DZ: Yeah, true.
BK: Always try to be home for dinner, I mean, five outta seven nights. I know. It’s hard to say, and we have a long season of parenting, but a lot of times we can just kind of say, ah, well, that’s an optional. God created meals as a means of fellowship.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: He created… We’re gonna be enjoying the marriage supper of the lamb that’s eternity.
DZ: Yep.
BK: So there’s something about gathering around a table that God means to encourage us and to inspire us and to build us together.
DZ: Mm-hmm.
BK: So whether it’s breakfast or dinner and maybe lunch, I don’t know if you can do that, but having those meals where you are sharing times, sharing thoughts and having asking questions, and as the kids get older, having them ask questions of each other. It’s not just, you kind of directing everything, but you’re saying, Hey, this is a time when we get to talk, isn’t that great. And we get to hear from each other. And then even to this day, when our family sit down for a meal, we end up just lots of times just hanging around.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Just hanging around the table, just talking. And that was cultivated through years of just devoting ourselves to eating together, which is what a great thing to do. [laughter] so for family devotions, I mean, there are just so many tools available now and I would say doing anything worth, doing bad… Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Meaning don’t wait until you have the perfect system.
DZ: Totally.
BK: Do something, just make it age appropriate. If it’s… If your kids are young make it fun, make it short, make it interesting, make it engaging. I think I used to put the burden on my kids to sit straight, to be attentive to, you know whatever it is. And it’s my job to make it engaging, you know? To make it interesting. And Julie would say, she would often say, “ya know, you’ll be doing something good and you’ll always go like five minutes longer.”
[laughter]
BK: “Or 10 minutes longer.”
[laughter]
BK: And I think there was something in me that said, okay. They’ve done… Been good up to now, but I wanna see if they really have self control.
[laughter]
BK: And it was horrible, but there was just this urge in me to do that. No, it’s not my urge. I wanna make it fun, good, enjoyable, engaging from beginning to end.
DZ: Yeah. Which is so great. Even you talking about the Wednesday night, like fun night. That’s so good because I think, especially if you’re in full-time ministry, you’re always carrying a lot of heavy, you know, moments of ministry conversations and relationships in the church and dealing with conflict. And so your family is your ministry?
BK: Yeah.
DZ: But if it’s just a… Like you’re talking about a rigid sit and listen, I’m ministering to you.
BK: Yeah, yeah.
DZ: If it’s rigid like that, it doesn’t… They miss out on the joy and the excitement of the fact that we get to be together and we get to see what God’s good design is and what his Word says.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: And experiencing that joy, you know?
BK: Yes. It never ceases to amaze me and always causes me to be more amazed that Jesus came and hung out with his disciples. He didn’t come to sit on a throne and be approached only by those who had done everything perfectly. ‘Cause there were none. So he came and he hung out for three years with guys who… I think if we knew them, well, we’d be a lot like them.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: They were proud. They were losers in different ways. I mean, but Jesus came and he like enjoyed them. I mean he hung out with them. And so that’s us, that includes us, you know, Jesus hangs out with us. And so there’s no aspect of our kids that, that we should look at and go, “Oh, well I can’t hang out with that.” You know, in fact, one of my kids, Devon, and he’s been on and we’ve shared some of our story.
DZ: Yes.
BK: He’s been on the podcast. There was a time when I realized, wow, if I acted towards anybody else, the way I act towards Devon, they wouldn’t wanna be with me, because of who I was when I was around Devon.
DZ: How were you around Devon?
BK: Oh, I was judge-mental. I was quickly angered. I… I was… Those are the big things. [laughter] I was proud, I talked down to him…
DZ: Because what do you think fueled that, you wanting him to change?
BK: I think what fueled a lots of things. Yeah, certainly I wanted him to change for my convenience, for my pride. I was a pastor, I was a parent and he should be doing what I told him to do. I would never do that, what he’s doing. And we’ve poured into him all these years. As your parents… As your kids get older, you’re tempted to think, “Well, I’ve poured into them all these years, so they should respect me, they should just do it.” And you know as kids, when they’re around 7, 8, 9, they start to realize, “Oh, I can do other things. I can think differently than my parents.” I mean many kids do, and you start to think, “Why are they doing that?” I’ve just been able to tell them, “Do this. Think this.” And there’s this mentality that a lot of parents have is, “Well, this rebellion is gonna come.” I don’t think we should have that attitude. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he’s old he shall not depart from it. Yeah, there will be kids who go off, go AWOL. We had one, but a lot of that revealed our lack in parenting as much as it revealed his heart when he was 12. We had done a lot of that, and especially me, or not done things that led him to think things that weren’t addressed. So just…
DZ: So what was the turning point in that?
BK: Well, the turning point was we shut his life down in a lot of ways. So we didn’t want him influencing others, we didn’t want other people influencing him, and then I began to spend one-on-one time with him. We’d go through a book, we’d go through the Bible, we’d just talk, we’d have these outings. And I remember one time going to a Starbucks with him and thinking “I hate this.” That’s what I was thinking in my mind and he said… Told me later, he said, “Yeah I was thinking exact same thing, I hate this.” But the Lord used it, we kept doing it. I remember we were going through a book engaging the enemy… The Enemy Within by Kris Lundgaard, and we were talking about how sin works, and I was talking about my pride, and he said, “Dad, this is the first time I’ve felt like you’ve talked to me as your equal rather than a fellow sin… You’ve talked to me as a fellow sinner rather than talking down to me.” And God used that just to show me, you think you’re humble, you’re not, not with him. So I mean, the Lord converted him eventually and we thank God that he did. He’s one of my best friends now, but there was that season where I had to confront my own failures in parenting, and hopefully as we’ve been talking through some of these things, you might be in that situation, someone listening, where you think your problem’s your kids, the problem might be you.
BK: And the ways that you have led or not led your children, the way you’ve loved or not loved them, the way you’ve taught or not taught them and we have an abundance of resources available to parents. More than ever. But in the end, I think it gets down to those three things I mentioned at the beginning, authority, affection, attention. You’re bringing them again and again to the Word. That’s one of the things that we realized over the years was that we have these resources that God has given to us, that we have to trust. They are His Word, His Word is true, we wanna build our children into the Word, we wanna build them… We help them see that we live by God’s Word, we trust God’s promises, we heed His warnings, we believe what He says. We have the gospel, which is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. It really does change people’s lives.
BK: And we need to constantly be referencing the gospel. Our goal as parents is not to keep our children from sinning, it’s to make sure that they know what to do with their sin in light of the fact that we have a Savior. That’s a different aim because your children will sin externally and internally. You might see the external, you can’t see the internal. So we need to teach our children that when you sin, we have a savior. So we have the Holy Spirit, we are not the Holy Spirit. Parents, we constantly fall into this trap of thinking, “If I just say this again and again more sternly, if I just approach it from different ways, if I just speak to them for an hour, they’ll get it.”
DZ: It’s gonna click.
BK: It’s gonna click and it doesn’t. We’re not the Holy Spirit. We can rely on the Word of God, we can rely on the gospel, we can rely on the Holy Spirit to do that change in people’s hearts. And then we have the church, and if you aren’t sharing… If you’re a leader and you’re having issues with your kids, you wanna share that with some friends, a pastor, a small group leader, because they’re there to bear that burden with you. Go to a couple you respect who have older children who are doing well and say, “How did you do that, how can you help us?” So we don’t take advantage of these resources, and that’s one of the things we sought to do was… I’ve been blessed to be in churches for the last 40 years, where I’ve had people I could go to for parenting questions and counsel and encouragement.
DZ: And it takes humility to approach people and ask them?
BK: Absolutely.
DZ: And God blesses that humility.
BK: You know, God has a way of bringing our pride back around to us and we can take such pride in our parenting, and then our children don’t turn out the way we thought they would. It’s humbling. It doesn’t say necessarily that you were a terrible parent because you have parents who have three or four amazing kids, and then one who just totally walks away from the faith. So that may not be so much about your parenting, but it is humbling. But you know what always helps me, to know that Jesus picked Judas.
DZ: Wow.
BK: Judas had it all. He had everything. He had Jesus.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: There. But in God’s plan and full knowledge and ordained purposes, Judas was the one who betrayed Jesus. So I wouldn’t want a parent to think, if my child is AWOL, that’s all my fault.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: No, you can learn from it.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: But you can continue to trust God.
DZ: Yes.
BK: He’s Sovereign.
DZ: Yes. Yes, yes.
BK: He’s good. He’s wise and use that redemptively rather than wallowing in shame and condemnation.
DZ: Amen.
BK: Because we have a Savior.
DZ: Yes.
BK: And He’s, He’s there for us, through every failure, through every sin, through everything we didn’t do. He paid for that all. He paid for all of that. And God has His sovereign purposes. So at the end of the day, I wanna be seeing parenting as this privilege.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I heard… I remember, when I was first a parent, hearing someone say, if a man is a success in ministry, but a failure in his home, he’s a failure. That’s a strong way of saying it, but that really impacted me.
DZ: Wow.
BK: And I just made it my aim to say, “Look, I’ll leave ministry if that means that I will be able to devote myself sufficiently to my family.” Now, as Lord would have it, I didn’t have to do that even when Devon was rebelling. But I’d be open to it. I would’ve been open to it because it’s where God is seen most clearly.
DZ: Amen.
BK: My attitude towards him, my relationship with him, it’s how I’m loving my family. And we’re just… We just scratched the surface of this.
[laughter]
DZ: This has been so helpful, so useful. And I just, I pray that it serves you. If there was a lot to take in, but maybe going back and writing down a few notes, if you’re tuning in and…
BK: We’ll put some parent… Some book references…
DZ: Great.
BK: In the notes.
DZ: Yeah. That would be so great.
BK: Podcast notes.
DZ: Yeah, that would so great. Well, thank you so much, Bob, for sharing, and thank you for tuning in or watching or listening.
BK: Yes thank you. Hey, can I pray just…
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Let me just pray.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Father, thank you for anyone who’s listened to this and is feeling the weight of parenting right now, whether they’re just getting started or in the middle or later years, Father, I ask that you would grant them your perspective or that you would bring conviction where conviction is needed. You would make them aware of your forgiveness through Jesus that has been purchased through His life and death and resurrection, full payment for all our parenting sins. Lord, they would rest in the goodness of that. And Lord, give them an awareness of your spirits working in them, make them aware, Lord, that you give us parents… You give us kids, not only so that we could be influence on our kids, but so that they… You would use them to change us. What a beautiful plan that you formed for our good and for your glory. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
DZ: Amen.
