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Happy Father's Day!
Join Neddie, Austin, and Brian on this episode of Living Reconciled as they discuss the profound journey of fatherhood. The conversation moves from the crucial foundation of a strong marriage and the importance of becoming a husband before a father to the emotional nuances of parenting and the ways children are deeply influenced by their parents' emotional states and behaviors. Tune in to gain practical advice on embracing the responsibilities and joys of fatherhood.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
We would love to hear from you! Send us a text message.
Happy Father's Day!
Join Neddie, Austin, and Brian on this episode of Living Reconciled as they discuss the profound journey of fatherhood. The conversation moves from the crucial foundation of a strong marriage and the importance of becoming a husband before a father to the emotional nuances of parenting and the ways children are deeply influenced by their parents' emotional states and behaviors. Tune in to gain practical advice on embracing the responsibilities and joys of fatherhood.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
This is Living Reconciled, a podcast dedicated to giving our communities practical evidence of the gospel message by helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured for us by living with grace across racial lines. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Living Reconciled, episode 53. I am your host, Brian Crawford, and I am with my co-host and my friends, Austin Oil, Nettie Winters. Gentlemen, how are you doing after that dramatic pause?
Speaker 2:I find you a friend as well, that's good.
Speaker 3:Nettie, I'm always concerned about that pause. Is that, am I still going to be a good friend or not?
Speaker 1:Special thanks to our sponsors Folks like Austin Hoyle, no, folks like Nissan, st Dominic's Atmos Energy, regents Foundation, brown Missionary Baptist Church, christian Life Church, ms Doris Powell, mr Robert Ward, ms Ann Winters. Thank you so much for everything that you do. It's because of what you do that we're able to do what we Day and today. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about fathering, lessons learned and fathering. I have two individuals with me today who are fathers, along with myself, and we are all fathers. I think we can all agree um at different points in our journey of fathering. Austin's on the the front end of fathering I'm sort of in that middle area of fathering and Nettie is Papa.
Speaker 3:He's a grandfather, great Papa, great, great.
Speaker 2:Papa, he gets to sit back and get that bird's eye view and laugh at all the parents Absolutely, as they go through the same stress. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Nettie, when you talk about fatherhood lessons learned, give me your biggest lesson, your biggest takeaway in your journey of fatherhood.
Speaker 3:My biggest journey in fatherhood, or blessing, is that you become a husband before you become a father.
Speaker 1:I'm interested as to why that's your biggest lesson learned in fathering. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 3:Because that's what God tells us Exactly, that premarital sex and all of that is a sin on occasion and it's just I don't know. I just find in my experience personally and professionally as a pastor that I find that when it's done the way the Bible says it's supposed to be done, they just work out so much better. That's not to say to anyone that it's happened to, that God can't fix it and make it right. But at the same time, lesson learned is that the Bible says husband and wife, mother and father are connected prior to children. If you go back into Genesis, it starts that way.
Speaker 3:And so for me to say to someone about marriage and other things first of all, my whole preparation, counseling, whatever you want to enhance me for marriage and so forth. We talk about this connection with God and how that works out. There's probably challenges enough in terms of life. And then when you join two people together, you compound the issues, the problems, the things of life, and the Bible says we become one. That is not in there just to say you become one. That is because when you face things, two is better than one. That is not in there just to say you become one. That is because when you face things, two is better than one. You know, and you know one can put a thousand to flight, two can put. And so the Bible talk about a threefold cord. You know you talk about you and your lovely wife joined together, but the rope that holds that together is Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3:And so we are faced with the issue of dealing with what happens in life and in marriage. And so if you're going to have the family, to have all the components and benefits and the great joy of marriage, then we need to do it God's way. And so the lesson learned is that we ought to give our children a good Christian education. Deuteronomy 6 talks about this thing of a good Christian education. Proverbs 22 and 6 says raise up a child in the way it should go. Proverbs 22 and 6 says raise up a child in the way it should go. In Ephesians 4, the Bible says fathers specifically do not provoke your children, but raise them up in the ammunition of the Lord.
Speaker 1:I want to come back to that. Give me just a second, because I want to turn to a little bit further into Deuteronomy and those passages that you, that the Lord is kind of just searing you through the years. That has shaped the way that you've raised your own. And so, austin, let me turn to you again. You're the younger father amongst us three. What's?
Speaker 3:the biggest lesson in fatherhood? What do you mean? The younger father, the children or him? Both, both, both, both.
Speaker 1:He was hurrying up to say both Absolutely. So what are the big lessons, or the biggest lesson?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they will take on your emotions far more than you realize. They will take on your burdens more than you realize. They'll take on your anxiety more than you realize they. They will take on your burdens more than you realize. They'll take on your anxiety more than you realize. They will take on your faults more than you realize, um, there's, there's not a thing, um, I can do. If I'm really in a bad place there, there's really not a thing I can do to shield my children from it entirely.
Speaker 2:Um, they're better observers and better listeners than we give them, and it's usually all at a subconscious level, it's, you know. That's the reason why, you know, people always joke, you know. Well, I don't know if they joke, so I've heard the joke which is like, well, you're just gonna have to pay for surgery when you're in your 20s, or not surgery, but therapy when you're in your 20s, or not surgery, but, uh, therapy when you're in your 20s. You know, I, I hear that sometimes and it's just like, okay so.
Speaker 2:So sometimes the manner in which we parent um may actually cause um, some some severe issues, either good or bad. Yeah, within the, within the children, it's and and it's it's never, never neutral. Your, your presence in the child's life is never neutral. Formation is happening. Formation is happening. Just in what direction is that formation happening?
Speaker 2:And whether we know it or not, and whether we know it or not, and whether we're conscious of it or not, and we could think we're doing a really good job in formation, but it may not be connecting, we could think we're doing a terrible job at times, but somehow realize and the kid would just come up to us I was like, hey, I see you struggling and that's helped me to be able to see what the real world is like to be able to see you struggling, to know that I'm going to have to struggle at some point in the future, at some point in my life I'm going to have a struggle and seeing how you handled it even though you didn't handle it very well for about five minutes there, but the rest of the 45 minutes you did a really good job and it was that rest of the 45 minutes that I'm going to remember.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you said that, austin, because I think there's a big lesson about fathering that you just kind of unveiled, and it is that fathering that you just kind of unveiled, and and and it is that fathering isn't a perfect science or it's not a perfect. It's not a perfect journey. However, kids learn just as much in the way that we fail and recover and respond as they do in the way that we're, you know, operating. You know when we're at peak, you know. So sometimes, you know when we're at peak, you know. So.
Speaker 1:Sometimes fathers think, ok, I got to be at peak, right. And and then when they, when they fumble the ball, they, oh man, you know well, oh, my goodness, where my kids going to think about me now that I fumbled the ball. They can glean and learn so much about this journey of sanctification by the way that we respond and the way that we recover. And so I have failed in magnificent ways fathering my two sons, but there have been times that I've learned just from these are magnificent, magnificent, magnificent ways, magnificent, magnificent ways as a father of two sons, but they have Are you talking about mistakes and failures, absolutely, and you call them magnificent.
Speaker 3:How can you put that Go ahead? Yeah, great ways, great ways.
Speaker 2:Momentous, momentous ways, prodigious ways.
Speaker 1:And yet they have learned so much from the way that I respond or choose not to respond. You know, there's so so many times. What I've noticed is that fathering is about showing up, you know, and, and what ends up happening is that when life gets difficult, when life gets hard, when the demand, when the demands become great, many men in fatigue, exhaustion, shame, frustration, whatever it may be Many men stop showing up. And so much of fathering is about just simply showing up every day. Sometimes you're going to hit, sometimes you're going to miss, but keep showing up. And there is so much that your children will glean from you just simply being present and committing.
Speaker 1:And when I say showing up, I'm not just talking about coming to the room and being in the room, I'm talking about bringing your whole self. That's helpful too. Bringing your whole self, yeah, helpful too. Bringing your whole self, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But don't run right, don't run when it gets hard, don't flee, don't flee, don't flee. And that's something that's really inherent. It's something that's there that wants to pull us out of the fight, man. It wants to cause us to disconnect and become disjointed and just kind of, you know, stay in the fight. And there is so much that your kids will glean from you. Just staying present and staying in the fight Nettie give me another lesson.
Speaker 3:You know when we talk about you know the ideal versus the non-ideal. We talk about redemption. Well, you know, when God redeems us, he expects us to go to the ideal. Even though you've not been in the ideal situation and things are not the way he really expected or designed for us to be when he redeemed us, that set us back up on the right track, the right time now for us to go forward. Jesus did what he did to make good on what Adam messed up in the beginning, and so, now that he's made good, he expects for us to do as best we can with the power to hold the spirit guiding, leading and controlling us to do that ideal thing now. And so when you express and Austin expressed that even though you've done a magnificent mess, god could make a miracle out of that magnificent mess. And so when our children see how we rebound if I can say that and how we respond and how God has shown grace and we extend that, that presence that you're talking about, we extend that and don't judge in a way that's detrimental to our children, but judge in a way that is positively to our children. That, oh yes, you will mess up, you will fall down, but you can get up and do better. And so when they see that, that's a lesson that's really been helpful. Because you know, I look at it like this man when I shot that arrow out of the evening, not only did I not hit the bullseye man, I thought I wouldn't even know where I'd hit the target, but God took that dude and brought it back in man and bam, right at the bullseye you go like what happened, God? Your presence and your obedience, your consistency and persistency pursuing God. God is doing something that in the physical we can never do, but in the spiritual realm we wonder how that happened, but we really don't have to wonder how it happened. God took our little, god took our obedience, god took what we were doing toward him and made it right within the generational and so forth, and so you see our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren going in the right direction.
Speaker 3:It ain't so much about me and what I did Well, it is about what I did but it's more about what God is doing through me, because I decided, when God redeemed me from all of these magnificent messes, I got to remember that. Sanctific messes. You like that, but anyway I Do. You like that. But I got to remember that, even though I made mistakes, god taking those mistakes and turn them into miracles of salt, if you can. And so now that's really a blessing to me. So now in my, even with my adult children, sons, I'm still doing work that a father should have done in in in when I was Austin age yeah, austin.
Speaker 2:So you get to redo it? Yeah, A little bit. I mean not completely redo it, but like a few times in certain ways. Well, you don't get it.
Speaker 3:It's almost like that man. I remember my father-in-law being buried in January and then I had a grandson to be born in the same month he was buried. He was going like, look at that, yeah. And so in a way, you get a first start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you get a first start. I see it as new opportunities, nettie, I mean, because even with my oldest son, my 19-year-old, right, there's some lessons, without question. Understand now that I should have taught him probably six years, yeah Right, and so the time has passed, he's not 13. So the lessons and the conversations that we're having are totally different now than we would have had at 13. However, there's new opportunities. There are new opportunities.
Speaker 3:But at this point, not that we should promote what we should have, could have, would have and don't worry about it, but you need to be concerned about it. So our job today is to talk about the 13 versus 19. Exactly, Even though the 19 now is probably in a better position of receiving and executing at 19 than he was at 13,. But that's not an excuse not to do it.
Speaker 1:No, no, because, like you said, what God is doing is he's using. I shot the arrow sideways and he's still finding a way to put it on target, so he's extending grace to me. I'll tell you, austin, one big lesson that I've really just reflected on over the last couple of years now is learning the difference in fathering, learning the difference between what's difficult and what's dangerous, because our culture Unfold.
Speaker 3:that's some more man. Yeah, our culture, that's deep.
Speaker 1:Our culture has merged dangerous with difficult talk, talk to me about that.
Speaker 2:I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to know what you mean, because so so we we are thinking so much about protection and covering and making sure our kids don't get into anything you know bad and hurt themselves and harm themselves that we're not allowing our kids to struggle.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And we're not, and we're not giving them an opportunity to learn or to be formed, going back to formation through struggle. Difficulty forms us, and so it's okay for us to allow our kids to have some difficult moments. It's okay for us to allow our kids to navigate through a difficult relationship before we immediately rush in to try to rescue and save the day. I'm going to go talk to that dad. I'm going to talk to these people, it's OK. I'm going to go down to school. I'm going to straighten that teacher out. I'm going to straighten that teacher out. It's OK to give them a little bit of time to kind of navigate through this difficulty, but because we shield them so quickly from difficulty, connecting it to danger oh, this is going to somehow be harmful to my child Then we have we have in some ways stunted their formation, stunted their growth, and so one of the lessons that I'm learning and it goes back to even basketball, basketball, football.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, you know they're running those kids. Man, oh, my goodness, I don't want my child to have to run. Man, it looks like he's got cramps and it looks like he's hurting now. Man, maybe I should go and talk to that coach, because my son had cramps last night after that hard workout, after that hard practice. No, no, no, no, no. Give them some room to struggle. Well, and remember you're still present so you can come in at any time, but don't come in too quickly in the midst of the struggle, because oftentimes it's one of the things that God uses most to bring formation.
Speaker 3:You know, when I thought about you saying difficult or danger, I believe avoiding what you're saying is try to keep our children. I have parents, especially my generation, say I don't want my children going through whatever I'm going like. Really, you really want them to go through what you've gone through because without you going through what you're going through, you wouldn't be here to help them Absolutely. And so I think sometimes we protect our children from the wrong thing Absolutely. And you know, even though I'm trying to protect them from difficulty and dangerous or whatever I see that you know, certainly if I see them standing in front of the train, I got to get them out of the way, yeah. But at the same time we put them in dangerous situations because we don't allow them the maturity of growing and maturing in decision making. And when we are removed from the scene it's like what am I going to do? I'm trying to lose it in other ways and other things. Other ways and other things.
Speaker 3:You know, in Luke 15, you know the prodigal son thing we talked about. Sure, for me that's a great illustration of loving them through the ups and downs of life. And what you describe is that the young son says give me what belongs to me now. Right, I don't wait till you pass away. I want my stuff now. And the father allowed him to learn a lesson he otherwise would have never learned, and so we have to love them through that Absolutely. And that love is allowing them to make some mistakes. Like I said, knowingly and willingly allow children to do things that you know are going to be detrimental to their health or physical being or whatever else. That's one thing, or emotional Right, that's dangerous.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, because there are forces in this world that would take over the spirits and the minds of children and that's dangerous.
Speaker 3:Okay, but at the same time, if we go back to the ideal, it says, when they are born, what we ought to be doing to protect them, that there would not be situations where they will make dumb decisions that will put themselves in those positions. Because if we train them up in the way they should go, educate them, don't provoke they should go. Educate them, don't provoke them, don't nag them. All these things that the Bible tells us to do, father's influence and having a father advantage, as you said, being present generally say would help them.
Speaker 3:Know you won't get some knocks and bumps in life, but there's still hope, there's still redemption, and so that's the, for me, that's the greatest part of the principles. If I were to talk about the principles of fatherhood, the principle would be number one to train them up, educate them from a biblical perspective, and with that come the spirit of God to control, direct, guide them. You know there's. You know it's just absolutely impossible. You know we talk about the schools and you know there's. You know it's just absolutely impossible. You know we talk about the schools and you know I look around at the school.
Speaker 3:For many years Our school was in isolated situations and we learned that being in isolated situations like that there's a lot of danger. That came in those situations. What do you mean? Isolated situations? Well, there was not being there. A community, you know businesses and even when we say that, you know got to be so far from the students.
Speaker 3:So how do you protect that? You know you build fences and put up security and whatever, and still, through all of that, these people still get in and harm the children. So the only real protection they have is to commit them when. So the only real protection they have is to commit them when Samuel's mother committed him to God at a very early age. She said, lord, you blessed me with a child, I will commit him back to you. And that's what she did. And so, as we think about that, then our job and when I talk about education, our job is to commit them back to the Lord, because the Lord, in essence, is the only one that can protect you. And, as fathers, if we've learned anything, we learn the fact that without God, it's impossible to do anything that we're talking about doing. It'd just be absolutely impossible. Because here they sit in this building in some instance of isolation, and they sit in this building, they are set in this building and they are subject and susceptible to whatever the teacher, the teacher I think Austin may have mentioned that for the mentally, emotionally and so forth. You got that crazy stuff going on. You got supposedly security, and then the security guy go crazy, or the person go crazy. What do you do with that? And then you got the outside forces that come in. You got all that taking place man and these kids trying to navigate through life and deal with the peer pressure and all this other stuff. Except for God, build the house. Except for God, protect. Except for God intervene.
Speaker 3:So our job is to daily commit them in prayer and pray over them. You know, I used to pray over my children and I still do it, at least once a week now. I do it as a family. I pray Ephesians and Colossians where it says, you know, that the Lord would dwell deep in their hearts, that they would know the love of God, all of those things that Paul admonishes us to pray for in chapter 1 and in chapter 3 of Ephesians. That used to be my daily prayer for my children when they were small. Now my daily prayer for them expands on all of that. But basically that's the basics of educating them, empowering them and equipping them, all of those things that I call the foes of Ephesians.
Speaker 3:First of all, we ought to equipping them, all of those things that I call the four E's of Ephesians. We ought to. First of all, we ought to enlist them. They ought to be our great followers. The greatest father we can have is our children, and we ought to enlist them to be on our team as part of family raising. And then we ought to engage them in a way that they're open to us speaking into their lives, setting the atmosphere, the climate for them to do that and they want to equip them. I think that's what occurred to Carmen. So many times we don't equip them because we don't feel like we're equipped and so, therefore, we don't equip them. But in doing that, in listening to them, engaging them and equipping them, that empowers them to remove themselves from dangerous situations that you can't protect them from even though you're trying.
Speaker 1:I tell people all the time, nettie, that parenting is provision, protection, preparation, absolutely. That is all three. I'm sorry I took my E's and made them P's Go ahead, but no, seriously, I've had several opportunities to not just raise our, our children, my two boys, but I've had opportunities to raise other children. Oh, absolutely, nieces and nephews and things of that nature. Just wait, just wait until they adopt you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have people have adopted me and they're like how do you adopt a pair by the end of the day? But the point I was going to make about the protection is that there's a right way to do it.
Speaker 1:Now the wrong way to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, the preparation and that's my point with see, the preparation allows you right To um put have your children in situations where they get exposed to, you know, maybe more TV than you wanted them to get exposed to or more, more, uh, computer than you wanted to get them exposed to.
Speaker 1:But if there's presence and preparation happening, then it is preparing them right for the moments where your protection isn't there, because there are times where your protection is not going to be there. But if you've given enough presence and preparation, by God's grace, that's going to be a sustaining force when they're in the midst of moments where your protection is no longer near them. And so, yeah, I encourage people all the time in that way to think about parenting as provision, presence, preparation and protection. And if all of those are working together, even as your protection begins to fall back and they get older and they move out on their own and begin to do different things, then all the other things that you've done in the way of preparation, presence and provision will guide them into in the protection area. And, uh, you know, even you know, when my son people ask me how's my son doing, I say he's on the road, you know he's still on the highway. It's still on the highway Now, now that highway has two lanes.
Speaker 1:He's still on the highway. He's still on the highway Now, now that highway has two lanes, that highway has median. Sometimes he crosses over lanes a little early, sometimes he's swerving Right, right, right, you know and and that, and that's that's what we call growing up. But he's on the road Right and I and my prayer is that there's been enough preparation, enough protection and provision and presence and prayer to keep him on the road until he reaches that destination but fully a man.
Speaker 3:The good part about him being on the highway and still on the road. He get a glimpse of us being on the highway and the road because we're still on the highway, we're still on the road, still swerving, still swerving Every night, I did it.
Speaker 1:Still yelling swerving Every night, I did he's still yelling out the window Every night.
Speaker 2:He is Angrily right and all the bad drivers.
Speaker 3:So every night I did, he'll dead. It. Are you sleeping? You know you hit them with one of those things they put on the edge of the road to let you know you're going on Guardrails. Every time then you bump them a little guardrail, they go like are you all right? Are you awake? You know. And so we're still on the highway, we're still on the road, you're still striving to get to where we are and the good news is that the more we do that, the more God takes. Even though we swerve a time or two, god always straighten that curve out man. And I call it, like you know, I'm not a military person, but I've read about being a platoon leader, and the platoon leader job was to go before the platoon to make sure that the landmines, the snipers you know the one that hides in the trees the snipers you know the one that hides in the trees snipers all of that is fleshed out, fleshed out person.
Speaker 2:I was just about to say well, you know, important part about leading is delegating.
Speaker 3:I think I would delegate in that sense, I don't think you had an opportunity to see. See, that's why some of our kids are messed up. We got to delegate stuff because I'm supposed to delegate. That's funny.
Speaker 1:Oh well, played man A little quick Well played.
Speaker 3:As a father, it's you to go before your family to prepare the way so when they walk behind you they can put their feet in your footprint to avoid the landmine. Amen. They don't have to worry about the snipers and what other, because you flourished all that out for them and they have a path they can follow. That's good. The Old Testament talk about the blessing. All right, I'm giving you my final remarks on it. The Old Testament talks about the blessing and when you search out the blessing in the Old Testament by Jacob and Esau and all of that, as you look at the blessing, for me there are several aspects of the blessing. There's meaningful touch, there is spoken words, there's expression of high value and there's a picture of the future and an active commitment to that. And so when we talk about all of these things, I think that encompass blessings. Not cheering to hear me say often, and one, you know, sometimes they just it's just nasty. When I kiss my wife or hug my wife and express love and affection, even grab them and, you know, lay a kiss on them and hug them and tell them how much I that boy. That that means, even though they go, ooh, you know all of that crazy stuff, but what that does is give a blessing that only the Father can give.
Speaker 3:You know, I watch the during the daytime. Sometimes now I got a little extra time, I can watch TV in the daytime and I see these courts on trying to find out. These young, especially young women, come on these court systems where they're trying to find out who their biological father is. And I thought you got these 20-something, 30-something, 40-something, and I'm thinking you've lived all your life without knowing what the problem is. But, man, when they find out that this person is their father, even adopted children are seeking. It's interesting. They seek after their father. Are you listening? They seek after the father.
Speaker 3:For me, there's a DNA within the human being that naturally points toward the father because of our God, the father, and so we're supposed to be those earthly fathers that point them to the eternal father, and they should get some idea of what fatherhood means, about what we do. And so I think this blessing thing is not a light thing, and so we need to bless our children, even though in the Old Testament, even in the Jewish tradition today, they have a rite of passage at 12 years old and whatever, and they pass the blessing. I like this. It says the spoken word, but a picture of a special future.
Speaker 3:You know we talk about how children have been told negative things about themselves. I think we need to point toward all the positive things. You can be, you will be, and so the spoken word, the meaning for touch, the hugs and all of those things mean something and an active commitment to me. I'm in this with all in to be the father, the husband that god have called me to be, and I think that's the best thing we could do to pass on our children that we're all in awesome um for me, and and it's it's a point that hasn't been explicit yet in this conversation.
Speaker 2:It's been implied and it even goes back to Nettie's original point just a little bit. Fathering and mothering are very different but also very complementary, a truth that we make an observation of our psychology and our biology, that men and women, overwhelming majority, are just different from one another. I mean there's I'm glad about that difference. There's variations, obviously, there's nuances within the two different sexes, but for the most part there's a reason why the image of father and the image of mother are two very different. Those are sex-linked characteristics and behavior patterns that we see.
Speaker 2:I'm going back to the two original purposes of marriage. One is from chaos to order, the other is to bring in babies, and both of those are necessary and both the mother and the father have different roles in each of that. Father more or less brings about the order, right? I mean that's what father the creator does. He brings about order in his creation. Father brings about order in the family in the ideal situation, in the best possible way we can imagine it happening. And the mother brings about a sense of purpose, a deeper sense of meaning. It's not just nurturing, but it's also meaning and purpose that is added to the life, not just the life of the man, no, the life of the whole family. Right, I mean I can for me as a, as a, as a father. My wife always likes to quote my big fat Greek wedding when she says, all right, the man is the head, but the woman is the neck, and she turns and it's like that's true. But because the woman and majority of the cases and if there's variations, you know, I say, so long as we're not sitting before God, go forth and live into whatever nuanced variation you need to is what directs our attention to what needs to be found, and just overwhelming majority of men by nature, in our healthiest situations that we find ourselves in, we just bring about the ordering of the world. Right, bring about the order in the world that is around us.
Speaker 2:I mean, sometimes, when we're dysfunctional, we only bring chaos.
Speaker 2:But there's also a feminine dysfunction as well, and I just I look at this and I say this is at once a biblical truth, something that is written all over the pages of the Bible, but the best scientific research that we have also shows that there is a major, major difference, and that's why I always like to say the Bible preempts what we can discover or we can discern scientifically.
Speaker 2:So actually we get a more pure science or we get maybe the hypotheses or the logic of the science, or maybe the precursor to the science, when we read the Bible. And what the Bible is doing is saying that there may be situations that don't live out into the ideal and people still do amazingly well in their lives, but it's this complementary aspect of fatherhood and motherhood that really makes the family work well, of fatherhood and motherhood that really makes the family work well. And in that regard, I think it would be very interesting to see what our wives would say to one another in this regard and how they would flesh out the conversation if they were to come and talk about motherhood and hopefully not give too much details about how we were as fathers.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, we've limited our discussion to fatherhood, so hopefully they'll limit their discussion to motherhood.
Speaker 1:My father, ej Crawford, who passed in 2011, was an incredible man. July 2011 was his final month here with us, but all the lessons that you guys have discussed today, I seen them in some shape or form emulate, or displayed rather, in him.
Speaker 1:He was a man who understood how to fail spectacularly, magnificently, and yet rebounded incredibly well, and I got a chance to witness in real time that gives new definition to God can take out mess in me Absolutely Got a chance to witness in real time his rebound and was never the same, because I got a chance to witness how incredible he rebounded and raised uh, both my sister and I um in the Lord, in the side of the, on the corner of the street, because he bought a new snow cone machine and said, hey, this will be a good summer project for you and your sister to go out and sell snow cones on the side of the road, or whether it was putting in windshields.
Speaker 3:When I was in high school or college, I learned struggle and so that was a great lesson and I would have died to sell snow cones rather than going to the field or standing in the hot cotton field all day long with an O in mind, and I learned a blessing, eddie, oh amen.
Speaker 1:You know, I learned a blessing. My father, when I was 13 years old, took me to the kitchen and told me to bow my head, close my eyes. He laid hands on me and he prayed over my life. And when I was 18 years old, he did the same thing and he told me when I was eight days old. He lifted me up in his arms. He lifted me up to the Lord, to the heavens, and dedicated me to the Lord and asked that the Lord would bless me and keep me and watch over me. And so I learned the blessing from my father.
Speaker 1:All these stories that we talk about, I saw them and they were, they shaped me, they molded me, and I can't tell you enough, as we're talking to having this discussion today, I can't tell you enough how powerful the role of the father is. And so if there is a man that's listening to this podcast today and maybe you've been a little disconnected, a little disjointed from your relationship with your children, maybe this is an opportunity, maybe this is a pride from the Lord telling you that it's not too late. Go ahead, jump in, dig in, be present, show up. There is blessing, not just for you, but there is blessing for your children if you do so.
Speaker 3:You know I was going to say it's never too late, never too late, never too late to do that. And can we close today, as you wrap up? Can you close that and pray for those fathers that sons have been a prodigal son, or are you still?
Speaker 1:his prodigal son, absolutely, absolutely. Father, we are so grateful for this institution and this great calling, this great gift that you've given us called fatherhood. And, lord, we lift up to you right now the men who are out there and maybe feel disconnected, maybe feel shame, maybe feel like they have completely and totally squandered their opportunity. And totally squandered their opportunity. Lord. We pray that they would find grace in you and that they would find a new energy, a new resolve, a new diligence. Lord God, to get back into the struggle and to Lord God, to fight to father well, no matter what season they're in, no matter what stage of life they're in, no matter how hard it may be, no matter how much their children in the immediate future may reject them, we ask and we pray, lord God, that you would give them the courage, give them the strength and shower them with the grace to step into this journey. Lord God, fully present and fully committed to do what you have called them to do. And, lord, we can't wait to hear the testimonies of those fathers. We'll be mindful in that day to give you all the praise, all the glory and honor In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:This has been a great episode, guys, encouraged deeply by it and we pray that you are encouraged as well. Please like, share and subscribe to Living Reconciled. You can go to any podcast app to find us again. Living Reconciled Mission, mississippi. On behalf of Austin Hoyle, nettie Winters. This is Brian Crawford signing off saying God bless, god bless. Thanks for joining Living Reconciled. If you would like more information on how you can be a part of the ongoing work of helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured, please visit us online at missionmississippiorg or call us at 601-353-6477. Thanks again for listening.