Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: As for me and my household, we will serve yhvh. Now, that's not just a cool plaque for you all. It's a battle cry. As family leaders, it's our job to repent of the junk that our dads, our granddads, dragged into our family. We're not just victims of the past, and we're going to reproduce whatever junk has come down the generations to us. We're going to be architects of a holy future.
It's not just our job to import good things into our family's future, but it's also our job to stop and take out some bad things that have come to us. So this episode is going to be your playbook to identify, repent of, and redirect the sins of dad. Because the kingdom starts at home.
Run your home and your dough. Like a biblical boss. I'm here today with Jeff Davenport, my old friend who's coming to you all the way from Denver, Colorado.
How's it going?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: It's going good. How are you?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty good. I had an adventure today I would like to share with you.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Lay on, McDuff.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Well, okay. I was with. Was with a young man today, a guy I'm discipling, and. And because I'm so considerate. But really it was because there was more I wanted to say. When it was time for him to leave, I said, I'll walk you out to your car so I can keep talking. You see, we walked out of the office, walked down to his car, said some parting words. He's like, I really have to go now. Please stop talking. Close his door. And he leaves. And I just. I like Charlie Brown. I hung my head, came back to my office, and I locked myself out of the office.
So the office had inside of it my computer, my keys, my phone, everything that you need. The convenient thing is that today my wife is. She has an event all day long, so she's not at home. There's no one to help me. I had my dog with me, so me and my dog walked the.
I had my dog with me because it's funny that, you know, it's funny that I had him walk out to the car with me. Actually, if he could speak, he would have been sitting telling me how stupid I was. Yeah, so I had a walking companion because I got to walk the mile and a half home from the office.
I also stopped a lady in the parking lot outside the office and used her phone to notify my wife. Like, if anybody could possibly get me back in the office, that'd be great. I don't know how you're going to get back to tell me that you can do it. But anyways, I'm notifying you. I'm locked out of the office. Thanks, stranger lady.
She gets back in the car and goes away. I walk home. Well, my house, I'm, I've been responsible. I don't always do this. I was responsible today. I had locked every door in the house.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Now let me for the listeners, that is an unusual thing for you, I believe.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. And I actually thought to myself this morning it was because my wife was away at this event. I'm thinking if, if Dora was here, she would be encouraging me gently and with love to please lock the front door. I did that partially because I had the dog with me, I guess, I don't know. And it felt like, well, the house is empty. I'm locking it up. And I'm, well, the house is locked up. Couldn't get back in. So I did this thing. Now this is a tip for those of you listening who want to break into my house because I put, I do. I had to do that thing where Winnie the Pooh does like this and he has to think, think, think, think. How would I break into my own house?
And what I came up with, this.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Is just a, if you want to, if you want to be a thief, it takes a thief. You know, it catches a thief. You got, you got to think like a thief.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: That was me. I was going into thief mode.
And here's what I came up with.
Move the trash. One of the big strong trash cans, the roll with the roller, put that up against my basketball goal behind my house, climb up to the top of the basketball goal and then leap from the top. Yeah, I was doing a little of this. Leap from the basketball goal to my second floor deck.
And then I climbed over the deck and made it into, thankfully my unlocked screen door.
Now that was all fine. I thought, well, I'm like step two in an eight step process. Now I'm in my house.
I, I find an iPad in the house, which is unclaimed, but it's under one of my daughter's logins. And I, and I text my wife and say, here's the situation. She says, at my event, I just sent somebody home. They live 15 minutes away. I'm not going to make, I don't have time for them to go to the office, but they'll put their key in their mailbox. I go, well, I don't have access to my car anymore. But the other, other mode of transportation I have at my, at my reach in my house is Jeff.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: A scooter.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: A scooter.
Okay, real quick.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: This is like, this is like a game, a video game you play.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Where you're like oh, okay, so it's a puzzle. Lean the thing. Ah, now I'm on the, it is.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Like that and it's sort of like the thing where you go, I can't take the fox and the chicken across.
So, so now I leave the dog in the house, I leave the garage door open. Smart. See, Leave it open.
Take the scooter out and start to drive 20 minutes away. Now also I want you to know that the clock is ticking and there's going to be another two young men that are going to show up expecting me to be at the office to spend time with them. Coming up, I'm going 15 minutes away from the office when there's a rumbling in the distance.
There's lightning and there is a downpour. That happens.
So now I make it to the house in the mailbox. God bless her. There's the keys to the office.
And I am, I am just. It's the, I don't know if you people have had the experience of driving 45 miles an hour on a scooter in pouring rain. It's stinging, stinging rain into the face.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: And tell me about this scooter. Is this like a stand on scooter or is this a scent? I don't know what, I don't know what you got.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: You don't, you don't know my scooter?
[00:06:27] Speaker B: No.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: That makes me so sad.
I have a three wheeled scooter made by the same company that makes Vespa. It's Piaggio, it's an Italian company. There's two wheels in the front and one in the back and it was made for highway use. So this thing goes 100 miles an hour. It's a 500cc 50 thing, trucking.
And I'm, and I'm trying to go fast. Two caveats to that one. If you go too fast, the rain really hurts your face.
So I'm, I, I'm ducking down behind the wind screen. I'm bent way over so that the cap of my little helmet and the wind screen almost touch and there's just little stinging Durham abrasion. Yes. And there. When I could feel the rivulets of water coming down from my thighs into the crotch area, that's when I knew. I'm truly wet, aren't I? Yes. I was truly Getting wet. Anyhow, the other, the other caveat was that I was in such a. I was trying to go fast to get back, but the water, the roadways were not just wet, they were freshly wet. So when a, when a roadway is freshly wet, it hasn't got, it hasn't washed away like all the oil and grime that sits on the road. So when it's freshly wet, there's some back wheel swishing and swirling. You get back. And I, I got back here right when the boys were pulling up and I peeled off my clothes and luckily I had, I had, there's nothing under this sweatshirt right now because it was all, it was all wet clothes, but I had a sweatshirt here. So here I am. That was today's activity. I wanted to tell you about that adventure.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And you pull up soaking wet on a scooter and these two guys look at you and go, and you want.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: To be our discipler?
They go like, this guy's committed to making disciples. That's what they said. Okay, I wanted to tell you that story. Let's also hit, let's also hit on this real quick, Jeff.
Let's just react in real time. The whole Charlie Kirk Memorial just happened, you know, yesterday as of our recording this.
What are your thoughts on that historic gathering?
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Right. Word, I mean, was, I think it's cliche to say at this point, but it was, I mean, had more people heard the gospel in multiple forms from different perspectives at one time?
[00:08:55] Speaker A: There were times when, you know, when Tucker Carlson says, you and I are the problem. We have to repent of our sins and the nation has to repent of our sins. The whole place stands on their feet in unison.
And it almost felt like, I mean, I know I texted this to you in the moment, but I think maybe we thought because his life's work was about politics, that it was going to be more politics heavy.
And it turned out that everybody that knew this man said, Jesus is the constant in his life. And that's what everybody ended up talking about, that it felt like, I don't, I cannot ever, ever even come in close to saying this statement. But instead of people sprinkling spirituality onto their politics to get votes, what it felt like was that in that room, live that day, that conservative right wing politics was taking notes from the biblical spiritual Jesus story happening. And I felt, we'll see what time will tell. But it seemed to me that if you were, let's say you're Marco Rubio and you have political aspirations like that, I think I feel like he was instinctively looking around the room going like, this is the future, isn't it? That this is the way, this is where we are now.
So you take JD Vance's comments where he says, I've never been comfortable sharing my faith, but I've talked more about Jesus Christ in the last two weeks than in my entire political life put together.
And I, and I'm, and I'm going to be comfortable talking about this going forward. And you kind of go, holy mackerel, what is happening?
Anyways, we watched the whole thing and we were stunned. There were, there were many moments where I would just exploded in laughter because I thought, I just can't believe this is happening. This is just so incredible. And as some people have said on my Twitter timeline, let's just rewind two years. And can you even conceive of this happening in our nation?
It's incredible.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Erica's, Erica Kirk's speech was just for the ages. I mean, my word, I, I, I sort of, kind of, I mean, what, I hate to use the word hope, but I had had in my head hope she would speak forgiveness. But my word, this is so fresh. Like maybe, maybe down the line, maybe in her own private time.
But when she was working, I texted you, I saw she was headed down this road and she was talking about, Charlene was trying to help people who were basically lonely, disenfranchised, lost hope like that man. And I texted you right away and I said, she's about to say it.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yes, you did.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: And there she goes and says, I forgive him. I mean, that was everything. Like it.
All the other, all the other forgive me Jesus stuff was powerful in some.
But I think the Lord would say this, where does the rubber really meet the road?
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Right. Everything else was all of the gospel presentations, Marco Rubio, for instance, or Charlie's pastor that stood up at the beginning, it was all powerful because it was true, but it was powerful in theory.
She gets up there and it's powerful in practice. To me, when she said that, I felt that moment in Lord of the Rings when the whole thing goes and all of the armies fall backwards because it was so powerful what she said.
And it was real time. Like, she, you're like, clearly she had talked herself up to, I need to be ready to do this in front of the nations, because that's where I'm going to do it.
Last comment on this is that Erica, what she said about their marriage and about family and about him as a father and family first and her as a wife. And like, I'VE got a challenge for the ladies out there. Like oh my word. Don't stop Erica. Anyway, she was killing it so powerfully.
My 15 year old daughter was watching with us and she was like this lady sounds like she's been listening to Abraham's wallet. I was like, come on, come on.
It was so good. All right, all right, all right. Today we're going to dive into something that is so huge for us, Daz, which is this is, it's our sacred calling to grab the wheel of our family story and steer it toward the kingdom.
And the Bible doesn't mess around when it calls us to be leaders who would break historical chains and build godly cultures going forward.
Your family isn't a blank slate. You know we talk about the fact that you're going to tend to parent the way that your parents parented you.
Your marriage is going to tend to look like your parents marriage did unless you change some things intentionally, etc. The fact is you were handed something and it's from that place that you begin to build. Maybe you were saddled with your parents debt.
I know people who since the time they're 15 years old they're paying the mortgage on mom's house.
Maybe you were given a big fat inheritance when grandpa died. Either way you were handed something.
Same thing happens spiritually.
Godly heritage might get handed down.
Jeff, we love the story of your dad getting up every morning and praying in that chair at the front of the house and walking through a prayer list. What a godly heritage. So grateful for that. My dad, he passed along to me something like hard headed faithfulness from my dad that you weren't going to change where he was headed with God, that wasn't going to change. Okay, that's all great. Also true sin patterns cascade through the generations like a waterfall.
So in the same way that you can see financial habits and patterns get handed down the generations, it's also true spiritually.
God wants us to spot them and stop them if these things don't honor him. So let me give you some, some biblical reference. Exodus 20, verse 5. God says that he visits the iniquity, that's sin. The iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
That's an interesting caveat. What that means is if somebody doesn't have the spiritual wherewithal by the Holy Spirit to put a blockade down and say that stops now, it's going to continue and you. And it's, it's kind of silly to Think, oh, if it stops in four generations, we're all right. Obviously, if something continues for four generations and the second generation repeats it and that continues for four generations, then we never stop.
So this thing is going to repeat forever.
Maybe it's alcoholism that wrecked grandpa's life and snuck into dad's weekends, or maybe it was divorce that has become a family tradition. That was true in my family line before my father stepped in. What about absentee dads? What about greed that turns every conversation into some kind of angling hustle? What about fear and anxiety that keep everyone playing it safe instead of being bold for God? This multi generational pattern is actually God's plan. It happens with his blessing and he wants you to interrupt sinful patterns in your generations.
So what I'm going to invite us to do as we kind of get started on the topic. You've made it through the all the chatter. As we get into the topic, I want you to look in the mirror guys, and ask yourself what's lurking in your family line.
Numbers 14, 18 echoes that do Exodus 20 passage that I read and it says, the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity. Here it comes again of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.
This isn't about putting blame somewhere. It's about being aware of what's happening so we can pray for revelation around us. As you consider what do I see in my generations?
Psalm 139 is just a great prayer for this kind of thing where David says, search me, O God, search me, know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there's any grievous way in me. And as we've said before on the podcast, I don't think that God sees us purely as individuals. He sees us as a stage in a river. There's been a stream that's come down and you are a stage in the river. So when I say, try me, God, and see if there's any grievous way in me, it's not like there's a little cone that comes around Stephen, and he goes, I just want to talk about you, you, you. He sees me as a stage in the stream. And he might say to me, there's something in your stream that opposes me. I wish I had an agent on the scene who would stop these things for the sake of all the generations which are to come. And I Would say, that's my job. Lord, I represent this stream while I'm on earth. As the father of the family, I'm not always going to be 100 years from now somebody else is going to be the father of this family line. But right now I'm the steward of it and I'm responsible for what keeps passing downstream.
So this is, this, this is step one. We don't say name it and claim it. We say name it to tame it. We got to see it. We got to name it, see it, so we can tame it.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: I'm going to put a little metaphor on this. My brother in law lives on some beautiful land in Montana. He had water that trickles onto his land to feed his cows, to, to give water to his cows. He often has to go about a mile and a half up into off of his property and it's no longer his property. And yet it has an impact on his property. And, and he will go way, way, way upstream and he will have to go clear out branches, he'll have to go remove crap and junk so that the water, when it does come to his land, is flowing well and is pure. And I think we could say even because it's going to go beyond his land at some point, that it keeps flowing well.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: That's right. You know, I always think of when we're like in a mountain stream, if we're ever hiking in the mountains and there's beautiful water coming by on the stream, kids always go, can we drink this water? And the answer is always no. Because we don't know how many miles upstream there's a dead goat in this stream.
So the point stands that we have to clear out the things that have come to us from upstream.
So that is the job and it's a big deal. This subject, if I could just riff for a second, because while you might be able to navigate some of what came down to you from the generations, you don't know how the future generations are going to do. You don't know if this thing's going to expand and get worse. You don't know if it's going to terrorize the family or destroy the family inheritance.
You just know what you can see when you look up at the generations. Again, I have to give the example of there have been two things in my family line before my dad stepped in the picture. Both divorce and alcoholism was in the picture.
And from the time I was a young man, my dad would tell me these stories and how he has determined that he looked me in the eye and said, I will never leave your mother under any circumstances.
I remember thinking, why, why are you telling me that?
I, that's what I assumed.
But as you grow up, I'm really glad that those stones got put into place for me. And I saw his determination and I was able to kind of partner with him in my early married years before my father passed away and go, like, I'm going to do the same thing, dad. Yes, we are also, we are standing against alcoholism in my generation the same way you did in yours.
And, and there's a lot of strength right, in that partnering between the generations for something godly. But there are also, there are also unclean things. You see these in small habits. I was thinking the other. This happened to me yesterday. I'm cleaning up the kitchen with one of my kids and the one who's the most available and willing to help. I, I'm cleaning the kitchen and I find myself being quite demanding with her in the kitchen, cleaning up. And I'm thinking to myself, she's, she's helping. What, why are you, why are you writing her so hard? And I thought back to myself, that's what I saw my mother do when, when, when we were helping around the house, there was almost like a built up resentment that we hadn't helped.
And so whenever we are helping, it's like, finally, why don't you do that too? And I'm thinking, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to help. What do you, what's going on here? And I, I, that was a moment where I just kind of catch. And I really did think, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't thinking this would be a great example for this episode. But I caught myself going, I could even see the look on my face and I could review back, that's a look on my mother's face and think, this isn't God's, this isn't God's story that's being told here.
And so I just kind of calmed down, tell my daughter.
I don't know why I got so intense right there. Let's just keep cleaning the counters until we're done.
And I've got to, I've got to, as an act of my will, change the story of what has come down to me generationally. Now. You and I just did very recently an episode on, on anxiety in your family and we told, if I was thinking about this episode that we're recording today when we were doing that one that you were telling, there's a multi generational Story of anxiety that's come to you and you're doing your very frickin darndest to wrestle that thing to the ground and, and you're fighting yourself. And when you see it in your kids and it's a little infancy, you're trying to nip that in the bud and say, we're not walking down that road.
Do you have any other thoughts on how somebody could maybe like observe if they, if, if nothing comes to mind where they go? I don't know what the, I don't know what our family's struggles are. What am I supposed to like, apprehend in the name of Jesus and uproot?
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Isn't it a little like the, the fish doesn't know it's wet that you can't know unless you've got a community of people around you who might reflect. Like, I probably would have been blinkered to the idea that fear was a big thing, except for people like you and other friends would be like, you're kind of fearful. No, I'm, I'm, I'm just careful.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: And, and careful. Your sleeve is near the candle and as opposed to you. You need someone to, to speak this from the outside. We're all in the, we're all in the bubble. And so you need someone from the outside to lovingly, someone who loves you can say, hey, I've recognized this and hopefully it's someone maybe knows your family and go, hey, and you. As you know, I always love this phrase, you got it. Honest. It didn't come because out of nowhere you got it because of dad or you got it because of your mom or your grandfather or something like that. So I think having an outside perspective, by the way, this is one of the nice little opportunities early on in a marriage is that's it's probably going to come out no matter what, probably in a tense moment, but your spouse is going to go, you know, you're.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Just like your dad and your mom.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: It's, well, take heed and go, well, maybe instead of going fine or not.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Maybe there's something there. Maybe this person who I'm now joined with from the outside sees this thing that I just couldn't see before.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Yep, that's great.
You're making me think of, you know, the value of community. And I've got to hype one of our great tools that we have around here.
We wrote a guide last year called the Financial Transparency Guide. And it was a guide for small groups of men who want to amp up Their transparency with one another. Sometimes guys don't know. I don't know how to do that. Let me tell you how to do that. Share your financial situation with your buddies.
You'll get real honest real quick. So that might be uncomfortable. I don't know how to do that. And I was just supposed to open up my books and show guys my checking account. Well, we've got this financial transparency guide which walks you through in a very, like, reasonable pace to walk through several issues about your financial situation with your guys. So for instance, have you ever talked to anybody honestly about your giving? That's usually a very private thing that we don't talk to anybody about. What if you had a group of five buddies that you just got to speak honestly about these things? I merit a guess. And we actually make room for it in that. In that study guide I merit, I will hazard a guess. I should say that by the end of this time, guys will have things to say to you.
You seem like you take unreasonable risks with your money and it makes your wife uncomfortable. You're always telling us that. Or don't you think you have enough in savings by now? It seems like you just think you always have to keep building up savings. Is that fear or whatever? So that's a little invitation about. I agree with Jeff. Having people truly know you will help you have a more objective opinion of yourself.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: So you, you may know who said this, but I quoted a lot.
There are some things God will not tell you personally. He'll only tell you through other people.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: I've also found that if you have Christian parents to talk to your parents about your generations.
Your mom, for instance, Jeff, she loves the Lord. She's got a good head on her shoulders. And I've talked to her about your generations.
And she, she has a very level headed. Well, that's what my grandfather was like. He did that. Well, that's my aunt. She's like this. And the more that you can talk to great resources in your family, maybe you have a cousin, everybody else in your family's lost. You got a cousin and they're born again. You go, I can conspire with my cousin to understand the story of my generations.
And if I can understand the story, then I know what to oppose.
Like, it's a great question to ask, like, what went wrong? If you find that our family is a mess, we're a dysfunctional mess. Just, just ask, like, what went wrong?
Well, I got a, I got a grandpa that broke the law all the time. Yeah, why did he break the law. Well, he was greedy at the center. Okay, this is a common thing is when people, is if people think, well, I don't think I'm greedy.
We have so many biblical examples of godly men who take responsibility for sin that they didn't do, but it came through their generations. And they, as representative of their generations, stand before God and say, on behalf of my generations, I repent of divorce, which is a violation of your covenant. Like I've done that before with God. And you would say, well, Stephen, you've never been divorced. Yes, but my people, you see, my people are people of divorce. And I now stand as, as the representative of these people before God. And I say, God, would you please forgive us of this divorce? It doesn't please you. And would you instill in us a faithfulness to covenant that we see that covenant is even more precious than our own lives?
Like, that's, that's great that God likes that. We see that over and over. Okay, now once, Once you've identified something, and by the way, I'm going to say at the end of our time, you're not going to identify everything like this.
You don't have to worry about that. You just have to deal with. This is the thing that's closest at hand. So I'm going to deal with this low hanging fruit. It's the thing that causes us the most problems. I'm just going to deal with this one thing.
No more excuses. Even if you are part of the problem, like you have personally participated in it. You go, I know that we have been greedy as a family. I know that I have been greedy. It's why I took that job. It's why I moved to Des Moines. It might even be why you married that girl. Because you thought you could get hired by her dad and be a VP in the company someday.
Fine. Maybe all that is true. Maybe you have participated in the sin. However you've decided. We're going to stand against this thing. We're going to oppose this thing. In Ezekiel 18, there's a passage where God says, I will judge you, O house of Israel. Everyone according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgression, lest iniquity be your ruin.
Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why would you die, O house of Israel? I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God. So turn and live.
So, guys, if you've been sipping from a poisoned well, maybe yelling like your old man did. Turn. Or you've been chasing dollars over family time and you're selling your family down the well because you have some dream of being a big hotshot. Just own it and decide today that this is going to end here. I'm really speaking to the guys. There's been something nagging that you've seen in your generations. It frustrates you about yourself and you don't know what to do about it. I'm here to tell you it's your God given job to stop it. You're not doomed to repeat that stuff endlessly. You're actually called, you have an assignment. Jeremiah 31 says, in those days they shall no longer say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.
Do you see that picture? Dad eats sour grapes and our stomachs get turned because of what they ate.
God's saying, that story's going away, but everyone will die for his own iniquity.
So God is inviting you to break the cycle of trapping your children into the sins and bad patterns that you've been on the receiving end of.
So I encourage you, even if you, you're not sure what to do, you don't know, you don't know how we're going to go from here, but you see that there is a problem. I encourage you to do this in front of your family, to do this with your wife, with your kids sitting there and say, lord, I choose life for the sake of my family.
And, and I'm going to walk you through what repentance would look like. But I think making that declaration in front of your family be a wonderful move. This is the skill that you have to develop.
It's one thing to see this trouble happening upstream from you.
I, I like the idea that you're afraid of it happening downstream of you, and I like you taking responsibility for your stuff. So what do you do? Well, biblically, repentance is not primarily a solo act.
You should do it with bros around you. I think it's most powerful to do it in the presence of your family because if you have trouble with your temper, for instance, they already know it.
So why don't you just acknowledge that in front of your family? Jeff, if you've had trouble with anxiety and acting fearful, your family knows it. So it's not only vulnerable, it is gold. As far as leadership goes.
Leviticus 26 says, if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors, I will remember my covenant with them.
That's great.
Okay, this. I got to give you one more precedent. In Daniel 9, Daniel says, oh, Lord, we have sinned and done wrong. We have not listened to your servants, the prophets. Now, Daniel himself was a prophet. I don't know how much he personally engaged in that sin, but he's acknowledging the sin of his people.
So we like to teach. I know we've done it on this podcast before, but we like to teach that repentance is a five step process. The first one, the first step is to confess openly. Now, by the way, the Bible doesn't. I'm giving a compendium of a lot of biblical principles. If your thing is. All I know is that divorce is wrong. We're not getting divorced. And I'm saying that in front of my wife and kids. By golly, we'll stay. We'll stay together forever.
Okay, that's. I'll take that. That sounds great. If you'd like to be as thorough as possible, I'm going to give you this five step process.
One is to confess openly and specifically name the sin. And James 5:16 says, Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
So that's like saying in front of your family, hey, everybody, I've seen fear grip my heart.
It's gripped our family line, and I've let it in. And I'm confessing it before God and before you and give some specific examples. Like when we went up on that ridge and I just had this thought, somehow my children are going to run 50 yards and jump over the cliff. And I acted like it was the weirdest thing, that everybody was just going to run over the cliff. And so I was yelling at everybody, don't go near that cliff. That was fear talking. And I don't want that in our family. So I'm sorry for that, et cetera.
That's step one. Confess it specifically and openly. Number two is receiving forgiveness.
It's a big deal. We really have to believe that we are actually forgiven when we confess sins.
We had. Jeff, you and I might have learned this in our Baptist upbringing. First John 1:9. Do you know it? Did you have to memorize it.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Confess your sins one another so that you may be healed.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: That's it. He says if we confess our sins, he's faithful. One, to forgive us of that sin. That's huge. And two, to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
So we just believe it. And you might say that in front of your family. Maybe your wife could pray for you. If you don't think she's ready for that, then you could say it yourself. You know what, guys? I believe, because I've confessed this, that the Lord forgives me every time we confess sin, and we mean it.
He forgives us. So I'm receiving that I'm forgiven. That's two. That's a big one. Number two, receive forgiveness.
It's huge. Number three, this. We just think that this is good.
This is good. Being diligent.
It's just being faithful, that is command any evil spirit to leave.
So there might be a spirit that has.
The Bible would talk about a spirit that comes and kind of sits down on family sins like it haunts the space. If it's alcoholism, there's a spirit that kind of haunts that space.
So that when you look at a beer, you don't. You don't look at it the way that I do. I've. I kind of shrugged my shoulders now. I don't. I don't know. Do you think. Do you think it's really good? I really need to taste this stuff.
Okay. Or I don't need it, but maybe when you see a beer. Oh, there's all this. There's all this background stuff. There's all this emotion that gets into it. Memories and weird stuff that happens to you when you see a beer. And you think, well, if I drink this beer, I'm as good as drunk, and I'll be drunk for hours because I know what follows the first beer, et cetera.
That's possible. And the Bible would say that evil spirits do come in and sit on things like fear. There are spirits of fear.
There's a spirit of lust, there's a spirit of rebellion, et cetera. So whatever your thing is, we. I don't know that something's there, but I just think it's good practice that if you've confessed something specifically, you've received forgiveness. Why not just say.
And if there's a spirit here, let's say it's the divorce thing. We've seen divorce come down the line. We're not. We're never going to get divorced. I know I've shouted that in anger before at my wife or I threatened the kids with that in some sick way. That's never going to happen. We're removing that language. And so I'm just saying if there is a spirit of divorce, that's here in Jesus name. Get out of our home. Get out of our conversations.
You don't get access to my children.
We. We cast you out of our home. In the name of Jesus, get out now. Did something happen there? Well, I don't know. I don't know if anything was there or not. We just think it's kind of like when you get the, the, the roach spray guy to spray all around the house. And you might be thinking, well there's never any roaches on that side of the house. It's solid concrete. And he's like, I'm going to be thorough. I'm going around the whole house. Right. Okay. I'd rather that they weren't there. Then, then, then we didn't do our, we didn't do our due diligence. So that's step four for us is commanding that thing to leave confess.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: And, and I think you could all you would agree. Don't get hung up on naming that thing. I think the sort of spirit you just go, I don't know. Spirit of not married anymore.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: That demon's not going to go.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Not my, not my name sucker. Yeah, yeah, sorry. That's step three, the last step. I mean it's not the last step. The fourth step is that Jesus says when you're dealing with an evil spirit or an evil presence. This is in Luke 11, around verse 30.
He says, when you throw something out, you better ask me to come into that spot instead of just leaving it vacant. So we always say that inviting the Holy Spirit would be step four.
It would sound like this. Holy Spirit, we have not thought of the future of our marriage in. In terms of serving you. We thought of it in terms of how hurt am I today, how mad am I today? And we would like you to be present and we want you to take the space in our hearts where we think of marriage and covenant. We want you to be the Lord of that space.
And you could put your hands on your kids and you're say, Lord, where, where marriage is the spot that marriage. If there's a bucket in these kids hearts for marriage, we ask you to occupy that space so that the divorce of grandpa and grandma and all of the divorces of the generations is not what sits in that place. But your spirit of covenant and of faithfulness is what sits in a. We give you, we give you the right to this Holy Spirit. I think that's very wise. And the last thing is simply blessing the future.
So the past is maybe have been of one of divorce. But we're going to speak life. There's the famous priestly blessing from Aaron in number six. It says, the Lord bless you and Keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you.
So we're saying about our future Lord. We're declaring because we know this is what you want. We're declaring that there will never again in our generations be the word divorce spoken. Because you're going to be the king of our generations. Not for these kids sitting here with us. Not for me and the wife, not for our grandchildren. Your kingdom is going to rule and divorce will never be part of our story. We, we agree with you on this truth in Jesus name. So I think that there's a, there's something significant about speaking that blessing and speaking God's truth to power in your, in your family line. Don't skip that step. I also think there's something super powerful with your children witnessing you being a warrior, fighting for their future in front of their faces. I think that's significant.
So those are the five steps. Confess specifically receive forgiveness. Command evil to leave. Invite the Holy Spirit into that space and bless the future.
Again, the Bible. I'm, I'm combining a bunch of things I see in scripture, but that, that's our sort of. If you don't miss anything, that would be the five steps of repentance. I think you should do that in front of your family.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: And the little note, Bine, Those are, those are, that's a good little walk through for just personal repentance about something you're doing yourself, not just your whole family do.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah, oh, absolutely. Now, the last thing I kind of want to say teaching wise, is that repentance without change is talk. And the Bible doesn't, doesn't jibe with that.
We know the verse in Galatians 5 that says if you walk by the spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh.
So I think it's very important if you're trying to walk out of something in your generations, you, you do some specific steps to do the opposite thing.
So if greed was this, was the ghost haunting your story? Start tithing and teaching generosity and, and practicing generosity if anxiety was in your family.
And make the whole family memorize Philippians 4. 6. Don't be anxious about anything in prayer and supplication and thanksgiving. Make your requests known to God and the peace of God will guard your hearts. Do something that might have produced anxiety in the past. You know, you and I both know Mark Douglas, who famously had all this trouble getting on airplanes in his youth because he had so much fear and anxiety about it. And when he started growing out of his fear, he's like I have to get on an airplane and I have to walk with Jesus into the airport, down the, down that gangplank to my seat and I need to be talking with him about the whole thing and go like, I'm not going to be fearful, Lord, if I die, I'm with you forever and I trust you with every moment. So start moving in the other direction. So I say make it practical and even make it fun. If absenteeism was the sin of your father, then I want you to schedule dad kid dates like your life depends on it. I want you to build a godly culture by adding habits that stick in your family.
God says, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways. That's the stream, that's all the junk that's coming downstream. Turn from their wicked ways, turn. I will heal them from heaven. I will hear them from heaven. I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.
I believe that your home is the land that God will heal.
So start small, but start now and keep turning your family into God's kingdom. Epic. I have one last little encouragement and let you react to it, Jeff, but my encouragement is this. I mentioned this earlier.
You might think, well, my job is to correct every bad thing that's ever happened in my family line and I need to do it by Thursday.
And I feel pretty put upon by this episode.
All I'm trying to do is empower you and tell you the things that you hate about your family culture. You can remove them in Jesus name, you could change them immediately and you can start building from them. But I want you to know that a river doesn't turn in a day. It's a huge deal to turn the shape of a river.
And there's even little, little I don't know what you call those things.
When a, when a river turns, it'll find a new part and, and build into it. And then as the river turns, it leaves that old little crutch aside and it doesn't flow that way anymore. And you'll see these little, these little turns in a river that are now just ponds. They're actually separated from the river, but they helped it to turn. It's a long process that happens. And I have to tell you this great story from Deuteronomy 7.
When God's telling his people, you're going to go into Canaan and you're going to take that land, he says that God's going to go before you into this land.
And he's going to do awful things to all of your enemies that you were. That you were afraid of. He says, I'm going to send hornets into them. I'm going to fight for them for you. And he says, you shall not be in dread of them because God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. Now this is Deuteronomy 7:22.
The Lord your God will clear away your enemies before you little by little.
Little by little.
You may not make an end of them all at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.
That is, it would be unwise for you to go 50 miles ahead of where your camp is and clear out every. Every mountain lion on the whole property for 50 miles. Then you come back to your camp. What are they going to do? They're going to reinhabit that space because you. You can't. You don't know how to inhabit it yet. There's not enough of you. You haven't farmed that land. But as you expand little by little, then you're going to be clearing these things away.
You may. It's. He says he's going to clear them out little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow to numerous few, but the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into confusion until they are destroyed. So I want to say that to. To dads who are trying to curate the story, don't be overwhelmed at trying to. I'm trying to solve everything that I see in every great uncle and every great aunt and everything. I gotta solve all of them this week.
No, you don't. You just need to be making headway. You just need to be moving your family toward the Lord. You need to be curating a marriage that doesn't necessarily. Maybe it takes some of the good things from your parents. Her parents take some of the good things. And over time, you are editing out the things that are godless and you're creating a story that moves more and more toward him. Does that seem doable? Jeff? I didn't want to overwhelm somebody. I'm trying to give them handles on a principle completely.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: And I keep thinking anybody who's resistant, my thought would be, what do you have to lose?
What do you have to lose? A little bit of humility, you know, Right. You step in and go, all right, talking about the line here, I'm going at this. But one of the benefits I kept thinking was if you identify that this is something in your generation stream and this is the thing that's got your number.
A buddy of mine went hunting for the first time last week and to go hunting, he went and took a hunter safety course and took this course where he was able to identify a mule deer.
So, well, it doesn't matter. He can, he can see this thing from. I know that's a mule deer because I've been trained. I know I, I may not know a bunny from a pheasant, but I know the mule deer. And I think the same thing I think I've seen in my life is because I've tried to deal with some of this fear stuff.
I, I, I know fear. Like I may not always know greed. I may not always know this, but boy, I can see fear. And that's a, it's a good, a good skill to have.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Yep, that's right. So, gentlemen, repenting of dad isn't. It certainly isn't about dragging the past or putting down your parents. It's about launching your family toward the future and toward the godly future where they're free of all of the chains that you had to maybe endure and you want to set them free. And I do want to say, as an Abraham's Wallet community, we're all in this together. We, we'd love for you to join us at ur. It's a great place to talk about these things.
I do have to throw in that I think we still have maybe like five spots.
I don't run our retreat, but I think we have like five spots left in our retreat if you want to get in on that. It's happening the weekend of November 21st here in Cincinnati.
You join that by going to Abraham's wallet.com retreat.
If you would like or subscribe us, we'd appreciate that. If you want to join our community, go to abrahamswallet.com support and we'd love to see you over at UR sometime otherwise, God bless you guys as you curate a family culture that pleases him so that you're adding in godliness and you're removing evil from your homes in Jesus name. Bless you. See you next time.
