Hey, why don't you tell everybody one of your favorite Bible verses?
Okay, I will because it's Psalm 119, 105. And that verse says, Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. I mean, what an awesome. Bible verse that reminds us how scripture lights the way in marriage and parenting and basically everything else. And we're super grateful to the Christian Standard Bible for supporting this podcast.
Yes, and just for their work in helping people read God's Word clearly and faithfully. To learn more, go to csbible.com. Uh Our kids, especially, I think when they end seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade, they need their dad. Mama does a lot of work up until those ages, but then dad really needs to step in because. Girls have hormones and so do moms.
Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson. And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
All right, so today we get to talk about the easiest thing in the world to do, be a parent. And not only that, but discipling as a parent, discipleship, because you know this about me. I don't even know what you say. This is my jam. I love this topic of discipling our kids.
I like to read about it. I didn't do it all that great. She actually tell me how to do it. That's what that sounds here excited about. That's true.
You're the dad. You do that.
So we got Barrett and Jennifer Johnson in the studio. This is your lane. This is your lane. I mean, you've got a lot of lanes. You know, this is a big one.
We were in a car coming over here, and it's one of those cars that has a lot of. Is that a driver here? No, no. It's got the autocorrect that if you change lanes without putting your blinker on, the car kind of corrects you. I bake that.
I baked it out now.
Okay.
So this is not necessarily our lane. Literally. My tendency is to get out of the lane and maybe somehow God knocks your back. You're a teenage daughter saying, you're not using your blinker. Exactly.
So, yeah, there's no lane. But this is a great topic and a great book. And you've written other books that we'll talk about later. But this disciple book, this discipleship, it's actually called Disciple Them Like Jesus. Just a little low bar.
Yeah. Yeah. Disciple that I'm like, Jesus. You know?
Well, we came up with that title or that whole premise. 20 years ago. And worked with our publisher to come up with this. 20 years ago, God gave us a vision of this, really, based on my golf game. I'm a golfer.
And I'm. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're a golfer. There's one question when you have a golfer in here. What's the number?
What's the handicap? No, let me finish my sentence. I'm a golfer. It must be a double handicap. I'm the worst golfer I know.
I love to play, but I'm terrible. But I thought to myself, if I could just learn to emulate Tiger Wood's swing perfectly, how he moved, if I could just copy him exactly, I'd be a pretty good golfer. And that turned into a thought of: okay, if we want to be good disciplers of our kids, which I believe is important, passing on the faith to the next generation, let's find a good model or a good example. Who can we think of in the history of mankind that was a pretty effective discipler? I think we can all agree that Jesus did a pretty good job.
He took 12, 11, you know, bone-headed guys. He'd be a zero-handicap. Zero-handica. He'd be a scratch golfer. Maybe he might as two.
But he took these normal guys and they changed the world.
So if we can. Disciple our kids in some way, form, or fashion, like Jesus did. We're kind of barking up the right track. And what is your ministry? What do you guys do?
So, we serve in the local church, youth pastor and a family minister through Texas and Atlanta, Georgia, for 25 years. But we started this nonprofit. I blogged under the name Imperfect Normal Families Only.
So, we became Info for Families.
So, that was the blog website, Info for Families.
Well, let's just make our ministry info for families. I have found in 45 years of ministry as pastor and in family and marriage ministry, most parents have never sat down. Before they had kids or even with kids, and said, What are we trying to raise? It's correct. Of course, the secret is Jesus.
Yes. But the secret is, I don't know what the goal is. And if we've never articulated it, we don't know what we're trying to do. Because then you got to work back from that goal to say, what's our strategy?
So let me ask you, what would you say the goal is for a Christian parent? We think parents sometimes, like Stephen Cuffy said years ago in Seven Habits, read that book. He said, we spend our life climbing the ladder only to realize the ladder's leaned up against the wrong wall.
So I think that's a perfect question. When we teach this stuff live and encourage parents in this space, we ask them, sit down and write. What is your goal as a parent? What's your objective? And the top three answers out there in the world are: I want a kid to be happy.
I want to be secure. You know, I want to be successful. That's the three goals. And I think parents spin their wheels, spin all their energy towards that. Why is that the wrong wall?
Those are not bad answers. Right. Happiness, successful. We all want that. Every parent.
Those are not bad goals, but I think they're incomplete. Me too. Because they're rooted in this, what's going to make me happy, where we shift from that to this conversation about, you know, we look in the Bible cover to cover. Let's find every verse in the Dave about what God says, what parents are supposed to do. There's honestly not a whole lot in there.
If we got this big old thick Bible, there's some certainly plenty of teaching in there, but there's not a lot of, let me go to the Bible and do all the things that God says parents should do. There's not a lot. But there's a whole lot in the Bible about what's important to God. And what we see fundamentally what's important to God is that we as followers of him walk closely with him, commit to glorify him with our lives and join him in his big agenda of transforming this world into heaven on earth and into his kingdom being made.
So that's his value system. And then God has entrusted these youngsters with his first 18, 20 years of influence. I believe the fundamental goal of parents' responsibility is to make disciples, to take advantage of that 20-year window we have to help them to follow in love with Jesus and get caught up in his amazing agenda for their lives to join him in something bigger than themselves.
Well, let me ask you this. You have stage four cancer. Yes. You said you started this book 20 years ago, but then you came back to it. And I'm wondering, and I want you to kind of talk about, tell us about like that journey.
Yeah. But I'm guessing as a parent. You feel that with a passion. And with eight grandchildren, I really feel more passionate about them because all my kids are raised, and I did my very best unto God. Not a good mom, not a perfect mom would take back so many things that I did.
But man, eight grandchildren that we want them to know, they're pops and we want them to know Jesus. What are your names with them? Pops. I'm Pops, which is a reasonable grandfather named Pops. Pops.
Now, my wife, on the other hand, my maiden name is Bird. B-I-R-D. Worst last name to have to grow up with. Birdie Birdie in the Sky. Why'd you do that in my eye?
So it was so nice to marry a Johnson. And my email is Lady Bird Johnson. Oh, boy. We're from Texas.
So she wanted to be Mama Birds. I wanted to be Mama Bird because that's my great-grandmother. And my first grandson called me Biba. Biba's all she could say, Biba. Couldn't get up, Mama Bird.
So you're popping. He made up my name, Biba.
So I'm Biba. And I wonder when we're in public places and they're saying, Biba, Biba, what people think. Am I the nanny? Am I the help? Am I, what's a Biba?
So how long ago did you start the cancer journey? I've been healthy all my life. I'm 57 years old.
So healthy. I've never had a problem, never had a cavity. I mean, I'm just assuming that he never even had a cavity. I often had a few cavities. Ridiculous.
Not in the last 45 years.
So three years ago, discovered a tumor in my salivary gland in here. Removed it. Biopsid, it's something called adenoid cystic carcinoma. Four in a million people get it.
So it's very, very rare. It can be aggressive at times with some people, and it's turned out to be aggressive with me. Not a lot of research on it because it's so rare, and so there's not a lot of detail on it.
So I've had to work really hard to find treatment, but we removed it. We radiated it like crazy in the spring of 2023. About 50% of cases, they do that, and you go live your life and you're fine. The other 50%, it tends to metastasize to your lungs and then jump off from there to other places. And about a year and change after my treatment, we found it in my lungs.
In the last year and a half, it has now spread to about, I've got it in four organs and I've got it in about six different bones all over my body.
So yeah, I've got stage four cancer and the prognosis is not good. The blessing is today I feel good and the treatment I'm on right now is keeping things suppressed. But the treatment studies we look at. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. God bless the treatment I'm getting and the doctors caring for me.
But most of the studies show: yeah, this will work for a while, but you know, maybe not. Long term, but praise God today. I feel good. But to answer your question, there's now an urgency in my life. Yeah.
I have to kind of live like we all need to live like our days are numbered. We all should do that. And also, when someone says, you know, we're all, we're all going to die one day. I say, yeah, it's true. But I've kind of got a clock ticking on me more than most people do.
Jennifer, how has that changed your marriage? I hang on him. I'm embarrassed if we have arguments, which we do, still just dumb stuff. And I'm just like, we have to stop ourselves. There's just no words.
There's no words.
Well, I thought it was so sweet when you said you don't even mind his snoring anymore because he's with you. Because he's breathing.
So we have gotten time. We've been given that gift of knowing our days are short. And we have vacationed a lot more. Our kids are like, you're going on a trip again. But you know what?
We just have had so much fun in the last three years.
So for them, it's been three priorities. And maybe the principles of this book have driven that. I want to have quality time with my girl. I want to pour life and truth and legacy into my kids and grandkids. And I want to do whatever kingdom work God gives me the opportunity to do.
And Christ in me is to live and to die is gain. The words of Paul. He's in prison writing this. We can't lose. I know that when God takes me home, I fear for my people that I want to leave behind, that I don't want to leave, obviously, that concerns me every single day.
But Christ in me is to live, I want to live every day.
So back to your original question, Dave, the message of this. I think this is the fundamental purpose of parenting, of grandparenting, is leaving a legacy that matters. Steve Farrar said years ago, my favorite quote of his life. I loved him. Steve said, I'm probably not going to know my great-great-grandkids.
But my great-great-grandkids are going to know me. They're going to know me not because they met me, but they're going to know me because of what I. Leave with my kids and my grandkids, and what they pass on to the generations that come behind them. And so, God help me. I get passing on a legacy of faith is what you said that earlier.
I started writing this book 20 years ago when my kids were young, and I got about maybe halfway through writing it. And God said, Stop writing. Because you're not allowed to write anymore about what you think parents should do with their kids until you start doing it better with your own children. Have you been there and done that? You can laid that?
And so I laid it down. It was in a Word document in my computer for 20 years. And this six-month window in the spring of 23, when I was aggressively fighting cancer and going to radiation every day and not able to eat real food and on a liquid diet for two months because I couldn't swallow, I think God just said, you know what? You still stink. Yeah.
Sarah, God said, You know what? God said, You still sing in a loving, gracious way. Maybe you're not any better at this, but Jesus certainly was a model.
So tell people what Jesus did, and let's use Christ as our model for making disciples. You can articulate that message. Yeah, and as we jump into the parenting like Jesus, let me ask you this: what role has fear played? Fear? Yeah, as you are walking through a cancer journey.
I'm just wondering, is there fear? I don't think there's been a move. That hasn't been a driving force, to be honest. Obviously, I don't fear death. Yeah.
I fear leaving those behind that I love, obviously. But I think I fear running out of time. That's that's if I had to fear something, that's probably what it is. Jennifer, how about you? I have so much fear.
There's no, and my sweet counselor, the first book we read through together was on fear. Because I tell you what, out of all the emotions, the biggest one is fear. Yeah. This has been my boy and my husband for 37 years. I moved from my parents' house to a dorm room into a tiny apartment with my husband.
I've never been alone. I've never lived without him. Like I'm, you know, and I just don't want to want to. You could interview thousands and thousands of people who would say, this is the most kind man and most godly man I've ever met in my life. And it's true.
And it's one of the reasons why I married him because I dated Christian guys that didn't live for Christ in college. I was like, man, this guy behind closed doors is a Christian and he is a strong lover of Jesus. Hey. That's a compliment after being married this long. That is what pulled me into loving him.
I don't think you can follow me. And I just want to say, well done. You could be at home living in fear under your roof. But you're out spreading the message of discipleship with our kids. We want to speak.
We want to get it in. We want to talk as much as we can. If I have to push him in a wheelchair to talk, I'll push him in a wheelchair. I'll do whatever it takes until the day he dies. We will profess Christ.
Well, I mean, there's every cell of our body. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. There's a sense, you know, I just met you. you know, a few minutes ago, it feels like you're sprinting. You know, it's like you're on a you're running.
You're not slowing down. The pace is when there's when there's running out of time, yeah, urgency. You are sprinting. That's a good way of putting it. It causes focus well.
I, I, those days I have where I feel like I wasted time today. Don't waste time. Moments I won't. Moments I won't get back. Yeah, when time is short, yeah, clarity becomes.
So then we snuggle or we watch a dumb show together just to be next to each other. I mean, we, we just really, literally, I don't want to be away from him for a night. Like, I don't want to go spend the night somewhere by myself with my girlfriends as much as I love them. But like, I just can't even stand being away from him. But I'm sure you feel that same sense with your grandkids.
I've just got to. How old are the grandkids? We've got a seventh grade boy who owns my heart and my every fiber of my being. I took care of him when he was first born. We have a very tight bond, and I'm so grateful that he'll come up in front of his seventh grade friends at church and hug me and run to me practically.
Then we've got six girls, twin girls in there. And then the last one is another boy. We have bookend boys so far. He just turned a year old. Interesting.
One of the questions we get most often this time of year is: What study should we do with our small group? I thought you were going to say, Who's going to win the Super Bowl? No, I wasn't going to say that. And honestly, if you haven't done the new art of marriage, and I said it's a new art of marriage, it's been like refreshed, redone, and it is awesome. You should do it.
Give it a shot. Yeah, you can do the art of marriage. And if you want, maybe you want to do a parenting study. We have the art of parenting or vertical marriage. They're all video studies and workbooks, and they're on sale right now through the end of August.
25% off. That's a deal. I like sales. Me too. So go to familylife.com/slash shop.
Pick out whichever small group study you want to do and go watch God work in your life and even more importantly in the lives of those that you're leading. Familylife.com/slash shop.
Okay, so if we're going to disciple like Jesus, where do we start? I think it's taking a good look at who Jesus was and not who we are. We truly can get out of our alignment wrong and the goals wrong and the focus wrong and just say, what was important to Jesus? And we see that Jesus in three years. He transformed because of his Who he was, obviously.
He's transformed the lives and the focus and the patterns and the commitments of these 12, 11 guys. And they changed the world. It starts with saying, let's see Jesus as our example. And if we're going to obviously, Jesus wasn't a parent, but he was one who was committed to making disciples.
So I think it first starts with us as parents realizing my objective. And I say this when I teach this. You want a good definition of what parenting is? Parenting is discipleship. Yeah.
Period. Everything else is superfluous. Help your kids do well in school and help your wedding kids be good friends.
Well, all of those are extensions of God's big agenda to help them be followers of Him.
So if you're going to be a parent, You're a disciple. When we started dreaming about this message, and I taught this at our church 25 years ago, and really a guy in our church said, I think there's something to this. You ought to write. You ever thought of writing a book? And I did.
I've always wanted to write. I liked writing and that kind of thing. And so that's when I started writing this book 20 plus years ago. But the model or the paradigm, and I think that's the hard part, is parents. We think, okay.
Go and be a discipler. Your job is to disciple your kids. No, go do it. That would freak me out. What does that mean?
That would freak me out until I read this book. And then it makes me feel like the pressure is not so high. But the number one thing is us walking with Jesus ourselves. And I'll tell you what, I spent more time in my room. When they were kind of young, they all had to spend like a quiet time in their rooms.
And I would too. And sometimes I would fall asleep and dream. I was so tired. But a lot of times I was reading God's word. I was reading parenting books and stuff.
And I just thought this is scary because I'm home with them more than he is. And I wrote the forward to this book. And we know a lot of people in ministry that could have made it fancy. And we could have asked these precious people that we're friends with to forward it. But I asked Barrett if I could, just because I've read so many parenting books by men.
And I'm just like, you're not at home in the trenches, changing diapers, figuring out what we're going to have for dinner. That's a good point. Breaking up fights between my kids. It's who would Argue with each other, but man, it came down to me being in my bedroom. A lot of times I'm not a morning person, so it's more of an afternoon.
We all take a break, and I would just cry out to God. And I am telling you, the one thing I want everyone to know that I think we have lost in our Christian faith is listening to the voice of God. He really does speak. And I took something to him one day, and I mean, my nose was in the carpet. I wasn't even just on the ground.
I was, my nose was on the carpet. And he told me what to do. And I want moms and dads to know you're not doing this alone. Jesus has been so specific with us and spoken to us. And that is for everyone.
Jesus is for everyone and wants to have a relationship with you. And then you parent and then you make mistakes and his grace covers over. But I mean, are you willing to share what he said? I had two kids that were arguing really bad. It was a boy and a girl.
How old were they? Girl, they were in high school. I just went to my room and God said, Have my child pray over the person that they're not speaking too well. Because I said, You're not answering to me anymore. You're answering to God.
And you're old enough to understand that. And I know that you walk with God and received him as your precious holy Lord and Savior. But Turn the table because that person's not answering to me. That person's answering to God and they're humbling themselves before the person that they have not treated oh, so well. And making our kids understand: look, I've done what I've done, not done it perfect.
And unto God, I feel like I've done the best job I could. We've even talked about like how big is your toolbox that you had for parenting. I think our parents had like an altoid size toolbox. And I think my toolbox was kind of one of the smaller toolboxes in Home Depot. But Again, I just had to.
Ask God for help and know that I can't do this on my own. Here's a question I have: just listening to Jennifer. For Ann and Jennifer, what do you, as moms and wives, need from us? As husbands and dads, this is the most important thing, and I hope every young mom hears this. Our kids, especially, I think when they end seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade.
They need their dad. I think mama does a lot of work up until those ages, but then dad really needs to step in because Girls have hormones, and so do moms. And my friend, Chrissy, gave me a robe from Singapore. They were living in Singapore, and she gave me one for Christmas. And on one side, it's blue and really pretty, you know, like oriental embroidered.
And then you turn it inside out, and it's black, and it has a dragon on the back of it. And when I got it, one of my children said, This is awesome, mom. On the days that you feel good, you can wear it on the blue side. And then when you don't feel good, you can wear it on the dragon side. Mom's got the dragon robe on in her room.
I still have that robe. I'll never let go of it. But I thought that was a compliment to teach my kids that I make mistakes. And I have made terrible mistakes with my kids being older. But anyway, back to your point.
Dad's Barrett would be gone for a week of summer camp. He was a youth minister for so many years and then a family minister. But when he would go away to camp or a mission trip and we would fall apart. I'm not joking. And one day I'm like, what?
Is the deal, and the Lord said your kids need bear it. I mean, not that he wasn't going to stop doing his job for it, but just really focus on it, especially with the girls. I think. We had a hard time and dad. Did it better than I did because I'm so emotional girl and woman.
I think their mom. But dad's got so much to invest in teenage daughters. But for dads, once our girls kind of go through the turn and become little women and get curves. Dads feel awkward. Shameless plug.
Wrote a book called Meet Me in the Middle that's a book for dads and daughters to kind of tee up conversations, these conversations is coaching you want to give to your kids as a dad, your daughters, but it's just awkward. How do you get there? And so as Jennifer puts it, the book kind of becomes the bad guy to kind of introduce content. And then as a dad and daughter, you can talk about it. And I think too, Dave, I think that we as women, as moms, we long for our men to step in.
Yeah. Yes. And that's it because we do feel the weight of it if we're home more. And so for a dad to say, hey, let's do this together. What's the plan?
And that just gives me a sense of like, I can just breathe. Like, thank you. I'm not alone. Yes. Yeah.
Barrett and Jennifer Johnson were a hoot. They are a hoot, but they are facing some things. It's like every person's nightmare. And man, they're handling it really well, aren't they? They're running hard to the finish line and discipling their kids still.
And grandkids. Their book, again, it's written by Barrett, actually, is called Disciple Them Like Jesus. You can get it at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes. And actually, we have their other books there as well.
I'd say, get them all. And they'll be back with us tomorrow. Our financial partners are the heartbeat of this ministry. And when you join this monthly giving community, you're not just donating, you're building something eternal. And we'd be so honored to have you on the journey with us.
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