I don't want my kids to feel like they're a commodity or something that is a hurdle to me doing my life.
I want them to feel like at any point, within reason, they can approach me and I will give them unhurried attention and care. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
So we've got Dane Ortlund back with us today. Great to be here. Here's something I thought I'd throw at you. Because you've been a pastor how many years? Almost four.
Four years. And you know this. I mean, there's like meetings after meetings after meetings about vision and mission statements and culture and DNA and all the different ministries of the church and who are we and where are we going and all that's really, really important. But after so many years of doing that, I feel like a lot of what the church wanted from their pastor, and I would say the community wants from their leader, a man or woman, is they just want a man or a woman that they feel like was with Jesus recently and is sharing with them what they just got from being with Jesus. That's what I want. That's what I want. And if I'm going to receive ministry from another human being, that is the core non-negotiable. Absolutely.
Me too. Yeah, and I'm not saying the other stuff isn't important, but there were times I'm just like, I just think when we have a lunch or a breakfast, they're just leaning over like, you've been with Jesus recently, right? What's he saying? In his word or whatever. There were times I'd walk on stage and say, you know what, we're in this series right now, and I'm supposed to preach this. I can't preach that because this week I sat with Jesus and he said this, and I was reading this text and I can feel the whole room like leans forward, like, oh, wow, we're getting something that wasn't pre-prepared six weeks ago. It's coming right from the heart of God to our pastor in the last 36 hours.
It felt like, wow, that's what I want. Now, the reason I bring all that up is don't you think that's what our kids want and our wife wants and our spouse? Absolutely. Yes.
The answer is yes, unequivocally. In Acts 4, you know, Peter and John, they're under pressure and attack. And it says that the people who are sort of criticizing Peter and John when they saw that they had been with Jesus. Yeah. David Ann, what is that?
Can you capture that with an iPhone camera? Oh, this person has been with Jesus. That person has not.
I don't know exactly what that is. What do you think? Like, what do you conjecture? There's something intangible about it, and I think it's probably a certain joy, a certain buoyancy, because they were, circumstantially, things were not good for Peter and John. Horrible. Yeah. So it's not life is a bed of roses. Everything's going swimmingly. It must be something deeper.
Maybe the difficulty is forcing something out, a radiance, a countenance, a gentle childlike happiness. I don't really know. What do you guys think? All of that sounds really good to me. Well, I thought, let's do this today.
Let's talk about ways that we as husbands or wives or dads or moms can model the heart of Jesus gentle and lowly. We've been talking about the last couple of days to our kids or to our spouse. I'm so excited about today. Dane's here. Dave's here. We're going to defer to Dane.
Dane, start us off. We'll all give some. All right. Well, it's such an urgent question, isn't it?
And I feel the need in my own life. Actually, do you all confess sins in the show or not? I mean, I don't know where the lines are, what's appropriate here. I think that's all we do. We turn on the mics and Anne and I just confess our sin over and over. Dane, are you confessing yours now? I'll keep this brief.
No one will feel uncomfortable, guys. Don't worry. We're preaching through Ephesians. We got to chapter four.
We got to the second half of Ephesians just this past Sunday. I, Paul, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all evangelistic zeal. No courage and fortitude.
No. With all humility and gentleness. All of the glorious doctrine of Ephesians one to three about salvation through faith and calling and identity, identity.
Yeah. It all funnels down into the first thing out of Paul's mouth for the back half of Ephesians is therefore be gentle. I called a family meeting yesterday, three forty five p.m. because that's when all the kids are home, but they're not too swept into their homework yet. Oh, wait, this is confession time.
That is what we're as a territory we are embarking upon here and yes. And I said, guys, I'm sorry for not consistently obeying Ephesians four to with all humility and gentleness. With patience, bearing with one another in love. Those are the four things gentleness, patience, humility, bearing with one another in love. I would really like to grow in that. Would you pray for me? I want to be a dad who in twenty twenty four and beyond is more Ephesians for two eyes.
This is part of how I roll. I want our home to be an Ephesians for two. So what I'm saying for number one here, David. Give us the ages of your kids and I need to know how they responded. Four boys and a girl, seventeen, fourteen, twelve, ten, eight.
The girl is ten. So boy, boy, boy, girl, boy in diverse ways. A couple of them were hard to read.
A couple of them were really locked in. And I don't really know all that they were thinking, but I want them to hear that for me regularly. I don't want to go back to them when they're thirty two and say, hey, here's the laundry list of things that I need to apologize for.
I want to do it in real time as we're going along. So acknowledging owning our own sins with our kids could be, Dave, one way that we're displaying Christ's heart to them. Dave, I think you've done that as well.
I think you're super humble. Like when the kids come to you even now and confront you or when they were... Hey, Dane, these days are coming. They're going to come to you as adults and they're going to say things. Like I'm recalling some hard conversations that our kids have had with you. Like one of them saying to you, like, Dad, you're dead spiritually. That is an ouch. Like that is a hard thing to hear. And I remember just thinking, oh boy, oh boy.
But you generally are not quick to react and you are slow to respond. And I think you've done a really good job of that. Way to go, Dave.
That's nice to hear. But, you know, it's interesting. One of my thoughts of what are the ways to model gentle and lowly to your kids. And just to say, we said this a couple times on the program this week, you can't do this apart from Christ.
Yeah. I mean, it isn't like, hey, try this and go home and do it. You can't do it. You're going to fall on your face and you're going to have to say, Jesus, I surrender.
You have to do this through the power of your resurrected Christ in me or I don't have a chance. But it comes off what you just said, Dane. I think it's also learning to handle or manage your anger in a way that doesn't push your kids away, but draws them near. I mean, you know, I had a struggle with anger.
I didn't understand really where it was coming from, but it had a lot to do with forgiving my dad. And so I would snap. I mean, I'm smiling now, but I remember one time we're driving somewhere and, you know, the kids were toddlers and they're in their car seats in the back and they're just loud and just being kids. And I'm like, you know, be quiet. I'm just yelling.
I grabbed whatever was in the middle of the console, like a little sticker, like a pencil or something. I just started swinging it. It is just looking at me like, what are you doing? I'm not hitting anything.
They're literally like, you know, but it's like, oh my goodness, I'm almost an abusive dad. Didn't hit anybody. No, and you wouldn't have hit somebody.
I would never do that. But you were so mad. But I snapped. You snapped.
And I was like, dang. I got to get it because as a mom, you're right there. But again, over days and months and years, I had to wrestle with where's this anger coming from?
Like what's it plugged into? And I figured it out and started this journey. And I think one of the ways that we can model that for our kids is we have to get a handle of that. If your spouse is saying to you, sometimes you react in a way that's beyond rational. That should be a dash light from God to say, OK, she's telling you, he's telling you something you need to address. And so I don't think my kids would say I was an angry dad because most of their growing up time, I got it under control.
But at the beginning I was. And so I think that's important. But the other thing you did, too, like I can remember that night when they were going to bed, just as you said, Dane, Dave goes into their room.
He's praying for them that night. Hey, guys, I'm really sorry that I lost my temper. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done that. I had to talk to God about that. But you guys don't deserve that, you know? And so I think that continual repentance to God.
Don't end your sins. Yeah. Apologizing. Yes. Yeah.
A posture of it. Yeah. All right.
You got another one? Here's what do you guys think about this? I am so put together and maybe it's part of my own, I don't know, fallenness or something, but I love efficiency. I love efficiency. I love efficiency. The problem is everybody else does.
Why can't our kids just get on board with it? What do you want to say? Say it in 10 seconds and then let me get back to my email. Time versus efficiency. The messiness of allowed time.
What about this versus the need for efficiency? In other words, I don't want my kids to feel like they're a commodity or something that is a hurdle to me doing my life. I want them to feel like at any point within reason they can approach me and I will give them unhurried attention and care and listening. I need to work on this in my marriage to get to the point here. No, just depressurize the conversation. Depressurize the date with Chloe, my 10 year old. Just don't look at the time.
You might have to, but try not to. You know what I mean? Have the culture of the conversation, the culture of the meeting be one of the way Jesus is with us. He's not hurrying us, guys. He is giving us all the time in the world and he happens to be running the universe. And he makes all the time that I need.
So what about one way we can reflect Christ's heart to our kids is simply in unhurriedness when we're with them. That's good. I wrote down as you were saying that like the way I would say it is be present in the moment. Yes. Yes.
Preoccupied. Yeah. And we can do that as women too.
I feel like I was not great at that because I'm very task oriented. Right. And so just to be present, to be there, to look them in the eyes, to say, tell me more without looking at my phone, my watch, all of that.
I think that's a good one. That makes us as women, I'll just say as a wife. If Dave would be like, tell me more, then what happened?
I'd be like, what? You want to hear that? But I can see we have granddaughters now because we only had sons. We have granddaughters, man, they can talk. They can talk. And they can go into such detail.
I'm watching Dave, like his eyes are glazing over. Funny, isn't it? The boys were trying to get them to talk. Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember, I don't know how long ago, it was a long time ago, I did a funeral for a man I didn't know very well.
He's in our church. You know, they asked me to come into it. At some point I said, hey, we're going to do an open mic and you know, here's the ground rules, keep it short. But so, and you know, sometimes there's nobody says anything.
And other times this was one of these, everybody wanted to say something and it wasn't a huge funeral, but every single person said the same thing. And it was what you just said. Wow. He never was in a hurry. Coworkers, people that he was the boss of, I always felt so valued and seen by him because every time I had an issue, he stopped.
He looked me in the eye and he never had to hurry away. Wow. I mean, I was talking about it years later. I'm like, that marked me. It's like, is anybody saying that about me? Are my kids saying that?
Is my wife saying that about me? Love that. That's a quality that Jesus carried. He dignified them. Nobody felt like, oh, Jesus got to go do another miracle.
Some other guy's more important to me. I don't think anybody ever felt that. How did he do that? Because everybody's pressing in on it. Everybody wanted a piece of him, but each person felt so special. Even the woman with the blood disease. Who touched me?
Yeah, he's on his way to heal. That is just like, wait a minute. Everybody's touching you. What do you mean? It's sort of the heart of God. He had an appointment to get to. Yeah. And he allowed himself to be interrupted. It was a death.
Somebody was dying. Yeah. Yeah.
I love that. Wait, what have we done so far? Owning your sin. Controlling your anger. Managing your anger. Time. Unhurried time.
Yeah. Being present. I think the one that I would say that I love and I think that our kids would love and that they've come back to talk to us is they want, we as wives, and I think our kids want the heart of our husbands and our dads. I think that our kids have wanted, Dave, your vulnerability, the things that you were afraid of, the things that you felt weak in, the things that you were feeling. It's kind of that level five communication of this is who I am. These are the things that make me excited. These are the things that make me fearful. I know that I long for that. And I know that our kids have come back to you and said, Dad, we wanted to know you.
Would you say that's true? Yeah, I don't want to talk about it. Lovely weather we're having. Back to the frothy. But was that hard for you to hear? Oh, yeah.
Dan, you don't know this one. We've said this many times, but two of my sons as adult men said you were more intimate with the congregation and your sermons than you were with us in the kitchen. And they were right. It's like being vulnerable and weak on stage and share my sin and my struggle. And yet they've longed to hear, like, even the stories I would tell is like, I wish you had told us in the family room before a thousand people heard it.
OK. I'm like, you're right. We got to notice something here and twice as we've been talking today, some failure of some kind has come up from Dave's life. And both times you caught what he said. He said and they were right. That is such a sign of not spiritual deadness. That is such a sign of life and the Holy Spirit.
The world can't do that. But to say, yeah, they were right. I mean, that is humility. That is honesty. He's so good at that. And it comes from me too. And I think our boys were wrong. I think our kids would all say I could come to dad with anything. Now with me, they'd be a little more scared because I'm way more intense and all that.
But with Dave, they could bring anything to him and they still don't know what a gift that is that he gave them and he's been giving them. That's a big one. Oh, you're being nice. But let's talk about another one. You got one?
I've done two already. Here's one I think. And it somewhat comes from your book, General Lonely, and this new one written for a younger generation is if we can sympathize with our child and our spouse, pain or struggle or weakness they're going through, rather than standing far away, but we enter in and we don't even coach them how to get out, but we just live in their pain with them. Dad, don't you think? Oh, for sure.
I want to grow in that. We experience sympathy toward us as a deep form of love because what someone is doing is they're not writing us a check. They're not bringing us a meal. They're bearing pain with us. They're coming alongside and we've got this 200-pound weight of some pain and they're taking 100 pounds of it or 50 pounds of it. The Greek word sympathize means literally to co-suffer. You're getting in the ditch with them, in the foxhole of life with them and taking some of the shrapnel that would be hitting them, that's what it feels like. J.C. Ryle, the Anglican bishop, he said 150 years ago, friendship doubles all our joys and halves, H-A-L-V-E-S, all our sorrows. So the sorrow you're in, taking the last part of that, that's sympathizing with. They're bearing it with you. Guys, we can endure anything if we're not alone.
The greatest thing is Jesus is with us so we're not alone and it sure helps also to have a human being or two who sympathize with us. It makes me think of the Navy Seals. Remember they do whatever, what is the night that they have to be up all night and they lock arms, that's it, and they lock arms together. And then they'll sing a song, that's a picture of the Christian life. We're locking arms, we're singing praise to God, we're in the midst of this battle and it's raging but we can't do it apart.
Amen. And it's so good, isn't it, to in this conversation here directly apply this to our kids and as parents. Because what I'm too quick to do is they've had some distress.
Chloe's at a falling out with a friend or whatever it might be, garden variety sufferings when you're in second grade, fourth grade. It's easy for me to brush it aside or minimize it or say, oh, it's not that bad. What if I actually found a fourth grade way for her to in her own way be thinking, dad's feeling the pain of this with me. Even if I think it's kind of silly to feel that with them, they would feel so loved by that.
Well, this is my weakness. When we're around our adult kids, some of this stuff comes out as I watch them, my kids parent, like, man, they're incredibly sympathetic. Like they just get right in there like, oh, that must be so sad for you.
Because I never had that in my upbringing. It was like, suck it up. Nobody hugged us or sympathize.
Are you kidding? And so this one child said, mom, I'm trying to think of a time you just hugged us and said, tell me more about how sad you are. Like, oh, I didn't do that at all. Like, you're fine. That's what I'd say. You're fine, hun.
You're fine. He said, I could have broken my leg. And my mom's like, just get up and walk it off. But I wish I would have done that.
You know, I can do that. They say, like, you're getting better with our grandkids. I didn't know. I mean, we were sort of proud of the fact that we didn't. Because we're tough. Like, hey, we're running the stairs. Let's go. Get up here. I know you're hurting me. What do you do? You want to be someone in your life?
I still don't mind that as much as my friend really hurt me at school and I feel rejected, you know, and I would brush that off instead of going into that a little deeper. Well, Dane, when you say that, I mean, I know I have a tendency now. My youngest son is a pastor and he's starting a church and it's starting small and he's got staff issues. And every time he starts to talk about him, I want to coach him. Right. I want to go, hey, I did this for 30 years.
I can fix this in five minutes. Right. And I'm realizing he does not even care. But if I go, that's hard.
Yeah. Leading people is really, really hard. And that's what he wants. If he asks for advice, I'll give it. But he does not want it. And he wants you to pray for him, though.
He wants a dad to become beside him and just say, man, I know that's really tough. That's really good. I was thinking of 1 Thessalonians 2, he says, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. If the rugged apostle Paul can compare himself to a breastfeeding mom, nursing is what it says there.
I'm pretty sure there's an example there for us to follow, too. That's a good one. Yeah. Okay, I have one more, guys.
Great. I think to have a husband or dad that's serving the family, that is attractive, man. I've heard this many times.
I want you to tell everybody. I think many wives feel like they're doing it alone. They're taking care of the kids, the house, you know, they might be working and they just have everything on their plate. But to have a partner that's in it with us, that's even going beyond that and seeing needs.
And I know sometimes I don't ask you for help because I expect you to know, but sometimes when you just do, you did it last night. You did the dishes. I walked in like, what? That's a profound ministry. I did it. It is a ministry. Ministry of dishes. I did it, hoping she'd talk about it today on the show.
You should accomplish, Dave. I didn't, but I was sitting there watching the NBA playoffs and I thought, look at those dishes. I was gone. You were out working out. Hang on, hang on a second. Did you do it only during the commercials or even during game time?
He could see the TV. Oh, lay down your life sacrifice, Dave. Come on. But I did think, look at all this that she's going to come in and do. And I'm like, this is what a man should be doing every hour for his wife and children. We are called not to be served, but to serve and give our life as a ransom for others.
That's gentle and lily Jesus. Now you got another one. No, no, no, no. Just asterisk to what you guys are saying. How about this?
Street level practical takeaway. Dad is coming home. It's 5 p.m. Whatever. He's fried and exhausted, maybe a bit discouraged from some meeting he had at work. What if he just said, God, I'm fried.
I'm upset. Part of me wants to just drive back out the driveway and down the street and not deal with whatever I'm walking into here. Would you please help me? Would you help me to serve in gentle humility, my family? And then here's the practical thing. Well, that's practical too. You walk, you walk in and you ask a single question of your wife. You say to your wife very simply, how can I serve you tonight? And then there's no wrong answer. No answer is off limits. She gets to fill in the blank.
That to me sounds like a healthy, flourishing marriage. Oh, yeah. Amen.
I mean, just thinking about that, like, how can I serve you tonight, Dave? You've gotten really good at that lately. Lately. Do you hear that?
That means like in the last day. No, that's a victory. No, and I would just add, I mean, even as we wrap it, what Dane just said, and I know women resonate with this too, but I know guys are like, I've been there pulling in the driveway. I'm exhausted. I'm discouraged. Things haven't gone well.
Maybe today or this month or this week. And I can't, I don't want to walk in and serve. I want to be served. And that is a move of God to say, Jesus, I don't want to do this, but I want to do this.
Yeah. And I need your power to do it. So give me the power to when I step in that family room or step through that garage, whatever it is, you'll meet me right there. And when I say, how can I serve you? I mean it and I'll do it. And we're never going to out serve Jesus serving us. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to change your marriage tonight.
What great practical tracks to run on. Ask God to give you his strength when you interact with your family and then transform your heart into a heart of service toward them. Others, because he first loved us. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Dane Ortlund on Family Life Today. Dane Ortlund has written a book called The Heart of Jesus, how he really feels about you.
You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or clicking on our link in the show notes, or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy of Dane Ortlund's The Heart of Jesus. Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Well, I know we're just in the middle of September here, but believe it or not, February is going to be here soon. You're saying, February?
What are you talking about? Well, departing February 8th through the 15th is the Family Life Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise. That's right. It's designed exclusively for couples. It offers an immersive experience featuring uplifting Bible teachers like David Anne Wilson, Derwin and Vicki Gray, Jared and Becky Wilson. They're all going to be there and teaching us about the scriptures. In addition to that, there'll be entertaining Christian performances from musical artists and entertainers, along with several evenings filled with romance.
So don't miss out. You can head over to familylifetoday.com and click on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise banner. There, you can secure your spot on the boat and be assured that your voyage on the seas is going to be dedicated to two things, renewing your relationship with your spouse and growing closer to your savior. Again, you can head over to familylifetoday.com and click on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise banner. Now coming up tomorrow, Jimmy and Kelly Needham are going to be here with David Anne Wilson to talk about teaching kids about moral complexity and the need for redemption.
How do you talk to your kids about that? Well, we'll discuss that tomorrow with the Needhams and the Wilsons. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
