Episode 240
DR. JOEL BEEKE - Family Leadership for Men: The Three Offices Every Christian Father Must Master
Dr. Joel Beeke is chancellor of Puritan Reformed Seminary, pastor, and prolific author who has written over 100 books on Reformed theology and Christian living. In this conversation, he shares his revolutionary approach to biblical manhood through the offices of prophet, priest, and king in the home. Dr. Beeke reveals how daily family worship and passionate prayer can transform families, drawing from his experience growing a seminary from 4 to 530 students and raising three children who remained faithful to Christ.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Fathers must be prophets, priests, and kings to their wives and children
- Daily family worship is non-negotiable for Christian households
- Couples who pray together passionately stay together spiritually
- Most men fail at family leadership because they don't know how to start
- Children need to see their father's soul-love through earnest prayer
- Discipline done in love, not anger, builds loyalty rather than rebellion
CONNECT WITH DR. BEEKE
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
"How to Lead Your Family: A Guide for Men Wanting to Be More" - Joel Beeke
"Family Worship Bible Guide" - Joel Beeke
"How to Cultivate Private Prayer" - Joel Beeke
"Reformed Systematic Theology" (4 volumes) - Joel Beeke
"Meet the Puritans" - Joel Beeke
"Shepherding a Child's Heart" - Ted Tripp
"Valley of Vision" - Arthur Bennett
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker B:This is a weekly interview show where I sit down and talk with authors, thought leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.
Speaker B:New episodes release every Friday.
Speaker B:My guest this week is Dr. Joel Beeke.
Speaker B:Dr. Beeke is a pastor of the Heritage Reform Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, editor of Puritan Reform Journal and Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books, President of Inheritance Publishers, and vice President of the Dutch Reform Translation Society.
Speaker B: books and contributed: Speaker B:He is frequently called upon to lecture at seminaries and to speak at Reformed conferences around the world.
Speaker B:He and his wife Mary have been blessed with three children and nine grandchildren.
Speaker B:Dr. Beekie, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker B:It is an honor to have you here, sir.
Speaker A:Welcome to be with you, will.
Speaker A:We got two more grandchild children, so we got 11.
Speaker B:11 grandchildren.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker A:Racking up the big numbers, description of me was, well, wherever you took it from.
Speaker A:But actually, the one thing missing, Will, is that my main work is as chancellor.
Speaker A:Now I'm no longer president of Pure to Reform Seminary, but that's my main work.
Speaker A:That's my full time employment here at the seminary.
Speaker A:So I'm teaching full time at Pure Training Form Seminary in Grand Rapids.
Speaker B:Wonderful, wonderful.
Speaker B:Thank you for that update.
Speaker B:I'm sure that people who know you and are familiar with your work, you've blessed them and blessed me in so many ways.
Speaker B:So congratulations on that new appointment.
Speaker A:Now, it's not a new appointment.
Speaker A: founder of the seminary since: Speaker A:And yeah, I said, when I turn 70, I will relinquish the presidency and take up the chancellorship.
Speaker A:But in effect, I'm still teaching here full time.
Speaker A:It's just that the buck doesn't stop with me.
Speaker A:We started with four students and we now have 530 students.
Speaker A:So we've been really encouraged by this work.
Speaker A:So this work is consumed my life more than anything else in the last 30 years.
Speaker B:Well, let's talk about that, actually, because I'm very curious what it's been like to see that much growth, to grow from 4 to 500 students, to see the fruitfulness of that work and to see the fruitfulness of the seminary.
Speaker B:What has that experience been like during a time when I think the reform world and seminaries in general, there's been so many challenges they faced.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, just a God thing, I, I, you know, it's, you know, Luther, Luther said about the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, I did nothing and the word of God did everything.
Speaker A:And that's, that's how I feel in a small, I'm no Luther of course, but that's how I feel in a small way about the seminary here.
Speaker A:It's just been a wonderful thing to work for the seminary for all these years and just to see step by step growth and yeah, now we have degrees, MA degree, the M. Div.
Speaker A:The THM the DMin and the PhD all accredited.
Speaker A:And in our own denomination we have seven students out of the 530.
Speaker A:So it's really an interdenominational international seminary.
Speaker A:So the students come from, half of them are from overseas.
Speaker A:So 44 countries and our alumni are in 42 countries.
Speaker A:So it's just been a joyous, joyous work.
Speaker A:And our emphasis is solid reformed teaching, but also experiential, that is to say, not only to reach the head, but also to reach the heart and to teach men how to preach in such a way that they reach the whole man head hearted and hands and feet.
Speaker B:Well, that actually ties in really well to the conversations that I wanted to have today because I actually have four of your books in front of me and I've read three of them.
Speaker B:So the first one, just to sort of set the stage is your new book how to Lead.
Speaker B:You'd A Guide for Men wanting to be more.
Speaker B:And I definitely want to start with this one.
Speaker B:But I also have your book Family Worship, a booklet here which is wonderful.
Speaker B:And then I have How Can I Cultivate Private Prayer and, and the Family Worship Bible Guide.
Speaker B:And so obviously I haven't read the entire Family Worship Bible Guide just yet.
Speaker B:But in, in terms of educating men, being able to educate the whole man, how much that translates into not just pastors, but husbands and fathers doing that in their household.
Speaker B:And I was very struck by the themes in these books.
Speaker B:So maybe we can, we can talk about.
Speaker B:Let's start with how to Lead.
Speaker B:You'd family.
Speaker B:What inspired this book?
Speaker A:Yeah, so.
Speaker A:Well, first of all, you see on the outside cover it says short and to the point, busy, busy men who are rearing children often aren't in a position to read a thousand page tome.
Speaker A:So I thought if I could condense it down so every sentence really counts and focus on the main biblical paradigm of how to treat your wife and the main biblical paradigm, how to treat your children, that could be helpful for men.
Speaker A:And then as I studied I came to the conviction Even though the two relationships are different, the main biblical paradigm is that we as men are to be office bearers.
Speaker A:And an office bearer is someone who bears office on behalf of another.
Speaker A:So Jesus is prophet, priest, and king on behalf of his father to his people.
Speaker A:So we have our children loaned to us by God to rear for him.
Speaker A:So really, we are God's office bearers through Christ, by the Spirit, to be prophets, priests and kings to our wives, to our wife and to our children.
Speaker A:And, well, that's basically how the book is structured.
Speaker A:First, being a prophet, a teaching, admonishing, loving, admonishing prophet in our home, guiding our wife, and then guiding our children, teaching them.
Speaker A:And then we're to be a priest to sacrifice ourselves for their welfare, not meritoriously, like Christ did for us, but gratuitously.
Speaker A:And we're to show that sacrifice to our children through the way we sacrifice for our wife.
Speaker A:And our children should feel that they are very high on our priority and that we sacrifice a lot of things in life to really nurture them.
Speaker A:So that priestly sacrifice element comes out.
Speaker A:But then the main element is prayer.
Speaker A:Christ's intercessor is priest, and so he blesses his people through his sacrifice and his intercession.
Speaker A:So we are to be prayer warriors in front of our children, priestly prayer warriors so that they may understand.
Speaker A:My dad loves my soul, and he's praying for me all the time.
Speaker A:And he prays earnestly.
Speaker A:He prays even sometimes with tears.
Speaker A:He cares about my soul.
Speaker A:He's like what J.C. ryle said.
Speaker A:Soul love is the soul of all love.
Speaker A:And then I need to be a king, not an authoritarian king that looks down on my wife, but give her kingly leadership out of love and as a leader in love.
Speaker A:The children see that as an example and protecting her, defending her as a king, and then protecting and defending and guiding the children also as a king, giving them real manly biblical leadership without becoming a dictator or a tyrant or falling into authoritarianism or excessive legalism, but just showing that kingly leadership that's grounded in the Word.
Speaker A:Of course, all three offices are grounded totally in the Word.
Speaker A:The Word is sufficient.
Speaker A:So those are the six parts of the book.
Speaker A:Prophet to wife to children, priest to wife to children, king to wife to children.
Speaker B:This is also very relevant for me because I'm actually getting married in about two and a half weeks and.
Speaker B:Yes, exactly.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:And so I think I'm going to set up this podcast, actually, perhaps to come out on my wedding day.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So as.
Speaker B:As I'm As I'm reading through all of this, I think what struck me, the three books, lead your family cultivating private prayer, and then the family worship books, the three of them, they struck me as being profoundly loving and profoundly firm.
Speaker B:Like, it would be very easy to talk about these subjects in such a.
Speaker B:In a very airy kind of way.
Speaker B:It would also be easy to land in them too heavily.
Speaker B:But I think what came across, particularly in the how to lead you'd family book was like a loving sense of graciousness.
Speaker B:Like, this is serious business.
Speaker B:This is meaningful stuff.
Speaker B:But not to land on.
Speaker B:On men, but instead to inspire them and hold them to account for how significant these three roles are.
Speaker B:So I was very moved by reading the books.
Speaker B:I felt you struck the right tone that way.
Speaker A:Oh, great.
Speaker A:That's encouraging to hear.
Speaker A:Well, thank you.
Speaker A:I do think the whole.
Speaker A:The whole goal of our manliness, the whole goal of our husbandliness, the whole goal of our fatherliness has got to all be marinated in genuine love, doesn't it?
Speaker A:I mean, Jesus gave us the example Ephesians 5, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
Speaker A:And how did Christ love the church?
Speaker A:Well, he gave himself absolutely for her.
Speaker A:He didn't get 50%.
Speaker A:He gave 100%.
Speaker A:And then 10 verses later or so, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Speaker A:So there's a kind of love that pervades everything.
Speaker A:Even when we discipline our children as kings.
Speaker A:It should be done in love, not anger.
Speaker A:I say to men in my seminary here as a pastor, when you lead your flock, when you lead your family, never, never respond in anger.
Speaker A:If you feel anger rising, you tell your kids, well, Daddy will.
Speaker A:Daddy needs to think about how to administer discipline to you for this sin that you've committed.
Speaker A:But give Daddy a little bit of time.
Speaker A:I'll come back and tell you how it's going to go, and you cool down.
Speaker A:And it's only when you can come back, speak with a loving voice, a loving but firm voice, that you're ready to really discipline your kids.
Speaker B:And how crucial is that in a.
Speaker B:In an age where discipline is not considered.
Speaker B:It's not even considered healthy anymore.
Speaker B:It's the gentle parenting and the idea that kids should just be allowed to kind of do their thing and creatively explore and that there are no boundaries for them, but instead the essential role of king and household is.
Speaker B:Discipline is a big part of that.
Speaker B:I found that to be a very.
Speaker B:A very powerful section of the book.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, discipline is crucial.
Speaker A:And I learned a lot from actually Ted Tripp's book on that when our kids were like four, three and one.
Speaker A:And I kind of followed that paradigm that he sets out where you discipline.
Speaker A:And I found it to be very helpful, although I do find, and I think most of your listeners would agree with me who have children that what often works for one child doesn't work quite so well with another.
Speaker A:So to spank a child who's been recalcitrant, who's offended against one of the Ten Commandments, and after instruction is still rebellious.
Speaker A:You want to spank him to bring him to repentance, but you also want to embrace him afterward and pray with him and show that love and walk out of the room, the private room where you are disciplining him, showing him dignity and honor as a human being, not in front of his brothers and sisters.
Speaker A:You walk out of the room hand in hand, and the matter is closed.
Speaker A:Now, that worked very well for us with one of our children, another child not quite so well.
Speaker A:Another child.
Speaker A:Oh, to put her in a room by herself to just meditate on what she had done was far more effective, but it was also far more discipline.
Speaker A:So what you have got to be careful when you write a book to husbands and to fathers is not to be hard nose on.
Speaker A:Here's exactly what you have to do in every situation and allow no room for the personality of the child.
Speaker A:We need wisdom to rear each child with his own personality, her own personality in the fear of the Lord.
Speaker B:I think that's the place probably where you would say prayer comes in.
Speaker B:I read the how to Cultivate Private Prayer and I was really struck by the weight of responsibility for prayer, particularly for fathers.
Speaker B:In fact, it's woven throughout how to lead your family, the family worship, and the cultivating private prayer books.
Speaker B:Just how significant the role of a father is for his wife and for his kids, and how powerful prayer can be, both as a support for attaining wisdom and also for finding strength through challenging times.
Speaker B:And I found that prayer is not something that I've heard spoken about often in Reformed circles.
Speaker B:I've heard a lot of other topics.
Speaker B:But prayer, I feel, is kind of under.
Speaker B:Is underdeveloped, at least maybe in.
Speaker B:Maybe in just the areas that I've been in.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:But prayer is foundational.
Speaker A:It's the foundation of the foundation in terms of rearing children in the fear of God.
Speaker A:And let me explain why.
Speaker A:So in the Bible, we're told more than once that we need to take hold of God in prayer.
Speaker A:My dad used to always say to us as boys, our relationship with God is a two way communication street.
Speaker A:Just like everyone else in life, God comes to us through his word.
Speaker A:We go back through him, through him, through prayer.
Speaker A:And therefore prayer is critical.
Speaker A:Prayer is the foundational link in family worship.
Speaker A:Prayer is foundational in church, in worship services.
Speaker A:John Bunyan, the Puritan said, you can do more than pray after you pray, but you can't do more than pray until you pray.
Speaker A:So I've tried to make that a pattern of my whole life.
Speaker A:When I was 25 years old, well, two days after I was ordained into the ministry, a minister who's in my position now who had been pastoring for almost 50 years came to visit me.
Speaker A:And I was all, I was all ears.
Speaker A:I mean, I took out a, a pad of paper and I'm ready to write down everything he said.
Speaker A:I just said, tell me everything, everything I can learn from you about the ministry.
Speaker A:And he goes, I can say it all in one word.
Speaker A:One word.
Speaker A:Yeah, pray.
Speaker A:I said, pray, yeah.
Speaker A:He said, never, never, never undertake one thing in the ministry, even if you've done it a hundred times, a thousand times without getting on your knees and crying out to God in prayer.
Speaker A:And that so profoundly impacted me.
Speaker A:But because I had such prayerful parents, I mean, my mother was on her knees about two hours a day.
Speaker A:And I'm not exaggerating, and my dad was always praying for us.
Speaker A:Oh, with tears he'd be praying, lord, let us, let us not be an undivided family, but let us be divided.
Speaker A:Let us be an undivided family reserved for the heavenly mansions above.
Speaker A:Lord, we can't miss anyone at the right hand of the side of Christ.
Speaker A:Save our children, Lord, save our children.
Speaker A:And then when we all got saved, he'd say, my oldest brother and sister had grandchildren by that time from my parents.
Speaker A:And he'd say, lord, now we need all the grandchildren saved.
Speaker A:And we tell it.
Speaker A:So I grew up in this atmosphere where everything was prayed about.
Speaker A:And when we prayed at the table, my dad didn't do a 30 second prayer or blessing for the food.
Speaker A:He did like a five minute, earnest, heartfelt prayer and then at the end, again, earnest prayer of the meal and family worship, especially on Sunday night, family worship.
Speaker A:And so when this minister said this to me, I mean, it wasn't a stretch for me to realize the value of this because I'd seen it in my own parents and I've tried to follow that my whole ministry, realizing that the most important Thing of all is prayer.
Speaker A:Anything I don't marinate in prayer, even fundraising for the seminary here.
Speaker A:Sometimes I come over in November and start fundraising for the year end gifts.
Speaker A:And every once in a while I'm busy and I come over and I pick up the phone, I start calling.
Speaker A:And I'll tell you, Will, this is not superstition.
Speaker A:But if I don't pray first, I could go through 15 phone calls and nobody's home.
Speaker A:But if I pray first and really commit it to God, I've experienced over and over again in my life that God takes ownership of that.
Speaker A:And so taking hold of myself and disciplining myself to pray and putting prayer up front rather than the backseat and doing that as a husband with my wife and doing it as a father with my children is critical for being a real man and what I find today.
Speaker A:I think most people in my church do pray earnestly.
Speaker A:Most men do pray earnestly with their children on family worship times every day.
Speaker A:I think the majority would, but there's a lot of men, a lot of men who are not praying passionately with their wives, just alone with their wife every day.
Speaker A:That's a huge mistake.
Speaker A:You know, we say the family that prays together stays together.
Speaker A:I like to put it this way.
Speaker A:And the couple that stays together or prays together stays together.
Speaker A:So my wife and I, we just made this, what the puritans would call one of your holy habits, one of your habitual uses of the means of grace.
Speaker A:We've just made it a point in our marriage.
Speaker A:No matter where I am in the world now, my wife always travels with me.
Speaker A:But it wasn't that way when our kids were young.
Speaker A:We will pray together every night.
Speaker A:So every night we get down on our knees beside our bed, hand in hand, she storms the mercy seat.
Speaker A:One night I stormed the mercy seat the next night.
Speaker A:That time is the sweetest time of my whole day.
Speaker A:I love to hear my wife pray.
Speaker A:I love to hear the feminine side of prayer.
Speaker A:And if I'm gone, if I'm in Zambia, Africa, I'll call my wife.
Speaker A:There's been one day in the last 37 years I couldn't get a hold of my wife.
Speaker A:No matter where I am, I couldn't sleep at night because I couldn't pray with her before I went to bed.
Speaker A:So if you develop it as a holy habit and you do it daily, like Deuteronomy 6, 6, 7 say you should do with your kids, but it also applies to your wife, passionately bringing her before the throne of grace that's critical to fulfilling your role as a.
Speaker A:As an interceding priest.
Speaker A:You know, job, job 1 5.
Speaker A:He says he brought his children every morning in prayer to God and sacrifice and killed a bullock or whatever it was for them.
Speaker A:And Spurgeon says about that he hurried to the cross early every morning to commit his children for that day to the Lord.
Speaker A:What a godly example.
Speaker A:What a beautiful way to live.
Speaker B:Thank you for that, sir.
Speaker B:I can.
Speaker B:I can validate the power of prayer, even though my fiance and I are long distance.
Speaker B:Over the past several months, I've been cultivating a habit of recording, like, a voice note for her and a very.
Speaker B:And a messaging app and reading a prayer.
Speaker B:Like I read a prayer now I'm in the Valley of Vision, so I'll just flip to a random prayer in the Valley of Vision, read it to her, and then do a bit of my own prayers at the end.
Speaker B:And how nice it is when she's recorded prayers for me.
Speaker B:It's just a really special thing to hear.
Speaker B:And we're not even married yet, and it's still something we're cultivating.
Speaker B:I have a number of spiritual bonds.
Speaker A:Are actually even more important than the physical bonds.
Speaker A:And they will give the physical in your marriage a dimension that if you don't have the spiritual, you can never reach by just having the physical.
Speaker B:Well, talk a little bit about those.
Speaker B:About those spiritual bonds.
Speaker B:Talk about, you know, this is not just your wife.
Speaker B:I think I've heard Vodi Bauckham say, she's not mine, she's me.
Speaker B:And I just said that.
Speaker B:What a striking phrase that is.
Speaker B:So talk a little bit about building those spiritual bonds, because I imagine there are probably a lot of listeners who they have stuff going on during the day.
Speaker B:The kids are going this way and the work is going this way, and just sleep.
Speaker B:Seem sleep and time and money.
Speaker B:Like, talk about making time to cultivate these spiritual bonds and how essential that is.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's different ways of doing that, of course.
Speaker A:One is to have these holy habits, these rituals that you do every day.
Speaker A:That's important.
Speaker A:In the Dutch background I'm from, we say if the form is gone, all will soon be gone.
Speaker A:But in the reformers and Puritans, they had the stated times of discipline, and the discipline to engage in the means of grace in the family and personally and with your wife.
Speaker A:And then you have the spontaneous times.
Speaker A:And so when it comes to the deliberate times, I'll just tell you what we do.
Speaker A:Obviously, we cry out to God in the morning, get out of bed, want to begin your day with God.
Speaker A:Then at breakfast, we follow the Dutch tradition where you pray before the meal, you read the Bible after every meal and maybe talk one or two minutes about it.
Speaker A:That's three meals a day.
Speaker A:And then you close with prayer.
Speaker A:So there you've got two prayers and you've got a Bible reading and a little tiny nugget of family worship.
Speaker A:Noon, you do the same thing.
Speaker A:Supper, you do the same thing.
Speaker A:But what we would do as a family, we still do it just as husband and wife, because all the kids are married now.
Speaker A:After supper, we then move into the living room as we always have done.
Speaker A:And then we actually go through a more formal family worship which consists of four parts.
Speaker A:First of all, we pray and I pray.
Speaker A:And then we read scripture and then we talk about what we read.
Speaker A:We go through the family worship Bible guide you held up.
Speaker A:That is a godsend.
Speaker A:That's our best selling book.
Speaker A:That's a godsend for fathers all over the world because it gives you the two major takeaways, basically two or three from each chapter and the ending questions.
Speaker A:And so we've been using that for years, ever since it came out.
Speaker A:Took us five years to write it with a bunch of other men because we felt there was a real lack there.
Speaker A:And when you use that family worship Bible guide, it takes all the fear out of leading family worship because it's written right there for you.
Speaker A:Then you just answer the questions, your wife jumps in, your kids jump in.
Speaker A:Sometimes you ask a question specifically to one child.
Speaker A:It's more at their age range.
Speaker A:And then after you talk to your kids for three, five, seven minutes as they get older, maybe nine, 12, because they love to talk when they get older.
Speaker A:And then what you do is you close with prayer.
Speaker A:And I would always have my wife or one of the children close with prayer.
Speaker A:Take turns.
Speaker A:And then we always sing Psalm 18, Psalm 118, 15.
Speaker A:They heard the noise of music coming from the tents of the righteous, which was not the synagogue, it was the daily home.
Speaker A:So the Puritans said, you've got to end your family worship with singing praises to God, because singing lasts longest on the memory bank and you should go into the day with it or into the evening with it and so on.
Speaker A:So those are some formal ways to build these bonds, both in marriage and in your family.
Speaker A:But then the spontaneous ways.
Speaker A:There's so many situations.
Speaker A:We developed a habit when our kids were still home.
Speaker A:We're driving down the highway, we see somebody got into an accident.
Speaker A:I wouldn't Even say to the kids, children, we got to stop and pray.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:I would just start praying and they would all hold their hands, close their eyes because they knew we were going to pray for their family because we can't stop and help them interfere with the police or the analysts.
Speaker A:But obviously whoever got into accident is in need.
Speaker A:So of course we're going to pray for them.
Speaker A:That's what I wanted to instill in my children.
Speaker A:Or I come home from work and my wife says, you know, Calvin has a bad stomachache and he's in his bedroom and Esther's kind of worried about a big test tomorrow.
Speaker A:So I go walk over to each child, say, I hear you're feeling pretty sick.
Speaker A:Or I hear you've got a big test that dad wants to pray.
Speaker A:I want to pray with you.
Speaker A:You just automatically pray.
Speaker A:So prayer becomes a way of life that it doesn't surprise your kids as soon as they hear about a need in their lives that you as a dad say, son, daughter, let's go to prayer.
Speaker A:Or you just heard sermon preached.
Speaker A:What a fool a dad would be to drive home, a 10 minute drive home and not talk about the sermon.
Speaker A:On the way home.
Speaker A:You just heard the words of the living God to you.
Speaker A:Of course you're going to ask your wife, what did you get out of the sermon tonight?
Speaker A:What did you learn?
Speaker A:And you're going to share what you learned and you're going to ask your kids a couple questions about what they heard and take advantage.
Speaker A:Golden opportunity.
Speaker A:Golden opportunity, but also in daily life.
Speaker A:My wife, who's written a few books as well and talks to women often at the conferences I do, she has a talk that she often gives to women.
Speaker A:It's called meaningful conversation around the dinner table.
Speaker A:I wasn't so great at that by nature because I'd come home from working 10 hours and I would be exhausted and sit at the table and just hard for me to put all the ministry out of my mind right away.
Speaker A:My wife would often gently give me a little, a little nudge with her toes, very light on my legs, just so enough I could feel it.
Speaker A:And I know what she was saying.
Speaker A:She's saying with that, remember, meaningful conversation.
Speaker A:Meaningful conversation, she'd always said to me.
Speaker A:So you know, because I mean, casual conversation is fine too for part of the time, but this is a golden opportunity to talk about real things.
Speaker A:When all your kids are around the table, they'll never forget those conversations.
Speaker A:Or we've got woods behind our house.
Speaker A:It's wonderful.
Speaker A:Take your kids walking through the woods, show them God's creation.
Speaker A:Just develop these spiritual, spiritual bonds as a way of life.
Speaker A:Spontaneous, but also deliberate.
Speaker B:What would you say to men who didn't grow up in Christian households or who grew up in sort of more nominal Christian households who look at all this and say, well, wow, that is a, that is a big shift from the way that I grew up.
Speaker B:Like, for example, I, me, myself, I, I did not grow up in a Christian home.
Speaker B:And so, so what would you say to men who don't come from that background, who look at suddenly taking on what can feel like an enormous responsibility for bringing God so much into the home when that's not something they grew up having experienced?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:That's a question I get a lot of.
Speaker A:And I usually begin this way.
Speaker A:How long did it take you to learn how to swim?
Speaker B:A bit.
Speaker A:A bit.
Speaker A:Okay, same thing here.
Speaker A:Do you learn to swim by avoiding the water?
Speaker B:Definitely not.
Speaker A:Okay, so I'm asking you rhetorical questions because the point I'm driving at is it doesn't take all that much to conduct a decent family worship.
Speaker A:And God is not looking for smoothness of language.
Speaker A:He's not looking for the length of the service.
Speaker A:He's looking for genuineness, sincerity of heart.
Speaker A:And so you're not a real theologian.
Speaker A:You probably are more than you realize, but you're not a gifted theologian in terms of expressing it.
Speaker A:But you can.
Speaker A:Even though you've never just taken my family worship book, giving you practical guidelines how to do it simply, then using the family Worship Bible Guide, you can pray for half a minute.
Speaker A:You can read the Bible with your children for a minute.
Speaker A:You can talk to them after you read the family Worship Bible Guide question for one minute.
Speaker A:And you can sing from a book for a minute or two.
Speaker A:You can start simple.
Speaker A:Start with a five minute family worship.
Speaker A:Just do those four parts and just say to your children, daddy's going to do this.
Speaker A:We haven't done it before, but I read this book by Joel Beekee or somebody else and I'm convicted.
Speaker A:I need to do this.
Speaker A:We need to have a spiritual foundation home.
Speaker A:Please help me.
Speaker A:Please help me.
Speaker A:And you explain to your children, you can do these four parts.
Speaker A:You're going to start out with a little prayer.
Speaker A:Usually probably right after supper is the best time before everybody goes their own way.
Speaker A:But you pick out the time of the day where most people can be there.
Speaker A:And then you read maybe five verses and then you do one family worship Bible question, maybe just one.
Speaker A:Then you have another.
Speaker A:Ask one member of your family to have another short prayer.
Speaker A:And then you sing one stanza.
Speaker A:And what you'll find is as you start doing this, it'll come so natural to you.
Speaker A:You'll want to sing two stanzas, you'll want to have a little more in your prayer, and you'll want to read 10 verses instead of five.
Speaker A:It will naturally settle in between 10 to 15 minutes somewhere in there that you'll find most edifying.
Speaker A:What you don't want to do is do a long family worship for 45 minutes one day and do nothing for two more days.
Speaker A:You've got to get in the holy habit.
Speaker A:You don't say to your wife, I'm too tired to do family worship tonight.
Speaker A:Are you kidding me?
Speaker A:Christ went to the cross carrying his cross.
Speaker A:He was so weary about caved in, and he still carried it all the way.
Speaker A:You can do a decent 5 to 10 minute family worship and he'll help you.
Speaker A:So don't make excuses.
Speaker A:Just start doing it today.
Speaker A:That's the point.
Speaker A:And he'll help you and it will grow on you just like you learn to swim better when you swim, the more you do it, the easier it will come and the more fruitful it will be.
Speaker B:What would you say to wives who would like to bring more of this into their home but want to perhaps inspire their husbands to take that step?
Speaker B:How can they do that in an appropriate way?
Speaker A:Yeah, it's a tough one.
Speaker A:There's so many different individual scenarios here that not one size fits all.
Speaker A:But I've also had this question.
Speaker A:I've answered this question.
Speaker A:I've spoken on family worship in about 50 countries, maybe 400 times in my life.
Speaker A:And this is one of the questions that pops up all the time.
Speaker A:And I'm sympathetic to it because there's no easy answer.
Speaker A:But I would say there's several different cases.
Speaker A:Number one is the husband who just goes to church every week, just feels no gifts at doing this, but knows it needs to be done and is feeling guilty.
Speaker A:So the wife just could say, honey, I'll help you.
Speaker A:I'll take one of the prayers.
Speaker A:But even if you read a form prayer, even if you do a few sentences, the children need to hear you pray.
Speaker A:Would you please, please pray?
Speaker A:And if he says, I can't do it, say, well, can I just write out a little prayer for you?
Speaker A:Will you at least read it so the children can hear you?
Speaker A:Just encourage him and just try to encourage him to lead the four parts.
Speaker A:All he has to do is open the book and read the family worship question and You've got it.
Speaker A:And then as a wife, you can help maybe facilitate the conversation a little bit if your husband's very shy in these things.
Speaker A:But do not take over from him.
Speaker A:If he can do it half as well as you can, let him do it.
Speaker A:And you just jump in where it is appropriate because children need to see his leadership.
Speaker A:But you can be there to support him right at his side to answer a question where no one is talking, that type of thing.
Speaker A:But if you have a husband who's very hostile to it and is not a Christian at all in any way, shape or form, not even outwardly, it's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker A:I think then the wisest thing to do is to say, I realize, honey, that you can't join us for this because you don't believe it, but it's very important to me.
Speaker A:Are you okay if I just lead the children in a five minute family worship?
Speaker A:I promise to keep it short right after supper.
Speaker A:Some husbands will go along with that and that's a substitute.
Speaker A:But that's better than no family worship at all.
Speaker A:And years and years ago, when our kids were not married, they were at home and I would have to travel a lot by myself.
Speaker A:My wife would do family worship with them every day, taking my place.
Speaker A:That's another possibility when the husband's gone on a business trip or whatever.
Speaker A:But then there are those extreme cases where the husband says, no, absolutely no.
Speaker A:What in the world do you do then?
Speaker A:Oh, man, that's a tough one.
Speaker A:And even there, there's variety.
Speaker A:But I would still say you have to obey God above man and it's a sin not to do it.
Speaker A:So the authority of Christ is more than the authority of your husband.
Speaker A:Maybe you have to come to a point where even if it's one minute, when your husband's not around, you just have a little prayer with the kids and do the best you can.
Speaker A:And as Peter says, of course you've got to walk godly in front of your husband.
Speaker A:That by your godly conversation it may please the Lord to convict your husband and to bring him to repentance if that happens.
Speaker A:Wow, what a difference in the home that would make.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker B:Can you talk a little bit about some homes that you may have seen that have instituted, you know, that didn't do family worship, that didn't do family prayer.
Speaker B:And then they instituted, they learned to swim, so to speak, and the trans.
Speaker B:Maybe some of the transformations you've seen from families that have done that, thousands.
Speaker A:Upon thousands upon thousands of families have had their family worship time transformed by this book?
Speaker A:Family Worship Bible Guide.
Speaker A:And why?
Speaker A:Why is that book so, so critical?
Speaker A:Well, because the hardest part for men isn't just uttering three or four sentences in prayer, and it's not reading five, ten verses in the Bible.
Speaker A:The hardest part for men is what do I say after I read it?
Speaker A:I read Ezekiel 44 tonight, and I have no clue what to say to my kids.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But here is a book that four or five people, maybe even a little bit more, we had spent five years writing wrestling with each chapter.
Speaker A:How can we condense it down to a few comments that you can read in 40 seconds with a question at the end to facilitate your family worship.
Speaker A:Why in the world wouldn't you get this book and just read it to your kids for 40 seconds a night, ask them a question, and immediately the conversation starts and the burden of it is taken away.
Speaker A:It really doesn't take all that much to lead a family worship in a decent way when you have an aid like this one.
Speaker A:But this is why so many men fail.
Speaker A:They know they should be talking to their kids about real things, but they don't know how to do it.
Speaker A:This book helps you.
Speaker A:And, and what you'll find is if you use it, sometimes you'll start adding a few sentences on your own as you learn to swim better, and then you might add a question on your own.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:So this book is actually training you as a dad at the same time how to communicate with your children.
Speaker B:I love this.
Speaker B:When I got this book and flipped it open, the Family Worship Bible Guide, and I just took a look at what was in it, I was like, oh, this is going to be such an incredible help.
Speaker B:Because I want to make sure that if I'm responsible for stewarding shepherding the souls of my wife and kids, that I'm teaching them well.
Speaker B:And I wouldn't just naturally assume that whatever I happen to say is true or accurate, even if I try my hardest.
Speaker B:So this was an invaluable resource in terms of like, oh, okay, here's how we can start the conversation.
Speaker B:Maybe so men can take a little bit of the pressure off themselves as having to have all the answers.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:And then if you don't have all the answers, you admit it to your kids, then you get a tool.
Speaker A:If I could humbly suggest that, like reformed systematic theology, and you have an index in the back and every single doctrine in the entire Bible is covered in those four volumes, which represents my life work in biblical teaching.
Speaker A:And you just look up a few pages and you learn and you grow as you look up questions that you can't answer.
Speaker B:Can you talk also?
Speaker B:A little bit.
Speaker B:And you get into this, into the how to lead your family book, which is very popular in my men's group, by the way, which has been great.
Speaker B:And particularly the short and to the point, like, here's what you need to know in order to take on this role in a godly way.
Speaker B:Can you talk a little bit about the roles of prophet, priest, and king and how those apply to a father's responsibility to lead his home?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So as a prophet, you have to remember you are God's authorized steward.
Speaker A:And on the day of judgment, God will ask you the question.
Speaker A:Give me an account of your stewardship.
Speaker A:How?
Speaker A:Have you talked to the children?
Speaker A:Have you trained them?
Speaker A:Have you given them, have you raised them for a holistic maturity?
Speaker A:Have you talked to them about the.
Speaker A:About Jesus Christ, about sin, about hell, about heaven?
Speaker A:Have they heard every major doctrine coming from your lips?
Speaker A:But also, have you talked to them about all the practical things of the Bible, the practical things of daily life, the things you read about in the book of Proverbs?
Speaker A:See, if you do family worship daily and you go through the whole Bible, say it takes you three years, you will have talked to your children about every subject under the sun.
Speaker A:Because the Bible talks about every subject under the sun.
Speaker A:So being a prophet is particularly a teaching ministry.
Speaker A:It's also a bit of an admonishing ministry because human nature tends to go astray.
Speaker A:Sometimes you need to warn your children about worldliness.
Speaker A:You need to warn them about watching ungodly entertainment, things like that.
Speaker A:But primarily it's a positive teaching emphasis.
Speaker A:And then you're to do it with passion.
Speaker A:Moses says in Deuteronomy 6, 6, 7, diligently, and not just in family worship, but when you lie down, when you rise up, when you walk.
Speaker A:By the way, that's a Hebraic idiom that simply means every day, every day you get up, every day you lay down, every day you walk, every day, teach your children passionately.
Speaker A:So if I get more excited about the score of a Super bowl ballgame, then I get excited talking to my kids about Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:What does that say to my kids?
Speaker A:So the problem is, so many dads today just lack that freedom to talk to their kids about real things.
Speaker A:And that has got to change.
Speaker A:And that's where the family worship Bible guy can get you going on the right road in terms of the priestly office.
Speaker A:As I said, it's this element of sacrifice.
Speaker A:Kids need to see me sacrificing for my wife, loving her like Christ loves the church.
Speaker A:They need to see me hear me interceding for them and blessing them with my conversation, godly conversation and as king.
Speaker A:They need to see me protecting them.
Speaker A:I want to give you a cool example that really is very dear to my heart.
Speaker A:My oldest daughter is a bit shyer than other kids were.
Speaker A:And he made it through high school without any boy being interested in her in the whole church or seemingly interested in her.
Speaker A:And even though she's attractive and she's virtuous, just a sweet, sweet girl, but just kind of shy talking to boys.
Speaker A:So she's going off to college and I said to her, honey, I'm just kind of worried about you.
Speaker A:I know you're going to a Christian college, but I'm kind of worried that you're going to meet a Christian young man there who's going to see your virtues, going to get interested in you and maybe fall in love with you.
Speaker A:But his background in Christianity might be very different from yours.
Speaker A:You know, we believe in free grace.
Speaker A:Maybe he's going to be in Arminian and maybe be sincere, but I'm just kind of worried about who you're going to meet.
Speaker A:And she was driving at the time we were coming home from church and I was sitting in the front seat, just the two of us, because she had gone with me to a neighboring church on a Sunday afternoon in between our own regular services.
Speaker A:And as she's driving, I can never forget her luck.
Speaker A:She turned and she looked at me and she said, but dad, why are you worried?
Speaker A:You know I never go out with anyone you didn't fully approve of.
Speaker A:And I go, yes, that was great.
Speaker A:But you see, what that told me by her example was she really wanted me to protect her, to protect her from men who would not be good for her.
Speaker A:And she trusted my wisdom.
Speaker A:That's the way it should be.
Speaker A:Now, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of faults as a parent and I'm sure my kids could tell you a number of them.
Speaker A:So we're all works in progress.
Speaker A:But when we're kings in our home, our children should feel that we're protecting them from the world, protecting them from evil.
Speaker A:Tell you one way my dad did that was really effective, really effective.
Speaker A:I thought all dads did this.
Speaker A:Found out later it was pretty unique to my dad.
Speaker A:So he realized, even though he only had an eighth grade education, he realized that when you get to be in about eighth grade or so, you're going to start making decisions for yourself.
Speaker A:The world is not black and white.
Speaker A:And so when we would ask him 13, 14, 15 years old, dad, can we go and do A, B or C?
Speaker A:He'd often say to us, why don't you go up into your bedroom, get down on your knees and ask God if you can glorify him by doing this activity.
Speaker A:And if you can't, don't do it.
Speaker A:If you can, you have my permission to do it.
Speaker A:And I think we were stricter on ourselves than he was because we go up there and pray.
Speaker A:So I think, wow, how can I glorify God?
Speaker A:By watching that movie.
Speaker A:Movie in my neighbor's basement with my buddy.
Speaker A:And I know there's going to be sin on that movie, and if I'm participating in it by watching it, no, I can't do that.
Speaker A:And you know, that type of thing.
Speaker A:So I'm not talking about legalistic things here.
Speaker A:I'm talking about cultivating the hearts of your children.
Speaker A:A principal conviction that I need to avoid the very appearance of evil.
Speaker A:I need to not desensitize my conscience toward the horrendousness, the dastardliness, the abominableness of this thing we call sin that comes.
Speaker A:And then the other part of the kingly office, of course, is guiding in the right directions and passing on wisdom to your kids and that they learn to grow and become much more mature in making decisions and teaching them in all areas of life, giving them authoritative guidance about how to meet people, how to interact with people, guidance on how should I view sports compared to life itself, how should I view the entertainment world, how should I use my cell phone, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:One of the things that struck me in your examples of, of your childhood growing up and of your daughter as well was that the, the choice to do or not do something wasn't, well, if I do it or if I don't do, a dad will be mad.
Speaker B:It was, it was with you.
Speaker B:You know, you went up and you were harder on yourself.
Speaker B:You said stricter on yourself than your own father would have been.
Speaker B:But, but you genuinely wanted to please God and your daughter genuinely wanted to please God in her own way.
Speaker B:And it sounds like just marinating in this environment of faith produces obedient, faithful children that are kept safe from the world in a way that legalism or like a tyrannical father would create the image, the appearance of that, but not the genuine, not the genuine article in the heart.
Speaker A:Yeah, Yat.
Speaker A:And let me nuance, if I may, just a tad bit more what you're just saying because you're onto something quite big.
Speaker A:So my dad would do that with me.
Speaker A:I was converted when I was 14, but he'd do it with me even when I was 13 or 12 maybe.
Speaker A:And as a child, that's unsaved.
Speaker A:Not in open rebellion against God, but having deep, deep convictions of reverence and respect for my father and mother.
Speaker A:When I saw their godly example, I knew they had something I didn't.
Speaker A:When I got down on my knees when I was 12 and 13, it wasn't motivated preeminently by loving God and loving his glory.
Speaker A:It was motivated by having just a kind of outward respect for my father and my mother and a training of the conscience.
Speaker A:My dad used to often say, don't ever overstep your conscience unless your conscience is not aligned with the word of God.
Speaker A:Well, my dad was always making statements like that and he was training our conscience.
Speaker A:And so even as unconverted children, we often didn't dare do things.
Speaker A:I remember very vividly right now.
Speaker A:I had a friend when I was 13 months saved, he wanted to take me to a movie.
Speaker A:Well, honestly, I grew up without television.
Speaker A:My parents just didn't feel it was good for us.
Speaker A:And also they didn't think the theater was good for us.
Speaker A:So that was built into my conscience.
Speaker A:But the movie, I don't think it was an R rated one.
Speaker A:But I knew there'd be sin in it.
Speaker A:And at first I thought, well, maybe I kind of wanted to see it too.
Speaker A:So I said yes, I would go with him.
Speaker A:So we were just about ready to walk into the theater.
Speaker A:We went downtown, we got by the theater, got out of the car and I mean, this is going to sound strangely mystical to some people, but I just tell you what happened.
Speaker A:It's really a result of my conscience training of my dad.
Speaker A:Before I went in those doors, I suddenly saw in front of me, in my mind, my dear, dear, loving, loving, loving mother on her knees as I saw her every morning, knowing that every morning she's praying for us individually that we'd be kept from sin, that we'd be converted, that we'd serve the living God.
Speaker A:And just out of respect for my mother, I turned to my friend and said, you know what?
Speaker A:Let's do something else.
Speaker A:I just couldn't do it now.
Speaker A:All of that changed dramatically when I was 14.
Speaker A:I wanted to do the will of God and I wanted to serve God from all My heart.
Speaker A:And I didn't need to be motivated just by what my dad and mom.
Speaker A:My love for my dad and mom, my wife and my mother are the two kindest people I've ever met on planet Earth.
Speaker A:I am so blessed.
Speaker A:My dad was kind as well, but he was more a lover of my soul.
Speaker A:Only I don't think he cared as much about my daily life.
Speaker A:But my mother had that love for every detail of my life.
Speaker A:And so I got the best of both worlds.
Speaker A:In a way, my mother loved my soul, too, but she couldn't express herself as freely as my dad about spiritual things.
Speaker A:But, boy, did she pray for me.
Speaker A:Boy, did my dad pray for me.
Speaker A:And so when you're that kind of man, where your children grow up and you're gently lovingly molding their conscience, and as they grow up, if somebody asks them about you and they can say something like this, well, my dad isn't perfect, but I want to tell you one thing.
Speaker A:My dad loves my soul and he loves Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:You've largely succeeded at Paradigm.
Speaker B:What a beautiful thought.
Speaker B:And what strikes me about the stories you tell is that the level of loyalty that your father inspired, your mother and your father inspired, and the level of loyalty that you inspired in your daughter during an age when so many kids, by media, by their own friends, by culture, are discipled in disloyalty to their parents.
Speaker B:Distrust.
Speaker B:Disloyalty.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's why we're working hard now at the seminary right now, the last four years.
Speaker A:We really want to establish.
Speaker A:We're doing a presidential search right now.
Speaker A:We really want to establish a subsidiary of the seminary called Puritan Reformed College.
Speaker A:We want a really positive college where every single professor, no matter what program is established, teaches from a solid biblical reform perspective.
Speaker A:Accredited liberal arts college where teenagers don't have all this poison poured into their minds that so impact them that so many, so many teenagers today walk into college pretty decent even if they're not saved.
Speaker A:They're outwardly decent, got moral convictions, they got a conscience that speaks.
Speaker A:And they come out of college hating the country and embracing WOKE stuff and all kinds of nonsense and different genders.
Speaker A:Oh, it's just awful.
Speaker A:And parents are actually paying for this, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Unbelievable.
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:We have to see to it that our children have a good education and not send them to places that are going to poison their minds and unravel everything we've been trying to do.
Speaker B:How can.
Speaker B:How can adults be more forgiving to their parents?
Speaker B:Because we live in a trauma and quote, unquote trauma, informed culture, psychotherapy, informed culture that sort of holds up bitterness towards mother and father, particularly father, as sort of a, a cultural thing that everyone does.
Speaker B:You blame your parents for everything that goes wrong in your life.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But I found in myself that forgiving, forgiving my parents has been one of the most powerful things I've ever done.
Speaker B:How can, how, how can adults learn, particularly Christian adults, learn to forgive their parents in an environment that celebrates like childhood trauma and things like that?
Speaker A:Yeah, there's again, not one size fits all here, I think.
Speaker A:But there are some things I can say that I think could be helpful.
Speaker A:There is trauma that can be overwhelmingly serious.
Speaker A:That definitely takes a period of time with good biblical counseling.
Speaker A:Like say if I got physically abused or I was, yeah, constantly verbally abused for years.
Speaker A:And I mean that you, you need to really get help for that.
Speaker A:I, I think.
Speaker A:But the normal, I should say normal slash, somewhat abnormal disappointment in parents who weren't godly, never took you to church, never talked to you about the Lord.
Speaker A:You become a Christian, you realize when you see other godly parents, what you missed then I would remember.
Speaker A:I would remember two things.
Speaker A:Number one, I would think along these lines.
Speaker A:If I grew up exactly like my parents and with the exact experiences, the exact same set of background, the exact things in every area of life, I probably would turn out exactly like them because I too have a deceitful heart.
Speaker A:Remember that.
Speaker A:Secondly, you want to remember that the Bible says I will restore, saith the Lord, the years the locusts have eaten and sometimes will.
Speaker A:There are people that become Christians, say in their 20s, they're reading a book or reading the scriptures or happening to go to church.
Speaker A:And they become very bitter that their parents kept them from all these riches all those years.
Speaker A:But they need to understand that they found what life is all about when they found that to live for the glory of God.
Speaker A:And once you discover that, you can be so grateful that God extracts you from that non God background you have that instead of not forgiving your parents, the reverse will happen.
Speaker A:You'll want to go evangelize your parents and you want to pray and pray that God will save them.
Speaker A:And once you can have that reversal, I believe and actually feel, instead of anger, feel a sense of pity for your parents because they've never seen this glorious truth that Jesus Christ died for sinners and they too can be saved because there's no impossible cases with him.
Speaker A:And this is the third thing.
Speaker A:If God can save me, he can save anyone in the world.
Speaker A:He can save my mom and dad too.
Speaker A:And so I think things like that are really helpful.
Speaker A:And the thing that I don't have it with my parents, but I've had people really, really hurt me badly in life.
Speaker A:I've gone through some very deep ways and what I found to be the most helpful for me.
Speaker A:And I think this applies to a child with a parent that hasn't brought him up right or well, is.
Speaker A:I look at it this way, no one has ever treated me, even though I was treated very badly by some people, as badly as I've treated my Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:And he still loved me and he forgave me, so I should be able to forgive anybody.
Speaker A:I think that's an important principle.
Speaker A:I wrote a book called to pastors called Coping with Criticism.
Speaker A:And I have like 10 or 11 solutions in the book, I think.
Speaker A:But I say this is the main solution.
Speaker A:Main solution for me in the ministry was just to consider what Christ suffered on my behalf and how unworthy I was of him loving me and forgiving me.
Speaker A:And if he can do that for a sinner like me, why in the world shouldn't I be able to forgive anyone who's damaged me?
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:That's beautiful.
Speaker B:As you've become a grandfather, how have these lessons taken on added or increased gravity?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I'm everything anybody tells you about being a grandfather.
Speaker A:It's, it's better than all of it.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker A:Oh, it's amazing.
Speaker A:It's so sweet.
Speaker A:I, I'm actually cutting down consciously my work next year or this year and already.
Speaker A:But next year in a much more major way just so I can spend more time with the grandchildren.
Speaker A:But I have this little class I'm teaching some of the grandchildren here in my study.
Speaker A:I'm walking them through right now.
Speaker A:It's an eight year old and a six year old, but I'm getting six of them later this month and starting the class.
Speaker A:Walking them through from Prolegomena all the way to Eschatology and Reformed Theology, but not using those words at a six year old level.
Speaker A:It is so much fun and it's so, so meaningful.
Speaker A:If I could just tell you one quick story.
Speaker A:So I'm teaching them.
Speaker A:This was maybe two months ago and so far we've walked through theology proper and we're into Christology right now.
Speaker A:We've gone through anthropology and so we're like no, no, we're actually into sociology so we're like 60% of the way.
Speaker A:But I'm talking about the immensity of God, how Big God is.
Speaker A:And I'm saying to the kids, ones 8, 1 6, God is so big, so big.
Speaker A:You could never, never imagine how big God is.
Speaker A:Dear children, do you understand how big God is?
Speaker A:And the six year old looks at me and goes, should you do?
Speaker A:No, you don't understand.
Speaker A:You don't understand.
Speaker A:He said, I think I do.
Speaker A:I think I know he's big, but I think I can understand it.
Speaker A:I said, selah, that's impossible.
Speaker A:I said, just imagine, just imagine that a little ant is walking up your leg right now and he gets back on his hind legs and he looks up at you and says, selah, I understand everything about you.
Speaker A:Even though I'm very little and you're so big, I can understand what your mind thinks.
Speaker A:I understand everything about you.
Speaker A:And she shouts at me, no, Grandpa, no.
Speaker A:That aunt can't possibly know me.
Speaker A:And I said, selah, as much bigger as you are to that aunt, God is even more bigger to you than you are to the aunt.
Speaker A:And she just stopped and she looked out the window.
Speaker A:I could just see those little wheels turning, you know.
Speaker A:And then she looked at me and she goes, just a little nod of the head like, okay, I get was so precious.
Speaker A:And then the next lesson she brought it back up again.
Speaker A:I was, we were talking about some other attribute of God.
Speaker A:She said, well, that's because God is so big we can't understand him.
Speaker A:I go, yes, yes, Taylor, you know, so this is precious.
Speaker A:This is precious.
Speaker A:So my wife right now is with my daughter out in Alberta for a week because her husband's a minister.
Speaker A:He's out at a, at camp and I'm batching it.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:I'm so used to my wife being around me all the time.
Speaker A:So I'm a little lonely this week, but I'm going over to the two children that are around us still.
Speaker A:I'm going over to one tomorrow night and then one on Friday night.
Speaker A:Not just for supper, but sit down and read the books to the grandchildren and wrestle with them and play trains with them and talk to them about the Lord and oh my, what fun.
Speaker B:Would you say that your grandchildren are your favorite students or among your favorite students?
Speaker A:Yeah, I've said to people, this is the favorite class I've ever taught in my life.
Speaker A:Of all the classes I've taught all around the world, this.
Speaker A:There's something special about teaching your own grandchildren well.
Speaker B:So this has been a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Speaker B:I'm so deeply appreciative of your time and your generosity of spirit and Telling all of these stories.
Speaker B:One of the things I wanted to say is I was very blessed in reading the books that you had written.
Speaker B:Just these short books as I prepare to be a husband and a father, Lord willing, and a grandfather as well.
Speaker B:So thank you for passing all of that along.
Speaker A:My pleasure.
Speaker B:So sir, where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do, but also where to start, Perhaps with your massive library of works, books that you've written, books that you've edited.
Speaker B:Where should people start in the Dr. Beaky universe?
Speaker A:Well that's a very kind question.
Speaker A:RHB stands for Reformation Heritage Books which is non profit sells everything discount.
Speaker A:RHB.org will carry pretty much all the books I've done, also the ones from other publishers and you'll get it cheaper from RHB than anywhere else.
Speaker A:I would start if you have a family.
Speaker A:I would start definitely with the family worship Bible Guide and the little company book I have with it which you also held up.
Speaker A:Family worship, Paul says Family worship.
Speaker A:That's a one hour, one and a half hour read of how to do each part of family worship and some practical guidelines for it.
Speaker A:If you're not a Christian, I would begin with my portraits of faith, what it means to really believe in Christ.
Speaker A:A simple 100 page book, portraits of faith.
Speaker A:If your father, you know, do get the how to lead your family book that was just published.
Speaker A:If you're into theology at all, get the Reformed systematic theology.
Speaker A:That's a four volume volume one.
Speaker A:But if you want to get in the Puritans, I've done two books both with co authors.
Speaker A:That one is called Meet the Puritans which looks at the life story.
Speaker A:You can read it as a daily devotional of all 160 Puritans that have been reprinted in the last 60 years.
Speaker A:And then it gives you a summary of each book as well.
Speaker A:All 750 books.
Speaker A:And then there's a companion volume that I wrote with Mark Jones that looks at the major 50 doctrines of the Puritans and then gives you eight chapters of how they interwove those doctrines into their family life, into their prayers, into their conscience, into their meditation.
Speaker A:And that book will really help you understand by far, by far the greatest writers ever in church history which are the Puritans taking all the reformed truths and bringing them home to every area of life.
Speaker A:And what we're doing right now will for the next 10 years is we're taking 200 puritan books that are small books and we're Editing them so that every difficult antiquated word is removed and replaced with its contemporary equivalent.
Speaker A:So a 14 year old can read any one of these 200 books without any trouble.
Speaker A:So gone are the days when people have struggled reading the Puritans.
Speaker A:And these books are so practical, they're so rich, they're so biblical, they're so full of content.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we got 16 of them done.
Speaker A:And one of them, for example, the Boundless God by George Swinnock.
Speaker A:What a book that is.
Speaker A:And I edited one called Anthony Burgess.
Speaker A:Faith and assurance triumphing over sinful fear by John Flavel.
Speaker A:What a book that is for people who have different fears of different kinds.
Speaker A:So they're called PTT Puritan treasures for today.
Speaker A:Go to ReformationHeritage Books, which is rhb.org and you'll find, you'll find all my books there and co authored books and things like that.
Speaker B:I mean there.
Speaker B:I don't know if you can see it from your perspective, but maybe when you watch the video later.
Speaker B:I actually have the Puritan Treasures for today series on my bookshelf behind me right now in the frame of the shot.
Speaker B:So they're up there.
Speaker B:Quickly, do you have any resources for wives and for mothers as well?
Speaker B:In the how to lead you'd family book you reference a couple books that you've written with, co authored with your wife.
Speaker B:Maybe some resources for women also.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:My wife and I wrote a little book called how to have a God glorifying marriage and that's just like a 30 page book.
Speaker A:We're rewriting it in a longer form now.
Speaker A:It's going to be about an 80 page book.
Speaker A:It's going to actually match this one.
Speaker A:How to lead your family.
Speaker A:The same type of principle in cover design and, and then my wife in the next year is going to write one all by herself.
Speaker A:80 pages, same style, shorted to the point to women.
Speaker A:How to be a biblical mummy.
Speaker A:And yeah, that's going to be really good.
Speaker A:My wife is such a.
Speaker A:She thinks everything through endlessly.
Speaker A:She's a very slow writer but she lets things marinate in her mind.
Speaker A:She always says, I don't know why it takes me so long.
Speaker A:I say honey, it's perfect because when it comes out at the end it's really you and it's, it's the Bible and her writing is her.
Speaker A:And she doesn't use other books, she just speaks from the heart.
Speaker A:And I'm sure it's going to be a great book for a moment, but that's not out yet, but yeah, there are good books out on being my wife.
Speaker A:Likes the one by Kent Hughes, Barbara Hughes, how to be a Godly Woman.
Speaker A:That's a really good book.
Speaker A:And we have a book coming out by the way, how to Live as a Redeemed man that's coming out in October, maybe early November.
Speaker A:And Paul Smalley and Rick Phillips and myself have edited it and we've got like 22 chapters in it on every aspect, nearly every aspect of a man's life, a redeemed man's life.
Speaker A:And it's authored by like 15, 17 different authors.
Speaker A:Think of Ferguson's in there.
Speaker A:Derek Thomas, Jeff Thomas, just a bunch of really, really good writers.
Speaker A:And I can't tell you how pleased I am with this book.
Speaker A:I was amazing, amazed at all the contributions we got.
Speaker A:They're really well done.
Speaker A:They're short chapters, just 4,000 words, 10 pages.
Speaker A:And it's how to Live as a Redeemed Husband, how to Live as Redeemed Father, how to, how to Live as a Redeemed man in senior Years, how to Live as a Redeemed man with regard to my young children, how to Live as a Redeemed man in my work.
Speaker A:And on and on it goes.
Speaker A:But it's going to be a great book.
Speaker B:I'm sure you found a lot of interest in redeeming the family.
Speaker B:These, these, these family portraits for husband, father, wife, mother, children.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:My, my daughter Esther, who I was talking about before in this broadcast, she, or podcast rather, she, she wrote a really good little book in our, in our Cultivating Biblical Godliness series that's just 30 some pages, how to Feel Productive as a Mom.
Speaker A:And basically her thesis is that you look at every duty you have to do as a mom as God's will, that you do that duty and so you glorify God in every duty you do.
Speaker A:Even if you're changing that diaper for the sixth time that day, this is your calling at that moment to change this diaper.
Speaker A:And so my daughter is very, very much of a, like a straight A student kind of a perfectionist.
Speaker A:So when she had all these babies, four babies in a row, she, she had to wrestle with this like, I just feel like I'm wasting my time doing the same thing all over again.
Speaker A:She wanted to be producing things and so she, she actually thought through it very deeply.
Speaker A:And then she actually wrote another book for women that's 150 page paperback called Transformed.
Speaker A:And that's to help women be transformed in their thinking so that the Mundane tasks of motherhood become tasks which I'm doing to the glory of God.
Speaker A:Because this is my calling at this moment.
Speaker A:This is my calling at that moment.
Speaker A:So the idea of the book that has really helped a lot of women is that you learn to live life for the glory of God every moment through doing your calling, whatever your calling is to do at that moment.
Speaker B:Well, actually, I've got a bunch more questions if you have another moment for that.
Speaker B:Because we've talked about so many.
Speaker B:I know that you have a thousand.
Speaker A:You should be winding down in five, ten minutes.
Speaker A:Okay, perfect.
Speaker B:Because I think what you brought up there is something so important because we've talked about how many different countercultural things.
Speaker B:We're talking about loyalty to parents, fathers disciplining their kids, you know, family worship and taking an active role in stewarding your kids souls away from cultural sin and towards righteousness.
Speaker B:But being content in the home for women, particularly today, to, to, to find glory to God in being a wife and mother and not feeling that fulfillment has to come out there in the world being productive in the way the world thinks about things.
Speaker B:I wonder if you can speak about that for a moment because that is such a powerful part of our culture today.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I'll go right for the jugular, please.
Speaker A:When I speak to women and I hear a woman say.
Speaker A:And I say, well, you know, so what's life look like for you?
Speaker A:What are you doing?
Speaker A:Well, I'm just a mother.
Speaker A:Wait a minute.
Speaker A:What do you mean by that word?
Speaker A:Just.
Speaker A:And well, you know, I, you know, they try to talk, to walk their way back from it, but they're taking on the world's language.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so I say to them, do you realize you have the second most important job in all the world?
Speaker A:Because I really believe the ministry is the first.
Speaker A:Because you're dealing with people's souls all the time.
Speaker A:But I say you are the hub that makes the wheel go round of the home.
Speaker A:Mothers are the central figure really for their children because the dad has gone so much.
Speaker A:You have the second most important job in all the world.
Speaker A:And so you need to stop buying into this false dichotomy, this false theory that somehow a woman in the home is not as valuable as a woman outside the home.
Speaker A:As a matter of fact, generally speaking, it's the opposite.
Speaker A:Because when you're in the home, and I'm not saying that women can't work outside the home part of the time, but when you're in the home and the kids come home at the end of the school day after going to a Christian school.
Speaker A:I mean, what a precious thing it is to have the mother there.
Speaker A:And so by all means, have your own pursuits, have your own hobbies, do some work outside the home, okay?
Speaker A:But make sure that you do not shortchange the upbringing of your children and just farm them out to babysitters or to daycare centers every day, five days a week.
Speaker A:I mean, that is a disaster, I think, for children.
Speaker A:I think it runs counter to Scripture.
Speaker A:So we have to live antithetically to this world.
Speaker A:And when this world takes on precepts that are directly contrary to scriptural teaching, I think we ought to sit up and say, wait a minute, we're not going down this road.
Speaker A:This is not the biblical way to live.
Speaker A:And will.
Speaker A:I've seen this all my life.
Speaker A:I've had three churches.
Speaker A:They've all been between 700, 800 people a piece, generally.
Speaker A:So I've ministered to thousands of people.
Speaker A:I've been around the block.
Speaker A:I've been in different countries, different cultures.
Speaker A:And over and over and over, I've seen that women who are content at home, who love their husband, who love their children, who give them a godly upbringing, who are praying for them, who dote over them, they can be very, very happy, fulfilled women.
Speaker A:And what an impact they have on the world, just as fathers who do daily family worship.
Speaker A:I look over those three congregations I've served, and the third one I'm still serving after 39 years.
Speaker A:I look over them and I say, what families here are the backbone families of the church that are happy in the Lord and that continue in the church from generation to generation are steadfast.
Speaker A:You can count on them.
Speaker A:You can see the image of Christ in them.
Speaker A:What families are they most of the time?
Speaker A:That's not all the time.
Speaker A:Most of the time, they're families where the mothers at home nurturing their children.
Speaker A:But the father is also involved in doing family worship every day with his kids.
Speaker A:It makes a difference.
Speaker B:What an incredible way to put all the pieces together is to talk about the.
Speaker B:The centrality of fatherhood, the obedience and faithfulness of children raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and just how critical the role of a wife and mother is to all of that, making it all possible.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, sir, thank you so much for the blessing of this conversation, the blessing of your work.
Speaker B:I'm sure it's going to do.
Speaker B:It's definitely been such a.
Speaker B:Such an encouragement to me, and I'm sure it'll be to many of my listeners as well.
Speaker B:Thank you, sir.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Thank you for having me on.
Speaker A:God bless you.
Speaker B:Well, God bless you, sir.
Speaker A:Sam.
