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- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys, I've got another special guest
0:55
on the podcast for you.
0:55
His name is Justin Whitmill Early.
0:58
So he is a writer, speaker, lawyer,
1:00
and the founder of the Common Rule,
1:01
which is an online resource center
1:03
for Christians seeking kingdom-formed habits
1:05
that can sustain them in an age of chaos.
1:07
So he's helping a lot of people around the globe
1:09
that are trying to deal with the age
1:10
that we're currently living in.
1:11
So he wrote a best-selling book
1:12
of the same name called The Common Rule,
1:14
but he's also the author of a new book,
1:16
which is out, if you're listening to this on time,
1:18
as of today, it's on Zondervan.
1:19
It's called Habits of the Household,
1:21
Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms.
1:24
And guys, I just got to tell you,
1:25
to all the fathers listening to this podcast,
1:27
and I would assume that most of you are fathers,
1:29
you have to listen to this episode.
1:30
Okay, there's lots of practical advice,
1:32
'cause here's the thing,
1:33
in the Christian kind of family book space,
1:36
there's a bunch of squishy books
1:38
that don't really lead anywhere,
1:39
and don't give you anything tangible
1:40
that you can really bite into and change.
1:43
He's helped me a lot,
1:44
because some of this stuff is a little bit beyond me
1:46
at this moment, because I have a one and a half year old,
1:49
and I've got another baby on the way in March,
1:51
and he's got four boys between the ages of three and nine.
1:54
But he talks about some very, very practical ways
1:57
to make what you're doing and forming inside your household,
2:00
whether that be with you, your children,
2:02
or the entire family,
2:03
to make it gospel-centered and biblically-centered.
2:05
Guys, I really, really enjoyed the book,
2:07
and I really enjoyed the conversation as well,
2:09
and I'm not gonna keep 'em from you any longer,
2:10
so without further ado, let's get into it.
2:13
Justin Whitmill, early, welcome to Undaunted Life,
2:15
a man's podcast.
2:17
- Thank you, Kyle.
2:18
- Hey, I'm so glad to have you here,
2:19
and we're gonna talk about your newest book
2:21
that's, if you're listening to this on time, guys,
2:23
it is out right now.
2:24
We're gonna definitely get into that,
2:25
and another book that you've written recently,
2:27
but it seems like you're the type of guy
2:29
that likes organizing,
2:31
and likes things being in their proper order,
2:33
and having a plan for life and those types of things.
2:36
Is that something that you come by naturally,
2:38
or is that something that you've kind of developed
2:40
as you've grown up?
2:41
- Absolutely not.
2:42
It was totally unnatural.
2:44
If you would have met me in my early 20s
2:47
when I was walking around China as a missionary,
2:50
I was a total, I still am, but I looked like it then.
2:54
Like long hair, total creative,
2:56
thought I was gonna write the next great American novel,
2:58
or wandering between my mission's work
3:00
and the local pub to do some writing.
3:03
This was before I was a corporate lawyer,
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before I was an author of non-fiction Christian,
3:07
so this did not come naturally at all.
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It is a practiced thing for me,
3:11
but it's really balanced out the rest of my life.
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- Well, hey, part of that comes from the fact
3:17
that having read your books and spent some time in there,
3:20
you felt like a guy that's been doing this his entire life,
3:22
like you had all your toys in their exact segments
3:25
growing up, and so that's interesting to kind of hear
3:27
that you've had a wayward path, a circuitous path
3:29
to get to where you are.
3:30
But in interest of time, I do wanna get into the first book,
3:33
at least the first book that I know of that wrote,
3:35
called The Common Rule Habits of Purpose
3:37
for an Age of Distraction.
3:38
Every time I have an author on here,
3:40
I always like to hear them describe their book
3:42
kind of in a Spark Notes format in their own words.
3:45
So why did you write The Common Rule and what's it about?
3:48
- The Spark Notes version of The Common Rule
3:50
is that your habits form you.
3:52
The change who you are spiritually, emotionally,
3:54
mentally, everything else.
3:56
How did I come to write it is actually a continuation
3:58
of the story that I just said.
4:00
So I was a missionary in China,
4:03
and then I felt called by the Lord to actually come back
4:06
to the States and work missionally within law and business,
4:09
which is like a whole 'nother talk on the meaning of calling.
4:12
But suffice it to say, I was a man on a call,
4:15
and I ran so hard at law school in my,
4:19
as I told you, just like disorganized
4:21
and just like do it all pattern,
4:24
that I worked myself into an awful anxiety crash.
4:28
I'm in a real like dark space bottom out
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my first year of lawyering.
4:31
So it took a couple of years,
4:32
but I had totally assimilated to all the habits
4:35
and practices of a top law school student.
4:37
What I didn't realize is that these things were changing me.
4:40
So in my first year of practicing law,
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I had such a bad anxiety crash that I was,
4:45
I was not able to sleep unless I drank bourbon
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or opened a bottle of pills.
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So I got to a really bad place
4:54
and I had to wrestle with the question,
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how did the missionary become converted
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to the nervous medicating lawyer in such short order?
5:02
And a long dark year, but I figured out eventually
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it was my habit and that's what got me on
5:06
to talking and thinking about habits.
5:09
- When I think the thing that happens
5:11
with your habits discussion is you don't just say habits
5:14
are good and leave it there,
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you give us some sort of pragmatic ways
5:18
to go through with that.
5:18
So in that book, you have four daily habits
5:21
that you suggest and four weekly habits.
5:23
So the daily habits are kneeling prior three times a day,
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one meal with others, one hour with phone off
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and scripture before phone.
5:31
And then your weekly habits is one hour of conversation
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with a friend, curate media to four hours,
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fast from something for 24 hours and then a Sabbath.
5:39
And so I want you to kind of have spend whatever time
5:41
you want to spend on whatever one of those things
5:43
that you want to discuss
5:44
because we're going to get into your latest book here
5:45
in just a second.
5:46
So I want to make sure we have a lot of time for that.
5:47
But is there something in there that is maybe especially
5:49
difficult for some people to add to their life
5:52
one of those daily habits or weekly habits
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or give us some overall ideas on why you chose those?
5:57
- I chose these because I think there are examples
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of keystone habits.
6:01
Keystone habits are small habits
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that change a lot of other big things.
6:06
And so when I think about habits,
6:09
the important thing that I want people to realize
6:11
is that you can't not have habits.
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So like, do you live a life of habit?
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Yes, the answer is always yes.
6:18
The question is what kind?
6:19
And so my big message in the common rule to people
6:22
is you need to examine the habits you have
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because they are forming you in ways you don't know.
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So I would just say my scripture before phone habit
6:31
is a great paradigm example for this.
6:34
I did not realize that during my first year of lawyering,
6:37
my habit that I had unconsciously adopted
6:40
of checking my email first thing
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when my eyes opened every morning
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and looking at what I was working with the London office
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at the time, looking what London wanted
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'cause they were half a day ahead of me.
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I didn't think that was any sort of pattern of worship
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of other men and their approval of me.
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I never would have thought that.
6:59
But as it happened when I looked at that first thing
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every day, I kept thinking,
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what are the partners in the London office think of me?
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What do they want of me?
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What do I need to do today to make them happy?
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And when I started the habit of scripture before phone,
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I didn't realize at the time,
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but I was unconsciously substituting
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a totally different pattern of worship.
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And that was looking at the word of God
7:17
and saying, oh, I am justified and loved
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regardless of what happens today,
7:21
regardless of what I do today.
7:23
And that really that small Keystone habit
7:25
changed the way that I went out into work.
7:28
It was the difference between going out in the work
7:30
to earn my love or going out into work
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because I'm loved and so I can love other people.
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And there are habits like this everywhere in your life.
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And that's what I try to show people
7:38
in the four daily and four weekly habits of the common rule.
7:41
- Well, I think that's important
7:42
and I've talked about this a lot on my show
7:44
is like I don't typically enjoy self-help-y type stuff
7:46
or squishy books or books that are just kind of,
7:48
oh yeah, I got the high point and kind of move on.
7:50
But this book I feel like was chock full of like
7:53
little reminders that had potentially explosive impact.
7:56
So even as of this morning, I was like, okay,
7:59
I'm talking to Justin today.
8:00
He's probably gonna ask me if I looked at scripture
8:03
before I looked at anything else on my phone.
8:04
And I did today because I read a section of the Sermon
8:09
on the Mount and because I wanna get in
8:11
and see what happened overnight with social media.
8:13
I wanna see what happened with my notification stuff
8:16
on the podcast business dealings in the email inbox.
8:18
So I definitely appreciated that.
8:19
It's just kind of a little reminder.
8:21
So you're already nagging me.
8:22
We're not even friends yet.
8:23
And you're already in the back of my head.
8:24
Just don't do this.
8:25
- I'm in your head, I love it.
8:26
- You're in my head.
8:27
It's fine.
8:27
A lot of my guys have jocko in their head
8:29
telling them to wake up at four o'clock
8:30
and do pull-ups, but right now it's just.
8:33
But I do wanna kind of see how that transitions
8:35
from the common rule into habits of the household.
8:37
That's the new book guys that is out this week.
8:39
You can check that out in the show notes
8:41
and I've got the link for the common rule as well,
8:43
but it's practicing the story of God
8:45
in everyday family rhythms.
8:47
And so again, just like with the previous book
8:49
in your own words, what is this book about
8:51
and why'd you write it?
8:52
- This book is a follow-up in some way
8:56
to the common rule for parents.
8:58
So I just summarized the common rule
9:00
as you become your habits and your habits form you, right?
9:04
This book adds the idea you become your habits
9:08
and your kids become you.
9:09
So your habits and the habits, especially as a father,
9:14
as a parent, the habits that you set in your household.
9:16
'Cause everybody's watching you.
9:18
Everybody's following you.
9:19
Whether you know it or not,
9:20
everybody's dancing to the beat that you set.
9:23
Those habits are forming your children spiritually,
9:26
probably far more than that awesome piece of advice
9:30
you thought you dropped at dinner
9:32
or that one important conversation that happened
9:34
with your son or your daughter after that tough event.
9:36
Those are important times, but my claim in this book
9:39
is that the most important times are the mundane daily,
9:43
everyday rituals that you don't actually realize
9:46
you're going for.
9:47
They're incredibly spiritual, they're incredibly formative
9:49
and they're changing how you and your kids
9:52
see and understand who God is.
9:54
And I want parents to have the joy of waking up to that.
9:57
'Cause it's not a burden.
9:58
It's actually thrilling to realize these little things
10:02
matter as much as they do.
10:03
- Well, I think it's important as well.
10:05
A lot of times when you read the typical family,
10:07
Christian book or whatever, it's like,
10:09
okay, I think I know what's gonna happen here.
10:10
It's all about formation of the children.
10:13
Like here are the habits that you give to your children.
10:14
Here's the things that you have them do.
10:16
So they don't end up becoming a rapist or a murderer.
10:18
But I feel like people forget about the parent side
10:21
of the equation, they forget about their own formation.
10:23
And that's the one thing I felt like was unique
10:25
about your book.
10:26
'Cause again, I've had to kind of trudge my way through
10:28
some other books that were in this space,
10:30
but it's not just about keeping the kids
10:31
from burning the house down.
10:32
It's about the formation of everyone in the family
10:35
and it doesn't just center on the kids.
10:36
So I felt like that was interesting.
10:37
But one thing at the very beginning of your book
10:39
that you talked about is you talked about gospel liturgies.
10:43
So that is not something that's common vernacular
10:45
for most people, not just my audience.
10:47
So if you would, give us an idea of what gospel liturgies are.
10:50
- All right, here's the story of how I got there.
10:52
And I think it'll explain it.
10:53
I'll try to keep it short.
10:54
All my books so far come out of moments of crisis.
10:57
This one was a crisis at bedtime, okay?
11:00
So I have four boys and I had three at the time
11:04
when this book came to me.
11:06
And it was because bedtime is ridiculous.
11:10
It's like there are kids trying to bash each other
11:13
with board books.
11:14
There's water all over the bathroom floor
11:17
and dripping into the hallway.
11:18
And one night when all this is happening,
11:21
I remember, I just do what I usually do
11:24
and that is just start turning into an insane person
11:26
and yelling at the boys and being like,
11:28
describing the bodily harm I am going to inflict upon them
11:32
if they don't get their PJs on right now, right?
11:35
So this is normal.
11:38
And I remember when I shut the door that night,
11:40
that's exactly what my realization was.
11:42
And it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.
11:44
Wait, this is my normal.
11:47
They misbehave, I start raging and yelling.
11:49
It's really weird when I say a bedtime prayer
11:51
because there's just this dissonance in the air, right?
11:54
So the last book came out of my anxiety crash.
11:57
This one actually came out of the realization
11:59
of my anger and volume and sort of impatience
12:02
with the children around the house.
12:03
And I was talking to my pastor the next couple of days
12:07
and just talking about like,
12:08
I really need to think better about the tone
12:10
that I'm setting around the house.
12:12
And he gave me this bedtime liturgy idea
12:15
that he did with his sons.
12:16
And I'm gonna explain that in a minute.
12:18
But I decided to write my own to try to just,
12:20
I was desperate for anything to help bedtime go better.
12:23
And so I wrote this series of questions
12:25
that I decided I would start doing with my boys at bedtime.
12:28
And I'll go through them real quick.
12:29
All the answers are yes until the end
12:31
when they say the Sunday school answer.
12:33
And so I look at them and I say,
12:34
"Hey, can you see my eyes?"
12:36
And they say, "Yes."
12:37
And then I say, "Can you see that I see your eyes?"
12:40
And they say, "Yes."
12:40
And then I say, "Do you know that I love you?"
12:42
They say, "Yes."
12:43
I say, "Do you know that I love you
12:44
no matter what bad things you do?"
12:46
They say, "Yes."
12:47
Then I say, "You know I love you no matter
12:48
what good things you do to."
12:49
And they say, "Yes."
12:50
Then I finish with, "Who else loves you like that?"
12:52
And they say, "God does."
12:54
Now the first time I did this with him,
12:57
you can imagine.
12:58
- It went horribly.
13:00
- Like all the I talk, they started poking my eyes.
13:02
They started poking each other's eyes.
13:03
They were like, "What is this?"
13:04
I forgot the questions I was gonna ask.
13:06
They didn't know the right answers.
13:07
But the first point I would make
13:10
about Habits of the Household
13:11
is that nothing is a habit until it is.
13:14
Every routine first was introduced first
13:17
as like, "Oh, that's awkward."
13:18
So the first time you yelled at your kids,
13:20
you're probably like, "Oh, that's kind of much."
13:21
And then after years of it, you're like,
13:23
"This is just what our household sounds like."
13:25
So a good parent works at their habits.
13:28
They're not afraid to introduce a new one.
13:29
And I knew that much from writing my last book.
13:31
So I kept practicing.
13:32
And then we had this amazing night
13:34
where it was still bathwater on the floor.
13:37
There was still naked wrestling matches in the hallway.
13:39
There were still board books being bashed
13:40
over each other's head.
13:41
But when they were in bed, one of my sons was like,
13:44
"Can we have our bedtime blessing now?"
13:46
And we went through this exchange
13:48
of God's unconditional love for us.
13:50
And the circumstances were all the same.
13:52
I was really different that night
13:54
because I was moving now towards a moment
13:56
where we exchanged some intentional words
13:58
about God's unconditional love for us.
14:01
And I realized, oh my gosh,
14:02
this is the power of a gospel liturgy
14:05
or a good parenting habit.
14:07
Good habits can function as liturgies of worship
14:10
in the house that lead us to realize
14:11
the most important thing we're doing in this house
14:14
is learning that God loves us no matter what.
14:17
Good things we do, no matter what bad things we do,
14:20
and that we can love each other like that.
14:22
Even when we're bashing each other with board books
14:24
and I'm yelling, we can forgive,
14:26
we can live in those patterns of unconditional love.
14:27
And that's what a gospel liturgy is.
14:30
And then I started looking for them everywhere.
14:32
And that's what the book is about.
14:34
- And I think that's important for guys
14:35
because again, we don't think in terms of rhythms.
14:37
That's why I like how you even included that
14:39
in the subtitle of the book is like,
14:40
you know, rhythms are not really something we're looking for.
14:43
We're looking for the outcome.
14:44
And the outcome is if you don't get in bed,
14:46
I'm gonna burn the entire house down with me inside it.
14:48
And I'm like, you know, it's just that
14:49
you get that moment of just sheer panicked terror anger.
14:53
And that's where a lot of parents get to.
14:54
And like my wife and I, like we have a one and a half year old
14:57
and we have one on the way.
14:58
And so we haven't quite gotten to some of those crazy moments.
15:00
And so it's good to kind of think about those habits.
15:02
And you do define 10 different habits of the household.
15:05
And those are waking, meal times, discipline,
15:08
screen time, family devotions, marriage, work,
15:12
play, conversation and bedtime.
15:14
And guys, we're not gonna be able to get all into all of them
15:16
here in the episode.
15:17
You've got to get this book for yourself
15:18
so you can go through all of them.
15:19
But I did want to specifically ask you
15:20
because everyone's gonna have a little bit of a different one
15:23
that they think is going to be an issue
15:24
or that is an issue for their household.
15:26
But I wanted to start with meal time.
15:27
So I want to read a quote from the book
15:28
and then get you to kind of follow up on it.
15:30
So you say, for the family, seeing the role of food
15:33
in the story of God means that we see food
15:35
in terms of it's in goal, relationship.
15:38
That means that the family that wants to become friends
15:40
needs to take rhythms of food and conversation seriously.
15:44
So you talk about that in that chapter,
15:45
but you also talk about something that's just been surrounding
15:48
me as of late for whatever reason,
15:49
but the difference between hospitality and entertaining.
15:52
And it almost sounds like, you know,
15:54
people that like to keep a messy house,
15:56
they just like to call that hospitality.
15:57
They're like, oh, we're not entertaining you.
15:59
Come into our messy house.
16:00
But I guess for you kind of go with that wherever you want,
16:02
but why is meal time so important?
16:05
Because a lot of us just treat it as,
16:06
hey, we need calories in order to burn to make energy.
16:09
You know, why is that so important for, you know,
16:10
gospel liturgies or just the habits of the household?
16:13
- Yeah, yeah, and it's such a great place
16:15
to dive into the key claim of the book
16:17
is that the ordinary times are the extraordinary times.
16:21
The mundane stuff is where really spiritual stuff
16:23
is happening and that's dinner time.
16:25
So before in our previous life,
16:28
dinner time was negotiable.
16:30
Like if I had a lot of work to do
16:31
or if I had an emergency client call
16:33
or a partner told me, stay late, you know, I did it.
16:36
And we just like, you know, we moved dinner.
16:38
We just eat on the fly or any of that stuff.
16:40
And what I realized that happened because of that
16:43
is that we were treating food like fuel.
16:46
You know, it's just something
16:47
as long as you load up in the calories, you're good.
16:49
Or, and you also see this in our culture
16:52
or you treat it like fashion.
16:54
You know, you're Instagramming it.
16:55
But neither of those are what food really is.
16:58
Food in the story of God is meant
17:00
and you see this all throughout the Bible
17:02
to bring a spiritual sense of communion between people.
17:07
Sometimes it's between God and us
17:08
and our thankfulness that we can eat to live.
17:10
But many times it's between each other.
17:12
And when you think about all that's happening
17:15
at a family dinner, like should you actually say
17:17
this, we eat dinner together as a family,
17:20
you have to change so many things.
17:21
I mean, you have to adjust your schedule
17:23
to get to dinner table.
17:25
You have to do all this planning and prep.
17:26
Somebody's got to buy the grocery.
17:27
Somebody's going to plan it.
17:28
Somebody's got to cook it.
17:29
And even if it's a simple meal,
17:31
you probably know this with a one and a half year hold.
17:33
And I certainly know this with my boys between three and nine.
17:36
I mean, like it's crazy.
17:38
Like our dinner tables are much more like WWE wrestling
17:41
matches than they are like a nice family dinner.
17:43
But, but amidst all this chaos, and there's a lot of it,
17:47
at dinner we're learning to pray together.
17:51
You know, when we talk at dinner,
17:52
we're learning how to tell stories to each other,
17:54
to narrate our life and what happened.
17:55
We tell good things that happened, bad things that happened.
17:58
We learn how to say sorry,
17:59
'cause somebody is always snatching somebody
18:02
from somebody else at our dinner table.
18:03
Like they're always taking food.
18:04
We learn how to praise someone who served us
18:07
and say thank you for what you could.
18:09
There are all these like intangible
18:11
and wonderful spiritual things that are happening
18:13
at the table.
18:14
And that's where I'm like,
18:15
if you look through what I call the liturgical lens,
18:18
as we talked about earlier, habits or liturgies,
18:21
there is so much spirituality and relationship
18:24
being taught at the table.
18:25
And it's just, it's such a good groundwork
18:28
to life for your kids.
18:29
So that's a good example of where spiritual stuff is happening.
18:32
And it's happening when you invite guests over too,
18:34
but I can leave that for the next conversation.
18:37
- Well, I think that's important as well is,
18:39
I didn't mention this from the top,
18:40
but you talk about each one of these habits
18:42
as forming a certain grouping.
18:45
So some of these habits are for forming parents, right?
18:47
Some are for forming families, which is meal times.
18:50
But right after families, you get into discipline,
18:52
which is forming children.
18:52
But again, I think people,
18:54
not that discipline is not important.
18:55
I think it's maybe more important than anything else
18:58
that's on the list.
18:58
But we look at discipline and we try to be forthright.
19:02
We try to, those are the things that we think about later.
19:05
Did I discipline correctly?
19:06
Was I too harsh? Was I not harsh enough?
19:08
And then we forget about the mundane.
19:09
We forget about the meal times and how that is chaos
19:12
and how that's maybe descriptive of what we're going towards.
19:15
But the thing that I know a lot of parents,
19:17
that's on the tips of their minds
19:18
and things that they're concerned about
19:19
is what you talk about with the fourth habit
19:20
and that's screen time.
19:21
And so that's for forming children.
19:23
So this is a slightly lengthy quote,
19:25
but I think it's really important for me
19:26
to kind of set the stage.
19:27
So let me read this quote from your screen time chapter.
19:30
Consider the stakes for a moment.
19:31
If we do not teach our kids about sex,
19:33
screens will be happy to do it for us.
19:35
If we do not teach them categories of good and evil,
19:37
then screens will be happy to obscure all of them.
19:40
If we do not teach them that God made them
19:42
who they are on purpose,
19:43
man or woman and black or white,
19:45
then screens will be happy to confuse their understanding
19:47
of all these things.
19:48
If we do not teach them that buying things
19:50
will not make them happy
19:51
and that consumption always leaves you hungrier,
19:53
then screens will teach them that being a consumer
19:55
is the way to status and satisfaction.
19:57
If we do not teach them that the world of nature
20:00
is ferocious and fantastic,
20:02
something to be stewarded and stunned by,
20:04
then the world of screens will teach them
20:05
that looking at pictures of nature is enough.
20:09
If we do not teach them that silence
20:11
is a sacred place where God speaks to us,
20:13
then screens will make sure they never ever discover it.
20:16
If we do not teach them that vulnerable and embodied friendship
20:19
is the heart of a good life,
20:20
then screens will relentlessly nudge them
20:22
towards connecting and liking their way
20:25
to endemic loneliness.
20:27
And so I thought that was a very good summary
20:30
of what parents are trying to avoid
20:33
when they're trying to take away screen time
20:35
for this reason or for that reason.
20:37
And again, to bring my own family into this,
20:39
I did a bunch of research on Cocomel in the other day
20:42
'cause I'm like, I don't want him to be addicted
20:44
to YouTube potato chips
20:45
and like, you know, him not be able to concentrate
20:47
when he's 15 because we put him in front of the screen
20:50
for Cocomel in too long and we seared his brain.
20:52
But why is this such a hard sticking point?
20:55
'Cause there's the obvious answer, you know,
20:56
we all have phones, we all have devices around us.
20:59
That's the obvious answer.
21:00
But why is screen time have to be one of the top 10 things
21:04
a parent needs to reckon with
21:05
if they're gonna form their family?
21:07
- Because probably the most important factor
21:12
in our discipleship to Jesus is how we use screens, probably.
21:16
I'm gonna say for 99% of those centers right now,
21:19
that one of the most, probably the most important factor
21:22
in how they walk with Jesus is how they use screens.
21:24
And that's gonna be true for our kids.
21:25
And I really step on it now because I think
21:28
we're in a generation who has the chance to understand
21:33
that screens really do change everything about life.
21:37
'Cause I don't know that our parents realized it
21:38
and I certainly don't think their parents realized it.
21:40
And the advent of radio, to TV, to internet,
21:43
it was just like a whirlwind.
21:45
And many, I don't know if you guys are like,
21:47
many of the parents and elders we see in my life,
21:49
I don't think they have the understanding
21:52
that this cable news stuff, like it's changing you.
21:55
This TV stuff, it's changing you.
21:57
And I think we, because of the rush
21:59
of the smartphone in the past decade,
22:01
we have the memory to be like, wait,
22:03
this is massively different.
22:05
Like the internet is massively changing us.
22:06
So screens form us, they form our kids.
22:11
And just like you read, I like that passage too.
22:14
So I'm glad you read it.
22:15
(laughs)
22:16
They change everything about how we view the world.
22:19
So I am not a Luddite.
22:21
I'm on screens all the time for my job.
22:23
I'm on screen right now.
22:24
I post about my book online.
22:27
My kids engage with the internet
22:30
through heavy supervision for me.
22:32
But, so I'm not against screens at all.
22:34
I'm really, really big on curating screens.
22:37
And that just means picking content on purpose
22:41
and carefully, because if you don't curate
22:43
your screen time and your kid's screen time,
22:46
then the 5,000 people behind the screen,
22:51
being paid wild sums of money,
22:53
will program your brain into oblivion.
22:55
And they will curate your life.
22:56
So we get to curate screens or screens will curate us.
22:58
It's a clear choice that we should pick.
23:01
- I think the hard thing for a lot of parents
23:03
is they feel the pressure from their kid
23:07
that the kid is feeling from other kids.
23:09
So it's easy for me right now,
23:11
because a one and a half year old
23:12
doesn't really have a lot of use for a smartphone,
23:14
in terms of connecting with their friends
23:15
or connecting really with anything.
23:17
But I do have some friends that have given their kids
23:20
smartphones in elementary school,
23:21
as well as friends that are like,
23:23
my kid's not gonna get a phone until they're 16
23:25
and they need it 'cause they're driving somewhere
23:27
and need help.
23:28
And they're not gonna be on social media
23:29
until we're out of the house.
23:30
And there's a lot of debate on both of those sides
23:33
of the issue that I think are extreme.
23:34
But for me personally, I feel like it is all,
23:36
not child abuse, 'cause that's hyperbolic.
23:38
But when you hand a kid an unlocked iPhone.
23:41
- Yes, yeah.
23:41
- But then tell them every now and then,
23:43
hey, by the way, don't look at titties.
23:45
Like, you know, it's just like, what are you doing?
23:48
Like you give them a PlayStation or an Xbox
23:50
with fully unlocked access to the internet.
23:52
You allow them to have a television and a laptop
23:55
in their room with full access.
23:57
I feel like you're literally setting yourself up.
23:59
Like, am I being crazy?
24:01
'Cause it's like, I don't have to deal
24:02
with these problems yet, but I'm so terrified
24:05
of what screens are even gonna be, you know,
24:06
five, six, seven years from now for my kids.
24:09
- Yeah, I don't think that your comparison
24:12
to child abuse is that hyperbolic.
24:13
It's certainly child neglect.
24:15
I mean, it is, it is, and look, this happened to me.
24:19
I don't blame my parents.
24:20
But my dad never talked to me about what porn was.
24:24
He never told me, hey, you gotta watch out there
24:26
on the internet, 'cause I don't even think
24:27
he knew the internet, you know, at the time.
24:28
We're both learning at the same time.
24:29
So, of course, I find my way to some pictures.
24:33
And, you know, and when he did catch me,
24:35
there wasn't a huge conversation that followed.
24:38
It was just like an idea that like, hey, you know,
24:40
you probably know you shouldn't look at this, right?
24:42
Like, I'm talking to my sons about it when they're three.
24:45
Like, hey, there's, there's, you know,
24:47
I'm starting the conversations early, tastefully,
24:49
but early, I mean, I'm trying to tell them
24:52
that technology, like sex, like money, like power,
24:58
some of the best and the worst things in the world.
25:00
Yeah, I mean, sex is so powerful,
25:02
that's why it'll make or break you.
25:04
I think technology is so powerful,
25:05
that's why it will make or break you.
25:07
So I'm just, we've got to like talk to our kids early,
25:10
teach them how to use it.
25:11
I keep telling parents one of the most important things
25:15
you will do for your child is teach them how to engage
25:17
with technology or not.
25:20
That will send them on two enormously different paths
25:23
in life.
25:24
And so it's just, and it's another,
25:26
parents know the paradigm.
25:28
It's not like a surprise paradigm.
25:29
It's just intentionality.
25:30
It's just actually parenting.
25:32
I mean, you know, if your kid is sitting at home,
25:35
like after the 10th bowl of ice cream,
25:38
a parent's job is at some point is to be like,
25:40
hey, enough is enough.
25:41
Like, we have the role of setting limits.
25:43
When we don't do that, we abdicate our role as a parent.
25:46
We need to set limits for technology
25:48
because limits are bad.
25:49
They're the path of the good life limits and rules
25:52
keep us in the great, like the path of Jesus.
25:55
And that is the kindest thing, the bravest thing
25:58
and the best thing that we can ever do for our children.
26:01
- Well, I feel like parents have kind of bought
26:02
into this artistic lie that if you limit your children,
26:06
you're limiting their ability to flourish.
26:08
But even talking to a straight up artist,
26:11
it's like, well, the moment you picked a medium,
26:13
you limited yourself.
26:14
Because the moment you picked a size of canvas,
26:17
there's only that much paint
26:18
that you can put on the canvas.
26:19
Once you've picked that instrument,
26:21
there's only so many sounds that instrument can give you.
26:24
And families have to understand,
26:25
and parents need to understand
26:26
that kids need those same limits.
26:28
Like putting limits on them isn't a hurtful thing.
26:31
It's not a hateful thing.
26:32
It's a loving thing.
26:33
It's, I don't know if this was on purpose,
26:34
but you go straight from screen time.
26:36
And then the next habit you talk about is family devotions.
26:38
And so that's kind of about forming children.
26:40
So very quick quote from that section, you say this.
26:42
For many parents, there is nothing more intimidating
26:45
than the idea of reading the Bible or praying together.
26:47
The fear of how this will happen
26:49
and what exactly will happen
26:50
is what often keeps anything from happening at all.
26:53
I feel like this is obviously something
26:55
that you're talking to in terms of a Christian household
26:58
'cause a secular household isn't gonna have a family devotion.
27:00
Like what are they gonna read?
27:01
Like the latest Barack Obama book.
27:02
But like if you're talking to a family,
27:04
like a Christian family,
27:07
I don't know very many Christian families, Justin,
27:10
that do this.
27:11
And that's terrifying 'cause I didn't have that modeled for me.
27:15
We go to a church that is like very faith filled
27:18
and Bible type church.
27:19
But I mean, there's very few guys
27:21
that would even mention the fact
27:22
that they get together as a family to do these things.
27:25
So your reaction to kind of how I frame this makes it sound
27:29
like you're maybe a little bit surprised by that.
27:31
But what do you see when you're talking with people
27:33
in terms of why family devotions are so important
27:35
or whether or not they're actually even doing it?
27:38
- Yeah, I don't know if I'm surprised as much as like,
27:41
man, it's so important.
27:43
I think if we're gonna raise our kids to follow Jesus
27:48
and I'll like talk specifically to dads here,
27:52
our kids need to have a memory of hearing our voice,
27:57
what it's like for a man to pray
28:00
and what it's like for a man to say,
28:02
hey, I read the Bible and when I read it,
28:05
I read it this way.
28:06
I mean, so I talk a lot about habits in this book, right?
28:09
All the things that we do unconsciously,
28:11
but this is a foray into making conscious teaching
28:16
moments where you actually lead your family
28:18
in prayer a normal thing.
28:21
'Cause you gotta be conscious about it.
28:22
Now, what I try to assuage people with is that
28:26
it does not have to be complicated.
28:28
So for all the dads out there who this might sound terrifying
28:31
to, what I talk about in this chapter is short prayers,
28:36
simple truths, just to sit down with your son
28:42
or your daughter on the couch and say,
28:44
I was reading this verse, it made me think about this.
28:47
What do you think about it?
28:48
Family devotion, I call that a family devotion.
28:50
You don't need a devotional, it doesn't need to have flowers
28:54
or print on it, it doesn't need to have the days on it.
28:57
You don't need a special guide.
28:58
You can just say, hey, you just told me about your bad day.
29:01
Can I pray with you or can I pray to you?
29:03
Can we pray together?
29:04
These moments are just small bits of intentionality
29:07
of saying, let's talk about the Bible.
29:09
Let's actually pray together.
29:11
I think these are worth their weight in gold
29:13
to our children and I try to give people
29:15
a lot of places to start, but it's not complicated.
29:17
It's mostly just about the vulnerability to say,
29:20
I'm gonna say something to my kid
29:22
and I'm gonna say it on purpose.
29:24
- One, I think the other thing as well is the intimidating part
29:26
is because parents don't want to give them something wrong.
29:28
And if you're a parent, that's maybe sensitive to theology
29:31
and you want to make sure you're giving them the right words
29:34
and the right theology, I think that's a thing
29:36
that might keep you from doing this as well.
29:38
Vodie Bockham, he's known mainly for the book
29:40
he released last year called Fault Lines,
29:41
but he wrote a book a while ago,
29:42
about 10 years ago called Family Shepherds.
29:44
But he talks about this, he talks about worship
29:46
in the household and this book is about that big.
29:49
It's not very big, but it is dense.
29:51
It's like, I mean, it's a snowball that doesn't ever melt.
29:54
Like that's how dense this book is.
29:55
So shout out to Ryan, one of our supporters here
29:57
in Oklahoma for turning me onto that book.
29:59
But that's something that helps take the sting out of it
30:01
in terms of they give you ideas.
30:04
And as you've in your book have given ideas to people,
30:06
like this isn't about everybody put on your Sunday best
30:09
for a Tuesday afternoon and we're gonna gather around the table
30:12
and do something that's absolutely perfect.
30:14
It doesn't have to be so corporate, you know what I mean?
30:16
- Right, no, it doesn't have to be complicated.
30:18
- And I'll just say this, I care about my kids learning
30:21
about technology so I let them watch me use my phone.
30:23
I talk to him about it.
30:24
I care about my kids learning to manage money.
30:27
So I talk to them about how to save, how to spend,
30:29
how to give away.
30:30
I care about my kids' bodies.
30:32
So I make them come to the gym with me
30:33
and watch me get exhausted, you know?
30:35
Like, and I care about following Jesus.
30:38
So I make my kids sit down with me
30:40
and watch me read the Bible and pray.
30:42
It's just one more part of living the life of a father
30:45
where you do what you do on display for and with your kids.
30:50
It shouldn't be that different.
30:51
But, you know, if I'm the kind of guy who's like,
30:53
hey, come to the gym and watch what it looks like
30:55
to get in shape.
30:56
But I never sit them down and say,
30:58
hey, sit down and watch what it looks like
31:00
to read a verse in the Bible and pick it apart
31:01
and think about what God's saying.
31:03
You know, something's wrong there, right?
31:04
So it's just one part of being a dad
31:07
that everybody should just bring in
31:08
and it doesn't have to be complicated.
31:10
- Well, I think the modeling part is very important
31:11
because, you know, before we put Sweet Baby James down,
31:14
our one and a half year old, we read a book
31:16
and then I've started in the last few weeks
31:19
before I was even turned on to your book
31:20
to I put his hands together and I say a little prayer
31:23
and I put my mouth next to his ear
31:25
and we do a very, very simple prayer
31:26
and then I lay him down and he goes to sleep.
31:28
Well, just even this week,
31:30
I'll get to the end of the book
31:31
and as I'm putting the book up,
31:32
he's putting his hands together.
31:33
He's 18 months old.
31:34
You know what I mean?
31:35
He doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's doing.
31:37
And at that moment, I can't be like,
31:38
well, you know, John Calvin would think this
31:40
about this particular situation
31:42
and you're not actually holding your hands
31:43
in the right angle.
31:44
You know, it's not about all that.
31:45
It's not about all these different rules.
31:47
It's just teaching those things
31:49
that are little by little, those habits
31:50
as you talk about a lot in your book.
31:52
The last habit that I want to talk about today,
31:53
'cause again, I don't want to spoil the book
31:55
for everybody else, you got to go out and get the book.
31:56
You talk about marriage.
31:57
That's the sixth habit.
31:59
And so that's the forming of parents, obviously.
32:01
So very quick quote from that section, you say this,
32:03
there's a strange paradox here.
32:05
In date night, all the work of the household is ignored
32:08
so we can focus on one thing
32:09
that keeps the household working marriage.
32:12
Now, this isn't breaking news to anybody
32:15
that's been alive for the past forever,
32:16
but how many times do you see it?
32:19
Were these successful young children,
32:22
they get all the way through school,
32:23
they get national merit or they graduate with honors
32:26
or they're all state football or whatever the situation is,
32:28
they get to college.
32:29
And then the moment the kids are off at college,
32:32
the marriage falls apart.
32:33
That's what people think.
32:34
They think it fell apart after the kids left.
32:36
It's like, no, no, no, it fell apart a long time ago,
32:38
but it didn't manifest publicly
32:40
until the kids were out of the household.
32:42
So many married couples completely forget
32:45
about what is holding the glue
32:47
that is holding the house together.
32:49
Why is that?
32:50
Now, my personal belief is that that is Satan's,
32:52
one of his biggest attacking points
32:54
in the church world, writ large, is marriage
32:58
because that's how we understand Jesus' love for us
33:01
and a sacrifice for us.
33:03
That's kind of my, you know,
33:04
gospel-y answer to that question or the type of a thing.
33:07
But why has it been so much time
33:08
focusing specifically on marriage?
33:09
And then I guess, why do you feel like so many couples
33:12
forget about that?
33:13
- Oh my gosh, there's a million different things
33:15
I wanna say here.
33:16
But in the story of the Bible,
33:19
and I try to connect each of these habits
33:21
to the story of the Bible,
33:22
the Bible begins and ends with a wedding.
33:24
You know, Adam and Eve are brought together in Genesis,
33:27
Christ and this church are brought together
33:29
and celebrated in Revelation.
33:30
Marriage is central to the story of the Bible.
33:33
Marriage is central to the family.
33:37
I think it is a terrible fiction
33:39
that we could talk about being good mothers and fathers
33:41
without being good lovers,
33:43
without being good husbands and wives
33:45
because our kids are learning,
33:49
Allah, the thesis of this book,
33:51
our kids are learning so much from what we don't say,
33:54
but from what we just do, you know,
33:56
how we look at our wife,
33:57
how we talk to her when we're impatient and tired,
34:00
how she responds to us.
34:02
They are forming like an imprint,
34:04
like a baby duckling of what,
34:06
they're gonna follow the rest of their life,
34:07
what marriage looks like.
34:09
And so we're living out the story of God
34:12
in front of them as we live out marriage.
34:13
And so it is just an incredibly spiritually important thing.
34:17
But as you said, it's kind of one of the easiest things
34:20
to forget about because kids become so important
34:24
and it's one of the hardest things to do
34:25
and everybody knows that.
34:26
Like marriage is hard for no one is it easy
34:29
to love somebody over the long haul of your life
34:31
as you continue to get to know how sinful this person is.
34:34
And that's true for my wife, that's true for me.
34:37
One of my favorite lines in a great movie
34:40
by directed by Richard Linklater,
34:41
it's called "Before Sunset."
34:43
I think it's Ethan Hawke is starring it.
34:46
He says to somebody,
34:48
"I feel like I'm running a daycare
34:50
with a woman I used to date."
34:52
And I heard that line, I was like,
34:53
"Oh my gosh." - That's brutal.
34:55
- This is what a parent is gonna feel like at some point.
34:59
So my point in the chapter is to say,
35:02
we've got to practice via small habits,
35:06
the most important things,
35:07
the little things become the big things.
35:08
And so just to practice loving your wife,
35:12
practice continuing to date,
35:13
her practice continuing to speak intentionally,
35:16
to forgive, to keep your sex life alive
35:19
and even at the forefront
35:20
in these terribly difficult years of child rearing,
35:23
that's the way like we keep the coals burning
35:27
that keeps the fire of the family alive.
35:29
And you neglect that, you neglect the foundation.
35:31
- I think it's really important because again,
35:33
if you were to pitch to a husband,
35:36
hey, the odds of your kids having a healthy marriage
35:40
down the road 20 years from now,
35:42
hinges on how you treat your spouse today,
35:44
I think we might think about that a little bit more
35:46
because we don't normally think in those terms,
35:48
we think about, well, she's not doing this for me
35:50
and things will be better if I had done that
35:52
or whatever scenario you paint in your head.
35:54
So I think that's always a good important reminder.
35:56
So that kind of wraps up the habits
35:57
in terms of our conversation today.
35:58
But just as a reminder,
35:59
the 10 habits that you point out in the book,
36:01
waking, meal times, discipline, screen time,
36:05
family devotions, marriage, work, play,
36:08
conversation and bedtime.
36:09
And guys, we literally just scratched the surface
36:11
on the ones that we went into and didn't even go
36:13
into the others, but in interest of time,
36:15
we got to kind of move on.
36:16
But one thing I like to do, Justin,
36:17
towards the end of my interviews,
36:19
I do a segment called,
36:20
"What would you say to someone that said?"
36:23
And then I'm gonna fill in the blank
36:24
and you get 30 seconds or less to give me an answer.
36:28
Whether it's about a big topic or a small topic,
36:30
this is lightning around here, okay?
36:32
So it is just straight up meat potato.
36:34
So yup, for it?
36:35
- I'm ready.
36:36
So I'm gonna get a couple of these
36:37
and I just gotta go.
36:38
- Oh, you're gonna get a bunch of these.
36:39
All right, they're just gonna be rapid fire
36:41
one right after the other.
36:42
You gotta give me the legit answer
36:43
right off the top of the dome.
36:45
- All right, I'm ready.
36:46
- Yeah, warm up, let's go, let's do this.
36:48
All right, first one, first one.
36:49
What would you say to someone that said,
36:51
"Justin's books make me feel bad
36:53
because they show me how much I'm failing."
36:55
- I would say the gospel does the same thing.
36:58
The point is to realize how messed up
37:00
we are so that we can realize
37:02
how much God loves us anyway.
37:03
And my thesis and all these books
37:05
is your habits will not change God's love for you,
37:08
but God's love for you can and should change your habits.
37:11
- Well, you hit the mark because I felt terrible
37:12
after I finished your last book.
37:13
So let's just kind of keep moving on from here.
37:15
So what would you say to someone that said,
37:17
I don't need to worry about my relationship
37:19
with my wife and kids nearly as much
37:21
as I need to worry about providing for them?
37:24
- Oh my gosh.
37:26
- That's a very mainly thing to say.
37:28
A lot of men I've heard actually say something
37:29
close to that.
37:30
So go ahead.
37:31
- Wealth and provision is part of the good life
37:36
that we are created for,
37:37
but it is not a sufficient for the whole.
37:40
Our kids need to learn to love.
37:41
They need to learn how to emotionally relate.
37:43
They need to see love on display with your wife.
37:45
There is so much more than providing.
37:49
They need to know who you are and see you love God.
37:51
- All right.
37:52
So you're doing great with these lightning round questions.
37:53
What were you nervous for?
37:54
We already went into this one a little bit.
37:55
So you already cheated.
37:56
So what would you say to someone that said,
37:58
I can be a good father to my children
38:00
without being a good husband to my wife?
38:02
- Yeah.
38:05
Jesus is a good husband to the church.
38:08
We cannot be like Jesus when we're treating our wives
38:11
like trash.
38:13
We cannot teach, let me just drill down more.
38:16
You're not teaching your child to be a man
38:20
when he doesn't see a man actually loving a woman.
38:22
You're teaching him to act like a boy.
38:24
You're teaching him to become a boy in a man's body.
38:26
And a boy in a man's body is one of the most dangerous things
38:28
that we can set loose in the world.
38:30
So we be a man and love your wife in front of them.
38:33
- Yeah, you're teaching him to be a fully grown up infant
38:35
is kind of how that works out.
38:36
Next one here, what would you say to someone that said,
38:38
I don't have time to play with my kids.
38:40
That's what their friends are for.
38:42
- These are all things I've heard.
38:46
These are all things I've heard.
38:47
- These people are making me mad.
38:48
(laughing)
38:50
- Your kids need to know what your,
38:53
the whiskers on your face feel like.
38:56
They need to know that you have an imagination.
39:00
They need to know that there is more to life
39:02
than working hard, that there is Sabbath, rest and play.
39:06
And if you don't teach them how to play,
39:09
then someone else is gonna teach them it
39:10
and it's probably not gonna be playing with the right things.
39:12
It's gonna be playing with fire
39:13
or playing with sex or playing with something else.
39:15
Your kids need to see you enjoy
39:17
so they can learn what true joy looks like.
39:19
- All right, next one here.
39:20
What would you say to someone that said,
39:22
my wife just isn't on board
39:23
with developing these new habits?
39:26
- I'd say that's hard and it takes two
39:29
and I sympathize with you.
39:30
And I bet there's gonna be a lot of wives
39:33
who say, my husband's not on board with this.
39:36
But the best thing that anybody can do in that situation
39:39
is just live the example gently and put it on display.
39:44
This is not the kind of thing your wife
39:46
is gonna get mad at you for doing.
39:47
It's the kind of thing that she's gonna thank you
39:49
for years later.
39:50
And vice versa to all the women who are listening here.
39:53
- Yeah, well, see, they're not here right now.
39:54
And so I can kind of pit them
39:56
as the negative person in this scenario.
39:58
So, you know, I'll have to deal with that one later.
40:00
Just a few more left here.
40:01
What would you say to someone that said,
40:03
forming these habits will be so time consuming.
40:06
We just don't have the capacity
40:07
to add more tasks to our plate right now.
40:10
- Yes, I would say forming these habits is hard.
40:15
Anything that's good and healthy for you is hard.
40:18
But it will not complicate your life.
40:21
It will simplify your life.
40:22
The hard, stressful, burdensome thing to do
40:26
is what you are doing now, and that is nothing.
40:29
Doing these moves you to a simpler life.
40:33
Just like Jesus said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
40:38
Adding on these habits is meant to help you,
40:40
is meant to simplify your life.
40:41
And this was a big thesis in my book, The Common Rule.
40:43
So people should go to that if they wanna think more about that.
40:46
- Guys, that is in the show notes just a couple more.
40:48
What would you say to someone that said,
40:50
screens are not the enemy, Satan is the enemy?
40:53
- I love this game.
40:55
Oh, I'd agree with you, Satan is the enemy.
41:00
Satan uses things that are so good, like sex,
41:05
like money, like power, and twist them just a little bit
41:11
to make them so bad.
41:13
And screens are good, technology is good.
41:16
It is like, we're cultivating and redeeming the world
41:18
in some way when we invent stuff like this,
41:21
but the enemy can use the realm of screens like wow,
41:26
to create unparalleled destruction.
41:29
So I'd say you're right, Satan is the enemy.
41:30
Watch how he uses the weapons of screen,
41:33
'cause he'll do some judo there.
41:35
- All right, last question,
41:36
and maybe the most important question of the day,
41:37
what would you say to someone that said,
41:39
"Some kids just suck."
41:41
- I would say I'm one of those kids.
41:46
We are all, the story of the gospel
41:49
is that we are all messed up failures who suck,
41:53
but Jesus is the good father who loves us anyway.
41:57
And I think about the best things that my dad ever did
42:01
is that he stuck with me and loved me
42:03
when I was the biggest ass, the biggest jerk,
42:06
the biggest, oh my gosh, I was just such a,
42:09
I had times where I was such a screw up in high school.
42:12
And those were the times where he stuck with me.
42:15
He looked at me and he said in some way or another,
42:18
"God loves you anyway, and I love you anyway, keep walking."
42:22
That's the, that is the way we act like Jesus to our children.
42:26
- That's great, man.
42:27
That's a great place to leave it all,
42:28
but that is all for me.
42:30
I'm so appreciative of all the times
42:32
and are all the time you've given us
42:33
and all the stuff we've gone into.
42:34
Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest
42:36
before we go?
42:37
- I just wanna do another one of these lightning rounds
42:39
sometime soon, that was fun.
42:41
- We can make that happen
42:42
because I have plenty more questions ready to go.
42:44
And I always like to make the people I'm talking to
42:46
a little bit uncomfortable, but you did pretty okay with it,
42:48
but anything else you wanna add for the audience?
42:50
- No, I would just say your habits form who you are,
42:53
and that forms who your kids are,
42:54
so pay attention and parent them well.
42:56
- All right, Justin Whitmill, early,
42:58
thank you for coming on Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
43:01
- Thanks, Kyle, this was awesome.
43:03
- There you go, guys, I hope you enjoyed my interview
43:05
with Justin, but before we let you go,
43:06
we are gonna do a quick resilience boost.
43:08
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men
43:10
to push back darkness, specifically by providing content
43:13
like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual,
43:15
mental and physical resilience.
43:16
So the links I've got for you today,
43:17
as I've got a link to Justin's website,
43:19
I've also got a link to both of his books.
43:21
You can go to the website for those books,
43:23
it's Habits of the Household and the Common Rule.
43:25
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
43:27
We do appreciate it.
43:28
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
43:29
rate and leave us a positive review.
43:31
If you want me to come speak live at your event
43:33
or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
43:35
to info@undaunted.life.
43:36
That's I-N-F-O at Undaunted.life.
43:39
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43:41
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43:41
and you can check out our website for everything else,
43:43
including how to donate to keep more content
43:45
like this coming your way,
43:46
just go to www.undaunted.life.
43:49
And as always, we're gonna thank the band,
43:50
August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music
43:52
for our content.
43:53
The intro outro track on this podcast
43:55
is our song, "Cutting the Ties,"
43:56
which is off their 10th anniversary
43:57
re-recording of their album, "Leveler."
43:59
The links are in the description.
44:01
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
44:03
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
44:06
keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
44:10
keep seeking the lion of Judah.
44:12
♪ I love thy land ♪
44:17
♪ There's a heart in life ♪
44:19
♪ I know you want ♪
44:20
♪ It's a side ♪
44:22
♪ nation ♪
44:24
♪ It's a virtue ♪
44:27
♪ You will be revived ♪
44:40
(dramatic music)