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0:38
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:53
Listen to your father who gave you life. That is Proverbs 23-22. We'll get more into that
0:57
here in just a second. But guys, I just want to remind you, if you have not already done this,
1:00
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please leave us a five-star review and leave us a few words and let us know why exactly you like
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them why you like it, that even shoots it even further up the chart. So we really, really appreciate
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if you guys can do that. Also, just to let you know, I know sometimes you hear ads on this show,
1:22
it's not your favorite thing. And oh, poor you, you know, you get paid to do your job. What about me
1:26
getting paid to do my job? But guys, the ads don't actually pay the bills around here. It's the
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donations. We've made this content so that guys like you can support what we're doing. So if you
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do support our content, if you want to see us make even more content, if you want to see us expand
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absolutely insane, please hop on board and be a donor. So go to undaunted.life/donate. So that is
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in the show notes. But on daunted.life/donate, hop on, be a monthly donor, support us. And then
1:52
also just want to remind you guys that we are affiliated with Origin and Jocko Fuel. So guys,
1:57
on the Origin side, if you're doing jujitsu or thinking about getting into jujitsu, they have the
2:01
best geese on planet Earth. And it is the only ghee on planet Earth that is 100% made in America.
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So you can check them out there. But they've also got boots. They got steel toe boots. They've got
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jeans. They've got all kinds of stuff on the Origin side. And then on the Jocko Fuel side,
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they've got mulk. So that's his protein powder. They've got a bunch of other different supplements.
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So vitamin D and they've got greens and they've got sleeping aids and they've got all kinds of
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other great stuff on the Jocko Fuel side, his energy drinks, Jocko Go guys, you can go and check
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out all that stuff. If you go to origin main.com or origin USA dot com, both of those will be in
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the show notes and use my promo code just my name Kyle at checkout, you will get 10% off your order.
2:36
So go to origin and get all your stuff and make sure you use the promo code Kyle KYLE to get 10%
2:42
off. So this week, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're not going to be doing
2:45
quick hitters or anything like that. We're going to take a little bit of a break from the news cycle.
2:49
And you know, we kind of already did that because we had all those interviews in a row. And then I
2:52
came back into an episode with a bunch of different things that we talked about. But I'm assuming
2:57
starting next week, I mean, we're going to be talking about the fallout from the midterm elections,
3:01
maybe through the end of the year, who the heck knows, there's so many things that are going on
3:04
right now. So I just want to kind of pull ourselves out of the news cycle because we're going to be
3:07
getting a mouthful of it for the next several months. This entire episode that I'm doing today
3:13
is dedicated to my father, David Glen Thompson. So some of you that know me, you know, my middle
3:19
name is David. Well, in our family, you get your father's name as your middle name. You know,
3:24
the first son will get that. So James, our first born is James Kyle Thompson. I'm Kyle David Thompson.
3:30
My dad was David, Glen Thompson, so on and so forth. But I wanted to do an episode like this today
3:36
because I thought about just dedicating an episode to him and that can kind of seem
3:40
trite whenever you just dedicate an episode to somebody and then you talk about something that's,
3:44
you know, completely not related to that situation. Obviously we've done that here recently. We've done
3:48
that before, right? But the reason why this was so important, I think the timing is appropriate,
3:52
is because my father just this month is retiring from 43 years of working at the Goodyear Tire
4:00
and Rubber Company in Law, Oklahoma, 43 years working at the same place, doing really, really
4:07
tough work in order to support his family and support himself in those types of things. And so
4:12
I just wanted to give an ode to my father as it were. And so in terms of today, I'm not really
4:18
sure how long this episode is going to go. Maybe a short one, maybe a little bit longer. I'm not
4:21
exactly sure. And I'm not even exactly sure what I'm going to say in total. I mean, I kind of wanted
4:26
it to be that way. I've kind of a rough scaffolding, a skeleton of an outline that I have put together,
4:30
but I'm not exactly sure. But I'm going to start the episode today with why this is so important,
4:36
this particular episode, okay? But not just to me, because that's not really entertainment. Like,
4:41
hey, here, let me hear me talk for 30 minutes or 45 minutes is something that's important to me.
4:45
If it's not important to you, you're probably going to tune out. But it's not just important to me.
4:49
It's important to you as well. And I'll get into that here in a second. But I will describe why I
4:53
think that this episode is important to me specifically. So while doing it imperfectly,
4:57
I take Exodus 2012, literally and seriously. Okay. So all of you have heard this by now, but
5:03
it's honor your mother and your or your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land
5:08
that the Lord, your God is giving you. Okay. So I take that literally and seriously. Also,
5:13
the scripture I said from the very top, Proverbs 23, 22, I take that literally. And I take that
5:20
seriously. Listen to your father who gave you life. Okay. So that doesn't mean that you should
5:26
do that blindly. That doesn't mean, you know, in the honor, we don't really understand what that
5:30
word means in terms of that back there. That doesn't mean that you necessarily like your parents.
5:33
It doesn't mean you necessarily do everything for them. You spend every waking moment with them.
5:36
But it does mean that you honor them. So this is something that I'm doing today to honor my father
5:41
because my father hasn't had a lot of things happen to him in his life where he had the opportunity
5:47
to be honored because when you do stuff in the public eye or maybe you're a professional athlete
5:51
or maybe you're a CEO or something like that, you're going to have these opportunities for
5:54
adulation and people are just going to drown you these syncophantic people are just going to drown
5:57
you and praise and all these different things. But a lot of people, the overwhelming majority of
6:01
people on the planet are not going to have opportunities like that. So I want to do that for my dad today.
6:05
But why this is going to be important for you, the listener or watcher of this podcast,
6:10
the first thing is it's a reminder for you to honor your fathers. So to a degree, it's like,
6:17
hey, you know, people have said before, follow me as I follow Christ. This is one of those
6:21
opportunities where say, follow me why I honor my father. And I want that to inspire you
6:27
and remind you that you should be doing that as well. And then in addition to that,
6:32
I wanted to be a reminder for you to look at your father in all of his flaws, warts and all and
6:40
find grace in how you approach him, give him the benefit of the doubt when perhaps you don't think
6:45
he deserves it, try to understand his shortcomings or any of those things are on the positive side,
6:51
just recognizing all the amazing things that you have gotten from your father, starting with life
6:58
in general. And then everything else that you learned. And I guess the last thing I would say
7:02
on the terms of this being important to you, it's a reminder that forgiveness is possible.
7:06
Because for a lot of people, their fathers are the center point of everything that's bad in
7:14
their world. I've not experienced that personally. But for a lot of people, that's the case.
7:19
And that's either because the dad was awful. The dad was abusive. The dad was manipulative.
7:26
The dad wasn't there. The dad was dead. Any number of reasons. And the wounding that comes from a
7:33
father is deeper than just about any wound you could possibly get. And we'll get more into that
7:38
for here in a second. So hopefully that's enough to kind of keep you engaged in today's episode,
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But I want to start out in terms of the honoring and then we'll get into some other things about
8:17
fatherhood in general. But in terms of me honoring my father, as I was preparing for this episode,
8:22
I was trying to think of what are the best things about my dad? And so this isn't going to be an
8:27
exhaustive long list. I'm not going to list hundreds and hundreds of things. I'm going to really key
8:31
in on a few things here that I think are very, very important. And I think for a lot of you guys,
8:35
you're going to think about this yourself in terms of you as a father. You're going to think
8:38
about this in terms of the father that you've had in your life. So hopefully you can kind of get
8:41
some of that carry over and cross over here. So the first thing I would say is that my father,
8:46
David Thompson, he is my number one biggest, most outspoken fan on earth, literally.
8:56
And I don't just mean of a not to lie for this show. I mean, of everything I've ever done,
9:01
he is the number one biggest, most outspoken fan. I've never had to wonder if my dad was proud of me,
9:08
or if he thought what I was doing was a good idea or any of those types of things.
9:11
So whether I was playing sports, you know, I remember I think I've told this on my podcast before.
9:16
When I was in junior high, I think it was my ninth grade team. So my freshman year,
9:20
you know, this in the town we grew up in ninth grade was middle school still. So you weren't
9:24
in high school. Yeah. And our freshman baseball team was ridiculous. We were so good. It's just a
9:29
crazy talented team. I think pretty sure we went undefeated that year. And I remember,
9:34
because I led the team in home runs, but there was one particular home run. I remember my dad,
9:37
he was parked in right center field beyond the fin, not on the field. That'd be ridiculous.
9:41
But beyond the fence, because it's one of those where you could kind of pull up to the fencing
9:45
and pull up to the, to the ball field or whatever. And he's actually sitting on the hood of his
9:51
truck. So he had an old four by four, a Dually Chevy or not, not a Dually. It was a step size
9:56
Chevy, a short bed. And he's just sitting up on the hood of the truck, just watching baseball,
10:02
probably eating corn nuts or some power seeds or something like that. And I had a home run.
10:05
And I remember coming around first base. And I don't remember if I have like wave datum or even
10:10
made a, I don't even know what, what I was doing. But I do remember looking to right center field at
10:16
my dad. And he is losing his ever loving mind after I hit this dinger. Like I thought I was
10:22
going to fall off the truck and hurt himself. And you know, it was just one of those things.
10:25
He was so jacked. But that was the thing is my dad was at everything. He was at every practice.
10:31
He was at every game. He did, he moved heaven and earth to make sure that he could be there to
10:36
support me in all the sports that I played growing up. And with undaunted, he listens to every single
10:42
episode. He'll call me and tell me, Hey, that was a great episode. You know, great job or shoot me a
10:46
quick text or something like that. And my dad and I will kind of banter back and forth. But it's all
10:50
in love. But again, he's my number one biggest fan. Like he's he's the guy that I can go to and
10:56
just know like, man, he's proud of me like not, it's not like a like an idol type thing. But he just
11:01
like, he's so proud of the decisions that I've made in my life. And the thing is, like, I almost
11:06
feel sheepish because it's like, I'm not nearly as good of a guy as you think I am, dad. But
11:09
he just he's so proud of me as his son. And I've never had to question that. So that's probably the
11:14
number one biggest thing, gift, I guess you could say our best thing about my father. The next thing
11:20
is I've been able to witness my father's resilience throughout his life. Now this obviously happened
11:26
before I was born. But when he was a young man, his father was taken from him because he was killed
11:32
by a drunk driver. Okay. And so he was killed by a drunk driver. And he was supposed to be in the
11:37
car that night with his father. My understanding is at the last moment, my grandmother, his mother
11:43
pulled him out of the car because he needed to go get some slacks or something for like an
11:47
upcoming recital at the church or something like that. So here he is about to go on a trip with his
11:51
dad, you know, one of his favorite things to do, he gets pulled out of the car. Fine, mom, I'll go
11:55
with you. And you know, not long after that, his father was killed, right? So when that happens to
12:02
you, I think he was 13 years old when that happened. So I think we're literally coming up on I think
12:06
of like the 50 year anniversary of that of that all happening. I mean, just crazy. That's such a
12:11
tough situation to be in for anybody that loses their father in that way, much less someone that's
12:16
13 years old. You're learning how to become a man at that time period. You're really starting to
12:23
kind of come into your own just a little bit and you need a father more than you need just about
12:29
anything. You need a father like you need water and food and air and all those things.
12:33
And he lost his dad. So he had to be resilient because he could have just went off half cocked
12:39
and you know, just been [inaudible] off at the world ended up in prison and did those different things.
12:42
That's not really what he did. You know what I mean? But then also, I mentioned 43 years. So for
12:48
some of you, you hear good year tire and rubber company, you're thinking, Oh, corporate. So he's
12:51
been wearing a suit and tie and you know, been, you know, taking care of things. No, he was working
12:54
in the factory working his tail off. I think when he started a good year, I think he may have been
12:59
throwing tires or something like that. What a lot of guys do. Absolute back breaking work.
13:04
And if you're a pus, if you're not tough, you will not make it. And I don't just mean physically.
13:10
You have to be mentally tough to get through that, right? But that's what he did. He did it for 43
13:17
years. And for the majority of that time period, it was because he was taking care of a knucklehead
13:21
like me. And you know, at the time when when he was married to my mother and like taking care of my
13:27
mom and taking care of my sister and taking care of me, like, that's why he did that. His job paid
13:31
the bills for us. I mean, we weren't just like rolling in dough as a kid. Like I've said many
13:36
times on this podcast, I had everything I needed and a lot of the things I wanted, right? And we
13:42
didn't feel like, Oh, you know, nervous about where the next meal was going to come from. Why?
13:46
Because my dad busted his butt at a factory. That's why. And again, you can't do that type of work.
13:53
I mentioned origin from the top of the show. They're bringing manufacturing back to the
13:56
United States of America, because everybody all these college educated people, you get lost in,
14:00
you know, the corner office job and oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur and start this new company.
14:04
I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to do that thing. And that's all fine. That's all great.
14:06
We need that in our economy. But it's the people that are actually doing the manufacturing. That's
14:10
what makes America run. Like, that's how we're able to do these things in industry because of
14:16
guys like my father. And so that's why, you know, origin helped me do a little something special
14:21
that I won't talk about right now for my dad. But it's just a very unique thing to run into
14:25
guys like that that are literally building and maintaining America to a degree. Okay. So him
14:31
being able to do that job and to do a job that, frankly, he hated, he clearly hated all this time,
14:37
but he did it because it's what was required of him. And we live in an era right now, guys,
14:42
this is kind of a tangent, but I'll get right back on the road here before too long. But we live
14:45
in this era where it's like, if it doesn't make you happy, you're not supposed to do it. Oh, you
14:50
know what? If if you're not feeling this job, you just go get you another one, right? You go
14:55
slay somewhere else. Like that's the crap that you hear on Instagram from these moron influencers
15:00
that haven't built a damn thing that don't do anything right. All they do is read self help books
15:05
and then chew it up and then that out on the internet. And then you're supposed to take that in and
15:11
change your entire life based on this super unimpressive person that happens to look really good
15:15
on camera. That's what you're supposed to do. There's no one talking about the fact, you know,
15:20
what sometimes you should probably just endure. You know, you maybe don't like your job. Maybe
15:25
it's not fulfilling. Maybe it's not checking all your boxes. Maybe it's not the best thing for you.
15:30
You unbelievable narcissist, but it's the best thing for somebody else that you're going to
15:37
sacrifice by doing that thing. This soul crushing work for a lot of these guys because of what it
15:43
allows you to do because what it allows you to do is to fulfill your bill to fulfill your biblical
15:47
mandate to care for your family. What it allows you to do is to not be a slugger that's just going
15:53
to sit around waiting on your government check to come in, but you're going to go out there and
15:56
get after it and you're going to bust your butt because that's what God wants you to do. My dad's
16:01
not not a very spiritual man by any stretch of the imagination, but even in an accidental way,
16:05
he's fulfilling that mandate by doing the work that he did for 43 years. So his resilience is
16:12
something that I really like. And this last one, this, this might seem a bit odd. So I want to make
16:18
sure that I frame it correctly. So just follow me on this. My dad has shown me many examples
16:23
throughout his life of how I don't want to be. And if we're being honest, because again,
16:28
I know that sounds odd because here I am just, you know, keeping praise on my father and he deserves
16:32
it. But when you have someone in your life that's so close to you, they're a father, their father
16:38
that's in your life, they're active in your life, regardless of who they are, invariably,
16:44
and 100% of the time, they will show you things. They will act in a way they will think in a way
16:52
that you don't want to and shouldn't. Why? Because they are imperfect people. And so
16:59
when you spend years, because I'm 36 years old, I have 36 years worth of data of my dad doing
17:04
thinking and saying things and I'm like, Oh, I don't want that to be me. I don't want to do think
17:09
or say that. And so that's a valuable tool. That's also a valuable tool that James and Squish,
17:16
my boys will be able to see. They're going to have decades, hopefully Lord willing,
17:21
they're going to have decades and decades of data on stupid things that dad thought said,
17:26
believed any number of things. And I hope they learn from from some of my ignorance,
17:31
some of my stupidities, some of my mistakes, because that's a great thing. If they can watch
17:36
me make the mistake, then they can avoid it. Okay. So I'm not going to get into any specifics,
17:42
because obviously that that's my family. That's none of your business. But like,
17:45
there are so many people out there that they have to deal with their dad being an alcoholic,
17:49
they have to deal with their dad being a drug addict, a dad that's physically, sexually and
17:53
mentally abusive. And I haven't had to deal with any of that at all. Right. Now, by virtue of my
18:00
dad's job, he wasn't always the most chipper person in the world, because he was either just
18:04
coming home from a job that he hated, or being a few hours away from having to go back to the
18:08
job that he hated, right? So to a degree, maybe that's unhealthy, maybe you could cycle analyze.
18:12
But again, all those other things that a lot of my friends had to deal with, I didn't.
18:17
Friends that came to school with another bruise on their face, and they weren't allowed to talk
18:22
about why, and all these different things. I didn't have to deal with you that. I got lucky.
18:26
But you still learn things about people that you're able to take and apply inside of your own life.
18:31
And so that's something I'm so unbelievably thankful for, because I'm going to be able to show my
18:38
boys something that I learned, because I was able, what do people say? The wisdom is, is like,
18:42
you know, you get to stand on the shoulders of giants, because here's the thing, like,
18:45
let's say you were going to go to seminary or something like that. Like, there are things
18:49
that people figured out 1900 years ago that you're not going to have to reckon with, right? All you
18:54
have to do is read for the weekend, and you've caught up on the life's work of something that
18:58
people spent decades trying to figure out, or dots they were trying to connect. But now you just,
19:03
oh, you get caught up super quick, and then you can build off of what they've done.
19:06
The same thing happens with a son and a father. You can look at their life. You can look at the
19:10
decisions they've made, and you can do some of the things that you like in taking some of that and
19:14
avoid some of the things that you don't build from there. And that's what I'm excited for my
19:18
boys to get to experience as well. They're going to look at the things that I've done,
19:21
the things that I've been able to build, and the life that I've led, and they're going to be able
19:25
to build a better life on top of that. That should be the model in a lot of ways. So again,
19:30
he's my number one fan. He's super resilient, and he showed me some things that I can avoid,
19:35
which I'm very, very thankful for. But as I was thinking through this episode as well,
19:39
I was thinking through wisdom from, I mean, the goat, John Eldridge. So again, I've talked about
19:44
on the show before. He's been on the show, I think four times, personal mentor of mine.
19:48
There were several quotes from Wild at Heart. Again, the book that that is the
19:51
Seminole Men's Ministry book in history, sold over a million copies. One of the most important
19:57
books, certainly it's on our book list on our website on dalton.life/book list. But there were
20:01
three quotes that I went to kind of go into and break down, and then we'll start winding to a
20:05
close today. So the first quote was this, "Many men are ashamed of their fathers.
20:10
You're just like your father is an arrow, many bitter mothers fire at their sons. Most of the men
20:15
I know are trying hard not to become like their fathers. But who does that leave them to follow
20:20
after? From whom will they derive their sense of strength?" So without getting into the details,
20:26
that was an arrow that my bitter mother would fling at me. Any time I was doing something she
20:31
didn't like, it's you're just like your father. And there's a whole lot of stuff to unravel there,
20:34
and that's under your business. But the thing that's very, very important about that is when
20:40
a family member or when society or when someone is trying to brandish a father as being bad,
20:47
toxic, or maybe even worse on those two useless, then what you've done is you've left an entire
20:54
underclass of citizenry children to not have anyone to derive their strength from. And this
21:02
is something that people that don't have kids understand. And I again, I'd say that like I've
21:05
been a father for decades. I've been a father for two and a half years. But this is something that
21:09
people don't quite understand. And this is something that women don't really understand either. Boys
21:13
don't get strength from their mothers. If you look at it in total, they don't. And that's no offense
21:19
to any of the mothers listening to this were so thankful for you. They derive their strength from
21:23
their fathers. That's where they get their sense of strength. That's where if they have a healthy
21:28
and involved father, they get to understand what true strength looks like. And when it's wielded
21:35
by a meeked father, again, I've talked about in the show a million times about, you know, people look
21:39
at meekness as weakness. No, it's about having a tremendous amount of power and prowess, but having
21:44
it under control, under voluntary control. And so that's the thing that I think is very, very
21:50
important because a lot of you have suffered the same thing that I have. You don't have a a father
21:54
wound, right? And we will get to that here in a second, because obviously the wound in this and
21:57
the father wound from wilder heart is one of the most important things that's maybe ever been written
22:01
for for modern Christian. I have a mother wound and kind of how it, how it, you know, coalesces into
22:06
how you're supposed to view your father and the lens through which you're supposed to see it.
22:09
But I know a lot of people listening to this, you look at your father in such an unbelievably
22:13
negative light. And part of it is because you resent him for either not being there or you
22:17
resent him for something that he's not because somebody else framed him improperly for you.
22:21
So I'm trying not to get too far out in the ether. But again, that's so important for fathers to be
22:25
involved because you are giving your sons a sense of strength. You're giving them an anchor point.
22:31
So another quote, this is a short one from wilder heart. It's this, to most men, God is either
22:36
distant or he is weak. The very thing they'd report of their earthly fathers. So some of you,
22:42
if you were to look upon your father, you would look at him with scorn because he was a weak man
22:46
or a distant man. Maybe he was way too involved in his golf outings or in his work. So he was gone
22:52
constantly or you saw so many opportunities for him to stand up for those that were weaker than
22:56
him and he didn't do it. And then that's the way you view your heavenly father because you
23:03
look at your earthly father and then you look at all this, you know, Christian ease and you read
23:07
the Bible and you do all these different things and you're just like, yeah, you know, the heavenly
23:10
father doesn't really seem that cool. It doesn't really seem like somebody I'd want to follow.
23:14
I certainly don't want to model after them. What you don't understand is it's because of your
23:19
resentment for your earthly father is why you think that way. You're like, why would I want this
23:23
cosmic daddy when my earthly daddy sucks so bad? And guys, like I told you, like two degree, I get it.
23:31
Now, from my experience, I didn't have that abusiveness, that unbelievably negative upbringing
23:36
with my father and my dad was there. People talk about white privilege. Like, look, I had daddy
23:40
privilege. I had a dad in my life, right? Even after my parents got divorced, I could go see my dad
23:44
whenever I wanted and he didn't live far away, right? So I had the privilege of having that.
23:49
And so it felt intact even though it wasn't to a lot of degree. But when you view your earthly
23:56
father as distant or weak, it makes sense that you would apply that to a cosmic dad that you can't
24:01
see. And this is this gets a little psychological, so I won't go too far into this. But if you have
24:05
a father that's gone. So if he doesn't live with you or he abandoned the family or he died or something
24:10
like that, he's a dad in theory. And for a lot of people, God, the father is a theoretical thing.
24:19
Because you can't see him, right? You can't see him like you could see, you know, a mouse or a
24:24
keyboard or, you know, some, you know, hex wrenches or a water bottle like you can't,
24:29
you can't see him. You can't feel him. You can't use him, right? You can't hug him. You can't be
24:36
hugged by him. You can't be protected by him in the physical sense and the way that we see it on this
24:41
planet. And so when it's out there in the ethereal, you're stuck with trying to theorize
24:49
about what this earthly father could possibly do for you. Again, as you're trying to reckon
24:53
with the fact that you were abandoned by your earthly father, you're abandoned by him somehow,
24:59
either physically or emotionally or in a myriad of different ways. And so that's another important
25:07
thing for us to think about as fathers is when we disengage or when we show cowardice or weakness,
25:13
we are basically giving a script to our kid of like, this is what you just should expect from
25:19
your perfect father as well. Again, it doesn't make sense. Some of you guys can break down the
25:23
theology of that point and maybe not get to the same conclusion, but that that's kind of where I'm
25:26
coming from. The last quote from wild a heart that I want to get into. I think this is very,
25:29
very important. This is where it goes into wounding. So I'll read it here. In order to understand how
25:33
a man receives a wound, you must understand the central truth of a boy's journey to manhood.
25:38
Masculinity is bestowed. A boy learns who he is and what he's got from a man or the company of men.
25:47
He cannot learn it any other place. He cannot learn it from other boys and he cannot learn it
25:52
from the world of women. The plan from the beginning of time was that his father would lay the
25:57
foundation for a young boy's heart and pass on to him that essential knowledge and confidence in
26:02
his strength. Dad would be the first man in his life and forever the most important man.
26:07
Above all, he would answer the question for his son and give his name, give him his name.
26:15
So the question there, I'll read that last line again. Above all, he would answer the question
26:20
for his son and give him his name. So the question that John Eldridge posits in wild a heart is,
26:27
do I have enough? That is the ultimate question for a son to the father. Do I have enough?
26:33
Am I enough? Am I the apple of your eye, rather, do delight in me? Those are all wrapped up in
26:42
the question and only the father can give them the answer to that. Only the father.
26:48
Because again, you know, I, you feel a little bit of weight when you get your father's name,
26:52
some of you guys are juniors or, or thirds or force or whatever. You know, my son's going to feel
26:56
the weight of my name because it's, it's his middle name and I feel the weight of David because it's
27:00
my middle name and those types of things and all that's very, very important. But it's overall
27:05
about initiation into manhood. Because again, and I've talked about this before,
27:11
in our modern society, you, you self-initiated into manhood. Okay, it's not bestowed upon you.
27:17
You get to decide. Is it the first time you have sex? Is the first time you score a touchdown
27:21
on high schools? Is it the first time you, you make it, you know, or you make it through boot camp or,
27:24
you know, you get your first job after college, like you get to decide when you become a man.
27:28
But the right ordering of it is that manhood is bestowed upon you. That's why I'm so obsessed
27:33
about rights of passage for young boys specifically. Yes, you know, it's important for girls as well,
27:37
but specifically with young boys, right? Because if they don't know what's expected of them,
27:43
they're going to make their own stuff up. And especially if you're a dumb little kid,
27:49
which you basically are until you're 25 and your brain's fully developed, then you're a slightly
27:53
smarter dumb little kid, you're just going to make up stuff that sounds good to you.
27:57
And that's the thing about manhood and masculinity being just bestowed upon you. It's not always
28:02
the stuff that you like. It's not always the stuff that you want to do. Think about my dad again,
28:06
43 years at a factory. I'm sure he would have enjoyed doing other things more.
28:10
But that wasn't the point. So the point for you is when you have your sons, it's telling them
28:17
and showing them, Hey, here are the things about your wiring that are money that are so good.
28:22
They're going to help you in your business. They're going to help you in your marriage
28:24
later in life. They're going to help you in the church. They're going to help you in so many
28:26
different ways. But also, son, here are some of your downfalls. Here are some of the things that
28:31
you're going to have to reckon with. Here are some of those rough edges that we're going to have to
28:35
smooth out over time and don't worry, I'll be there with you every step of the way to do that. But at
28:39
some point, I got to cut you loose and you got to figure it out on your own. But also, here are the
28:43
expectations we have on you now. And by we, I mean, your mother and I, this household, this greater
28:48
community, our church, the United States of America, you know, whatever the situation is,
28:53
this is what we expect of you, son. And we are going to do everything we can to equip you
28:59
to perform in those ways. That's how you pass on essential knowledge. That's how you pass on
29:06
confidence in his strength. That's how you pass on the answers to the question, do I have what it
29:12
takes? Am I enough? Am I the apple of your eye? Do you delight in me? That's how you pass all that
29:18
on. Okay. So let's go ahead and bring this to kind of a call to action and then we'll call it a day.
29:24
So in terms of calls to action for anybody still listening to this, the first thing you knew this
29:29
was coming is honor your father. Honor your father. Now, if your father is still living,
29:38
you need to reach out to him to honor him. Maybe that's in person. It probably should be in person,
29:46
if that's possible, perhaps silver the phone or FaceTime or zoom or something like that.
29:50
But I know for some of you, you get tongue tied whenever you're with someone in person,
29:54
maybe you're intimidated by your father. Like I think every boy is still intimidated with his
29:58
father to a degree. I'm still intimidated by my father. So maybe you have to write it out.
30:02
Maybe you write it out and then read it, read it to him in person or you send him a letter
30:06
or send him an email like whatever y'all's thing is. Maybe it's a handwritten letter. Maybe it's
30:10
fancy. I don't really know. Maybe use a quill pen as you write it. I don't really care.
30:14
But honor your father, but tell him, tell him, don't just honor him without letting him know.
30:20
So this is part of my process of honoring my father, but most of you don't have a podcast or
30:26
whatever. So you're going to have to do it a little bit differently. But that's a call to action
30:30
today is to spend time figuring out how you can best honor your father and then go and do that.
30:37
The second thing that I want to talk about is to pause to evaluate yourself as a father.
30:44
Now this is a rough one. So and I will throw myself before the court here.
30:50
So I've been very surprised at how much fatherhood, how difficult it's been for me,
30:55
not father in general, because yes, it's hard, you know, the sleepless nights and, you know,
30:59
the poopy diapers and, you know, the accidents on the floor, like, yeah, like all that stuff.
31:03
Yeah, we all get it. But I thought I'd be better at being patient. I thought it'd be better at
31:08
helping. I thought it'd be better at directing. And I've already seen some things that I've done
31:13
just in the first two and a half years of James's life in the first, you know, seven or so months
31:17
of squishes life that I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to pay for that one for a long time.
31:23
Like, Oh, my boys saw that. My boys heard that. My boys picked up on that, you know,
31:28
that I scared them with my reaction to this, like all those things that I'm like, Oh, no,
31:33
like I've got so many more years of this, like how much worse could it possibly get.
31:38
So I'm a very pessimistic person. I'm a very judgmental person. And I'm no more harsh in my
31:42
judgment of anybody on the planet than I am of myself. But regardless of who you are and
31:47
your self talk and all that, you know, worldly girly stuff, you should spend a lot of time
31:51
evaluating who you are as a father, because I know the majority of you guys listening to this are
31:54
fathers, because I want you to be able to ask yourself some very tough questions, which is,
31:59
am I a father that is easy to honor? Oh, that's a rough one, right? Because here we have this
32:09
biblical mandate to honor our fathers. For some of you guys out there, that's really,
32:13
really easy. But for a lot of you guys out there, that is one of the hardest things you could
32:17
challenge someone to do is to honor their father. Am I an honorable person? Am I easy to honor as a
32:24
father? Also, am I showing my kids more so what not to do? What not to say when they get older?
32:31
Or am I giving them examples of what they should do what they should say? Am I pointing my kids
32:37
beyond me to the father? Am I able to allow them to bounce their attention and their love
32:46
and their sight and their feelings off of me and onto the Heavenly Father? The one that will be
32:52
there forever and ever, right? Because if things go to plan, dad, you're going to die before they do,
32:58
right? But the Heavenly Father's not going to die. He's going to sustain like throughout
33:06
all of the time. He's, he's constant. It doesn't even make sense. Our brains can't even fully
33:11
understand constant or, or, you know, the, the trueness of infinity, but that's who and what God
33:17
is in his essence, right? So we have to again, ask ourselves as fathers, are we pointing our kids
33:24
to the Heavenly Father? Because to a degree, again, I just dealt with an email from a guy here recently.
33:30
He's like, man, I'm just going to be real honest. I'm a thermometer in my house. I'm not a thermostat.
33:34
Like, I don't set the spiritual temperature of my household. I just kind of respond to what's
33:38
happening. And I think he was expecting me to respond with, Hey, here's 10 books you can read
33:42
and here's like, here's a how to guide on how to be better. It's like, no, dude, just be, be the
33:46
thermostat. Make the decision right now. Don't wait around for somebody to pray for your kids
33:50
over dinner. You do it. Don't wait around for somebody to pray for your kids as you're tucking
33:54
them in. Don't wait around to, for someone else to grab your wife's hands and to, to lead her
33:59
spiritually. Don't, don't wait around for someone else to say, Hey, let's do a family Bible study.
34:03
Like you do that. Is it going to seem fake? Is it going to seem a little vapid? Is it going to seem
34:08
like you don't really know exactly how to do it? Yeah, you're going to do it poorly for a while,
34:12
but you're doing it. So again, I could give a million other examples, but I think you get the point.
34:16
Pause to evaluate yourself as a father. So again, honor your father. Pause to evaluate yourself as
34:23
a father. And then the last one here, forgive your father. Forgive your father.
34:32
As your heavenly father has forgiven you, if you put your trust in Jesus, forgive your father.
34:43
Again, going out over my skis a little bit here for some of you guys,
34:47
but some of you guys have such unbelievably pent up aggression and unforgiveness towards
34:54
your father's. And what you're not realizing is that's not hurting him turning you.
34:59
It is destroying you. It is, it is rotting you away from the inside.
35:05
And for some of you, your father's gone gone. Like he's in the ground. He's worm food.
35:12
Maybe you don't even know where his body lay, but you need to find a way to forgive him
35:18
because it was not fair to you that he was gone. It was not fair to you that he was mentally
35:26
absent. It was not fair to you that he was abusive. It was not fair to you that he didn't show you
35:32
what it meant to be a good husband. It was not fair to you that he did things to you so that he
35:37
could feel better. None of that was fair to you. We have a word for that. It's called sin.
35:42
And as a Bible believing Christian, you know that all of us sin and we all fall short of the glory of
35:50
God, but God is the only one that can absolve our sin debts from us. God is the only hope that we have
35:59
for every sin being as if it never happened for every tear to be as if it was never shed.
36:05
1 John 1 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
36:10
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
36:13
So if you want to understand even a little bit in the most minuscule way possible,
36:22
what it means for your heavenly father to give you a pathway to himself through his son Jesus,
36:27
you need to forgive your father. And guess what? The forgiveness isn't for them as much as it's for
36:33
you because it's not always going to be a lifetime movie where you go to your dad and you set him
36:39
down and you say, dad, I forgive you and you both cry and you hug and you have the best relationship
36:43
ever. Maybe that's your story, but a lot of us live more so in the real world. And so you may do that.
36:49
Your dad may respond very, very negatively. He may fly off the handle. He may lose his mind.
36:54
He may disagree vehemently with your viewpoint on how he raised you or the life that you led.
37:01
But that's okay. You control the controllables. You control what you can control.
37:06
And in that situation, you can control you. You can control you.
37:12
Get yourself to the place and I would urge you to do that with the help of your heavenly father
37:18
and say, help me to be able to forgive my father. What is the negative here?
37:24
Because if you can forgive your father, you'll be able to understand what God did for you.
37:32
And that is the message of the gospel. The gospel isn't about acting right. The gospel isn't about
37:37
going to church on Sundays and sometimes on Wednesdays. The gospel isn't about making your way to
37:43
Easter service. The gospel isn't about helping an old lady across the street. The gospel is the
37:48
good news of the fact that you had no way to pay for your own sin, that you couldn't possibly be
37:53
righteous enough on your own, but that God sacrificed his son at the behest of the Jewish
38:00
andhedrin on a Roman cross where he was killed, put into a tomb and raised three days later.
38:07
And he was resurrected for you. That's the good news. So if you sit there and say,
38:14
I can never be good enough. You're right. If you sit there and say, well, I'm just not enough.
38:19
You're right. If you sit there and say, like, I wish somebody would just love me for me. You don't
38:24
want that. I wish someone would just give me what I deserve. I promise you, you don't want that.
38:31
Because we know from what God says in his scripture that the wages of sin is death.
38:35
That is it. That is the only outcome for the sinner unless they put their trust in Jesus.
38:42
So to all of you out there today that have not made that decision, I implore you to do so.
38:49
Pour yourself out to God, the father, put your trust in the reality of Jesus's resurrection
38:57
as a propitiation for your sin debt. So guys, I appreciate you coming on this journey with me
39:04
as I give an ode to my father and to wrap up to David Glenn Thompson, dad. I love you.
39:10
All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
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