[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the intentional fatherhood podcast where we explore what it means to live on purpose as a father and how legacy starts at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Justin Whitmorely, and I'm Brooke Moser, we'll be your hosts, and we desire to bring biblical hope and practical hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to season three of the intentional fatherhood podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are pumped because we are rolling here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are diving deep.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're into the topic of work, vocation, calling, purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning in your work, balancing your life of family and work, we're going all in on this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you tuned in last time, you're going to have the recap in your mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did a whole season one on the map of tensions and fatherhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we did a whole season two on the sort of story, a time-look at fatherhood of giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we are taking,
[SPEAKER_01]: all the places on the map and we're diving deep this season is on work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're gonna want to keep updated.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do people keep updated?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well there's a couple of ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well first of all we have to note you're getting you're getting stronger at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that better mind than my last direction?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the first one wasn't bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying like noting this back there's been you're noting it says I'm not up to par yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm noting that
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I has wasn't a back pain and compliment.
[SPEAKER_01]: You did a great job.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, I feel like I have my learners permit right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, can I introduce support?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like being tested.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not free to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing at all?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the boss dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I think I've had to do it so many billions of times on our other on other podcasts that is like it just comes natural, but it's natural.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're you're getting there.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, listen, I would give you at least a 93%.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could people maybe, if they approve of how I'm doing like and subscribe this podcast?
[SPEAKER_01]: That would help me to know my instructions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, how you get the word out and let people know about it is by liking, subscribing and leaving a comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: That details actually very important because there's few ways that we can interact with you outside of email, which please email hello at intentionalfatherhood.org.
[SPEAKER_00]: give us feedback that way that's super helpful, but it's one of the ways that we know how this is helping you and even directionally social media is one way leaving comments on different podcast platforms that you listen to, but also emails that whole like Trinity of information in a digital space when we are trying to pour into people digitally, it's just the one way to get some feedback.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very helpful ways to do that and if you like this share it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you how helpful that is word of mouth Oh, just sharing with your friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like this has been helpful and we said this Maybe we meant to say this last time Justin tell me if we did or didn't I can't remember Listen to this as much as you can with your friend group
[SPEAKER_01]: We said it last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to start saying it like a broken record.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so important.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you listen to this, then you hear a sale of time community changes everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your fatherhood needs community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your fatherhood needs friendship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the best ways to do that is to listen to the same things, read the same things, be engaged in the same deep conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's conversations we're going to have in this season, and every season, that you just can't do alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't figure out your calling alone, for example, and we'll dive deep into that today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the last detail before we jump into today is you can also watch all this on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so check it out, go over to YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can watch all this, you know, see the sweet gold chain that Brooke is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm just saying, man, you know, you know, what is John Wesley?
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone said, not John Wesley.
[SPEAKER_00]: a good compliment for six months or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, dude, I'm wearing the shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm feeling pretty tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, you are looking pretty tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm doing a gym.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I've been tried.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw some LPs I'm trying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, I can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: My body's trying to teach my soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my mouth is trying to teach my body that food is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: I name it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish there was a book for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, that's that's called a shout out an unintentional shout out for the book the body teaches a soul actually a very good book But all jokes aside very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the very good very great flows.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to endorse it all though It didn't need no one bought the book because I endorsed it ironically.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know that someone is going to comment Someone I'm a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm someone is going to comment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually I bought the body teaches this whole only because I want
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, let's talk about, we had the whole foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to talk about calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't find your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: You form it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a thesis said again.
[SPEAKER_00]: you do not find your calling, you format.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that is enough to pull you in because that is a truth that has been so helpful for me and I think for many, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we wanna talk about this because this idea of calling, what it is, how to find it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you find it, like we wanna kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: unpack and we also want to help you truly be able to see what calling is what it isn't and then therefore where are you at in your journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure this is going to be a thing but I'm just asking do you want to hear my my word map on this one?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, actually I do your word map is fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm having a fun time word mapping episodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, here's the constellation of ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very helpful time up calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and we go back and forth with our all of our ideas, which I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's like we just put them to the, it keeps getting different and different, but when you do these word maps, it's so helpful to just the broad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, hit them with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: you think they're helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a good compliment.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could remember that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the answer is about sitting over here flexing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Call it on stronger.
[SPEAKER_01]: Calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gifting world needs grind, iterate, talent, your story, do something, free will and Providence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Free will and Providence.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started to get out there in this and I'm going to bring it to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to need to, but that's my short mind map.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, we're going to do this episode while drinking a very tailor-made cup of coffee by Justin Whitmore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Early, when are you going to start your own coffee shop?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have too much to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to know you're drinking my pour over, I'm drinking my error press.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that was right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some people are tuned in to hear how each was made.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you the specs later.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll start a separate Instagram account of what OCD looks like through coffee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see what I'm not called to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not called to coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: But how would I know, bro?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I warm it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I find it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me tell you.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, you have to kill in this series.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to kill the lightning bolt myth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's this myth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't think I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this myth that like you are going to get
[SPEAKER_00]: And here you go, Zing, and now you're calling, and now you're ready to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this can be formed in so many different ways, misunderstanding of how people stories work, what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time, if you are a person, and you come across someone's story that's impacting you,
[SPEAKER_00]: Most likely, social media has changed the game a bit, but even before social media, it was because that person's calling or their life or situation had some sort of focus on it, attention on it that was maybe bigger than what the nine to five job was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you get to see that part of their story, but you don't, it wasn't a lightning bolt, when you saw it was when you saw it, but there was years and decades usually of story that was being formed before that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the same with all of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're all, you're not going to get zapped with a calling as much as you are through your story, which we're going to talk about, your life, through decisions that you make are becoming the type of person, willard, or if we're talking about buccner versus, I think I think it's currently Dallas,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great call back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm all about that call back to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's Del's Willarge.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Del's Willarge, John Mark, come here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So come here, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: He loves eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dallas Willard says, your job is not your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your calling is to become a certain kind of person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that helps frame like you don't just find your calling, you form it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that idea is that
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot of men in less we slow down to think through, pray through, what do I want to do, what I feel made to do, what do I enjoy, what am I good at, all that stuff, we can live someone else's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked to a lot of men, I think most men in many ways are living someone else's life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I mean by that, you said this in our planning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like this is a very intriguing statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I didn't ask you to unpack it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I want to hear you unpack that in real time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: You said the word in real time.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, in real time, what do you actually mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Most men are, that's a bold claim.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most men are living someone else's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless you slow down enough to think through your story, what you were made to do, what you're good at, what you're naturally doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's what is already in your hand to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: many of us will often just take on things without fully asking a handful of questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go, well, what am I supposed to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm supposed to make money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how do you make money?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, business major might be a good idea, because I mean, business is everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, why don't we just do business?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can make four years and a lot of money to business.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get out of business school and you're like, I don't really like business.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, the countless people that I talk to that are like, I have an education, but I didn't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of people in law have done this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's not, it's a very common thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no shade.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's your story, it's like, let me just give you the, the end of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's redeemable.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's, there's redemption here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not slowing down enough to ask a certain level of questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is you're living, when I say you're living someone else's life, what I simply mean is that you are taking on a set of responsibilities, ideals, and different people's values, and you're saying, well, this is what I guess I'm so opposed to do, rather than asking the deeper question, what am I made to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I want to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What could I do in the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are a whole group of people that they have mentors and models and people family, especially parents that help them do that there's a majority of people that never even get into the life or adulthood and have asked those questions many are listening in a career that you're doing because you feel like it's the right responsible thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: but you do not feel called to it, you don't love it, you're, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a little bit counter, not, not pushing against our last episode, but to say that this is also very important to understand that all work is beautiful, but you're also made for something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually hear some tensions here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested in exploring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I think one of the things we're going to try to convince our listeners of is that
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not this magical moment where you, aha, I found out my calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but rather you're calling this form.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more, more process, more choice than you think.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe, maybe more you led in some ways rather than like fate led.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're also, I'm noting another tension, you're noting a lot of ideas about whether what you're doing is really an imitation of someone else's life and maybe that's why you feel so and satisfied or.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trapped or frustrated now, both of these are a little bit intention with two ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, what we drew out last time and that is that your work is fundamentally outward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we're going to do I hope, I hope not a contradiction, but a nice compliment and that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: the right kind of work in many ways should light you up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it, you shouldn't always feel like, oh, I don't want to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I doing this?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's outward service, but it has also got, I think God made me to be a lawyer and a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, I wish you were a better writer, but that's just my personal feedback.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Completely appropriate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to defend myself either because I'm completely joking you so you're an incredible writer and I love you, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to move right on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, we're just going to poke a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do love doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're sure that you really made to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is in word.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in word satisfaction in my outward call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, but here's the tough thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a lot of other things I could have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there's there are real alternate worlds where I'm an architect, there's real alternate worlds where I'm, I don't, I could make up to my image.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where I'm still a missionary, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where I still play the drums a lot, maybe I'm more musician than writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can imagine myself in those worlds being like, I need to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is this tension of being like, there is, there is a way that God made you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but there's also a lot of formation here on like what is your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's God working?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing to tailor yourself to the call?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe and so we're talking with forming it or refining it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it for us or is it for the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is it for us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the answer is yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I actually think when we talk about inward, which I absolutely agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about one element, the last episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about one element of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't had a chance to jump it in here, the first episode will make a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll help give you a lot of context of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just to simply say that there is also an inward story that you're stewarding.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were born into a family in Richmond, Virginia.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a particular place in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all of that that plays into the parts of the things that you could do in our made to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we're not God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we like the answer is there's so many things this side of heaven that are like yes, and or yes, and amen or or just yes when it's like multiple questions And so what we're talking about is tension and the thing that Jesus did better than anybody and with all he lived intention that's the most consistent thing he did It's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're just gonna name the tension like you were made to do stuff
[SPEAKER_00]: I think God put that in you and you're also supposed to find it and figure it out because what you don't want to do is you don't want to succeed at the wrong life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I mean is like you could have success, but hate every part of what you do and be so dissatisfied at your core because you're chasing the wrong thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where you see a lot of people make a lot of money but be miserable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they made money, they did their thing, but there's no like satisfaction in their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you start doing what you're made to do, money becomes less important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was just saying for me, like, getting to do the work I get to do, I'm grateful that I don't have to think about doing another job, but I don't actually think about like, how much money could I make to do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm not like, I'm not overrevealing any of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: under or overrevealing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not a money motivated person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's not a badge of honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's literally just like that's not what motivates me the most because I've been in situations where I've been in work, where I just needed money, but I hated my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is so miserable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so to do work that at the end of the day is helping other people is super life-giving to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've learned that of all the things that could do, I want to be in some sort of work that helps others, or that I can use what I've learned to help other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really satisfying to who I am and my makeup.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people are like, I love making money, but I'm great at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about money all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing wrong with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I would say, you need to figure out if that's your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to succeed at the wrong life simply just can mean that you are doing all the right things for the wrong reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're, you're like, I did all the things to be a family man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you wake up one day and you're like, I've hated the last 30 years of my life or the 20 years of my life because I was responsible, but I never actually took time and space to think about, well, God, what are you making me to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you asked me to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then taking the steps to form it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe let's talk about what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is this sparking for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you want to go?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have a couple of things with two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, this is in part my story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I often say that I felt called to be a father, felt called to be a writer, felt called to be a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two, there's been some resources that have really helped me with both with these questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll share briefly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, please do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I, I told this story and brief in season two in the getting our luck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in season two, we've fleshed out getting your life together, giving your life away, giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a path of manhood, path of fatherhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the stage of getting my life together, I had a really important moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a summer, I think after my,
[SPEAKER_01]: So after more year of college or as we say at UVA, my second year of college, where I asked the Lord to call me to be a father, a writer and to go to China.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were three things on my mind and this was a really interesting tension point for me of calling because two things
[SPEAKER_01]: the truth of the quote I had never heard by Dallas Willard that you're calling is not a profession yet but it's to to be a certain type of person yeah right I had read the story about Jesus walking on the water and just been utterly struck I think it was the day before maybe the morning before this moment about how Peter
[SPEAKER_01]: through his seasons with Jesus had become the kind of person that when he saw someone out in the stormy waves that might be Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, if that's you, call me yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just I just want to listen to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just listen, think about this for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see something God is doing or someplace Jesus might be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you say, if God is there, I want to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a kind of person.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a lightning bolt moment of like you're made to be a carpenter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the idea of God is forming you to the kind of person that recognizes that your fundamental call is to be like him, be where he is, do what he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I think about my
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that I had stopped being that sort of like punk kid version of myself that was I want to do whatever I want to do Like I don't know that I want to do what God calls me to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to knee jerk reaction say God Wherever you are I want to be there and I remember what I prayed that that day was Lord if you're in these things I would like to write I would like to become a father.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would like to go to China like would you call me there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the days and months after that really it was days and weeks were a series of affirmations through conversations with friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: That yes, these were things that one could healthily pursue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like nobody was saying like, look, don't, don't go to China.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a horrible decision for you right now because, you know, something just happened to your family or this is your response.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, people were like, yeah, something good decision for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was both this idea of like I'm becoming the kind of person who wants to be like Jesus, these are the opportunities before me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I sense the desire in myself to do such things and my friends confirmed this desire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could have been totally different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most fundamental part was being where Jesus is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then there was just an important process of saying,
[SPEAKER_01]: do you pray about what you want to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you ought to.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to change for the kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pray about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to do this or that pray about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk to friends about what you want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: You ought to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, do you have multiple ideas and iterations of what you might do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you better have more than one.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot more
[SPEAKER_01]: that like I didn't become the writer until a decade later actually um I didn't become a father until seven years later I became a missionary in China one year later it takes a long time yeah and so there's just there's a lot more process there's a lot more formation there's a lot more community they are but nonetheless I still look at that moment and I do feel like it was one of those moments where Jesus looked at me and said follow me here yes and um
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope that's helpful to people because there's a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: When people when we say I'm called to this there's a lot going on underneath that word and what you don't want to do is interpret it in a pagan lens of like fate has this for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might miss it.
[SPEAKER_01]: or you might find it, you're on your own.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a quote, fate has this for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a quote, Carl you and tell you, make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, see that again?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was gay keeping this one from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, I'm just like black people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I have this mind, I'm taking it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tell you, make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are all you for the wind, dude?
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's kind of what you're talking about of not understanding your story, not understanding your story, not understanding your story, not understanding your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've been talking about some comments, so let me just make it all pretty succinct right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does all this mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: If Willard's saying it's not about your job, it's about becoming this kind of person, making you the unconscious, conscious, or you'll call it fate, living someone else's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we're saying is there, everyone's called to something very specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's to become more like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's to give you all that number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: To become more like Him to learn, to implement those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your calling is formed from this place of intimacy and knowing who God is and becoming the type of person that does good and listens and obeys and serves because you love God, not because you have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a myriad of things that you would already mentioned that you could do that would be really fruitful.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that first part, your real calling of being a true disciple of Jesus is in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So could you have done all that other stuff and would it feel like the same maybe maybe the answer is yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is what you this is what made sense to you could that be the case for me to absolutely I think I could be doing lots of other things I have skills that could be very much overlapping with different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is where opportunity, life, story, all of it has overlapped to this point to that this is where I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's, if I trace back my story and how it intersects with this idea of like, our first calling is knowing Jesus, let me just maybe give a little, little tiny story that can just put a, for instance on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if my calling right now, if you were to look at my life and your calling is to lead intentional to lead this ministry, that's all about spiritual formation in the family that you focus on marriage, you focus on fatherhood, motherhood and parenting.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's my calling, it's my work too.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did all of that come about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first I was wanting to be formed in the way of Jesus, so I wanted to do something that would further his kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a passion to start like, God truly made his heart's desires, my heart's desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to pray a prayer, start saying, God, would you change my heart's desires from being so focused and what I want in my deal and would you help break my heart for what breaks your heart?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you give me a passion to see the
[SPEAKER_00]: those kinds of prayers begin to give you a heart that's soft and open to say okay here's what God might want that might be different than you and then secondly it's my story my story is I grew up primarily in Portland had a really you know interesting family situation interestingly enough I shared a lot of my story on the open spaces podcast with Jeff and Jordan Johnson check that out
[SPEAKER_00]: And shared a ton of stuff there that I haven't shared in any of our other podcasts, which I might share here soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just tons of stuff about how what my family was actually like, and the different nuances and things I was growing up as struggling with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And getting to be 17 years old, I work a shift at Starbucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I meet my now wife, but I met her dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was in ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of wanted to be in ministry, but I was playing music professionally at the time I was just working shifts at Starbucks and I meet this girl and then I meet her dad and then along the way when I'm out of music and done with music, because something like I don't want to do this for my whole life, they were starting a church and like maybe you should be the junior high, like youth
[SPEAKER_00]: to pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, that sounds terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was signing autographs last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm like in a room with 30 sweaty kids and you trust me?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like, yes, so weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the best thing for my ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just giving like a for instance to say, I started to really want to walk with Jesus and my first calling to become the kind of person.
[SPEAKER_00]: that love she's us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then part of it was my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like all the sudden, I'm in ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, and then interestingly enough, why am I doing an intention?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, my, my in laws actually started intentional as a kind of like their retirement plan to say, like, we're going to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to travel.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to do a couple things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they didn't want it to become anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, basically this thing where they went and spoke and they wrote and it wasn't, it wasn't like a what it is right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm putting
[SPEAKER_00]: Could I have done other stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but this is also part of my story the family I'm married into the skills I have and that's just to hopefully help you see the linear Like you start following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gives you direction you can do different stuff But my story and understanding it helps me understand and know like where not only where I've been but where I'm going and what I might want to do with my life
[SPEAKER_01]: make sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the, one of the books that has really, really helped me in this is actually written from a design perspective, not a Christian worldview.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called, I have it on my lap here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes, it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called designing your life, the overnight and day of Evans.
[SPEAKER_01]: They run, I think still, at least 10 years ago, they did a program at Stanford to help people design their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Figure out what to do with their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of basically figuring out evocation, but there's a lot more to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I read it, I just remember thinking, oh, this is so helpful because,
[SPEAKER_01]: it's from a design perspective, but if I were to express what I think is the Christian perspective of finding your calling, we would come to all the same principles.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get to it from a different place, but I think it's catchy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's some of the things they say.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say you should be like a designer and thinking about your life and that designers have curiosity.
[SPEAKER_01]: They see problems that other people don't see and they innovate and iterate to find a ton of
[SPEAKER_01]: Right before one of them catches and so like I think if I'm if I'm not mistaken I think one of them helped design the mouse for Macintosh So I've heard I've not read this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard yeah, so like figure out where to put it or how it works Or maybe that's just a story they tell in the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember but it's this this idea of like First you have to notice a problem Which is like we got to figure out to get the cursor to move on the screen or hold on we're trying to sell a laptop
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't want to plug in a corded mouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people will live their whole life with a corded mouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And everything gets a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: But other people will like,
[SPEAKER_01]: the world could be better than this, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just stopped there, pause number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what Beakner was talking about in the quote we shared last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, where your passion meets the world's need?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to be able to find quote unquote you're calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's call it what we, it should be.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to be able to form your calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless you have a curiosity that is aligned with God's view of the world, so that you start seeing the problems that he sees.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, like the poor shouldn't be poor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, or like why are the hungry hungry here or why is injustice being done here or why is this industry?
[SPEAKER_01]: So broke it for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the first things I noticed about lawyering was why are we also mentally unhealthy?
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know a lot of people still now accept that this is how lawyering is you know and one of the things that became true of me and my first or second year is I said
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we have to do it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like I don't think we need to live with the corded mouse of depression in every lawyer's life or the corded mouse of anxieties, every lawyer's working.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that my partners and I have tried to talk a lot about at a vote of legal is, are we mentally healthy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are our associates mentally healthy?
[SPEAKER_01]: What kinds of ways would we do work differently in order to be a place of mental health?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just one example.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the idea that you Christian should see Problems in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like we were talking about on the last episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Run your vocation through the framework here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're asking What is fallen about the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: What what?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I see that's broken that shouldn't be the way it is?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I see that's inefficient?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I see that's that's dumb stupid unjust?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you have to do the hard work of asking, am I possibly of help here?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think global poverty is an enormous problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have not yet seen in my story the kind of skill set to be able to meaningfully impact that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Lauren, I've recently started partnering a lot with Hope International, like a ministry that's in microfinance and money and how to use it education.
[SPEAKER_01]: They help third world countries build gospel centered cultures of growing
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, we're not sponsored by this.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's sponsored by, but I was just starting to give to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love for you to give to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like probably not my calling to fix it, but it is going to be my calling to give towards it to help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people think, yes, their main, if they're in business again in the for profit world, they're like, well, my my calls to make money to send others to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, well, part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not your main calling, like you're main calling is to be whatever business menu are, also you should do other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is how we address like we're meant to do more than the one thing that we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that's part of that curiosity, that design perspective of finding solutions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I just say one more thing from this book that is I think so helpful is they talk about an iterative approach, which is true for any business problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: and also really true for finding slash forming your calling, which is you try a lot of stuff before you're like, oh yes, I'm not cut out to be a missionary in China.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm cut out to be a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh wait, I'm not cut out to be a lawyer alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm cut out to be a lawyer and a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it keeps her funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm cut out to be a lawyer and a writer who with a huge focus on fatherhood and friendship Like you know you you iterate and find and now I feel like at the age of 40.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, I'm I thought you were like, we're like older and you look great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great in the beard.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're both the same age to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was what you just said about I just want to say the refining.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you got to start somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you start, you have to start designing and that's one stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are, I mean, we talked about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't heal everything, but you can name anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you name stuff, a lot of the psychological pressure stress anxiety can begin to dissipate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't go away fully, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe for some of it does, but it dissipates when you name like, I'm in the designing phase.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, you're not thinking I'm in the refining stage, which is, me getting better at this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're learning what is the thing you're actually good at?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you had to take that first step to be like, I'm going to write a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to try to write a book called The Common Rule.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just see what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was stage one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was first step.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're like, oh, well, I liked doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people received from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people are interested in letting me do that again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I do that again?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you did it and then you became a lawyer, but then you realized I want to change some of this and the process of then saying, okay, well, actually I wonder if it would be better to have my own firm versus, you know, just being a part of one, just to say that people can easily look at where Justin Whitmill early, all three, J. W. Where he's at now and go.
[SPEAKER_00]: pain and my greatest desires and passions, where does line up?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's just to say, like name that, you might be somewhere in that process or in between, but it's gonna keep getting better.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more you continue to have this approach of like, I made to follow Jesus and love and serve my family and discover through that, what I'm passionate about and what I'm good at and what is good and calling again, like we're talking about, calling is not just something that goes,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's God did design you for certain things, but you form it by walking with him in relationship and understanding what you are made to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just to be so fair and honest with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a long, much longer than I would prefer process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as much as you can expect that you won't be so frustrated if you're not at the end of that or whatever, you're not at the figuring it out fully staged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay to be in process, but begin the process,
[SPEAKER_01]: I like, yeah, I think it was on the last episode, you put it, you can't be somewhere other than you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be where you are not.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't be where you're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really important for people to hear because, yeah, you might be listening into this and particularly if you hear my story, well, Justin's found his calling, he's a lawyer and an author, but I have these things I want to do, and it's not working out for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you zoom in a little bit, I knew from the age of probably 20 that I wanted to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: Always wanted to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was an English major.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I was a missionary in China, I was writing poetry, short fiction articles on the side.
[SPEAKER_01]: And guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: By and large, no one cared.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have really read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have absolutely no one wanted to pay me for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it wasn't, but but I would broke every Monday night.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would Lorna had an agreement Monday night.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was allowed to just leave the house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would bike to either t-shop or a pub in China.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we didn't have a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would buy
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember the enormous tension of being like, I'm away from my wife.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not preparing for like our ministry work tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: This feels indulgent.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just doing what I want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has no discernible purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, you know, making anybody money or advancing my career.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was even thinking about applying the law school at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just, and by the way, this continued for a decade before you ever actually, a decade of might actually even more from 20 to 33.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time I sat down to write, I did so with a sense of guilt that I was like, I'm not really contributing to anybody's bottom line here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just doing the thing I want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I will also say honestly, that was combated by a more redemptive feeling that was, I love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm not who I am unless I write.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think God made me to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite quotes is Cecil De Lewis.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think said, I write not to be
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so here's what I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, here's what I'm trying to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are quote unquote meant to do something, if you're quote unquote, you know, called to do something, if they learn, made you to do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: then it's probably the kind of thing that you will do regardless of whether it's working out to produce you and income.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think that's a side.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can't not write songs, if you can't not paint paintings, if you can't not iterate on your kids homeschool curriculum, like I feel like I made a right curriculum, you know, whatever it is that you're like, this is my passion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it be then.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may live its whole life there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: If God made you to do it, He didn't necessarily make you to make money by it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just made you say, I love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means that you're not who you are unless you do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I at the age of saying 34 for the first time my life had a publisher say, I will pay you to write a book on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was stunned.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would, I would definitely call it like a break in my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it was my quote-unquote big break.
[SPEAKER_01]: But under, so people might look at them and that people might look at that and they say, well, how did you find the book contract?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you find the agent?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, that's the wrong question to ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: The better question to ask is, why did you write for 13 years without it?
[SPEAKER_01]: You became the type of person that was a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I became a writer, even though I was embarrassed to call myself that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but what I'm pointing out, it was a formed thing through prayer, through practice, through discerning, through a need in the world and your passions.
[SPEAKER_00]: That story, I think, again, just encompasses what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it wasn't just boom, lightning, just it, we're author.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was it started with curiosity started with sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: It started with I don't know is this ever going to be anything is this indulgent and it makes me think of how many things that we do that are actually there's a lot of things that you are supposed to do or that may be God placed in you to do that isn't actually for many or anyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's okay to love stuff that brings you closer to Jesus and just helps you appreciate Him more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not all of it is supposed to be efficient, financially lucrative, time, time-sensitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is actually for you to remember like you are a human on this planet and if you enjoy it,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's God gets so much enjoyment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm watching his kids enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about when you give your kids some Yes, they enjoy it for no reason other than they just like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that same pleasure that you get Even if you don't like the thing or care about the thing, but watching somebody else enjoy something that they just with no Judgment they just love it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is and it's cool when they can line up and sometimes they do But there's nothing wrong if it doesn't
[SPEAKER_00]: If you paint for the rest of your life, no one sees those paintings, but they bring you closer to God, do it every single day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to just zoom in on that a little bit because we talked about last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dividing line in good and, you know, bad work is not whether it makes money or whether you raise money.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like for profit or nonprofit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that this really applies here the dividing line and whether work is worth doing for you or whether you're called to it is not whether it produces income.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the question of whether it's your main vocation or not, particularly as a father.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a question of whether you should be like, hey, I love that you're good at bookbinding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like your handmade journals are amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to support your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and or I love the idea that you're a poet I love writing poetry that is probably not going to support your family so what you're not what you're not saying in that place is like This isn't calling you should form you're not necessarily saying that you're just saying this was probably not the only thing that you're going to do and so you need to yeah start to practice a life that is content with providing for your family through this job.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you bring in a lot of meaning through this hobby or something and we'll we intend to do a whole episode on side projects hobbies and passions But for this I'm just trying to emphasize to people it's a delight when that thing that you love Produces significant income
[SPEAKER_01]: That is not what has to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think for for fathers, you need to get real comfortable with this idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's not producing a sustainable income for your family, then you need to iterate on other colleagues.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you need to, you say it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be fine to keep that thing as a hobby.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like,
[SPEAKER_01]: your responsibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a responsibility and our opening salvo in this episode was that your calls have become more like God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is a provider.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has made you as a father to be a provider.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has made you to take care of your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't a calling he's calling YouTube that doesn't involve that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm not saying you might not go through hard times or difficulties, you know, Hudson Taylor raising support is a big like idol of mine in China.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he put his, he's just traded through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a lot of our actually a lot of our ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: leaders are like great heroes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you would want to replicate their family life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like some of them put their I could too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I completely agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I and I know there's people in my life where I want to encourage them like hey.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're spending too much time in what is your passion and not enough time in what should be your role as your provider.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, get that order right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, put one at the center of gravity and then let the other orbit it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that we can talk about a little here, but we are going to absolutely and we're teasing out all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to get into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've known money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're actually not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was actually going to connect it to identity and work because this is something we have to talk about because we have the other end of the spectrum.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying the other end of the spectrum is you love what you do so much that you find your identity in it and it becomes another idol even if it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trust me, I'm in the ministry world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see it all the time and the worst part is we can over-spiritualize something and we can literally use spiritual excuses for overwork.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can use spiritual excuses for abandonment of our family.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can use
[SPEAKER_00]: all of these spirit, it's dangerous, as all I'm saying, but we have to talk about that too when your identity and your work overlap to a point where you are it's too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the other end of this, which we're talking about one end, we'll get to that end too, because that is something that you have to be so cautious of because men and it's just to say this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a fatherhood podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ladies, listen in please and I know you're doing I'm so glad you're doing
[SPEAKER_00]: But to the men listening, you were literally made to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, part of that is that a lot of your time, and why we want to talk about this, is because this isn't the case with every single marriage or situation, but majority of the time men are giving the majority of their day times to a vocation award.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a huge percentage-wise, a huge part of your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: is just as important as getting your faith in Jesus, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting your marriage, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting your fatherhood, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is up there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we started with this because if you think about walking with Jesus, your wife and your kids, what is the thing that you do more outside of that, or that is always kind of living in that, you know, again, we don't want to pit one against the other, but is having to always be balanced and thought through.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is work.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tension points with me right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, so here's all
[SPEAKER_00]: the work, the responsibility, the calling that I have, how do I give that what it needs and not yet steal from the family, but both, and there's not a right or wrong, but I mean, it is that constant thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those on a weekly basis, 90% of my focus goes on to how can I care for my wife and my kids and she's us and how can I fulfill the work and calling that I have?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got to get this
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you're getting excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see you getting answered.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to give, um, I don't feel like we can start to land the plane of this episode without giving some real bimbo backing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just going to say yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was I love this go and so when you think about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Finding your calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the reason we phrase it like that is often because we have smuggled in some either secular or pagan ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually mean this literally in this context.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like anti-biblical, un-biblical narratives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: That we need to undo.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so let me just read you two verses and then talk about how the doctrines of providence and free will.
[SPEAKER_01]: actually are completely freeing to Christians to iterate and practice callings and that the opposites of those are
[SPEAKER_01]: shackling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're the secular and the pagan narratives.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just real quick, Ephesians two, eight to nine for it is by grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have been saved through faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not from yourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the gift of God, not by work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the no one can boast adding 10 here.
[SPEAKER_01]: For we are God's handy work created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: One more that's very, very helpful on this, Romans 8, 28, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called, called, according to, here it is, His purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just really quick, two really dangerous narratives out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm reading the Odyssey right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, listening to it in preparation for the movie that's coming out this summer, because it's going to be made with Matt Damon's.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's Christopher Nolan.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be like, oh, it looks incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I'm reading the Odyssey getting ready for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the center of the Odyssey and a lot of pagan or like thought and antiquity was the idea that you are at the whim of the gods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Odysseus is pulled back and forth from Ireland to Ireland trial to trial because the gods just frankly aren't sure whether they want him to get home or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many of us live with this pagan idea of fate It's written in the stars.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something above me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an impersonal force that may or may not love me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's dictating everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if it's going to work out for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually one in the same with the materialist narrative and truly secular thought, which is
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're atoms.
[SPEAKER_01]: They will do what they will do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our consciousness is a product of only biological forces.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no, there's no.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, this so seriously, there's just no meaningful room for free will or freedom of choice or autonomy in a world that says the big banks started everything evolution carried it forth and here we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it is ridiculous thing mechanical.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we take these two things and we're very few people call
[SPEAKER_01]: very few people call themselves a true secular materialists, but these narratives exist in the ether.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they make us think, I'm not really steering the ship.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm lucky if I find it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just got to keep my eyes out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's this other narrative that's completely different, but it's equally modern.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the idea of, you know, you are your choices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, go get yours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, Moana.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just do, you know, go see if you can make something of yourself and it's manifested.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Disney narratives and they're not all, you know, they're more nuanced in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, they're two ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is complete fate.
[SPEAKER_01]: one is complete choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is so credible about the Christian inheritance of the our world view, because it is reality, is that we paradoxically see God's providence and our free will as working together and meant to be, if you want to go deep, I've read Boethius on this, this last summer, credible book on how God's
[SPEAKER_01]: still fits with your freedom of choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in a lot of, grew up in a lot of reform circles, I've thought a lot about Calvinism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even even even in Calvinistic thought, there's this idea of, you know, God working truly through free choices.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not unburdened in responsibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mentioned those two things because just whether you're going to classical Christianity or whether you're going to Calvinism, this is not an inter-Christian debate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying broadly Christian
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, like your father, you need to get off your you know what and make some choices and take some risks and say God's providence is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does it unfold?
[SPEAKER_01]: Even Calvin would say through your choices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why in my word map, I'm literally I've just written do something that's the major point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But do it in the knowledge that God has prepared
[SPEAKER_01]: who works for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good works.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Christ Jesus that you've been created for.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's working all things together for good.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will work through your mistakes, he'll work through your bad choices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazingly, unfortunately, he will also work through your inaction and your paralysis and your frozenness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he will, you can take great confidence that God is writing a good story of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you must take great responsibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are the one to act it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you got to go, do some stuff with the calm that comes on a Christian, knowing God is watching over all that he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, I am literally just sitting in processing what you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thankful for again, that just tension and perspective, because I think it is so what I also think we have to do and we're doing, you know, without overstating it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or we're just having to also undo, we've had to do this individually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, and even again, we're doing it together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're, you have to unlearn before you can relearn.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been a lot of these like unintentional.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's been intentional, but in some maybe, but unintentional patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the right, what cultural things that we, even in Christianity that we have like absorbed and that we've pulled on to or held on to or the church is grabbed and unintentionally taught and it's like when you, I love when you actually read and study the scriptures and you come across these things that are like that isn't actually what it's meant at all but why is that the way that I embody that felt it been explained that it was explained to me that we are whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, just freeing, I think this really freeing what you're saying, and I think there's so many that we could, you know, continue in when it comes to this idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to just to land the plane for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really important that we name, you just give a scripture, something that's really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Read Exodus 2 and 3 when you get a chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how Moses's story actually shapes his calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: so many of your stories are going to shape your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't have time to read obviously through two chapters, but to just say like note that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why I say that is because it's really important for you to remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we talked about this in season one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So go back and listen like how your story I think was even episode two or three I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not as accurate as Justin on that memory there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but your story and understanding it and knowing what family you're from and it's absolutely going to shape where you're at and who you are and what's going on and it doesn't even have to be bad but the more that you understand what it is, the more clear it will be what you are supposed to step into.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're like listening to this, you're like, it seems like there's, it's yes and or yes to both questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because it's a tangent point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't just one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to sum it, we are first calling is to become more like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could know that if you are following the way of Jesus, you are fulfilling your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to work and when it comes to these different ways of making money and what you feel satisfied with that's a process it takes time and you form it Yeah, you form your calling in that sense more than you Then it's just zapped to you and that one's negotiable the former is not yes, you know, if you're if you think hey my calling is to do this thing and it contradicts the word It's like that one simple
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, well, this last week, what we had said as just a practice is write down three things that gave you life in three things you've seen in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say actually you need to do that again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you haven't done it, do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why I'm saying that in the practice that Justin gave as well, of writing your story is of writing just basically the story of your work and those four things again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why we need to do that again is simply to just really be clear about what it is that you are to do and then the one last little maybe I would say maybe as an added practice and just if you have anything on those I got one practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, I thought you did but just the one practice to add to that after you kind of name those three things.
[SPEAKER_00]: in your life and in the world, just even identifying a repeated pattern in your life and ask where did this start?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a for instance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people have families, like one of my dear friends that have some families where maybe they moved a lot and vocationally what they saw was a family that like moved all the time every year because they couldn't find their vocation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore all of a sudden you're like, oh I'm like moving every year every two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's on example to say, like, where is your story, your family, like, where does that pattern, like, show up?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the pattern?
[SPEAKER_00]: Write it out and just begin to again identify.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is this showing up in your life and story?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my practice for you all would be to take the exercise that Brooke started on last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: You write out three things that that you feel passionate about, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Three things to give you life and three needs in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three things to give you life and three things that are needed in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you put those in a circle, yes, you could put that the first one is the things you enjoy things that are passionate about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then put in the next circle, I think the problems that need to be solved in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's call that the need circle.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have the I enjoy circle, the need circle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then draw one more circle, and we're going to call this from the talent circle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are you good at?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are people affirm?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where these circles overlap is typically a great place to try to iterate and find your vocation, because where what you enjoy overlaps with what you're actually good at overlaps with what the world needs, you can spend most of your life there, what we call a vocation that someone will pay you for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because because you like it, you can keep doing it, it turns out you're good enough to get paid for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, people will pay you for things that the world doesn't necessarily need, that's a nuance.
[SPEAKER_01]: So being able to be paid for it is not the only sign that the world needs it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a pretty good sign.
[SPEAKER_01]: If no one's willing to pay you for this, it might be a sign that the world doesn't need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ask your friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to be true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just think that's a really helpful way to get guys unstuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some guys are living their whole life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I'm passionate about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the world needs it, but like turns out, man, you're not, you're not good at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can do it as a hobby, but it's not your way you're going to provide for your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or they're sitting there being like, man, I'm so good at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm, I pity these people, not really.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're so good at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're so good at making money.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're like, I don't love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, well,
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I had your problem, but those, you know, those people need to find a way to bring meaning into their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: They need to find like maybe they're either leaving their vacation to do something meaningful or maybe they're just bringing in a hobby.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think plotting out this venn diagram, what do you enjoy?
[SPEAKER_01]: What does the world need and what will they pay you for?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you talented at?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is a great way to start to figure out how to balance your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're lucky, that's not to use the word luck, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're blessed, you'll live right in the center and what you love will make you money and you're good at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But most people will have a scattershot diagram where they do a couple different things and they find their balance that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, can I just say the pre that you'd be blessed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not at the end?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not why not.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, I don't know what you just said, but it's just real talk before we're done today.
[SPEAKER_00]: the only reason I'm doing the thing that like the reason I'm in the middle of that venn diagram and I really do feel like I am personally for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You do feel I fortunately feel like I'm I found the middle too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do I and I feel blessed for a lot of years I didn't and what drew me to want that was the desperation that I wasn't in that space and I did one of the only things I could do which was pray a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: asking God for that, asking God for clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I printed prayer a long time ago that God, by the time I'm 32 and I don't know why it was that age.
[SPEAKER_00]: would I be stepping into the snow?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was 33.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I would I be starting or in the thing that I'm really made to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I prayed that for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons I did was because I was like, I just know that what I'm doing right now isn't that.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I didn't have like all this clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just knew that what I was doing, there was mass.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're listening to this, you know what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a whole there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this isn't the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just knew it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then let me just tell you just so you know, so you start praying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then God asks you to obey.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just as we close as we said the practices.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you start praying this way, that God would bless you, that you would be in the middle of that Venn diagram, that you would be like having all those things converge.
[SPEAKER_00]: there is no doubt going to be a moment in that journey where God asks you to obey i.e.
[SPEAKER_00]: trust him with stuff and in ways that feel uncomfortable where it's going to literally be like, well, if you want this, now some of it might be an easy lift, but you might be literally in a different direction than God's going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, if you're really asking for that, he might actually invite you into some steps of obedience that feel super uncomfortable
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can't hear this is so funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Phil and I came to Elizabeth and I said you should come to an intentional.
[SPEAKER_00]: In every way in my entire being I did not want to do it and it was because I didn't I was about to go plant a church in a Seattle or New York either of those places.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were on track to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to plant the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be the guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to be in the family ministry space.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hated that as an idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, no way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing in me wanted to do it even at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they were inviting me into was a part time job with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: My in-laws who I'd already worked with before, which is not easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I don't want to do that, and then my buddy that lives in a smaller town and his smaller church goes, hey, why don't you come and help me half time?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like literally working at a church half time and a non-profit that I have no idea if it's going anywhere with my in-laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm all of a sudden feeling like I'm supposed to say yes to this very unglamorous thing where I move away from any sort of city context or whatever where I would feel like I would know or be known.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the sudden, I'm in this obscure place, working at a small church in a small nonprofit, not having any clue of why I said, yes, but feeling in every part of my life I was supposed to say yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm saying that to say, it is, we was like, just a six to seven year process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm like seven years into that probably five year process and full to go like, okay, I think I can see this and I think I made to do this and I think I'm supposed to do this and I think God might be behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's in recent years, friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm just saying it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it can look like and it's not anything that I would have expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I note two things on that please?
[SPEAKER_01]: We close this is just striking me.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Venn diagram that I was trying to sketch out earlier, you know, you're what your talent at what the world needs and what you enjoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Along our theme of iterating and forming your calling more than finding it, you know, keep in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talent can be practiced.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can get better at something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just saying, well, skills probably a better word than even talent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because talent is more...
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not so much discovered as it is developed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is almost everything's a skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then need, what does the world need?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's part of this is sales.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, are you able to go sell yourself this year?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get better at saying, hey, actually, I'm good at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody pay me for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The harder, I think people realize that, like you can develop talents, you can convince the world that they need a new X, advertisers, they're great at it, marketing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes we think we're stuck with the what do we enjoy?
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is why your story just sparks this in my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enjoyment circle is actually more about formation than like the whims of your desires.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we're created.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're born into a culture that assumes like you're born a certain way and you like a certain set of things and you're just this way and It's just not true like we're very formable multiple people.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get formed by certain things and we can be formed in certain ways It's not an absolute truth, but but it's a pretty elastic one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I love what you said you were like this this very unglamorous thing like I don't think I want to do that
[SPEAKER_01]: And as it turns out in your story, two things are happening one, God was shaping what you actually wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your what you enjoyed was more elastic than you thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think big term.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then this is huge, but it's more of a seed for next episode, not this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you got over yourself of like you got you got over like, oh, this is not plant.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had an idol in your head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sexy thing you wanted to do is the thing that was going to make you the person that you're and look.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is just it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a teaser for next episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: So many of you fathers have an idea of yourself that you are desperate to achieve.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's an idol.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pretty selfish, like I've always just thought I would do X and in your stuck and your your your whole life is like shackled to this image.
[SPEAKER_01]: We literally call that idolatry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, maybe the Lord wants to bring you to it, but he's going to refine you before you get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to tell you down before he builds you up or maybe it's just truly an idol.
[SPEAKER_01]: But lots of times and I just heard this in your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: you don't really get to forming your calling until you do the, the ballsy thing of repenting and being like, all right, fine, Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I don't want to go to Nineveh, but I find.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was exactly that and killing the pride and do not underestimate how much our ego is playing to every decision we make even when we, they are, quote, unquote, godly things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that you couldn't be more right because there was no way that I was,
[SPEAKER_00]: I would ever be able to obey God with what he might ask me to do now if I didn't obey that first step and that first one was a hard one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, yeah, are you going to lay down what you think could happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to let it die, the prayer would link wishmen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and the prayer of Linguishment is a wonderful prayer I've said it before in other episodes, but as a note, Richard Foster rock, it's an ancient form of prayer, but it's that idea that you literally visually in your head dig a grave and you throw all of your dreams and your hopes on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in your head, you're bearing it, you're literally putting all the dirt over your hopes and dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this is the prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gentlemen, pray this prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, resurrect is that what is from you and whatever needs to stay dead, let it stay dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was, you know, here's what's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: A year before that invitation came.
[SPEAKER_00]: Constantly out of just complete frustration that I knew I wasn't where I was supposed to be Every night I'd be on prayer walks around our block praying the prayer of a language meant and I finally got to a place where I was like fine I'm just I'm bearing my being a lead pastor doing this thing doing all stuff that I was supposed to start throwing it in the grave And I really I mean at least a couple times I know I've really meant it where I was like resurrect whatever is from you But whatever needs to stay dead
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, keep it dead and and the thing I'll say about this and anyone that's done this knows Certain things came back that I would have totally expected like yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that was there like I knew that was yeah, you know And things there's other things that stayed in the ground that I would have expected come back to life But they're still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still dead and they're not coming back.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my in my estimation
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great practice to add to our listeners.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never done that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to pray that and also just think this is intentionally or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a fantastic setup for the next episode because if we've convinced you an episode one that you're made to work, like you got has a big, big picture, big theological view of vocation that he wants you to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then too, if you know, okay, now you're going to form your calling in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the question arises, how do you be ambitious enough to do it while being humble enough to do it without pride and idolatry?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you have ambition without idols to huge things that kill men, kill fathers?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we have ambition without having idols?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the next episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: See you next week.