How to Stand for Truth

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilkie here joined just by Joe Wilkie. This week, Will Harab is out on a work assignment. So Lord willing, he'll be back with us again next week. But we are picking up where we left off last week, actually. We had the episode Get a Backbone. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend that you do. But it's not that you can't listen to this one until you listen to that one. So they do go hand in hand, but this one will work as a standalone as well. The premise of the last one was having moral fortitude, having courage, having the ability that, as Lewis said that we quoted to begin that episode, that courage is not just one of the virtues, it's basically what's behind every virtue. It's every virtue's testing point is only as good as the courage behind it. And so that was the thrust of last week's episode. This week we want to get very practical in your marriage, in your church membership, in your friendships, in your parenting. There's a lot of places you're gonna need to do it, but without dropping the hammer on people, without going crazy, without anything like that. So that's where we're going with this week's episode. Joe, do you have any opening, opening thoughts for us? [00:01:19] Speaker A: No. I mean, again, this is going off of Hegseth speech, but we're just seeing a lot more in the culture of people that are willing to stand up and say, say things and to get it out. And I think the next place we're going to start seeing this major resurgence is in the church. We're seeing it in certain quadrants of Christendom, I suppose. But I do think that it's not just for the church. It's in the home. And we're going to start seeing kind of more of a resurgence of these things. And we're just trying to say, like, man, we want to get on that train as much as possible. I think it's a biblical train to get on of let's bring back the backbone. And so, yeah, that's all I'd say is as we look to kind of get into it because we want to get into how to have one. I don't know that we actually got into that last time. We got into if you don't have one, we got into the both sidesism and the C.S. lewis Fire Department, and we got into hexa speech and kind of broke it down. But we wanted to get into how to have one. And then also where you need one, because I think there's a. Yeah, it's easy. It's one of those cliche things. We'll just have a backbone. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, two thumbs up. [00:02:15] Speaker B: That's great. [00:02:17] Speaker A: What does that look like practically? What does that look like? For my life, I have this situation going on with my wife or with my kids or in my church or, you know, we want to be able to parse out some of those things and dig into some more of the specifics, which does get into the nitty gritty and is not always an easy thing to do. But I think it's important for us to try to determine what that looks like. And so for this one, I'm just going to say right off the bat, if you are in the deep end or if you're in our Patreon Focus plus, make sure to get your comments in because we want to know, we want your questions. We want, if you have specific instances of what that might look like or questions on that, make sure to get them in this week. And we'll have a great deep end for that one. And if you have not joined Focus, make sure to join it so you can get your comments in. But those are just my opening remarks. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah, focuspress.org/ for that one. But the other thing I want to say as we get started is the importance of this. And we laid that out a lot last week. But the other side of it is you have a better life when you learn to stand up for things. That if you're constantly betraying yourself, you're constantly swallowing your convictions, you're constantly going along to get along and putting up with stuff that doesn't need to be put up with, that you're tolerating things that shouldn't be tolerated in your own life from yourself, from the people around you, from your spouse, from your church, whatever. Not only are there the practical consequences of, oh, you let that slide now the bad thing happens. It eats away at yourself. You become smaller, you become. Because you've got the cognitive dissonance in your head of like, I'm not living the values I think I should. That takes a toll on you. And you either you like, double down on being dishonest with yourself, which is even worse, or you just kind of have to like do this head in the sand, like, pretend that you're living your value. Like it just almost like divorced from reality. And I've met people like this where it's like you can't get them to engage with reality, you can't have discussions about facts and what's really going on in the situation, because if they did that, they would have to rethink all kinds of things. Well, that is from years and years and years of tolerating things that shouldn't be, of not standing up when they need to. And so there's a real misery to it. There's a real deep social consequence and personal consequence and. And your own ability to respect yourself, I guess, is a way to put it. What's at stake every time you don't stand up for something? [00:04:45] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because as you said, it starts with a little decision here or there, and everything is built on a house of cards, kind of a false premise. Or maybe dominoes might be the way to think about it, if you knock down one domino. Because we often think, man, why can't you just accept this? Like, this is not a difficult reality? Why can't you just stand up in this area? Because if they did it here, they'd have to do it here, have to do it here, have to do it here. So it goes all the way back. It's the same thing I work with in therapy of, like, people that don't express emotion and they think they're stronger for not expressing any emotion. One of the reasons they don't want to express emotion is they know if they express it here, they're going to have to feel the emotion of when their parent died and when something happened as a kid. And like all of that emotion, I often use the illustration of a dam where it's that water behind the dam. When it breaks, man, you're flooded. What you think about the same thing from these decisions that have to be made is like, man, if I stand up to my wife in this situation or if I stand up in this particular situation, that means I have to rethink this entire paradigm of my life and go back and 50 dominoes have to fall. It's a big task and it's a big ask for us to come in and to say, you need to do this. But that's one of the best things that when we talk about having a backbone, sometimes it is breaking the paradigm of your life and realizing kind of hitting rock bottom. Man, I have made my entire life built on a house of cards because I haven't ever really stood up in the way that I needed to. It's a harsh reality, but this is exactly how you get to what you're talking about. Of they're not living in reality. They have to curate Their own reality, because reality is too harsh. And it would bring them to rock bottom to realize, man, I have made a mess of things going back maybe sometimes 30 years, 40 years, whatever it is. But that's a strong. That's right there. An example of what it means to have a backbone is have the backbone to go, I've been wrong, and I have been hiding from these things for a very long time. And. And then hitting that rock bottom and moving on from there. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah. The brain has an amazing ability to say, oh, this is what I wanted to be. These are my values when they're not. And deep down, even if the conscious isn't seeing it, the subconscious knows. But that's part of the practical we're talking about here, is some of the things we're going to talk about, whether it's as a parent, as a spouse, as a church member, as a church leader, or whatever else it might hit you. I've put up with this for way too long. But you might be looking at it like, I've got to push this boulder up this enormous hill because of all of the times I've caved in and haven't had the right backbone. And. And, you know, I've had situations like this where it's kind of like, I should have taken that stand four years ago. But it's that old saying about, like, the best time to do it was then. The second best time to do it is now. But now it's going to be way harder than it ever would have been the first time. And so you've really got to steel yourself. But it's that quote about choose your hard. Yeah, it's going to be really hard. You're going to have to fight some battles in your marriage. If you've slacked on these things for a long time as the husband or the wife, it's not going to be, all right, well, I draw one line and take one stand for the right thing, and everything's going to be great. No, it's going to be really, really hard. Getting people off of one set of train tracks and onto another is insanely hard. It takes all kinds. The reactions you're going to set off aren't going to happen for a day or two. It's going to be a good long haul together to get through it, but you're better off for it. You're coming to a place you can live with. So that's what we wanted to talk about this week, and we're going to get again specifics on all of those different sides of this. But just to recap where we ended last week was the idea that it's very easy to pretend to have a backbone. It's very easy to say you're taking really hard stands to, but not be specific. To not actually have it cost you anything. To not really push yourself and put yourself out there and deal with the consequences. Saying very generic things, well, we got to do better. We've got a. I remember, you know, we've talked before about struggling with porn addictions and lust and all that. And as a teenager, I remember, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna confess it to somebody. And I said, you know, I just need prayers for, you know, for. For doing better, following God. I need prayers for sin. Yeah. I knew deep down I wasn't actually getting the courage up to do the right thing, but I kind of did. So I kind of like you're giving yourself credit, but, you know, you know that you're not. And so something like that is an example of that, or getting up and preaching on. We talked about the Charlie Kirk thing. Both sides. Both sides. Come on, man. Stand up for what just happened and be a respecter of reality. And so that's where we ended last week. We'll just kind of use that to get into this one. But before we get into the points here, did you have any thoughts to add to that? [00:09:20] Speaker A: I was just thinking about the preacher that gets up and talks about the roles in the home. Right. The right roles in the home. Spends like 30 seconds talking about a woman submitting to her husband and spends 10 minutes talking about a guy not being overbearing and cherishing his wife and treating her well. You know, I said it to both sides, like, yeah, one is way safer than the other, because, you know what's going to happen if you kind of take an equal side or an equal position on that, where you're both talking five minutes apiece on what that actually looks like, or, you know, as you said, it's easy to talk about the sin of adultery and cheating on your spouse. And, yeah, I preached the word. I was real hard on that. But the fornication, where you got the young couple sleeping together or you got the guys looking at porn, or you've got the emotional affairs of the women taking place or whatever. We're not really going to talk about those because, you know, we're going to. We're going to take a strong stand on adultery. Nobody is going to tell you. Wow. Boy, brother, that was. That was great. I've never heard it presented like that, like. Yeah, that's pretty safe to say. It's the other ones where you're hitting people where they are. And that's part of that backbone is you got to be relevant. You've got to hit people where they are and step on the toes where is needed, rather than. I mean, you're not even close to the toes. But I'm preaching the hard things or saying the hard things. Or in the home where you're taking stands against who knows what. You know, we're not going to watch Wolf of Wall street on our home. Okay, that's fantastic. But you're allowing horrible TV shows, you're allowing these, you know, terrible music to be listened, whatever it may be. You may take some really hard stands in your home, but that's not what is needed right now. Your kids are on Snapchat 20 hours a day and you're too busy talking about how you're not allowing to watch Wolf of Wall Street. You've got to meet the people where they are, and that's where the backbone is going to be seen. But that kind of gets us into Jack, this idea of how do we have a backbone? Maybe you're a dad, listen, maybe you're an elder, listen. We also had a comment in our deep end that we're going to get to on this one about for women. What does that look like for women? But I think, first things first, the moral compass has to be grounded in the word of God in order to have a backbone. Because otherwise I feel like you are. You're floating. You know, it's whatever feels good in the moment or it's whatever maybe gets you liked in the moment or whatever. Even if you're harsh and you have the backbone, what is it grounded in? What are you using for the. The, you know, the backbone itself. And I think it has to be grounded in the word of God. You had James 4:17 on the outline. To him who knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it, It's a sin. How do you know what the right thing to do is? How do you know what to stand up for? There's got to be that, you know, that standard. [00:11:48] Speaker B: And these are just to kind of give the heading for this section of what we're talking about is the principles. These are going to apply to all of the specifics we're going to get to. But these are principles you have to take into them is. Yeah, having a moral compass and that it's grounded in the word that you understand what The Bible would have you do taking a stand because you see that like you'll see people that have the truth but don't take a hard stand for it, but you see other people that might take a stand on their own personal opinion, on their, their whatever they want, or they're just misinformed and they're taking a courageous stand for something that they maybe shouldn't. There's not really anything gained from that. Or it's not the right thing to. It's not the right hill to die on, to use that phrase. And so knowing the word, knowing what is the right thing to do in this situation, we need people like that. That's what leadership is, is having a strong moral compass. And I brought up that book last week, a failure of nerve. And his whole point is whatever your organization is, whatever your leadership structure is, if the leaders have good self differentiation where they can stand out and everyone can look at them and say that's their values, that's where they're leading us, that's what they stand for. Everything else falls into place, that's what you have to do. That's really important. And so being that person that knows the word, knows, hey, here's what God would have me do. So yeah, that's point number one is having your moral compass and really developing it and praying for God's leadership, praying help me know where to stand up. Help me know what the right thing is. The second one we're going to add is fear of God and not man. That is so many times why there is a lack of backbone is what are people going to think? What are the numbers going to do? You know, people are going to leave the church. Fear of your wife, fear of your kids, fear of your husband, fear of my friends that they're going to get mad at me if I stand up for truth or whatever the case may be. Jesus told us in Matthew 10:28, don't be afraid of man. All they can do is kill you. And it's like, well, that's pretty bad. Yeah, but they can't destroy your soul. Yeah, I have the ultimate. [00:13:47] Speaker A: Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who's able to destroy both soul and body in hell. You got to have the priorities right. And you got to understand this is. Everybody gets sick of me talking about attachment. I'm sure, but this is the importance of us getting younger, childhood. Right. And building attachment. There's no guarantee that I'm doing it right either. But this is something I work on and I think about quite a bit. So much of the fear of man comes from a younger. Especially when a guy lacks a father. You know, a young kid doesn't have a dad is what you do is you end up most of the time becoming a people pleaser because you're trying to please mom. You're. You're trying to, you know, sail away. You're trying to be a good boy. You're trying to do all of those things. Or maybe you spin way out of control. You become the ultra rebellious one, and you come to Christ later and you're scared of that part of you. You're scared of being the rebellion, the rebellious one, the rebel. You're scared of being that jerk who's very overbearing. And so you really try to push those parts aside. The problem is we also throw the baby out with the bathwater. And in the, you know, being a good, good guy, being a good person, that's great. But the Mr. Nice Guy who doesn't really step on anybody's toes because he's. Everybody else is going to think that's also coming from this. Like, do I know myself? Am I okay with myself? Well, no, I'm not. I'm only okay with myself when you're okay with me. And the problem with that, and this is why the fear of God and the love of God have to be at the core, is I know where I stand with God. Why were you at sinners? Christ died for us. So at my core, I know at my very worst, God loves me, which causes me to then love myself in an appropriate way. Cause me to love myself and to take myself seriously and to say, yes, I am. You know, I'm righteous in the eyes of God, as David might say. And that helps inform the rest of the way we show up with relationships. Unfortunately, if you think of those as circles going out, unfortunately, we're often the other way around. We're outside in. If I can get the strangers to like me, acquaintances to like me, my friends, my best friends, my family, my spouse, if I can get everybody else to like me, that will tell me I'm worthy, that will tell me I'm a good person. So therefore, we spend our entire time trying to navigate how to please everybody around us rather than going, what is it that pleases God? He's at the core. And what is it that I can live with myself? I can look myself in the mirror and see I like that guy. You know, I can look him in the mirror and not be Ashamed and not wonder what everybody else is going to think of me. That's where you see the fear, man. Because most guys are going to listen or most women are going to listen to this and go, well, I don't fear man. A litmus test is like, how much are you a people pleaser? Because if you're a people pleaser, you inherently are looking to please men so as to get them to like you. Because you don't feel worthy of love without it. You got to ground yourself in love of God. You got to ground yourself in the fear of God and recognize man. I want to get that right with him if everybody else hates me. But I'm in a right relationship with God and with myself, I'm golden. I'm okay. I'm okay. Because the right people will appreciate it. The right people will respect where you're coming from. They'll respect your values and see that you're in alignment with God and you may lose a lot of people. That's not the point. The point is you and God are solid. At one point, David's on the run. He's got like nobody, man. He's basically all alone. It's him and God out there. I Elijah is the same, but what does God say? No, there's actually like 7,000 people out there. You're just not aware of them. Sometimes we feel like Elijah is the guy who is fearing God, who is standing up and it's like, man, where is everybody? They're out there. The right people will find you and the right people will respect what you're doing. But that's a big part of having a backbone is knowing yourself and grounding yourself in. God's got me, he loves me. And I fear God more than I fear man, which is that that acts 5, 29 on top of that. [00:17:12] Speaker B: It's not just the love, it's the consequences. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Right? [00:17:15] Speaker B: Preaching a certain sermon might get you fired. Taking a certain stand might make your spouse really mad at you. You don't know what they're going to do. It might. Saying certain things in the workplace might get you in real hot water, whatever the case may be, taking those stands. And so we try and control results and manage it and say things. Certainly that's what leads preachers to being non specific as well. I don't want people to leave and the numbers drop down and then I get fired or whatever the case may be with that. That's God's job. And so when you're fearing man and not God, God's going to Take care of me. I've lost money for things I've said. Focus Press has lost donations for things that we said that we thought were true and people didn't like it. Okay? God keeps the food on the table. God takes care of us. And so you see that with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You see that with Daniel. You see that so many times in the scriptures is, let God handle the results. I'll handle the rest. So, number one, moral compass, ground in the word. Number two, fear of God and not man. Number three, a love for others. You're speaking the truth in love. You're doing it out of love. I love what Paul says in Galatians where he asks, am I your enemy because I told you the truth? You're not an enemy. You're loving people enough to say these difficult things. Not bashing them over the head with it, but just saying, I love you. And you need to know this. It always has to come from a place of love. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Think about it from a parenting perspective. We talk about the gentle parenting. Obviously, we go off on that quite a bit. Even the snowplow parenting, where you're pushing every obstacle out of the way. And we think that that's love. But what is. What does God tell us? Or what does the Hebrews writer. Yes. God, through the Hebrews writer tell us? In Hebrews 13, God disciplines us because he loves us, because he cares for us, because he wants us. I think maybe that's Hebrews 12. I may be off at chapter sorry, but that is love. When you're feeling that discipline, you think about the same thing is you're going out, you're preaching hard things, you're saying hard things. What is the loving thing to do? We have warped love in our mind where love is always connected to a warm and fuzzy emotion. It's always connected to, wow, it feels good. You know, my kid is not feeling the warm and fuzzy when I spank him for doing something wrong. I'm just going to safe to say I don't think he's feeling that warm and fuzzy love. Is that the most loving thing I can do at the time? Yes. Now, do we hug after? Do I explain things after? No doubt. So we can then come in. That's part of the love process. But inherent in love is a little bit of friction when Nathan comes to David and calls him out, tells the whole story about the lamb. And David's like, man, that's, you know, we got to kill that guy. And Nathan goes, you are the man. Was that a loving thing to do? You think David felt good in that moment? [00:19:46] Speaker B: No. [00:19:46] Speaker A: David breaks down, right? He breaks down in that moment, but that's the most loving thing to do, so. Well, hold on. That's not warm and fuzzy. That may come on the back end, but the consequences are still in place. That goes to your last point. Like the fear, the consequences are still in place that he loses his son and he's weeping to God. Right. And crying out. But that's all part of the loving process and bringing David around to where he needed to be. So we have to almost uncouple is the word, right? This idea in our mind that love always equals warm and fuzzy love, sometimes is the hard thing that then leads to that later. It's kind of as you talk about choosing your hard, like, we're loving, but you're not going to feel that until a little bit later. If I call the LGBTQ person out and say, man, that's not right. That's not good, and it's not right in the eyes of God, they may feel very, very hurt. But the love on the back end, if they come out of that is they're going to be incredibly, incredibly grateful for that. And we're putting planting that seed in their mind. That's the most loving thing we can do. So we have to reframe in our minds this concept of love. It's not love to let my son run down the street because he wants to. The love is absolutely not. And if he tries to do it again, he's going to get spanked. Why? Because I want to keep him safe. Ultimately, it's coming from a place of love. [00:20:58] Speaker B: Hey, folks, I know a lot of you are looking for more Christian content for your daily walk. Of course, we often tell you about Focus plus and the daily devos and other content that goes up there. Of course, we have this podcast, Think Deeper. We have the Jim podcast Godly Young man by Joe and Will. But I want to also tell you about the Church Reset podcast feed. Every article I put out on my website jackwilkie Code on the Church Reset podcast feed, along with audio from all of the videos I post to the Focus Press YouTube video like cultural Breakdown, Masculinity Monday and Thursdays through the text. And so if you're looking for something to listen to while you're doing chores around the house or on the go, check out the Church Reset podcast feed. Subscribe to get all the latest content as it comes out four or five days a week. Yeah, one of the most Loving things a fellow Christian ever did for me was invite me over to his house for coffee and tell me he disagreed with me lovingly and explained through it and talk through it and all that. And he ended up being right. And I've come around to his point of view, but he didn't storm off. He didn't leave the church. He didn't. He just said, well, I see it this way. It was great. And so love for others. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Number three. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Number four, prepare to be hated and slandered. And we'll just cover this briefly because it's similar to the fear of God and not man. That doesn't mean that God's going to protect you from what man does to you. He'll carry you through it. But you look at Moses undermined regularly in the wilderness. You look at Paul. I mean, in the entire letter of Second Corinthians, is Paul saying, yeah, no, actually, I am an apostle. You kind of do need to listen to what I'm saying. And these other guys that are telling you not to listen to me, look at the fruits of their work. And Paul having to defend his own work and be like, hey, I'm the good guy. I'm the one who's done all this work among you. What have these guys done? And you can tell his frustration with it. Like, I shouldn't have to be bragging on my own work. You guys should know better. But his authority getting undermined. Elijah, Ahab, calling him the troubler of Israel and things like that. And this was just a promise Jesus made to us in Matthew 5. Or just said, blessed are you when you're persecuted. And it's not just persecuted, but when people slander you, when they speak evil against you falsely, when they make lies up about you. Been there, done that. You know, that is the cost of doing business. When you're telling the truth, it might be your own spouse very, very angry with you. It might be your kids. And when you start taking stands that, you know, you should have stomping their feet, not real happy about it. It might be, you know, the friend that you might lose a friend. These things happen. Prepare for that. Again, do it in love. Don't drive people away by being rude. Be ready for somebody to get mad in that way. [00:23:29] Speaker A: There's a. I used to be libertarian. More libertarian than you. You know, you were libertarian. And it's this concept of, like, everybody's gonna kind of do their own thing. What you realize is there are a lot of sheep. There are a lot of people that aren't going to stand up that aren't going to have that fortitude. I think that's what God's called us to be. And I think major, like, God has called women to submit and women to follow. They're going to be more of the sheep most of the time. I think that's just biblical. The guys are called to be able to lead. And so much of leadership is exactly this. Like, if everything went great all the time, for every leader, everybody'd want to lead, right? Because you get all the accolades and you get all the power and response, like all of the greatness. But with the power, with the responsibility, comes some of the negatives, comes the slander, comes being hated, comes me. You know, you're having a lot of, like. I'm sure that every leader in time in history has had moments where people absolutely hated him. People didn't want to follow. People were frustrated at their leadership. People were slandering them, saying all sorts of that goes from Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan to, you know, to everybody all over the world. It's just part of, as you said, doing business. And God's called us men to have that fortitude. I think to be able to do it doesn't mean women can't. It just means, by and large, there's a ton of sheep in the world. And I think God calls men to not just be that, but to be shepherds for their family. Every man, if he's got people underneath him, whether that be his wife or his kids or, you know, as an elder or even as a government official in those roles, you're called to be a shepherd. So the husband may not be shepherding his entire church. He's not an elder. He's certainly not in government, maybe. And so he's not going to shepherd people in that way, but he is called to shepherd his wife or he is called to shepherd his kids. And so it takes this fortitude to recognize, yes, the wolves will come, yes, the lions and the bears and all of those things, the things that David put, you know, killed. Exactly. All of those things that we see actually taking place in the Old Testament and David killing them. We're called to be able to defend against those, which means, yeah, there's going to be a lot of negative that happens when we're leading and when we're having this backbone par for the course. We got to accept it. And that's the importance of being grounded in the fear of God and the importance of being grounded in the love of God, as you said. So These are just a few things just to list them off again, in terms of how to have a backbone, I think you have to have your moral compass grounded in the word. You got to fear God, not man. You got to have this love for others, and you got to be prepared to be hated and to be slandered and to know that's okay. And here's another trick. Being hated by the right person. That sounds bad, but sometimes the person who hates you tells you all you need to know if you're hated by the right person. If I'm hated by, you know, the abortionists, probably on the right side of history. I'm probably doing what I'm supposed to do because the right people hate me, you got to take that into consideration as well. Now, if my family and, you know, my church family's turning against me, all of this stuff, and my family is telling me, whoa, that's way wrong. Got to have the humility. But we got to understand that just because we're hated doesn't mean we're doing something wrong. So that kind of wraps up in terms of how to have them. Jack, I want you to get. Unless you have other thoughts. I wanted to. [00:26:24] Speaker B: I was just going to add. I wrote a bulletin article. My Bible 101 substack. You guys can check that out if you need bulletin articles for your church. But it was on how to be hated the right way. There's a right way and a wrong way to be hated. Just being hated is not like, oh, I must be doing something right. But Joe's right there. You know, there's certain people that if you say certain things in the right way, they're gonna hate you. And that's a good sign that you're, you know, that you're over the target, so to speak. But. So having thrown that in there, let's talk about the practical situations in which you're gonna need a backbone. First of all, let's start with the church. And with all of these. It's gonna. It's not gonna be the same for everyone. Church leaders need to have one in a certain way. Church members need to have one in a certain way. And so we'll start with the leadership. And whether you're a preacher, whether you're an elder, those are different roles, but they're going to have to take stands. You know, the preacher might be bold proclamation of the truth from the pulpit elders. It might be standing behind him when he boldly proclaims the truth. It might be church discipline. It might be when people come to you throwing a fit and wanting their way, saying no. When people say, we're out the door if you don't. Saying, you don't get to throw your weight around in the church like that. This is not your church. It's Christ's church. We're gonna do it his way. That's all of those principles we just said of love for people and fearing God and all that. That's why you're there. I think that's at the heart of this. One of the biggest things we miss is why are the church leaders there? Why elders? Why preachers? Because somebody has to, and somebody's got to. The buck has to stop with them. They've got to hold the line. And when in Timothy and Titus, I've mentioned this a bunch of times because I think it's really important. Paul writes to them and uses this word, entrusted. Like you've been given something very valuable. It's been placed in your hand to protect it, to hang onto it. You know, let's say a briefcase with $100,000 in it, you've been entrusted with that. You got to make sure nobody comes and takes that away. Nobody comes in and, like, steals it or you lose it or anything like that. It's a big deal. And so for church leaders, it's that question of what would God have me do? Not what are the people like? Not which way is the wind blowing, not which. Any of those things. What would God have me do? You have to ask that question about every single example. And if your Bible's not open and if you're not on your knees in prayer about just about every decision you made, everything you're going to teach, everything you're going to say, you're not doing it right. Right. [00:28:46] Speaker A: So much of church leadership is being able to navigate interpersonal conflict. You know, having the backbone from the pulpit is good, but it's also. It's the moments after where somebody's really upset that you got to have the most backbone. Because that's where, man, I preached it. I said something really difficult. And then they're threatening to leave, as you said, and then they want to talk with the elders. It is those moments. And this is why I think there's such a list in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1 for the elders to have specifically is because these are really difficult things. Navigating conflict and having the backbone in these moments is really difficult. He's got to prove he can do with his wife who's under control. He's got to prove he can do it with his kids, who are faithful kids. Right. That he can get them across the line and get them to salvation. He's got to prove that he can have other people, the hospitable, have him in the home and that he's not pugnacious, he's not a jerk. And how he's handling these things. All of this, if you read that list through the lens of somebody who is going to have to handle the wolves and who's going to have to. To have tough conversations and have the backbone, the whole thing makes a lot of sense as to why God has called them to such a standard and the deacons to a similar standard. Maybe not quite as much, but to a similar standard. Because, yes, there's going to be struggles, meaning the backbone is going to be most necessary for the people that are called to it. And I love your point, Jack. I'd love to ask the average church member, why did God establish church structure with preachers and elders and deacons and why we talked about preachers and where they fit in their evangelist, whatever you want to call them. But having that as part of the church structure, why? It's not to maintain the building. It's not to make sure he's having a good time. It's not just to grow numerically. It's a spiritual growth. And within that means, yeah, there's going to be some friction. Nobody grows without friction. You cannot grow muscles without tearing the muscles a little bit. And you're really sore after the gym. And that's the best thing you can do is do that and then recover from it. You're going to have to have those moments in your church. And church leaders are the ones that can really lead that charge. Not pugnaciously, not in a poor way, but yes, with a backbone. And once again, this is why I think we'll get to the home here in a second. That's why I think the home is a part of the qualifications is can you do it at home? Do you have a back home with your. Yeah, do it with your wife and kids because you're gonna have a tough time showing up to church. And so many preachers is why PKs are a thing. Right? So many preachers don't really have their kids on board. And it's really, really difficult to then have a backbone with little Miss so and so. Who's ticked when you haven't ever stood up to your wife? So I think the church has been served by a lot of guys who are, yes, scared of their wives. Who are scared of the conflict, who are scared of taking people off because they're going to lose their job. And so they're operating out of a place of fear rather than a place of boldness, because the boldness may get there. So the backbone in so many of these situations with the preacher, that's why we rage against some of these things, is the system itself is incentivized to keep the preacher subservient and to keep the preacher kind of milquetoast. We're just not going to say these things because if the elders don't stand up to your point, if they're not standing up with him, that guy could be out of a job by Monday depending on what he says and how people take it. So, yeah, we've incentivized this go along to get along mentality. Don't step on any toes. Rather than was the brother right? Did he say biblical things from the pulpit? If he did, man, we stand behind him 1000%. That's the backbone right now that's most necessary with church leadership, in my opinion, that now you switch it around, not just church leadership. I'm curious to get your thoughts on where this might show up for church members. For me, we talked about this in the last one. It's having the backbone to hear these things. It's having the backbone to go, is this biblical? I may not like it. That may have really stepped on my toes. I really don't. Man, I wish he hadn't preached it. But on the other hand, did he say anything that I find to be unbiblical? We have to have the backbone, moral compass ground in the word of God. [00:32:24] Speaker B: Right. [00:32:24] Speaker A: Like we said. But we got to have the backbone sometimes to hear it and to have our toes stepped on and know that that's okay before I run off to the elders and say to fire him or he can't preach that message again or never let that guy in the pulpit or any of those things. Was it biblical. And if I have no, no way of proving that it was, I probably need to sit down and shut up. [00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And with the we're in such an insubordinate, independent culture and we elect our leaders, and if I don't like you, I'll vote you out and get a different one. This is a real temptation for people to undermine their elders when, as you say, have a backbone to hear the truth, the right. But even if there's a time where they need to be confronted, there is a right way and a wrong way to do that, and Paul is very serious about this in First Timothy 5, where he says, don't, don't even entertain an accusation unless you've got two or three witnesses. Somebody came and said, well, did you hear brother so and so? No. If he's an elder, if you trusted him enough to make him an elder, and he says in that same section, don't lay your hands on anyone too hastily. Like, don't just make anybody an elder and not a novice is one of the qualifications. Like you said, all those long qualifications of like, this guy should get there because he's respected by all and can be trusted. Therefore, if one person comes up against them, his word versus their word, it's not good enough. Like, his word outranks that. We don't break that way. We do not give them that kind of benefit of the doubt, that kind of, hey, you've earned this. No, this is one of my, like most things that makes me most sick about the. What I've seen in the church traveling around and people I've interacted with. There is zero respect. There's zero. Like, man, he earned that title, he earned that office, and that is a big deal. And that list of qualifications is really long. And from people who will never measure up to that in their lives, be like, well, my vote's as good as his. No, it's not. Absolutely not. And so you've got to have that reverence and respect for the office and for the man that has that office. But that doesn't mean you can't stand up to him. That doesn't mean there's not a time and a place to say, I disagree with that. There's not a time and a place to. As I said, the brother did for me at one point, pull your preacher aside and be like, hey, here's why I think you're wrong. You need to do that with respect. You need to do that with honor. You need to do that in a way that's not. You're not treating them as. There's that sense in which, yes, we're all equal and that we're all souls that Jesus died for and all that, but as far as in the hierarchy of the church, no, we're not equals and so have the respect of that. But you can still, with love and respect, go to them and say, how did you get to that decision? Why are we going that direction as a church? Why are you bringing this in? Why are you changing that? And I don't like that. And there's a time and a place to leave a church for sure. But the I'm going to take my ball and go home because they didn't schedule my favorite event kind of thing that stuff is. I think God's going to have a really big problem with that. And I think Christians are way too casual about that kind of disrespect. So have the backbone. But it's not a backbone to throw a fit. That's not what having a backbone is. [00:35:22] Speaker A: No, I think that's key. Let me ask you this, though. Do you think that our dumbing down of the qualifications to some degree has contributed to that problem of not respecting church? Because that's what goes through my mind is like, wow, we kind of fudge on it. He doesn't actually have. He's got two. Two out of four or two out of five faithful kids or one out of three, and. Well, he hasn't had anybody over in his house in like two decades. But that's kind of one of those lesser qualifications. Like, if you think about a guy actually hits every qualification on that list. Yeah, that guy is absolutely worthy of respect. And everybody knows. Above reproach being one of that first things, right? He is absolutely above reproach, and everybody in this congregation knows it. Unfortunately, I do see travel around a lot. I see a lot of. Lot of things. This is not to be. Because again, I don't want to be, as Will might say, casting aspersions on all of the elders. Because the exact same point, I hear that, and you start cringing like, whoa, you don't speak ill of the elders, you know, no matter what. On the other hand, I do look around and you see guys that I don't think are qualified. I just don't. You know, you. You consider the entire list. You go, man, how did this guy get chosen as elder? Well, he's been here for a long time. Kind of punch his ticket. He's a nice guy, you know, he's got most of his kids faithful, whatever it may be. I think that has contributed to the crisis we're seeing in the church of people not respecting that position as much as they should. But to your point, I do think it is really important for members to start thinking of their leaders in this way. The same. We talked about government. The same thing with the government, which is you don't have to agree with everything that they do, but you do have to respect them as being put in the position by God. That's a very, very serious thing. And that will trickle down to the other aspects of life as well. But you're right, man. We don't get this right in the church very often. [00:37:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, throwing a fit is not having a backbone, but it's something to navigate very delicately for sure. All right, moving on from the church, let's look at the home, starting with the marriage relationship. We got a lot of bad examples on this in the Bible. You've got Solomon, of course, being led astray by his wives. He didn't a. He wasn't supposed to multiply wives, but even once, he did have all those wives. Honey, no, that idol's not coming in this house. Didn't have the backbone. He just wanted to keep all of them happy, and they led him astray. You think about Ahab and Jezebel and like, the. Like that they amplified. They made each other worse in so many ways of. Well, honey, you want that vineyard? I'll go kill the guy for you. Well, honey, you want. You know, you want Elijah dead. All right, I'll send some people after, like, really bad stuff. Neither one of them standing up for truth or doing the right thing. Samson, Delilah, on the other hand. Yeah, Samson and Delilah. There's. There's no shortage of those kinds of things. But you do see Moses and Zipporah, when Moses is heading back to Egypt and he hadn't circumcised his son, and God's got a real problem with that Zipporah, his wife steps in and stands up to Moses. So you have some positive examples of that. And so, I mean, obviously you can go back to Adam and Eve, the original bad example on those things. But there's the husband side, there's the wife side. And we did get the comment on Focus plus last week that we wanted to roll into this, where she asked the question, how do you encourage women teachers, the church, to get rid of the idea that a woman's meek and quiet spirit means no backbone? [00:38:31] Speaker A: This is. [00:38:31] Speaker B: We'll start with the women's side of it. Submission is really important. A quiet and gentle spirit is really important. That does not mean being a doormat. And so people only there's that false dichotomy of, like, she's just misses, you know, outspoken versus Mrs. Doormat. Getting that right where it's not. It walks that fine line between those things is a challenge, but it's really important that we do it. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Yeah. The doormat, I think, is going to come. Both of those come from, like, I don't know. I think they're. They're both come from a wounded position. The doormat is very much What I was talking about earlier, the Mr. Nice Guy that just kind of lays down and takes it all the time. I think the, like, Deborah might be a really good example of, sure, Bayrak is intended to lead. She pushes Bayrak to lead. But there is that level of like, man, you got to lead. You got to get out there and do this. And so she pushes Bayrak to do what he should be doing. And there is that backbone, not the meek and quiet. In terms of. Well, I guess I shouldn't say anything like, no, I feel called in this moment. Yes, she's a prophetess, so there's difference there. But still feel called in this moment to say, hey, let's, you know, let's push. On the other hand, Jack, this is where this is such a difficult, difficult thing to get into. First Peter 3 talks about winning the husband over by the quiet and submissive spirit. And so it feels to me, I'm curious to get your thoughts on that dichotomy, because not that obviously, the Bible is not doing this. You know, it's not conflicting with one another. Well, Deborah doesn't meet First Peter 3. That undermines everything. But, you know, so I don't think that they're against one another, but it's a difficult line to walk for that reason. I think if you can get the quiet and submissive right, and you truly understand where the quiet submission. It's kind of like the idea of having a Ferrari under the hood that you drive the speed limit. And we talk about this for men, but I also think for women, having the Ferrari, like, absolutely. She could go out there and rip a head off. But, man, she's. Hey, she's under control. She's in submission. She is not. It's not the. Well, you know, kind of. We talk about the Prius, like, couldn't do it if she tried. No, she does have this fire in her to go do amazing things. And when channeled appropriately, it's great with the kids. It's great in so many ways. It's Proverbs 31. But she's in submission. She's under control. The same way that a man with his anger. It's under control. It's where it's supposed to be. It doesn't mean he never gets angry. It means it's under control. The guy who, when we're talking about a backbone, the guy who couldn't have a backbone to save his life, but thinks he's holier because he doesn't stand up and, you know, he's not mean to People like you couldn't be if you tried. We need people that absolutely could be. That's what Jordan Peterson gets into is, you know, you want the, the monster type of thing that is under control. It's where it's supposed to be. And I feel the same about a woman that. Not that she's got, she's got some inside feminist streak, but she knows, man, she got this fire to get things done and she can, she can submit to her husband, but she can also push back in some ways and go, man, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? I think any great guy that you see does have a great help meet. That's why they're help me. They're on the back end. Go, man, have you thought about this? What do you think about that? For an elder to have a wife, not who runs the eldership, but he goes, honey, what do you think about this suggestion? I'm seeing this problem in the church. We really need to do something about this. Can you please present this to the guys? I think that's more than appropriate for her to have a pulse on the situation and be willing to stand up in that moment as well, rather than being completely checked out. So I don't know. Those are kind of my thoughts. But getting back to my question for you. How do you see the marriage between a first Peter 3 quiet and submissive and then a Deborah standing up? What are your thoughts on it? [00:41:50] Speaker B: I don't think Deborah, because it wasn't a marriage. That is a little bit different. [00:41:53] Speaker A: That's true. [00:41:54] Speaker B: I would say Proverbs talk so much about the contentious woman and how miserable she makes life and all that. So it's to not be that which is always fighting, always pushing back on your husband. But that's. And in our Romans study on focus plus I taught on this about being good citizens. I said, look, if you're that guy, that's just a pain in the neck for your government. That's just pushing every boundary you can, saying, I'm not going to obey this, I'm not going to obey that. You're just driving them nuts. You're a thorn in their side. On the other hand, if you're the guy that is the stand up model citizen does everything that's asked of you and there's a point at which you can't. And then you go in and you're like, sorry, guys, this one's a no. I think you got this one wrong. You have clout, you have moral authority there that the whining guy just doesn't have. So the same thing with a wife. If you're fighting your husband tooth and nail, you're just blowing off what he says you're going to do as a family. You're not going along with the decisions he makes. Any pushback you have has no weight at all. On the other hand, if you really are that quiet and submissive spirit, the gentle, when you're not contentious, he's gonna hear it extra loud when you say, honey, I think we should rethink this one. Or, I don't like the. You know, I don't really agree with what you said on that. Now, there's gonna be times where he listens and like, yeah, that's right. You know, if he's doing things his way as the husband, he's gonna go, point taken. All right, that's good. There's gonna be other times where he's like, you know what? I've looked at this just as strongly as you have. I've looked at it, I've prayed about it. And I think it's the opposite. That's where you come back into submission. If it's not, you know, something that's wrong morally that God wouldn't have you do, then you say, that's not a decision I would make. But, okay, that's what we're going to do. But having the courage to stand up and say, no, or to say, I disagree with you, my husband, that's good. Without doing it contentiously, without fighting back. But the focus plus comment was about just kind of women in general. The whole idea of boundaries. It's with. With the relationship with other women, with, you know, church events, things like that, that women can be viewed as catty when they. They do take a stand. And the boundaries thing really does get overdone where it's like, well, boundaries. I don't. You can't ask me to do anything. I get to do whatever I want. I don't owe anything to anybody. I don't. Because boundaries. I just got to have my boundaries. Like, no, again, be that model citizen. And then when you have to draw a boundary, you've got some moral authority to do that. You've got some credibility to do that. And that goes into your marriage as well. So that. That's kind of my thoughts on that side of it. [00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah, some of those. Some of the tough conversations, that's where a woman can really do it, is the interpersonal. Going to somebody and saying, hey, you know, going to another woman who's offended or Whatever. We need to talk about this. Can we? You know, you really offended me in this moment. Like that's to me, where you can really see a woman with a backbone or standing up for what she believes in church, you know, maybe there's a committee, a Women's day, Ladies Day, whatever it is, having those opportunities again within the home, talking to her husband. I think she can lead her kids very well. I think the parenting is where it really demands that a woman has a backbone because the guy's gone a lot, especially as a stay at home mom and got to be able to put the kids in place and those that kick the can down the road and, well, just wait for your dad to get home. And dad, every single day he comes home, has to dole out all the discipline, man. Nobody wants that. The dad didn't want to have to come home and do it. The kids start dreading dad coming home and the mom just gets to, you know, kind of push it down the road. Like, no, have the backbone in the moment and to stand up with your kids and mete out the discipline where it's necessary. So when dad gets home, it's a great, great occasion for everybody. And yeah, maybe there's times where dad's got to do some disciplining, but it's not every single time because the mom's handling it. She's got that backbone with the kids. Even in the church again, there's sometimes that cattiness takes place. Having the backbone to call that out and go, man, I really don't appreciate that. That's where the gossip train can really start is a woman having a backbone stands up and goes, uh, I'm not going to hear that. I think that's gossip. It's a really tough. That's tough for guys. [00:45:46] Speaker B: Yeah, you go talk to the person. Don't tell me that stuff. [00:45:49] Speaker A: That's really difficult for guys and girls both. But we know that Paul kind of talks about women being busy bodies and the gossip train that kind of starts, yes, that's a woman problem in a lot of ways, more so than with guys. For the most part, that's where backbone can come in. And you go, no, I'm sorry, you know, you need to go talk to them. I'm not going to hear that. I'm not really going to participate in the gossip. So there are different ways to do it that I think are they're not going to get you liked as a woman because you become the woman. It's like great, you know, can't even talk to her. You don't want to be the person that shuts everybody down. But, yeah, if it's a sin, if it's slander, if it's gossip, if it's things like that, no doubt having that backbone to say, no, we're not going to do that. Going to the elders, I would say if your husband, you know, have your husband go, if there's something that's really bothering you, but if you don't have a husband going and talking and saying, man, I really don't appreciate this. Why do we do it this way? I think that's okay. Those things are okay. [00:46:35] Speaker B: And so, yeah, this one also heavily brings in our first principle. Have your biblical moral compass that you're not just kind of blowing with the wind, you're not going on your whims. It's very clear you've thought this out, prayed about it, studied it, and then you can take that stand. The other side of the marriage equation, of course, is the husband. And I think this is one that, as we said at the start, there's some people who are going to hear this, and if they think, you know, I do need to take a stand, the husband to the wife is going to be a pretty common one. And it's a really hard one. If you haven't done that all along, you've done the. One of our favorite phrases here on Think deeper. Happy wife, happy life. That is a very large boulder to roll back up that hill to say, actually, honey, no, I disagree. These are the decisions we need to make, and you can't roll it all back in one day. As I said, you can't overcome all of this in one day. But it has to start somewhere. And it might start with a tough conversation to say, honey, I haven't really done the job I should in leading, but I need to start doing it. And so. And how she's gonna take that if she's a godly woman, you know, has her priorities straight, she's gonna love that and she's gonna go along with it. Even if there's an adjustment period, if she's not, there might be some really bumpy days ahead, There might be some difficulty getting there, and who knows? But at least you did the right thing. You feared God, you did the right thing. And so every time we talk about this, I make the point, do not listen to this in your car on the way home from work and walk in and be like, all right, honey, I'm laying down the law. Jack and Joe told me to go, no, no, no, no, no. Humbly go about leading in this way, but lead nonetheless. Humility and serving don't mean not leading. Hey, guys. I wanted to tell you about A Closer Walk with Thee Volume 1. It's a devotional book written by Joe and me. It is 90 days worth of devotionals that each day gives you a Bible reading, a prayer, a meditation, and a discussion question. Something that you can do quickly. It's something you can share with others, something that will give you three months worth of devotionals to get your year off on the right foot. It's currently available on Amazon, coming soon to the Focus Press store. So go check out A Closer Walk With Thee, Volume one today. [00:48:50] Speaker A: One of the things you can do the most is humbly apologize for not leading. Instead, I'm just going to lay down the lot. No, go in and say, I'm really sorry. I've not led you in the way that I'm supposed to. I've probably been more afraid of you than, you know, than been loving you. And perfect love casts out fear, right? You shouldn't be afraid of your wife. You need to love and cherish your wife. Ephesians 5, the loving and the cherishing. This is where leadership, I think, is at its best is you care so deeply for her that you do want what's best for her, which means you have to know what's best for her and you have to strongly desire it and you have to act on what's best for her. And sometimes what's best for her is go back to Adam and Eve. What was best for Eve in that moment? Put the fruit down. What are you doing? Everybody calls it an apple, but whatever, you know, whatever type of fruit is like, put it down. Absolutely not. Get away from there. That is the loving thing in that moment. To step up. That's what she needed. That's what love and cherishing Eve would have looked like in that moment. So when a husband comes home humbly, if you are the type that has been basically in submission to your wife, I'd humbly apologize and say, we're going to look to change this and to turn this around. Maybe your wife responds well, maybe she doesn't. That's not the point. You cannot do this based off of her response being what it's supposed to be. You have to do this based off of what? Going back to the second principle, fear God, not man. You got to fear God and say, this is what God wants me to do. But the love has to come through. You can still kind of date your Wife, as they talk about and the love notes and the cherishing and the praying with her, praying for her, you know, making sure that every morning she wakes up, she knows that she's cocooned in love. That's the guy to your point earlier, that has the clout to then call out his wife. Because I have cherished and loved you, and you know that I love you more than anything. And so when I lay down the law and say, this is where we're going, we have a. There's this understanding of like, okay, he doesn't hate me. He's not doing it because he doesn't like me. He's doing it because he genuinely thinks this is what's best. And he's got this mountain of evidence to prove he does cherish and love me. So I think from, from that perspective, getting those things right of a guy standing up in the gap and, you know, standing up to his wife within the home, it has to be coupled with that love and cherishing because otherwise it does feel very domineering. It feels very much, yeah, kind of that. That authoritarian rather than authoritative. And we're going for the authoritative, which is high warmth and high expectation rather than the low warmth, high expectation, which is just authoritarian. So bring up that warmth depending on where you're at. If you're high warmth and low expectation, that's basically neglect. Like, you are. You are that. That's you getting run over in that. Well, neglect is low warmth, low expectation. But, you know, having those. If you're high warmth and low, bring up the expectation and apologize that you haven't and then tell her, this is what's different going forward. But it brings around. Same thing with the parenting, you know, that next step of talking about church and, you know, within the home with marriage. It's the same thing with parenting, which is set the expectations as the leader and having the backbone. You are as a man, a culture setter in the home. You have to set the culture from day one and say, this is what we're doing. This is how we're disciplining. This is where it's going to go. As a woman, you may, you could say, I don't really like this, I don't like that. But you have your why, you know, if a guy says, this is going to be a home where corporal punishment appropriate, but that's what we're going to do, I think that's something that needs to be discussed with husbands and wives. But that's a submission element, is the guy sets the tone and say this is how we're going to discipline. This is what it's going to look like. He listens to his wife, you know, her thoughts on it. But ultimately he's got to lead that. And then you stand up. The backbone, to me, this is where the stiffness of the backbone comes in. Kids will challenge that like crazy. Kids are going to push back and forth and try to get out of boundaries. And that's the purpose of being a kid, is to push the boundaries. You have to stand up and go, nope, we're not moving. I am. I am steady in this. And if they sway, well, okay, this one time, well, maybe then the kids realize, man, I get away with basically anything to the point that they're out of control. And then the parents resent their kids. And that's terrible. That comes from the dad not having the backbone to say, we're not coming off this point. It is what it is. [00:52:35] Speaker B: Well, the consistency that. That's the thing my wife and I struggle with the most is if you say first time, obedience is what we're going to do, it's very easy to catch yourself going, hey, I said no. No, I don't need to say it twice, right? And sometimes, you'll see, kids, even my kids will do the same thing and tell them to do it. No, wrong answer. Wrong. Don't. You don't get to say no to mom and dad. Now you can ask a question. You can say, well, hey, can I do it when I'm done? And if the answer is no, then get up and do it like you give. You're reasonable. It's not just jump up immediately, but you need to obey and you need to be ready to obey. And you need to not just obey, but cheerfully obey. Like, these things. Come back to that question that is at the heart of this whole Backbone series of episodes here, at least two of them is what's right, what is the good thing here. And the good thing is you want kids that learn to obey and do it cheerfully because it's what they want to do, because I'm trying to raise future Christians, right? And so not that I'm the parenting expert, but if I'm letting them get away with stuff, if I'm doing that well, I said what I'm teaching them. What I'm incentivizing again, that incentive structure we've talked about is you don't have to do anything until I get up to, like, come over and make you do it. That. That's. You can. You can kind of blow it off. You can do this selective here. You know, their ears work. Their ears work plenty good. And that's one of those things that you forget where you find yourself saying, well, I said to do that, just stay on. And so the consistency, that's. That takes backbone, that takes diligence, that takes discipline and self discipline to stay on, their discipline to make sure they're doing the things that they're told. And the easiest thing in the world is to be the nice mom, the nice dad, the one that, man, I've already gotten them in trouble like 27 times today. Like, well, some days are 27 times, 28 time troubles. Not every day is. And the more you handle those well, the fewer of those you have. [00:54:33] Speaker A: And to couple on my last point to go with it, when you love and cherish your kids appropriately, you then have. Doug Wilson has this idea of like the emotional bank account. You have enough emotion in the bank account to cash the check of spanking them. Like I have put into the kids. I'm not neglecting my kids. And then try to go discipline like, no, I love you and I've been here for you and I've been engaging with you. And so when I go to discipline, it matters because they are, they are hurting that relationship that you built. As you get a little bit older, you cash in on their relationship a different way. So you're not going to be spanking them. You're going to be, you know, having different difficult conversations. You're going to. There's maybe a little more lecturing or you may be grounding them or taking certain privileges away, but all of it's done in the. Yeah, I've led you appropriately. Part of the leadership is the cherishing them and letting them know where they stand with you, not having them walk on eggshells. But then you have their heart to be able to discipline, to be able to lead. So it's a. It's, you know, the backbone comes with. You got to be able to basically build out the structure around it so as to have the backbone. The rest of the flesh, you know, the rest of everything else is, man, your cocoon. The backbone is not just a spine hanging out of nothing. We're surrounded by stuff, right? By muscle and tissue and everything else. And that's that love and that cherishing and that support of the kid. But at the end of the day, the backbone is what causes you to stand up straight. And that's the key in our parenting as well, is, yeah, have that love and cherishing, but, man, your consistency Point is spot on. That's the word I was looking for. That I think is key. But it also goes with. In terms of consistency. Getting into the next one, this is flying by, so I'll have to kind of wrap this one fairly fast. Is standing up with your friends. Stand up with your friends and you see this. And I remember growing up, it does not take very many times of giving in before. It's really difficult to then say, okay, guys, not that far. Like, it's that consistency all along the way to have the backbone. Stand up with your friends. Yeah. When you're a teenager, the peer pressure, you know, especially middle school, like peer pressure is sky high. But I think we have this false idea. The peer pressure goes away. It doesn't go away. It just changes forms in some ways. So even as an adult, there can be that peer pressure to engage in the group thread that, you know is maybe a little off color. You know, those type of things that now the peer pressure is involved. That, again, I think that we can still struggle with as adults. Consistency is going to be the key. Having the backbone to go, no, I don't appreciate that, or I'm standing up against that, or that's wrong. Especially at a young age with like, you'll see kids that start bullying another kid. Somebody's got to stand up and go, what are we doing? This is incredibly wrong. It's a lot to ask of a kid. But I think this starts with our parenting. It starts by training kids that have that backbone, have that willingness to stand up and go, no, we're not doing that. And then they consistently do it. And you'll notice kids are just swaying, man. If you have a kid that's pretty strong in his convictions, you used to notice this. I think I've told this story before, and then I'll shut up and pass it to you. But, you know, I didn't cuss growing up. I don't cuss. And I didn't cuss in the locker room when I was playing hockey. And you got to the place where kids wouldn't cuss around me, and it was Christian Joe. Right. And I think you had a similar situation. Like, kids just didn't cuss around us because they knew. Kids are blowing with the wind, man. When somebody stands up for their convictions and go, we don't do this, you'll notice that people are willing to then go along with it. But you had to be consistent in it. If I was cussing sometimes and not at other times, you don't have that same Conviction, you don't have the same clout with your friends. So. And I'm not just trying to pump my own tires. There's plenty of things I did that were wrong. You know, probably weren't great examples, but that's just one of them, that standing in those convictions. Well, it's the same thing when you get older, is just being able to stand up and have that consistency. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And I wanted to reference Paul standing up to Peter. Like, that's difficult. It's Peter we're talking about, right? I mean, like, that's the guy that we read so much about, was so prominent in the church. And Paul said, yeah, he stood condemned. And it was out of love that he stood up for Peter to say, you can't treat the Gentiles this way. You can't treat them as lesser. That's not okay. And the example of that setting for the rest of the Jewish Christians, like, he said, these guys were caught up in it and that can't stand. And so being that person that's going to say, hey, no, we're not going to do that, but it's the fear of man thing. Well, I don't want to lose the friendship. Well, do the right thing. And if you got friends who appreciate that, like, good friends will appreciate that, good friends will come around, they might not see eye to eye on everything. They might not say, yeah, you're right, but they're going to appreciate. I mean, if you're the guy that's just nitpicking everything. No, nobody appreciates that. But again, choose your place. Know when to take a stand. But one of the most prominent ways of doing that, this is something I have historically been very bad at, is evangelism. Evangelism, as much as modern Christianity wants to avoid this, there is an inherent, you're wrong in evangelism. There is an inherent, you don't know everything you need to know or your view of the world is not correct. That's hard to tell somebody. And you don't lead with, hey, you're wrong. And let me tell you, like, you let the conversation come to what it is. But there's gonna come a point at which somebody asks, what about this? What do you think about that? You know, do you think I'm going to hell? Those hard kind of questions. And I think Christians do well when they say, well, let's look to what the Bible says, let's point to God. But you know that you're putting as, hey, it's not me, it's from God's word and his authority, that's a good tactic to have. But you're still holding that line and saying, yeah, no, it's not okay, you do need to have faith in Christ and be baptized into him. And yeah, that is a sin. That what you do or whatever the case may be, and taking those stands and disagreeing with somebody, disagreeing is a challenge. Disagreeing takes a backbone. And if you're worried about what people think of you at all times, it's very easy to. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but there's a video of Tim Keller, the late Presbyterian guy, huge name, was a minister in New York City, wrote best selling books and all that. And he was asked, is homosexuality a sin? 3 to 5 minute video never once says, yeah, it's a sin. And it's not. He comes around, well, it's not God's best for you. Just tell them the truth, man. Love them enough to say that, right? And yeah, he probably would have had a lot of people leave his church. They, that's because again, he had caved in and not said the right thing for years and years and years and got a church full of people who couldn't stand the truth. That's on him start today. You know, he should have at that moment said, yeah, the right thing to say is it is a sin 100%. And that doesn't mean God doesn't love you, doesn't mean you can't repent and be saved, any of those things. But yeah, it's a sin. That would be the loving thing to do. But that takes backbone, that takes conviction, that takes fearing God, not man. That takes love for the Word and the truth and all the things that we've talked about. [01:01:10] Speaker A: You can create 50 people that are fake Christians that yeah, yeah, I'll go along. In the moment that you disagree with something and specifically the moment scripture disagrees, they leave. Or maybe you can have five true Christians that man, they're all in and they buy it and every last thing. And what the Word says goes. And we have to be looking for that. It's quality, not quantity. And that sounds really mean to say, but this is why our churches are filled with people that have itching ears. They want to hear what they want to hear. And the moment that they hear homosexuality, dissent, whatever. I don't think in Church of Christ it's that bad. But in other places, yeah, I think there, there is that. And we're just looking for the, the quantity of numbers, man, we really got to Be looking for the quality. And the right person is going to respond to being called out. The right person is gonna say, man, I do have to repent. The same way that, you know, at Pentecost, going back to Acts two, there's like, what, a million? Two million Jews there, a bazillion of them. I mean, there's just a ton. I think at least a million is the estimates they used to come to Pentecost. How many are saved on the first one? Was it 2,000? [01:02:06] Speaker B: 3,000? [01:02:06] Speaker A: 3,000, yeah. 3,000. So 3,000 out of 1 million. So 3,000. [01:02:12] Speaker B: Wow. [01:02:13] Speaker A: That's incredible. I'm not saying all 1 million got preached to, but to some degree, I mean, 3,000 is a fairly small number. But you know what? They were committed. They cared, they wanted it. He didn't water down the message and go, hey, why didn't you just, you know, what if we all just got along? Type of thing, and 500,000 people follow, but then the moment that you preach Christ, they all leave? No, we're getting down to the nitty gritty. 3,000 that are here, and they're, you know, they want it. That's what a backbone will get you. It'll get you the right people. Maybe not as many people, but it'll get you the right people. I think that's key. Last couple places just to wrap up. We've talked about. You threw on the outline, Jack. Work and culture and. Yeah, I think at work, having the backbone to stand up, that kind of goes along with the friendship. Having the backbone to stand up to the things that. I think we're kind of out of the woke or we're coming out of the woke, where you're going to get in trouble for standing up against LGBTQ or whatever it is, the pronouns and all of that, that I think it's okay to stand up in this moment, especially in this day and age, which, you know, shout out to so much of what you've talked about, of. Yes, we do want political involvement to be able to turn the tide, which is what we're seeing. Having the backbone at work to do some of those things. I think most people are not going to be asked at work to do something that's morally wrong other than. [01:03:18] Speaker B: But I would say the Christians, I know that say not working Sunday. Yeah, that makes a big difference. That's a really great thing to see. And so that takes backbone. That takes, again, trusting God, fearing God and not man, and realizing, man, I could lose income because of this. Let's see what God has me do. Let's see what God comes through for me and just do things the right way. And that really is powerful to see when you see Christians doing something like that. And again, so many bad things can happen in the workplace, the way people talk, the lives they lead, the happy hour after church or after work kind of thing. Those things, yeah, there's. There's things to avoid still, like being involved and around people and caring about people and in a bright light and a positive part of the work culture without compromising yourself. And so that's, that's one thing there, you know, having a backbone in the culture. We've talked about that a lot. That's. That's one of the themes of our podcast. So we don't really need to get into that so much. But again, just calling the balls and strikes as they are, that's an important thing to be able to do. And so just wrapping all of these things, there's just things in all of our lives, whether it's marriage, church, work, parenting, whatever the case may be, where you might look at it and say, I haven't taken the stands that I should. And when you set the filter to what would God have me do? And you run everything in your life through it, you're going to find some things all of us are. I do, too. [01:04:52] Speaker A: Wow. [01:04:52] Speaker B: I'm not really doing that, that I think he would have me do, that I think the scriptures would guide me to do. And you pray about these things, Lord, show me if there's something I'm doing, as Paul or as David prayed, if there's any way in me that's not right, show me. And when you do that again, you've got a choice in that moment, if you can be honest with yourself, of I gotta do this, it might be really hard. My spouse might really be mad at me. My kid might not want to talk to me for a week. My, you know, it might cause problems with my church, family, or work or whatever the case may be. Pray for faith. Pray for trust in God. Pray to fear him more than others. Pray for a love for the truth. Pray for a love for the people you got to deal with, whatever the case may be, and then just do it. Because if you don't do it, that is where you shrink, where you become smaller, where you become lesser. And it not only is, it's hard this time, it's 10 times harder next time if you don't do it this time. And so look at those things right now. And if there is something I love that phrase of what must get done eventually should be done immediately. If there's something that you know it's going to have to happen and it might be difficult, and, you know, one way or another, that's. That's where we're headed. Just do it. Just rip the band aid off and get there in a loving way, in a gentle way, in a humble way, and all those things that we've talked about, but do it, man. [01:06:13] Speaker A: That's a great rap. All I was going to say is, if you're struggling with this, with the backbone, and you can tell, the only practical thing I'd say is make a list of the areas that you think I really could step up. As Jack talked about, I would journal these things. I'd write them down and I would pray about all of them and ask for God to move in your spirit, to give you that extra courage. But I would also look at it and say, why am I not what has hindered me up to this point? Basically, 10 times out of 10, it's going to be, I'm afraid of something happening. I'm afraid of them leaving. I'm afraid of them being mad at me. I'm afraid. And then you have to ask why? Why am I afraid of those things? It's going to go back to this deep fear of what if I'm not enough? Or what if I'm unworthy of love? I mean, those things are so often. It's going to come back to. It doesn't justify it. It just means when you really break it down to the very core of why am I not leading? Why do I not have a backbone? What is going on here? Why is it so difficult for me to call my wife out or to call my kids a higher standard or step up in the church? You got to be able to question yourself, look yourself in the mirror, and have the hard conversation. I mean, I got to get there. I've got to be able to fear God rather than man and, you know, to be grounded and rooted in the fear of God and in the love of God. So I go back to that point just because I think so many times it's like, where do I go from here? You got to understand your why and then build it up from there, looking for the areas where you probably need the most work and just praying a lot about it. And the other piece of advice I'd give is surround yourself by people that can give you that backbone. I love that I have Jack and Will got my parents. I got other people that I can bounce things off of and they can go, hey, have you thought about this? What about that? So I don't have to be the guy coming up with every last thing. It's like, this is what I'm doing in my life. You go, man, that's fantastic. I'm going to emulate that. I'm going to, I'm going to add this or that or whatever it is, seek advice, get their counsel and look to apply it. So having your gang, so to speak, you know, your group of guys or girls or whatever it is that can help push you in that area can be really, really helpful. [01:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it can. Yeah. This is why we did two full episodes on it is everything else we talk about is no good if there's no backbone behind it. And so this is a critical piece of doing the right thing, of getting the church in a better place, of getting the home in a better place, of getting the culture in a better like everything around you. As I said at the start of the episode, everything gets better when the courage to do the right thing is underlining it. When your family knows, when your church knows, hey, we're just gonna do the right thing. That's what we're going to do. We're going to study on it. We might be wrong about what the right thing is and we'll change course if we need to. But to the best of our knowledge, what we think is the right thing, we understand God would want us to do. That's what we're going to do. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be better. And I can promise you that. And so we're going to leave you with that. As always, we'll have the deep end with the questions and comments that come in on focus focus.org a great way to support Focus Press but also get extra content. We've got our Roman studies on there, our Leviticus and Revelation or really the whole law, Exodus through Deuteronomy and Revelation are cataloged there. Other videos and content, there's just honestly weeks worth of content, sermons and old deep end episodes, things like that, that if you enjoy Think Deeper, it's a great way to Support us for 10 bucks a month. So check that out focuspress.org/ and if there's nothing else, we will talk to you guys on the next one. Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.