Maybe We All Aren't As Busy As We Think

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome back into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm Will here. I'm one of your hosts, joined by Joe and Jack Wilkey. Got a what to. I always, of course, think our episodes are fascinating. So I'm a little biased. But this one specifically, I do think is going to be a pretty fascinating discussion because I think it touches different areas of life for everybody. Everybody that's listening. I think I'm hopeful that it's going to resonate with you as we talk about kind of the. The way to handle distractions in our life, the way to handle certain things that might take precedent over spirituality sometimes or take up more hours in our week. And so we just want to have a really good discussion about what distraction, you know, distract things that distract us. How much time should we be spending doing these things? Again, just where should our priorities be with some of these things? [00:00:55] Speaker B: And. [00:00:55] Speaker A: And for all three of us, somewhat different stages of life, different perspectives on each of these. I just think it's going to be a great discussion. So preview that. We'll get back to that in just a second. I did want to mention a couple things. One, be sure to remember that all three of us, whether it be together or separately, we do offer seminars if you are interested or looking to host maybe a spring meeting, summer meeting, fall meeting, whatever it may be. Jack has some great seminars. Church Reset, being chief among them, is kind of the one that he's most well known for his book that he wrote several years ago. Joe's got some great stuff about getting out of sexual addiction, getting out of porn, pornography use. And then you've got one for young people also, right, Joe? I forget the name of it. I apologize. [00:01:39] Speaker B: But understanding why. And I have another one. Yeah, God's Design for Sexuality. [00:01:45] Speaker A: God's Design for Sexuality. There you go. And then I've got a couple as well, specifically primarily for young people to strive for greatness. And then the me and Joe both do the Godly Young Men podcast seminar as well. Shout out to Leoma Church of Christ for inviting us out two years in a row. We enjoyed that. But anyway, so that is something we wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that we do offer those seminars. We have had one Think Deeper seminar that we enjoyed a couple years back. If you want to hear all three of us not in podcast form, we do make that available. And then the only other thing I wanted to mention, we haven't mentioned in a while, if you want more think deeper content, we do offer Focus plus, which is our monthly Patreon subscription where you get a whole nother episode every single week where we essentially answer and address listener questions. Listener comments to the Monday's episode goes up every Friday. We really enjoyed it, or really enjoy it. We just recorded the Deep End episode for the last episode that went up last week, so wanted to make sure. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Everybody was aware of that. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Focus plus is what we call it. And yeah, there's content going up every single day. It's not just that, sermons, class, Bible class material, daily devo, stuff like that. So. But guys, let's get into this episode. Like I said at the off the top, I'm very excited to get into some of the minutia, some of the details of these things. We're going to talk about things like sports, work, social media, entertainment, even church busyness. And I think as we kind of get this started, Joe, I am going to hand it to you first. I think where my mind goes as we get this episode started is there are so many things that are bidding for our attention. So many things that are bidding not just for our attention, but for our time. And I think about our time being a finite resource. It is a zero sum game. If we spend time doing this, that is time that is being taken away from something else. And one thing I've learned as I've hit my 20s, gotten married, had my own family, is that there is not as much time in the day, in the week as I thought there was when I was 16 and 17. Obviously, because you're doing what you want to do when you're a teenager and you've got nothing but time ahead of you. And as life goes on, again, more fills your plate, there's more things that come up. It truly does seem like there is a constant war, a constant battle for where am I going to spend my time, what am I going to spend my time on? And again, that's what we want to discuss with this episode. There's kind of the obvious side of we want to make sure that we are devoting time to our spiritual life, to God, to serving the church, to being at worship, to being at, you know, church events, things like that. We want to make sure we have time for our family. We're spending time with them. That still leaves a lot of hours. And so again, we've got kind of different areas that we want to get into as far as to what extent do these things become distractions again, sports, entertainment, all those things. Joe, I'll kick it to you. I don't know if you have any introductory Thoughts on kind of this idea of distractions and really all these things that are just bidding for our time. We were even talking beforehand. There's so many really good listening content and watching and viewing content of Church of Christ MC materials that we're like, man, we really want to listen to it. An hour's a long time. And we're saying that, as you know, sitting here recording an hour long podcast that we are very grateful that you're listening to. We understand that's a lot of times an hour doing that that you couldn't be doing something else. So, Joe, what thoughts do you have to kind of get this, get this started? [00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, so initially, let's. Right off the top, this is a Think Magazine topic, I believe. And so we have an entire free Think magazine. Make sure to get the PDF of that online, Jack. I'm sure. What's the URL that, Jack? [00:05:11] Speaker C: FocusPress.org Think there you go. [00:05:15] Speaker B: And so that'll. That's a companion piece. This is a kind of the companion to the. Yeah. To the magazine for that month. But the thing that hits me right off the bat, I remember being in preaching school and taking homiletics and they said, look, when you get up there, you got seven seconds to get people's attention. Seven seconds after that, you're pretty much, you lost them. They're not going to pay attention now. I think that's a bit drastic and I don't fully subscribe to that. On the other hand, it made a very, very good point and it kind of drove it home for me, which is you don't have long until people start getting distracted. People will fill their time, they will fill the void every bit of the day with distractions. And so that's why you see people pull out the iPhone or whatever it is, right? They're pulling out their social media, they're pulling out their specific apps, their games on the apps. And there used to be. I don't even know what the big apps are now these days. Game apps used to be Angry Birds or Wordle or something like that. And so there's always something that people are playing up. They always. [00:06:11] Speaker A: In the year 2025 is. [00:06:13] Speaker B: I know, it's insane. It's insane. [00:06:14] Speaker C: It's been a while. [00:06:15] Speaker B: It goes to show how little I actually play any of those games, but I know they have. What is it? Clash of the Clans. I don't even know if that's still a thing these days. But everybody, it's. I was gonna say it's getting. It's it's dating me and I'm 30, so it's terrible. [00:06:27] Speaker A: That's hilarious. [00:06:28] Speaker C: Crush Farmville. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Temple Run. [00:06:34] Speaker B: That's a good. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Exactly. Atari. [00:06:36] Speaker B: Atari. Yeah, the. But the point is, we're always filling our time with something or another or finding our distractions. The problem is we all know that we're supposed to be drawing near to God. We know we're supposed to be more spiritual. We're supposed to be growing in our life as a Christian, and yet we find these distractions taking over. Now we have the individual ones. We'll get into some of those. But where I wanted to take off. And Jack, I don't know if you have some introductory thoughts, but I do want to get us into. Sports is kind of the first one, because we're talking about all these things. We can talk about the introductory thoughts. Okay. Okay. Go for it. Sorry. Yeah, I figured we just took them all, so go for it. [00:07:13] Speaker A: That's right. [00:07:16] Speaker C: I'm using my seven seconds to get people's attention. Seeing how that works. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Oh, my word. [00:07:20] Speaker C: I got. Everybody lost me. No, I'm sure people are looking at their phone or their stereo going, what? What? See, I've got you. Here we go. The thing to me is we always. Man, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. We always talk about how busy we are. I think we're more distracted than busy. I really think, you know, looking at my own life, I'm so busy. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Like, yeah, if I cut out all. [00:07:38] Speaker C: The social media time, I'm not nearly as busy. Like, if I put that into the chores that I have to catch up on after I'm done with that, or if I put all of these other things, if I didn't have to watch the. The game, if I didn't have whatever it may be. I think we are. And I'm not saying we're not busy. A lot of people are really busy. You got your work, you got your kids, you got extracurricular activities, you got church stuff, whatever it may be. There's a million different things that we're going to cover, a lot of them. But when you kind of think about the. We've got the same amount of time in a week that people have always had, and as Will said, more kids, more obligations, that that week seems to get smaller. However, I think if you take away the distractions, if. If you took. Just look at the screen time on your phone or whatever and cut that in half. How busy are you? Like, oh, man, I didn't have time for Bible. Yeah, Maybe you did. I didn't have it. And so not, not just to zero in fully on the phone thing, there's a million different things, but it's, it really is more distractedness than busyness. So I just wanted to like start with that because I think that will apply to a number of the specifics we get into here. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I, I would just add on the distractedness point. It's not as if we, and I, I would categorize myself as somebody who is very, very busy. But even among my busyness there are five 10 minute stretches, 15 minute stretches where it's like I'm not really devoting my time to a full task. I'm kind of. Yeah. Distracted with something. And so I think that's a really good distinction there. Let's start. Let's go. Joe, you were going to bring up sports. I'll hand it back to you if you kind of want to intro that because that is for the three of us specifically, that is something that we really enjoy. We enjoy viewing, viewing sports and that sports discussion. Obviously, typically, stereotypically this is going to be more of a male space than a woman's space, but it is something that can be incredibly distracting and not even just the viewing sports, but also among families with taking their kids to different practices and got three practices a week and then games on Saturday and all those things. So there's a lot that sports can do to turn into a distraction. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's two separate sides. I think the one builds on the other. What you're just talking about, you have the fandom side of sports. People go nuts for their, their football or whatever it may be. Every sport seems, well maybe not baseball, but every sport seems to try to be all consuming. Whether you're following your, your fav players on social media, you're checking the stats on espn, NHL, whatever it may be. I find myself doing that NFL, you're checking all the big stats and now they've got the crazy stats and whatnot. Where you're going into the dig into the game, the fantasy football, of course that comes in and so it's all consuming. Are we shocked then that when it comes to kids, sports have become all consuming? That's to me like I remember used to be able to just play drop in basketball or whatever it may be. And that was fun and that was great. Nowadays they're trying to stick your kid on some travel sports team from the, from the get, get go. You're trying to figure out where you fit in and how good your kid is, and is he going to make the NBA? And. And it's just insane to me. And it's like the fun of going out and just playing backyard football with everybody going down to the local park and playing, that that's not the case now. We got to organize everything and make sure that. That the kids are on steroids by the time they're seven, so they can grow up and be in the NFL. It's just insanity. But you see a lot of people, a lot of Christian parents fall for this trap, and the sports become all consuming. So you got a lot of the single guys where, again, it's the chicken and fantasy of football every single day. They're making sure that their rosters are perfectly lined up. Or you have the parents who are so distracted that they're not showing up to church all of a sudden, they're not coming on Sunday mornings. Because, man, we just put so much time and money into this that by the time they ask for us to meet on a Sunday, I can't really say no. I mean, we're $10,000 deep into all these camps and all of these. Everything else for these kids that it's really difficult at that point to pull away from it. And so sports become a massive distraction. They take us away from God and they become all consuming for us. They become consuming for the parent. And then we have these kids that they grow up and they are more concerned and more focused on their ability to perform on the field or on the ice or whatever it is than they are to be good Christians. [00:11:36] Speaker A: So I've got a question. And Jack, I'm sure you got some thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Joe just said. But then on this question, a critique that I had growing up about people who would talk about sports as an idol, and, you know, sports, you know, can be too distracting. Maybe this was the cynic in me, but I always found it interesting that the people that were the most vocal critics of sports did not like sports. And it's like, that's a pretty convenient position that you hold that all sports are such an idol when you could not care less about any sports. It's kind of like the. I talked before back, you know, we proved the Disney boycott was the correct thing to do. But I hearken back to there were a lot of people that were shouting for Disney boycotts that hadn't watched a Disney movie in 15 years. It's like, man, that's such a sacrifice for you. I feel the same way similarly, about the sports discussion, in some ways, I do think there's. Obviously, it can absolutely be overkill and you can 100 take your kids away from God, make that their entire focus of their teenage years. But where is the balance? Where is the line between having something your kids really enjoy doing, it being a passion, it being a hobby? Jack, what are your thoughts on that? And kind of the. Kind of the irony of the people who are the pretty loud, vocal people who oppose sports the most are the ones that don't like sports. [00:12:50] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a human thing to really be able to see the sin that you don't deal with. And the. That's such a popular thing. The, oh, sports ball, you know, go, Go team. Kind of mocking the whole thing. Like some people really care about it and it's not wrong to really care about it. I mean, there are. It can be taken to excess. Exactly. But I think it does help when it is people who are big sports fans, as we don't hide that the three of us are that from within to say, okay, this can go too far. But you're right, the outsider perspective. There was a tweet a few years ago that went and kind of made the rounds. It was really. I mean, it captured it really well. It's kind of a toe stepper. She said, men will watch a sports game, then immediately after, watch all the highlights on the said game. Then the next day we'll watch four different shows and listen to three different podcasts analyzing and giving opinions on the game. And this is for every single game. It's like, oh, ouch, okay. Yeah, no, I've done that one. You know, watch the game, game and then catch, you know, catch all the goals again or the big dunks or whatever happened. The touchdowns. And yeah, then I mean, I've got my favorite podcast for. For multiple favorite teams or whatever. And that. I really have toned that down over the years. Again, kids come along or whatever. There's. There's other things, but it really can get. I mean, the. For the longest time, the first thing on my phone, listening to get up in the Morning is the. The hockey podcast, you know, for my. My favorite team. Then it's switch to the. The basketball podcast, my favorite team. And after a while, it's kind of like, man, I don't really have many ideas for writing these articles about, you know, Christianity. I wonder why that is, huh? Because, like, all I'm thinking about all the time is basketball and politics, you know, and so, like, that's one way it manifests for me. But there's just the things you're putting in your ears and before your eyes all the time are going to be what you're thinking about. And so that really can be a huge. Not that you have to be listening to hymns and audio bibles and Christian podcast. I mean obviously we've got our work, we want you to get through all these, then get to everything else you want to listen to in the week. But you know, you don't have to be Christian content non stop. But I think it is worth looking at percentage wise. [00:14:55] Speaker A: So that's kind of what I was going to ask like measurably speaking, what the balance is. I don't listen to a ton of ton of podcasts, but the ones that I do typically are sports podcasts. And now the football season's over, I won't exactly be watching all that much, you know, sports, but during football season with that being my favorite sport to watch, you know, that did consume a certain amount of hours in the week. And so I am genuinely curious. Joe, your thoughts on I know we're still talking mainly about consuming. I think there's an interesting discussion here to be had about how many sports should you allow your kid to play. My parents are pretty strict about you can play one, you can't play four, you can't play, you know, is all of them that year round where you never have a break and we as a family never have a break. And so that was kind of their role. I know a lot of people have that rule. I think that's what people are going to want to know when they listen to. This is like, you know, not that we know everything or have all the answers, but what do we think is the line or the appropriate thing? And I do think to Jack's point about the percentage thing is to start with the consuming point and then maybe we can revisit the kids playing sports thing. I do think you, you absolutely need to evaluate how much time, how many hours of your week are you consuming sports for entertainment and how much time for spiritual growth with either yourself or with your family are you doing? If you're skipping out on your evening worship time, your family worship, your Bible, Bible time with your kids at night because the game, the basketball game is on or you didn't have time to get to that, but you had time to listen to the full 45 minute podcast episode about the, you know, the football games the previous day, that is a problem. I do think that again, if you are neglecting the really important Just even if it's reading your Bible every day or again, the family worship time at night, that just kind of keeps getting pushed to the wayside because you're too tired at night. You know, for all those things, I think that's a pretty easy indicator or a pretty clear indicator to say priorities are a little bit out of whack now. On the contrary, if you're able to continue to do those things and you have a really healthy study life with your spouse and really healthy study life independently, I don't think there's any harm in enjoying a football game or playing or listening to a sports podcast or things like that. How balanced is everything Is the way that I think I would take that. But Joe, what are your. What are your thoughts? [00:17:02] Speaker B: That's exactly my thoughts. That was the priorities. You have to know what your priorities are. And I would be on the same page, especially if you're married, same page with your wife on what you expect of yourself, what you expect of the marriage, what you expect within the home to be taking place. Because, yeah, I mean, the priority is first and foremost going to be to God, making sure your spiritual life is right, trying to lead your family appropriately. But then your house could be a complete wreck. But man, you made sure to sit down and watch that football game. Like, okay, what's the priority there? Is it to make sure that you are catching every highlight, whatever it is, to the detriment of your home? It's just a matter of priorities. It's not wrong. Like, let's say you're driving into work and you happen to catch a 45 minute podcast. He's got a 45 minute drive to work, you're listening to sports podcasts, I don't think that's bad. But if that's the one time you had to pray or the one time you had to listen to audio Bible or whatever else we're not sure. I don't want to be like the. What's the term? Jesus juke people, where every last minute, and that's kind of the John Piper thing, every last minute has to be spent thinking about how you can glorify God. No, there are times where it's okay to just relax and listen to favorite podcasts and whatnot. Where it gets, where it gets carried away is exactly your point. The priorities are completely out of line. When it comes to the kids, though, that is a more nuanced discussion because everybody thinks their kids go into the bigs. They think that, that their kid's really, really talented. Maybe he's getting scouted by the right coaches, whatever it may be. That's really tempting for the parent to go. My kids go in places. [00:18:22] Speaker A: Because it's a self esteem boost for you as a parent. 100% correct? [00:18:26] Speaker B: Correct. Because you're seeing your kid is really talented and your kid may be incredibly talented. I got a buddy right now it will not surprise me if his kid makes it to the NHL. His kid is that good playing AAA ice hockey, scoring. I mean he's incredible. Already getting scouted at a young age. [00:18:39] Speaker A: Like wow, he's a big deal. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Good for him. It's also all consuming. That's his life. He travels all over the nation, he's away from his wife. It's not a healthy dynamic. And so though his kid may actually make the NHL, I think he's an incredible player. Okay. For what? And I think that's once again you go back to the priorities and you go back to the, the end result which is what is the end of this? My kid makes millions. Can he still be a Christian in that, in that field? [00:19:06] Speaker A: So what will you all do with your kids? I guess this would be my question here. We all, both have, we all have sons. With all of us being natural sports fans, you can imagine a lot of that's going to get passed on. I am curious. Jack, we'll start. Guess we'll start with you. Robbie takes a huge interest in hockey obviously best example here I suppose what. But let's say he really likes hockey, really likes to play basketball, wants to do both or wants to, I don't know like what are kind of be kind of some of your guidelines as we get close to that time period. [00:19:33] Speaker C: I think limitations are healthy. Obviously your family had the one sport thing. We only played one sport. And so it was not so much that, but I mean summertime especially tournament season, it could get really ramped up. And there were times where Joe was on three teams, I was on two. You know, you'd have kind of your local team, your travel team, things like that. And. But I mean we always had the Sunday rule. We're not skipping for church. That was a big thing. And so I think you got to have that rule for sure. But I think even with that, when you end up spending all your family's time is in the car going to practice, going to the other thing. I loved what we did growing up. I probably will tone it down from what our parents did a little bit less. You know, not that many teams, not that many commitments. Because Joe talks about talent. There Are kids that were in our circle, especially Joe's circle, more than mine, that you can turn on the tv, they're on the NHL and kids that Joe was better than back in their day. We didn't have the, the time like there were. There was a couple teams locally and it was seven day a week practice. I mean, like it, like if you really wanted to make it, you had to commit to that. And so it was kind of an in between. We committed to some of it. It was three, four days a week kind of thing. Well, that's a lot. And so your family spirituality, your family and not the mom and dad weren't emphasizing that. But I, I think it, it can get out of hand in a hurry. And mom and dad did set limitations. They were good ones. I think I'll, I'll draw the line a little farther back than they did. But I think that's something that parents again, that, that promise of what could be. I think sometimes, even if it's not professionals, it's a college scholarship that really helps out things like that. You can lose perspective really quickly, I guess, is what I'm saying. [00:21:17] Speaker B: Well, where does the family come in? And how does the rest of the family feel about it? And does everything run through the filter of the sport? Oh, well, we have this practice. Oh, well, we got that. Can't leave town because of this. Or it's going to be tight to make it to church on a Wednesday night because, I mean, how many times does that come up throughout the week? And I think about ours. Yeah, hockey came up a lot. Our life, my life was. Was hockey growing up. I don't think that's healthy. No, I think I'm going to. With my kids. I'm going to put them in team sports. I do want it to be hockey because I do think that you build a lot in that. You build camaraderie and you build teamwork and leadership and a lot of different things that I think can be very important. So I'm not against sports, but I do think one sport at a time. Absolutely no skipping church on a Sunday. And yeah, I mean, I want life to still revolve around the family and around God, not around whatever sports you may be playing. [00:22:12] Speaker C: 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 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. [00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's important to mention obviously we're zeroing in on sports here for this conversation, but this absolutely applies to theater kids as well. You know, where every single night is rehearsal and then the big shows and that kind of encapsulates there. Obviously none of us are theater kids, so that's not the first filter we're running it through, but it applies to that as well. And so we got to move. [00:23:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Music and so we got to move on. But I, I like what you guys both said. I'm somewhat undecided on kind of the one to two sport thing. And you know, how's that going to go? I do think, and this is somewhat subjective and so probably not super helpful, but I don't want my family's life to be dictated by it. Joe, that's kind of what you just said. Like I don't want that to be the number one factor on. Are we getting enough family time? Are we getting enough time with the congregation time to do all these things obviously homeschooling time. Like I don't want, yeah, I don't want my life to be driven by my kids. Sport is kind of the one thing that I have. But any other, any other thoughts on that before we move to kind of out of the sports realm and into one that is a struggle and that is work specifically for, for men. And kind of hustle culture is what we have on here because all three of us before have kind of bemoaned the fact that. And not just us people all across the United States have bemoan the fact that you can't, you can't really 40 hour week anymore unless you're at a very specialized position. You have a lot of education, you know, really, really high paying against specialized job. The average guy can't work a 40 hour week and comfortably pay his mortgage comfortably, have retirement ready to go comfortably. Like kind of all the things that, you know, encapsulate, you know, having a family and being able to afford, you know, kind of the cost of living. Very difficult to do on the average 40 hour work week. It can be done, but it's difficult. And so that's where hustle culture comes in of I'm going to work 55 hours a week and get overtime, or I'm going to work 40 hours a week at this job and I'm going to spend 10, 15 hours at this other job with my side hustle or whatever it is. And obviously there is a point where specifically as husbands and fathers who are the spiritual leaders of their home and need to be around enough to set the tone and set the culture and invest in their wife and invest in their kids, there is a, again, it's a zero sum game. There is a certain number of hours that you get to where it's like you are not spending enough time with your family, you are not spending enough time investing in your kids, discipling your kids. You're not spending enough time investing in your marriage. The question is, what's that hour number? That's what stuff. I mean, I'm speaking as somebody who conservatively 55 hours a week is kind of where I'm at right now. 53 to 55. Joe, I know you're right there behind me. Jack, you work a ton as well. And so this is a big, this is a. I'm really curious to hear Yalls thoughts because this is a big one for us right now as men and again for a lot of young guys, especially if maybe again you're not in just this very specialized, really high levels of education that got you there position where you're probably making a good amount of money, entry level jobs and kind of first jobs for people. It's tough. And so there's a lot of work that goes into it. How do we balance that, I guess is my question of making sure that we have enough to provide for our family. Making sure that we can live fairly comfortably while not sacrificing all this time to invest in discipling kids in our, in our family. I only wants to go first, but this is one that I struggle with on a pretty weekly basis when it comes to just kind of am I, am I doing the right thing? [00:26:10] Speaker C: That is one of the hard things generationally that again we could get into like the understanding between the generations of there is the idea of a certain time in life, especially like building up your skills, your education, whatever be you're gonna. That stuff's gonna be on the back burner. Wife, kid, like not, not that they're not a priority, but like it might be okay. I'm gonna work these extra long weeks for a time and then we're gonna get over the hump and I'll be able to cut back. And I know a lot of people who did that. The problem now is you're not sure that that's going to happen. There's not like a light at the end of the tunnel. Like, man, if I really put this in two or three years, I get the promotion, I get the education, I get that job, then I'm going to move up. Who knows? I mean you look at as far as like citizens being hired into jobs, like it is so slim these days and how many people are working in fields not in their college degree. So people go out and just work non stop to get a, you know, education or working on the side and they think, okay, this will get me, you know, to the point here of where I want to be. No, it's not. You're going to get out of college, going to get your education, get your master's even and there's just not a job opening for you. And so when you're looking at it as a man for the next two or three years, I'm really going to be nose the grindstone. Then I can pull back and have more family time. That's one thing that a family might make that trade off when it's not. When it's kind of I'll do this and it might just be more of. [00:27:30] Speaker A: That up in the air. [00:27:31] Speaker C: Yeah, like there's no, no sense. That's a harder trade off to make. And so it's kind of do you live with way less. I mean just like essentially poverty line, you got the values of especially if you want your wife to stay at home and homeschool the kids. Things like that takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of extra work. I've known guys drive Uber, pick up different shifts over here. You know, we're trying to get, you know, Joe, we've all had multiple streams of income at different times. I, I do right now. I mean like that's, you have to. And it's just crazy. And so at times past where you kind of had the 80s and 90s idea of the workaholic guy, especially on TV, that was kind of a trope. The guy always in the office 78 hour hours a week and making all this money and all that. It's less that of a luxury of like he's really trying to, you know, making the ladder all that stuff now, it's like staying afloat, you know, affording eggs is kind of the meme thing. I don't really have an answer there. I mean they're. We're very much in the sense of you do what you got to do, but among that, you, your, your very next thing is make sure that's. You really got to be on top of the distractions then. Because when are you going to get the family devotional time in? When are you going to get the time with your wife, time with your kids, whatever it may be. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. You got to make every second count in a situation like that. Because if you were an older person looking down on the younger of, well, these young whip snappers, like, please take a step back and realize hustle culture was. You could say it's an old. It's not. Hustle culture is a young guys thing where you're working three, three jobs. Like you used to be able to do it on a trucking job and put your kids through college. That's not the case. I worked with or I talked with a guy today, younger guy around my age. I think he's working 72 hour weeks to make it. Right now they're up to the budget, 72 hour weeks at his job and he's trying to figure out he just got a raise, so hopefully that'll help. But he is trying to make it work. They're looking at a budget, they're looking at what they can cut. 72 hour weeks, you're talking 12 or 612 hour days just to try to make it. This is what people are having to do these days and they're lucky to have the jobs they have. And because your nose is the grindstone, you can't exactly look at a different job. And when you do, people are putting in, I mean there are some jobs, 2,000 resumes, they're having to work through. 2,000 people you're going up against, you're probably not getting that job. So this is a very real thing. If you don't have the job, it's a, it takes up a ton of your headspace. If you do have a job, it takes up a ton of your time. So on both sides of it, I think you have distractions that can really take you away from God. And this is not one of those first 76. You know, the, the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. Yeah, that is very true. But I think this is more of just trying to put the Food on your family's table, going to the, what is it? First 75 of, you know, making sure you're taking care of your household. A man doesn't work, shouldn't eat. Like, you have people that are working really, really hard, which means dial it in. Dial in your schedule as much as possible and once again, make the seconds count. When you are home at night, do those family divos. That may not be the number one thing you want to do, but you got to fit it in somehow and hope, pray that the situation will change for you. [00:30:39] Speaker A: I think a good, at least from my perspective, a good idea or concept here would be to have a minimum in the sense of like, my minimum kind of standard is I will not, I will not be in a position where my wife has to work. That's kind of my minimum. It's like whatever it takes to where my wife does not have to go work outside. Like work outside the home. That is, go out and work outside the home. That's what I'm, that's what I'm going to do. Now if your minimum is, I need to be able to afford three vacations a year and I gotta make sure that I can get the newest iPhone every, like, okay, that at that point is when we kind of need to reevaluate and say, okay, what's my minimum here? Which you could fall into. You very easily could. And so I think that's an important thing that I would encourage specifically the husbands to kind of have in mind is like, what is your kind of, your minimum standard of living? And for me, it's again, I don't want my wife to have to work outside the home to where my kids have to be watched by my parents all the time or go to obviously, heaven forbid, daycare or something like that. Can't, can't have that, you know, in, in my house is kind of the standard. And so guys, any other thoughts on that before we get to kind of the next section? I, I think it's again, it's a struggle that I have. It's one that we didn't really come down and give an answer. I, I, I think if you're working more than 60, 65 hours a week as a man, it's really difficult to have the time to invest in your kids again. I know there's situations where you absolutely have to, to keep your wife at home. I get it. I mean, that's tough. But I, I think, Joe, I don't know, I'm curious your thoughts, Joe, because you, you've worked close to that, I'm sure, before. I think it's difficult to have the time for your own spiritual growth, to have the time once again to invest in your marriage and in your kids when you're at that, when you're pushing the 60, 65 hours a week mark consistently over the course of years. So that's. That's very arbitrary. I just kind of pulled those numbers out. But I mean, based on what I work now and kind of what I'm able to do, the time I'm able to spend already, I'd be pushing my limits if I was about 10 hours more than I am now, so. Any other thoughts on that? [00:32:42] Speaker C: Okay, there's a. There's a lot that could be said. I. I think generational, and I've talked about this before, I've posted about or written about it or whatever. Really, you get a lot of pushback of kind of get over it and pull up the bootstraps and all that. And, well, you know, people back in the day, you know, back before technology and all this stuff, like, there were times throughout human history, I mean, you look at the Old Testament, the festival schedule, they had a lot of time off. They had a lot of time that God set aside for family and things like that. That's not a bad thing to want. It's not a lazy thing to say that, you know, that I. That this isn't just a distraction, it's a necessity. And I don't know, I. I can hear already some of the pushback on this, and I don't think it takes everything into account. [00:33:24] Speaker A: I don't remember where it is in the Old Testament where, like, the husband who gets newly married gets a year to. To spend with his new wife of, like, doesn't work at all. [00:33:31] Speaker C: Military service. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:33:33] Speaker A: Military. That's crazy to think about. [00:33:36] Speaker B: It's not a bad thing. I think, Jack, that's a very valid point. It's not a bad thing to want rest. It doesn't make us lazy. The lavishness of the 80s, the going, going, going, going, going, you know, always got to be on, always got to be doing stuff. It burns you out. It's really not healthy. It's not good. And when you see these guys that are burnt out, it's. It's not good for the family. They're not able to show up in the ways that they need to. And this is where the church can rally around people like that. And you start getting into. Is this a. Is there a place for the church to be? Able to help people like that. A guy that's gotten that, whether that be another church member looking for another job for him, you know, people, people trying to help him out and ask around, is there another job he can get that's going to do the same or can they supplement something if the guy is hardly ever home? I mean, you see guys that are working really hard and just not barely making it. They don't have time to find another job. See if there's a way the church can help. See if there's a way that somebody else can step in and maybe take something off your shoulders or for somebody to be able to give you 500 extra bucks so you can take a day or two off. I don't know. I think you have to get our church, like the church may have to get a little more creative thinking outside the box on how to help people like that, especially as we go forward. But if you're a guy, I would exhaust all options to try to be home, you know, when you can, as much as possible to be in your kid's life. Because I know from an attachment perspective, I bring that up a lot. But it is important for kids to have both parents home as much as they can. And obviously guys got to work, but yeah, try to make that happen. So the. We talked about sports. We talked about. We spent some time on sports and on work. I don't know that we came down fully on that. This one, I don't want to spend a ton of time on guys because we have Beat this one to Death and other podcasts. But that is the idea of social media. How much can this be a distraction? Well, we opened the, we opened the podcast talking about social media and apps and things like that. This is a, a well known one. This is the one that everybody's gonna know. And so stepping on toes for this one's kind of hard because everybody's always had their toes stepped on for this one. Yeah, we get it. We need to get off Facebook. We need to get off that. Practically speaking, though, I think the reason, like, like the biggest thing I could say to this and I'll turn over to you guys is why are you turning toward it? Any distraction, you have to ask, why am I needing the distraction right now? And a lot of times it's because we don't like Silence the Beast still know that I am God. I think that's one of the, one of the biggest verses we as Christians can use. We are never still. We want our mind going well. Why? Because we don't like what happens when the mind is. Is off. And you see this with social media, with people that turn toward it, and they always have constant stimulation. They're always picking up something, whether that even if it's comparing themselves to somebody else or they're finding out about somebody else's life or they're posting themselves whatever it is, why do you need it so much? And if they could answer that question, I think what they'd come to realize is I just don't like myself when I'm alone. I don't like my. And one of the reasons they turn to social media is to compare themselves and figure out, am I worthy of being liked? Oh, I'm better than that person. And they're never actually going to physically say that it's back here. You know, it's the subconscious of the mind where they go to see, am I enough? That's a question you have to answer without social media. But I think understanding the why is one of the biggest reasons or one of the biggest things we can do to manage our time on social media, where it's not mindless, it's being very intentional with it and fully understanding why. Am I jumping on social media right now. Is it to fill 15 minutes, or is it because I really have a reason to get on? [00:36:55] Speaker A: That's a very good answer, Very intellectual, well thought out answer. My answer is a little bit more simple. I think it's just a lot of people, like, having their brains turned off. I mean, I'm not calling anybody out. I'm right there with them in the sense of, like, it's nice for a couple minutes to just kind of get on and see what people are saying. And let's face it, it's easier to do that than read a book. It's easier to do that than have to. I mean, doing homework, where you're having to really think and really exercise your brain to write this essay. How much easier is it to pick up your phone and just let me scroll for five or ten minutes? It's brainless. It's mindless. Joe, you just said that. And so I think that's another reason why a lot of people turn to it is just because the temptation to turn your brain off for a few minutes is really high. And then the other thing is it's kind of true. And real social interaction has been replaced by that. And so when people want to have social interaction, that's where they go, as opposed to even though it's still technology, calling up a friend and talking on the phone or having people over, as we've talked about before, or things like that. That has completely been replaced with getting on for young people, TikTok and YouTube and things like that. For older people, Facebook and X or whatever it is. And so that's people's social outlet. And so, yeah, there is a huge draw there again, to turn your brain off, but also just to. To see what everybody's saying and to, you know, see who went on what trip and to see who's dating who. And it's just a. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it. Like, it's not malicious is what I mean. But I think we got to get back to the idea of that not replacing social interaction, because it has for a lot of young people. And I think that's part of the draw. [00:38:29] Speaker C: I think that's a really good point. That, hey, I've been around people. No, you haven't. You just artificially felt like you have to. The other point about it just kind of being a shut your brain off. There's a reason they call it a feed. And I mean, like, I'm being a little bit facetious with that, but, like, it really is like you're plugging in and just digesting all this garbage of, okay, what's this person doing? And the other thing about it is it's endless. You can go to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikToks now, whatever one you're on. There's. There's always something you can go. Always one to the next, to the next. It's kind of like, is there anything in the fridge? No, I'll go check the pantry. Is there anything in the pantry? No, I'll go check the fridge. Like, you just back and forth, back and forth. And. Yeah, I mean, you're keeping yourself busy. You're keeping your brain occupied, but you're getting nothing out of it, I really think. Okay, so here's this. Kind of goes for all of these, but I'll park on this one. On this particular one, my wife and I were talking about the other day of people who show up to church once or twice every few months or whatever. And, like, why. Why would you think that's okay? And of course, we're people who grew up there every Sunday, every Wednesday, Families that raised us that way, which is. I'm really appreciative for where she was trying to get into the mindset of people who do that. And I said it was same when I go to the gym. There's people. You just See every now and then. And then you see the everyday kind of guys. I think all of those people say, yeah, I know I should. It's kind of the same thing with this social media thing. Yeah, we have talked about it before. Everyone's talked about it before. I should do less. All of us would say, yeah, I know I should. Why don't we, like, what's. What is the disconnect between. I should definitely spend less time on that. I should definitely limit it. I know, Joe, you've got some of those apps that do limit. Like you can't get on some of those social media sites because you just end up scrolling. So that. That's a good thing that you've done. That I probably should do. But like with all of these distractions, whether it's the sports thing. Yeah, I should not have watched and listened to everything we've talked about before. We're not telling you anything new. And I guess this is probably where this rubber meets the road with this topic. How do you get from the I know I should to I am. I am doing better. I am on social media way less. I am, whatever it may be, because I've done times like that where I really pulled back and slowed down and deleted apps and way less time. You always end up back there. You always. And in the same sense, some people, man, they made it to church three weeks in a row and then they slide back again like that. That full life change is really hard to do. [00:40:58] Speaker B: A couple things come to mind. First off, there's the parable of the the demon where you replace the. Or you pull out the demon. Seven worst ones take its place. If it's filling a need for you and you just remove the need, something will take its place. A lot of times it'll end up taking its own place, so come back around later. Which speaks to the second point. I go back to beat the dead horse on this. What is your why? Why are you running to it and why do you want to get rid of it? A lot of times like, oh, I know I shouldn't. Okay, well, I'll just, I'll try hard not to. Yeah, but why do you want to get rid of it? Why is your life better without it? People can't answer that question. And so it becomes a. An exercise of self will, you know, can I just white knuckle it and work really hard to get rid of it? Yeah, but what's the reason I got rid of it in the first place? Because people are looking at it going, man, I was Kind of happier. It gave me a little bit of a break. And so you start telling yourself, it didn't do what I wanted it to do. And then you have to ask yourself, what did you want to do in the first place? You felt guilted that you spent too long on it, but what were you going to fill the time with? If you have a why of like, you know what? I want to be there more for my family. I want to check in with my family more. I want to make sure that I'm, I'm having time to talk with my wife or I really want to get to these books. I want to read these books. If you are actively filling the time you used to be on social media, you're going to be a lot more likely to be able to eliminate that distraction. But if you get rid of it and it's like, what do I do at the time? Now, I don't know. I guess I'll do something, get busy, clean the house. Well, that's not going to be a reason. That's kind of a, I don't know answer. What's your why? And why are you running to it in the first place? Is it because maybe I'm lonely and I don't have a ton of connection? You have to solve the underlying need initially in order to get out of a distraction like this. [00:42:39] Speaker C: Hey, folks, I want to tell you guys about this week's book from our sponsor, Cobb Publishing. Catholicism Against Itself. Catholicism Against Itself uses only books officially endorsed by the Catholic Church to show what Catholic historians admit about the history of their church, their hierarchy, their practices, and their claims. This isn't someone outside of the Catholic Church making arguments against the legitimacy of it. These are the Catholic experts and historians, all of them stamped with the official seal of approval and endorsement of the Catholic Church itself. They admit the Catholic Church forged documents in order to convince the laity to go along with whatever the hierarchy wanted to do and that some of their practices to this very day are based on those forgeries. O.C. lambert once possessed the largest library of Catholic books and documents in the United States outside of a monastery. After producing two volumes of Catholicism Against Itself, he challenged any representative of the Catholic Church to a public debate. No one dared. Available@cobb publishing.com, cobb publishing.com Amazon and many other online bookstores. [00:43:41] Speaker A: To add to that, my answer would be, you have to get specific about what you want to accomplish. You can't just say, well, I, I, man, I want to not be on social media as much. That is, as Clear as mud. Like, what does that mean to you? You know, I've said it before about, you know, people who want, well, I want to eat healthier. What does that mean? That that is not clear enough. And so for social media specifically, what do you want out of it? Do you want to completely get off of it forever? That's really, most of the time, not people's goal, but it's the people that say, well, I want to be on it less. Let me just delete all the apps real fast. And then that'll. That'll solve it. The reason that really solves it is because they didn't have a clear goal in mind of, like, this is what I want. If your goal is, I want to spend 15 minutes a day or less on it, there are ways to do that. There are ways to set up screen time, passwords where you don't know the password, and if somebody else has it and 15 minutes is up, you're done, you're good. That's. That's your goal. That's what you decided to do. The problem is people or things like, I don't, I don't want to be on social media from 8am to 7pm there's ways to do that too. Technology is really nice in some ways. The problem is people don't set clear enough goals for themselves. It is a whole lot of I want to be on social media less or I really want to be better about not scrolling social media. The more ambiguous and vague you are about that kind of stuff. The. Just to keep using the metaphor, man, I really want to get closer to God. Great. What does that mean to you specifically? And so that would be my answer, Jack, of like, that's where the rubber meets the road is you got to decide what is it you want to accomplish? Is it 15 minutes a day or less? Is it. I don't want to be on it during the workday. Is it. I only want to get on it on the weekends. Is it. I want to get off of it completely. Figure that out. And then that's how you're going to before. You can't accomplish anything until you figure that out, I think. And that goes once again for dieting, that goes for being healthy, that goes for your spiritual life. Got to get specific. [00:45:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:30] Speaker B: Here's your thoughts on that, Jack. Yeah. [00:45:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And again, this word, I kind of brought this up to the social media point, but it applies to everything we're talking about here, of figuring out what it is you really want and really just kind of assessing with your life. I mean, every now and then you do have to take. Intentionality requires stepping back and going, what do I like the direction this is going? What do I actually need to get done? Is that getting done? What? Because I mean, if you ask yourself that question, what would I Rather Do? Read 3,494 tweets or read a book? Well, they take the same amount of time. Obviously you're going to say, I want to read the book, but if you don't actively choose it, you're going to read the tweets. Like that's, it's just what happens. I mean, that has happened over and over and over for 15 to 20 years now of that kind of thing. When I think back, I mean, I'm almost 20 years into the social media era. I was one of the not earliest adopters, but fairly, fairly early on. And so it's been half of my life. You just think about, like, how much more could be done. And so you start asking yourself those questions, like, is this really how I want to spend my time? And again, not just social media, the sports thing. Like, as I said, having more kids, I watch way less sports than I used to. I used to know everything that was going on everywhere. I could name every quarterback, coach, stadium, team. I can't anymore. Like, it's just the, the sports trivia. I don't even know, you know, half of the, the baseball stars anymore. And it kind of hit me a couple years ago, like, wow, I used to know everybody. You lose that. I mean, like, priorities take their place. Well, that's got to happen across the board is really, look at your life and you only got one. I, I think one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible is Psalm 90, verse 12. It's where actually Moses wrote that psalm and where it says, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. It is unwise to not consider your days numbered. To just spend them like they're unlimited. They're not unlimited. There's a hard limit to them. And wasting them on a million sporting events, a million social media apps, whatever it may be. Really ask yourself the question, what do I actually want? [00:47:32] Speaker B: I love your point of intentionality because is that not the crux of the issue with distractions? We're just not intentional. It's really what it comes down to. If we want a closer relationship, a closer walk with God, we would be intentional. And it goes to Will's point about being very strategic in how we plan this out. What is it that I actually want. Well, I just want a better relationship with God. What does that mean? He said it perfectly. What does that mean? It is the intentionality that it says, you know what, I don't want to do this. I don't want to just scroll doom scroll on social media all day. I really do want to get in my word and I want to read through the Gospel of Matthew this month or I want to say have the Daniel challenge where maybe for a month, I'm saying three prayers a day or whatever it may be like you want to have challenges for yourself that is intentional that you really have to put time and effort and thought into. And distractions are just a. It's the exact opposite of that. They're thoughtless, mindless things that we want to not think about. And. And sometimes they are things that we're thinking about like sports, but we find that they're taking us away from what we really know we. We ought to do. And the big question of my life is how do we get what we ought to do to be the thing that we or the thing we need to do to be the thing that we want to do? And it's finding passion and finding purpose and finding value in the thing that we're supposed to do. I need to go to church. I need to read my Bible. Well, why don't I want to. We have to be able to change the needs to wants, and that's finding purpose in those things. Finding value in those things. [00:48:56] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think that's a great thought. I'm going to go ahead and move us into our last category here. There's one that I'm just very interested in. It ties kind of into the sports thing. So we'll probably save it for the deep end. And that is just entertainment. Shows, movies. I mean, that is kind of. If you're not a sports fan, then typically that is going to be your way to kind of enjoy your night sometimes is watching a show and watching movies and kind of being again that just being your pastime. And so I'm curious your guys's thoughts on how much that is too much. You know, binge watching, of course, is kind of a thing or, you know, four or five episodes a night. And that's just specifically for college kids and young people. Like that's just what they do at night is they binge watch. And so I'm very curious Yalls thoughts on kind of the. How much is too much as far as that goes. But we'll save it for the deep End because I want to get to one other area before we get to Jack's. Think fast. And that is a bit of a different one than the ones that we've covered so far. And that's church busyness. What do we do with the idea of the church calendar filling up so much that in a way, we're just as busy as if we were with sports, as if we were with, you know, any of these things that we've covered already. But it's with the church calendar, it's with youth events. It's with, you know, get togethers with your congregation, fellowship events and service projects and youth nights and all these things. I would argue those are probably better. It is probably better to do that than it is to be gone seven nights a week doing sports because you're with your church family. You're building those relationships. Like, I don't think those things are equal at the same time. My dad or my parents have argued before, and I don't think they're necessarily wrong. Your church calendar can. You can say no to things like that, can get too busy to the point where you are sacrificing your family time. And so, yeah, just to open up that discussion about when does church busyness become too much? I mean, we already know both y'all, but primarily Joe's thoughts on youth events and stuff like that. So we don't necessarily have to get into that discussion. But primarily, again, you'll say you've got a fairly decent sized congregation that might have two things. Two things planned per week. Two nights a week. There may be in some cases, specifically in the summer when there's all kinds of stuff going on. At what point do you say, no, we're not going to participate in that, Even though it's a service project, even though it might be a healthy thing for our kids to go to, I think that can be just as distracting in many ways. Obviously, again, a little different than the other things. But what are Yalls thoughts on the balance with church events and distractions? [00:51:22] Speaker C: I think it's very clear to see the difference between somebody who's like, yeah, we don't want to come tonight because we're going to the ball game. We're going to whatever to. Okay, we've been at the last 17 church things in the last two months, and tonight we just need some family time at home. Like, that's. They might get accused of that. Like, oh, you're just not committed enough to the Lord. No, that's. You got to have your priorities in order Priorities. Yeah, I think that's one of the other things is with some of these church events it can be very easy, especially for the real plugged in producers to get to that point where they're, they feel like they have to be a part of everything. If the church is doing that much and one or two families have to prop the whole thing up, the church doesn't need to be doing that much. Like, if you can't pass the duties off to somebody else and they pick it up, then maybe it doesn't need to be done. Maybe the church is not ready for that. Maybe you need to get other people ready to step into that role. But the idea of just attending everything, maybe, maybe you don't have to attend everything, maybe talk to the elders or just decide for your family which things are most important, but that's a very hard thing. I've been at smaller churches for a good long while now, and so we, we haven't had this problem as much. Although I will say one of the smaller churches I worked with, man, the amount of teaching and preaching I had to do, like the amount of events and special classes and teen classes and like, it got ridiculous. I had essentially an extra two weeks worth of work every single month of extra lessons I had to put together and things like that. And as a preacher I was just totally cooked. But people were showing up for all of them and it's like, man, I think this is a little too much for these people. So again, take your, your stock of, of how much family time you're getting in. Take stock of, man, and we don't need to be at the building five nights a week kind of thing. [00:53:09] Speaker A: That was the other thing I was going to bring up briefly, Jackie, that you spoke to, because I was, I, I was in this position for a while. A lot of ministers kind of viewed themselves as like, they are paid based off of how many events they plan. And like, you are highly incentivized to do more things because again, that's kind of your job in many, it's specifically for youth ministers. But even, even for, as you spoke to preaching ministers who, you know, whether it be fellowship stuff or again, service things or just classes and stuff like that, like, there is a pressure that I felt when I was in that position of, you know, if I don't plan these events, are my elders going to think I'm not doing my job type of thing? And so I think that is kind of an understated part of it as well. Joe. [00:53:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we have to think about Distractions. What are we distracting from? Because somebody may listen to this and go, are you kidding? You're saying that church work is a distraction from what? You know, it's drawing us closer to God. And that's, I think, where the contention would be, is not all of these events are drawing us closer to God. Not all of these events are helpful. Not all of these events are helping the family. When we talk about priorities, what is the priority here and what are we distracting ourselves from? By and large, we're distracting ourselves from a closer walk with God. But I think in this situation, we're distracting ourselves from first things first. You know, we're distracting ourselves from healthy families. The reason PK means something is because you can fill your schedule with all sorts of church work that doesn't get your family to heaven. It doesn't mean your kids are right there behind you. It means you have pumped your schedule full of church stuff, and your kids are dragging. Your kids don't necessarily want to be there all the time, you know, and. Wow, that's a heart issue with them. No, it's not. Maybe they just want mom and dad, and maybe sometimes that's enough. I don't think having the bazillion things on the calendar is healthy for a spiritual walk, because the other thing is, it really turns into workspace salvation. Well, I showed up for the last 12 things, therefore, I'm tight with God. I've been there. I've done this. Where you are doing a bazillion one things for the church. We had this as a family a long time ago when we were attending a bigger congregation, and we did a lot of different stuff. We were involved in pretty much everything the congregation did. And you think that you're spiritual. You think you're in a good place with God until you zoom out and you stop doing those things and you go, wow, I'm not near as close to God as I thought I was. I was distracting myself with the bazillion one things that were taking place at the church. And it was all to my detriment because I was convincing myself I was nearer to God because of these things. And when it comes down to it, my prayer life isn't there. My study life isn't there. My. My closeness to God isn't there. I was just distracting myself with a million and one things at the church. I. I cooked for a youth event. Fantastic. Okay, what's your prayer life like? When's the last time you got on your knees and talked to God? When's the last time you were vulnerable with another person, when's the last time you were hospitable and had somebody over? Maybe you got a million and one things going on at the church. That doesn't mean that you have a close connection, a close relationship with God. And it doesn't mean you're drawing your family closer to God. And so that's kind of the point we're making here is church activities can absolutely become a distraction from those things. [00:56:03] Speaker A: I'm going to defend them for just a second. Kind of give the other side. We're overusing this word, but it is a balance because I have also seen people. I can't come to that. I can't be at that event. We need our family time, and it's okay. So by family time, you mean family movie night four nights a week. Like, okay, that's probably not the right way to go about it either. And so I do think there is an element of making sure that. I don't know, I guess fellowship time with your church family needs to be part of your calendar. I, I guess is what I'm saying. And, and that's not to take away from Yalls all of our points because we've all said it that that can be overdone. But I would caution people also against, like, you know, we got to have our family time. We can't go to. Can't show up, can't take this meal to somebody. We, we, sorry, we can't show up to the Tuesday midweek Bible study. We can't do. There definitely needs to be a balance there and you need to be able to see. And again, if, if your family time that you're always trying to make sure that you have is just movie nights and fun things and all the time, like, that's, that's not the right way to go about it either. And so again, overusing the word. But it absolutely is a balance here that if it teeters too far in one direction, can, can throw your family off balance. But I would agree, overall, you need to make sure as, as a parental unit that your kids, that you have time to disciple your kids and that that's not being neglected. [00:57:22] Speaker C: Yeah, the. When we say the work of the church, that can be things at the church building that can be having family devotional with your kids is your portion of the work of the church or having somebody over. So thinking about that clearly is something we need to do. All right, we are going to save the entertainment discussion for the deep end kind of what to make of that usage of our time, movies, tv, whatever the case may be. Having said all that, it is time for our Think fast here. In the last few minutes, there's a few different directions I thought about going with this. We've done the sports thing. I know not everybody are sports fans. There's just a big NBA All Star game, which apparently was terrible. There's the, the hockey National, Canada, USA beating on each other kind of thing. But I'm gonna go a different direction. There is this proposal that maybe we're getting. Everybody's getting government checks again from the savings from the Department of Government Efficiency and all that. And who knows if that's going to come to pass. I don't think that's the best idea. I think we get Ramsey this thing and roll that money into more debt payments or whatever it may be. But let's say we do get that money. I could say what do you. I guess I'll ask you both questions because I can't decide on which one. Let's say it's, you know, 500 bucks, 700 bucks, whatever it was last time. Let's say that's what you get. What is. If you're just going to spend it frivolously, something stupid. If something for the podcast and Focus Press and then just something personally. [00:58:45] Speaker B: It said, I, I read $5,000. [00:58:47] Speaker C: I think that was exaggerated. Yeah, I think that was. I saw like a community note correcting that. I don't know. I'm just. Let's say you get, let's say a thousand bucks. Let's say you get a thousand bucks. [00:58:59] Speaker A: Joe, you're up first. [00:59:00] Speaker B: New podcast equipment, I would say, where we're all getting brand new mics and I would put it into. I talk with you guys about splurging on a big studio and getting the, the studio look, maybe if it was something for Focus Press. I think personally, man, that's a tough question. I need my passport renewed and those things cost a lot of money. So I'd probably, I'd look to do that. I don't know if you guys have looked into that recently. That's expensive. So that's kind of on my to do list or my, my buying list. [00:59:31] Speaker A: I guess this is a, this is a fun question. I, I would say Focus Press, wise, Gallium and podcast studio, just deck that thing out. We're working, working on that right now. Maybe spend a little bit of that money on, I don't know, some marketing stuff too. That wouldn't go very far, but I think that would maybe Help, SEO, whatever it is personally. So Jack, you said you had to spend it. My first thought would be save it, just throw it in our emergency fund and. But spending it, I travel, I'd go on a vacation. I would pick somewhere cool to go and go for go for a week. [01:00:05] Speaker B: If I had get my passport and Will and I would split. [01:00:07] Speaker A: There you go. If we're going overseas, that thousand bucks wouldn't last very long. I would say that's always going to be the way I'd like to spend my money is on travel. Jack, how about you? [01:00:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I wouldn't buy a whole lot worth but I'd pay somebody else to produce all this. You know, like to produce this and do the website stuff and content production for and I mean like obviously I'd still do the writing in the podcast but it'd be very nice to sign off on here and be like, all right, here's the video file buddy. Go get us a bunch of reels and quote clips and all that. So again that would buy about like three episodes worth. But hey, I take the break. I don't know a frivolous thing. I don't know, some house upgrade. [01:00:42] Speaker A: You are not a frivolous spender. So I was curious. [01:00:47] Speaker C: Upgrade, you know like a half of a beef, like the local, you know, grass fed or whatever. [01:00:53] Speaker A: I love it. [01:00:54] Speaker C: But it wouldn't be nice like your freezer full. [01:00:56] Speaker A: So not like a steak dinner or anything like that. [01:00:59] Speaker C: You can buy mini steaks. You would get like eight ribeyes in that thing. See, I'm thinking big here, so I don't know, I. Yeah, I'm not a big frill spent. You're right. A nice dinner out, I don't know but just something goofy. Who knows? If you do get that money, I'm not a financial advisor. Don't spend it on something stupid. [01:01:20] Speaker A: Cryptocurrency. [01:01:22] Speaker B: There you go, your lottery ticket. [01:01:25] Speaker C: Unless you want to fund all of these focus dream projects. Focuspress.org donate is the link. So no, we just throwing a little bit of a fun question out there to end the episode. But if you have any other distractions, any other ways in which that comes up, anything to add to the list, be sure to do so join us on Focus plus as we're going to discuss the entertainment one. But also whatever comments we get on there, be sure to check that out. Sermon cast always goes up. Huge archive of devotionals, videos, all kinds of stuff on there. So check out Focus plus and we will talk to you guys on the next one. [01:01:59] Speaker A: Sa.