030 | Secure Your Own Mask First

Hey Dads,

As Christian dads, we long for our children to follow God’s path with joy-filled hearts. We pray they will delight in God Himself. But is there something we need to make sure we ourselves are doing first?

In Ep. 30, my longtime friend Jonathan Ballou talks with me about how we as dads need to “secure our own mask first” to guide our families in the right way.

With Much Aloha,

Nathan

Scripture

Hebrews 7:27

Quotes

"The journey of missions has always had a strong connection to adventure. It's always, for me, had a sense of freshness and newness and a pioneering spirit to it…"—Jonathan Ballou

"Honestly, we learn from each other in that, we support each other in that, because our strengths are different, we lean on each other."—J.B.

"I know that my own heart has to be steady through my walk with God. I think that I try to deal with my own…spiritual, emotional turbulence without letting that shake the people around me."—J.B.

"One of the responsibilities that God gave men with our role is to be steady. And the faith and the devotional life of a father has to provide stability that will weather seasons. Any family is going to go through a lot of different seasons, and I've seen in so many cases where it's the strength and the stability of a father's walk with God that allows the family to navigate and to weather those different times."—J.B.

"We live in an age where there's a great deal of the abdication of the role that God has given to us."—J.B.

"We do have the responsibility to other people, but the way that we're best suited to care for our families is when our own spiritual lives, our own spiritual walk is regular and steady and faithful, and then we're able to, by example, lead others into a similar closeness and intimacy with Christ."—J.B.

"Fathers, you can get this right."—J.B., referring to what Jon Tyson teaches fathers regarding raising their sons

"As readers, we can't become complacent….We want our minds to be sharp. There can be a certain dullness of the mind, either from not reading, or from only reading that which we already know or that which we already agree with, and we're never allowing ourselves to be challenged to actually do the work of sifting out and refuting what somebody else is putting out there in their position. I think we expose ourselves to a certain amount of mental atrophy, that we would then become unfit to help the people that we're supposed to help." —J.B.

Books and Authors Mentioned

👤 Elisabeth Elliot

👤 Wilfred Grenfell

👤 J. Hudson Taylor (best book about him: Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor)

📖 Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

📖 The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

👤 Oswald Chambers

👤 A.W. Tozer

📖 The Intentional Father, by Jon Tyson

👤 James Dobson

👤 John Eldredge

👤 Douglas Wilson

👤 Steve Farrar

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💡 See the show notes at https://refreshpublishing.com/030-secure-your-own-mask-first

Notes

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/jonny-easton/the-messenger
License code: OAJIXAABB3C1V1OY

https://uppbeat.io/t/aaron-paul-low/pony-express
License code: ZUCYKOROVB4PRHZC