Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Britton Grimm, Chris Carr. Welcome. How you doing? Pretty good. You? Good. Yeah, doing well. I got a little sick yesterday, so hopefully recovering from that, but still don't feel great.

[00:02:44:23 - 00:02:50:04]
Chris
 So you're sitting here three feet from me? Yeah. You didn't tell me that before we started?

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Brenton
 I'm wearing a mask.

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Chris
 Right. Yeah. I'm not wearing a mask. Don't anybody believe that?

[00:02:57:20 - 00:02:58:06]
 (Laughter)

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Brenton
 Yeah, so I'll back up a little bit from you.

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Brenton
 Real quick, a little housekeeping. We did have a bit of a Spotify issue last week. Audio file didn't get updated. So anyone that struggled to find the episode last week, it was available on Apple Podcasts, but I think everything's taken care of now. So if you did miss the episode from last week, it's there now. So you can have two coming out right next to each other.

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Chris
 Yeah, we had a rough tech week last week, didn't we?

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Brenton
 Yeah, a little week.

[00:03:30:01 - 00:03:30:02]
 (Laughter)

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Brenton
 I think we're all squared away now.

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Chris
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 It happens.

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Brenton
 So we started the created and called sermon series this week, and this is all on family.

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Brenton
 And how long has it been since we've done a sermon series devoted to families? It's been a while, appreciate it.

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Chris
 I'm trying to remember the last one we did.

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Chris
 It's probably actually been prior to COVID when we actually did a full-- or if you talk about the family, we've talked about marriage and we've talked about sexuality, but it's been a minute.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 We talked a little bit about where you're going to go with it, but what is causing us to come to this point? I know we have the family conference coming up, and that's looking forward to that. But also, what specifically is this trying to address that is timely right now?

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Chris
 Well, really what happened is that Pastor Paul Fishbach came to me and said, hey, I've got this idea for a family conference. This was a while ago.

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Chris
 And we want to do it in February of 2026. And I was like, well, that's great, and then begin to think about that. And I'd already had it on the radar. We needed to be talking about some of these things. And so I said, well, I think it'll be a great way just to do a whole month and kind of wrap it up with the family conference and just hit on these really core foundational issues. But I mean, we don't need to spend much time talking about how the family is in someone in disarray in a culture that might be putting it mildly and the challenges that families are facing from a whole host of areas, including obviously marriage, but sexuality, gender.

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Chris
 And it really extends beyond that. And our family conference, we're going to have something literally for every age demographic from discipling kids, teens, to how do you care for your aging parents,

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Chris
 using your retirement years for the Lord, how you do estate planning, medical ethics, and others. That's just kind of scratching the surface of what we're going to talk about. So there's just so, so much of it. And we probably can't talk about it too much. Yeah, that's true.

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Brenton
 All right, so jumping into your sermon.

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Brenton
 The very base of what you were talking about is the idea that because God created us, He has the right to define who we are. And not only that, but you've mentioned calling too, right? So He has the right to define what we do.

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Brenton
 But our culture is obsessed with self-definition, that the only way that we can define who we are is who we say we are.

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Brenton
 Why is it, you took an entire week to kind of lay this out. Why is that such an important foundation or something for us to accept before we even get into the practicalness of this?

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Chris
 Well, I'd start with Romans chapter 1, which I briefly mentioned on Sunday. But it all tells us in Romans 1, when we deny the truth of God, about God, and then hence about ourselves, that it leads to just complete disintegration and disarray.

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Chris
 And so, if we don't begin with the truth about what God says about everything, but specifically about us,

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Chris
 then we are bound to be in trouble. And that's literally what we see. It's chaos.

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Chris
 What's interesting in Genesis chapter 1 is we see God taking literally chaos,

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Chris
 and He making order out of it,

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Chris
 and defining and defining and all. And then human beings decide they want to take over and give themselves a self-definition. And then we end up back heading toward chaos.

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Chris
 And so, in many ways, what God's doing in the world now is He's putting things right. He's taking the chaos that we've created and bringing form back to that. And, you know, formation is a big word, you know, for me, and what we've been talking about there. So, I guess it's really, though, just important for us is like, too, if we get to define ourselves, then that's probably going to be changing on a regular basis, like who we are, what we're here for. There's just no solid ground, because our feelings, a lot of that's based on feelings, and our feelings just change. And there's just no doubt about that.

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Chris
 Nobody can deny that our feelings change. And so, we're just left kind of tossing on the waves there of where our feelings go and where our circumstances take us.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Would you say that that's the biggest implication of the difference between those two paths, whether it's self-definition or it's God defining who we are? Like, what would you say is the biggest difference practically that comes out of those two things?

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Chris
 Well, it's just whether or not you're going to have a clearly defined shape and direction for your life that is not rooted in what's going on in your head, heart, and circumstances,

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Chris
 or whether you're going to be subjected to that.

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Chris
 And, you know,

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Chris
 in a society, you know, part of one of the circumstances is society changes, and as society changes, then naturally our thoughts and feelings about what's right and what's true can easily be changed along with that. And we just see that all the time.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 You said that the family's purpose is ultimately worship, not self-fulfillment.

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Brenton
 What does it typically look like when family becomes an idol for us?

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Chris
 Well, I think it plays out in different ways, but if...and it can be different whether you're in the role of parent or child, and some people are in the role of both.

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Chris
 But if you're, say, you're a parent and family is an idol, then your kids, how your kids are doing,

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Chris
 can either...they can absolutely crush you if they're not doing well, or it can make you proud if they are doing well. Both of those things are unhealthy and not good for us. As a parent, you can also...what kids need is they need stability from their parents. Their parents need to be loving, firm, and consistent. But if our kids are an idol, then we're going to tend to be inconsistent and not firm.

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Chris
 Kids need boundaries.

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Chris
 But if we are worried about what our kids are thinking about us and how they're going to respond to us, and what I mean by is overly worried about that, controlled by that, then we're not in a place to make good parenting decisions. I hope our kids are the best. On the other hand, if kids make their family, and maybe you say their parents an idol, and I would say their parents' opinion of them an idol, then they are going to probably not

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Chris
 help well and find their identity rooted in where it truly is. And the parents should be helping them to do this, but even when parents are striving to do that, kids can make their parents' opinions, what the parents have to say about them, think about them.

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Chris
 That's the most important thing to them in the world, and so their behavior can get molded

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Chris
 instead of their hearts being molded. And parents have a significant role in this, too.

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Chris
 And then another way we see this a lot now is where the families becomes—everything revolves around the family's schedule instead of at times revolving around what God's priorities would be. And we could not give a lot of examples there and step on a lot of toes,

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Chris
 but that, the family. And maybe just add another one, because I'm really going to step on some toes here, but I've just seen this consistently here, is that where the family becomes such a big deal in family gatherings and spending time with our family, that we are not hospitable to people that are outside of our family, whether that be believers or unbelievers, and it just becomes such a big deal. And one of the common things that you will hear, that you, maybe I should say I hear from people who come and move into southeast Iowa and central Illinois from outside, is that it can be really hard to actually acclimate to this area, because people are so engaged with their family. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily bad in any way.

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Chris
 So you might be asking for their podcasts.

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Chris
 But like, it's—a family is good, and that's right in all of that. But we have to keep it—there's a balance there, and we should be looking for how we can help people to get connected to the church. And a lot of times that's going to be maybe it would need us to sacrifice some family time.

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Brenton
 Yeah. I think this specifically can be such a hard thing to navigate, because it's really easy for us to convince ourselves that family is our priority, right? That especially our kids, as we're responsible for them, and they seem like they should be top priority to us. But I think what you said is right, that that can point to them being an idol for us. Yeah.

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Chris
 I think it's like this idea that it's either our kids or other people,

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Chris
 it's just like—it's not an either-or.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Chris
 It's like one of the best ways to pour into our kids and to train them and to disciple them is to help them to see hospitality in action and love for the other, in action, love for our neighbors in action. It's not like we're saying, "Hey, kids, you guys go take care of yourself." No, it's like we're going to invite people into our lives. And that's just like—to get in the area where we're at, one of the strengths of this area is there is a stronger family connection, Molly Bonds. That's a strength of it. And what I would love to see is where we use that strength more with a mission kind of gospel focus in the sense of like—and I think there's benefits on both sides, both for our family and for people who are not a part of the church family in particular.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah, well said.

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Brenton
 So you talked a lot about cultivating, and you said when you were defining it, you said it speaks of development, structure, order, and care, working to see something flourish and guarding it so that nothing prevents it from doing so. What would you say are some enemies or some things that kind of push back on us cultivating like we should?

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Chris
 Well, we could talk about this a lot, but I think consumer mentality, consumerism,

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Chris
 and

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Chris
 we're just consuming instead of building, so to speak.

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Chris
 And I'd say that something that goes along with that is just a busyness. One thing that I continue to strive to do with somewhat limited success is like, how do we actually slow down?

[00:17:07:22 - 00:17:23:03]
Chris
 If you—I'm not a big gardener or anything like that or a landscaper for sure, no green thumb here, but like if you're going to cultivate something, it takes time and care and intentionality.

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Chris
 And we're so busy these days with so many different things that I think it's really hard to give it that time and attention and care that it needs. So this would probably be the big things that I would talk about this—and they really do go hand in hand, is like this consumer more and taking in more and more and more and more and taking instead of giving and instead of building and that mentality and then actually giving ourselves the time to be able to not only think about it, but to give the care that it needs.

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Brenton
 Yeah, you mentioned something when you were talking about cultivating on Sunday about a lot of us at least have grown up where we kind of see the earth going away anyway, so like who cares?

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Brenton
 Do you think that a lot of people are still in that position, kind of have that pessimistic view of like who cares about how we're going to be taken?

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Chris
 I don't know if people are even thinking about it as much in terms—one,

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Chris
 I think implication of that is we should care for the creation care. And I think that sometimes we Christians, like the climate wars, so to speak, which I'm not taking aside like here on this,

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Chris
 but what we do is we react negatively to that. Like there is a craziness to it.

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Chris
 The earth is what God created it for us to enjoy.

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Chris
 We shouldn't make an idol a God. Creation is not God.

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Chris
 Yet at the same time, it's like we are stewards of it. We should care for it. We should think, is this the best use of the earth and natural resources and even simply things like littering and all that kind of stuff. And like that as a Christian, you really should think about that. I was out, like, well, I won't mention that because I've already stepped on enough toes yesterday, but it's like I love nature and going out in the scene, like people are just dumping stuff and,

[00:20:13:07 - 00:20:33:16]
Chris
 you know, or we just destroy things, just destroy things and all of that. And we just don't think about like this world is going to be recreated and renewed. It's not going to like, who cares? Because it's going to burn.

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Chris
 Like take your beer cans and fill them up with them to sink to the bottom of the pond because what does it matter? Okay. But like, I mean, that's kind of a joke, but like we should, and there's a lot of other implications in regards to that. Like, so yeah.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where people land on a lot of that stuff. I think it's been kind of, I mean, I grew up the same way where I didn't even, you know, think about, because it's just like, you know, Jesus is going to come back and we're good. This place is over. But there is a certain, you know, you're right. It's stewardship. And it's not just like the physical earth that we're talking about, but like, you know, all of these things are, they have implications later too.

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Chris
 Right.

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Brenton
 Okay. You were clear that being fruitful is more than having children.

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Brenton
 And what you were really getting at was like, our job is to disciple worshipers, to create worshipers out of our children.

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Brenton
 How does that kind of help us refocus, like what success looks like in parenting, especially when the priority of the culture is not that at all?

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Chris
 Yeah. It's a great question. And I think a really important one.

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Chris
 I think ultimately the healthiest and happiest kids are going to be kids who are discipled to do what they were created to do.

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Chris
 And so that's in some that would really be the answer because this is what so much of this is about is like, we're only going to flourish when we do what we were created to do. That's just, I mean, you can almost put a period on it then, but maybe something that will just bring this to bear for parents.

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Chris
 You know, I do a lot of funerals or have done a lot of funerals, I guess I should say.

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Chris
 And like at funerals, people are,

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Chris
 the things that people want to be remembered for are not like making a lot of money,

[00:23:04:10 - 00:23:10:19]
Chris
 how big a house they have, how successful they were in a career or anything.

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Chris
 What people want to be remembered for and what you generally are going to be talked about as your funeral is things like your character and the lives that you've impacted and the legacy that you have left behind. And so we all ought to think about that for ourselves. Like what do we want? What would we hope people would say about us at our funeral?

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Chris
 And then if you want to talk about it in terms of parenting, what do you want people to say about your kids at their funeral? No, I know, no parent, trust me, I fully understand this. No parent wants to think about their kids funeral. That's not my point. It's just like what really matters,

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Chris
 right? Is it getting into the right college or is it being a great athlete? Is it making a lot of money?

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Chris
 Is it being wildly popular or is it their character? And that's what we're talking about in discipling worship. It's all about character. Yeah,

[00:24:22:06 - 00:24:33:01]
Brenton
 again, it's one of those topics that you can get caught up in really good stuff, but take it too far too. I mean setting your kids up for success in the future is a great thing.

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Chris
 Well, I would just say just a general principle is that when it comes to parenting, you have to begin with the end in mind.

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Chris
 And I think a lot of times we just don't think about the end. We're just caught up in whatever's going on in the world. And the craziness now with youth sports, it's just...

[00:25:01:22 - 00:25:19:03]
Chris
 All of my kids except for one are in their 20s now. And so this was a thing when they were growing up, but it's even magnified another significant degree now. It's just like,

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Chris
 I think a lot of parents just get caught up in my kid. Everybody else is playing these sports continually and traveling all over the place. And we're spending all of this money and that's just like kind of like... That's what families do and not thinking like, okay, is this really going to help accomplish the end that we really do want? I think for many, almost all Christian parents, it's not that they ultimately want the wrong thing. It's that they a lot of times just don't even think about is what we are doing actually going to

[00:25:59:14 - 00:26:00:19]
Chris
 get our kids there.

[00:26:02:02 - 00:26:40:23]
Chris
 Does that make sense? Right? It's just what I said, with our Christian parents, they want their kids to love the Lord. They want their kids to be high character people. They want them, I think, probably to be like Jesus. And yet, I think so often we just don't think about is what we are... That end goal that we want, we just don't think about it. We don't take time to think is what we are giving ourselves to now going to see that come to bear. Yeah.

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Brenton
 All right. So you broadened cultivation, as you talked about more, to include things like work, art, business, culture.

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Brenton
 How should families think differently about careers, schedules, priorities, kind of what we were just talking about? If all of life is meant to be cultivated for God's glory, what kinds of intentional steps can we take to, just say intentionally again, cultivate

[00:27:15:07 - 00:27:16:15]
Chris
 this?

[00:27:17:22 - 00:27:18:16]
Chris
 Well, I think we...

[00:27:20:14 - 00:27:28:08]
Chris
 Just to speak a little bit more to what I was trying to get at on Sunday, we,

[00:27:29:08 - 00:27:35:23]
Chris
 for a long, long time, grew up in this sacred, secular divide,

[00:27:38:07 - 00:28:00:13]
Chris
 where we allow ourselves to look at the world either as sacred or secular. And what I would suggest that is more biblical is that we look at everything as sacred and things are only secularized. Okay. Okay. There is no such thing, in my opinion, as secular music or secular employment.

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Chris
 There's secularized music, entertainment, and secularized occupations, or the way that we give ourselves to that. And so what I mean,

[00:28:19:00 - 00:28:35:01]
Chris
 this is what I was getting at there on Sunday, is we view our work, careers, whatever it may be. You can include pretty much everything we do. That's what Paul talks about for Scranthe and Stem, whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

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Chris
 So what we viewed these as a means by which we can help to cultivate creation and henceforth, ultimately then give glory to God. And we just begin with this mentality.

[00:28:53:22 - 00:29:00:19]
Chris
 There's this idea that there's, I've said before, I don't like to be called minister. People can call me pastor,

[00:29:02:14 - 00:29:11:09]
Chris
 literally whatever title or no title at all. I don't like the term minister because I believe that everybody is in the ministry.

[00:29:12:13 - 00:29:15:07]
Chris
 Okay. Now I'm a vocational minister,

[00:29:16:13 - 00:29:43:12]
Chris
 right? But everybody should see that God's calling on them is to use their gifts and opportunities, whatever he's put them to cultivate creation for the sake of his glory. And if we can begin to see it in that light, then I think it actually becomes easier as to how to go about it. But until you actually get that,

[00:29:45:07 - 00:30:18:04]
Chris
 until the attorney sees like, my job here is an opportunity for me to cultivate creation and bring glory to God. It's not just simply a job. It's not simply because I have the opportunity maybe to make a good living or anything, like good living, fine, good, wonderful, but like that's why I'm here until people can see that. And this is true wherever we're at. Like even if you're working in a fast food restaurant,

[00:30:19:14 - 00:30:20:10]
Chris
 cleaning toilets,

[00:30:21:16 - 00:31:09:01]
Chris
 like I could go on and on here. Like literally I could actually give specific, like tell you how that can be. And then just use the cleaning toilets at a gas station. Okay. Not literally, like the most, you know, he will say like, and who wants to do that? Like, I don't want to do it, but like if the bathrooms are clean, then people are probably less likely to get sick. They're going to be healthier. That's helping cultivate creation. If you do it with your best serving the Lord is not, then the Lord is not a man, then you're giving God the glory. And that if it can actually, this actually has application to that example. Just think about a teacher, a school administrator, an engineer,

[00:31:10:03 - 00:31:11:15]
Chris
 a pilot,

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Chris
 you know, and just go on and on and on and on and on and on. So, I mean, like we look at these bridges that they've been working on in Burlington. We're thankful for those, right? Because if they're not maintained,

[00:31:27:21 - 00:31:28:02]
Chris
 like,

[00:31:29:07 - 00:32:07:19]
Chris
 and no, I don't know if the people are working on unbelievers or not, some of them probably are, some of them aren't, but if they take that approach and that mentality, then it just transforms that. And so once we have that mentality, then we can actually be more intentional as to how we maybe actually carry out our roles. We will do a better, we may very well do a better job with a better attitude, with a more intense focus on how this actually plays a part in the story that God is writing in this world.

[00:32:07:19 - 00:32:29:16]
Brenton
 Well, and I think with that, that kind of comes back full circle to the parenting thing, that if we are actually living out our vocations for the glory of God, then that our kids are going to see that too. It's not just a command, you need to worship God. It's like, come with me and this is how we are going to live.

[00:32:31:07 - 00:32:31:17]
Brenton
 So yeah,

[00:32:32:20 - 00:32:33:10]
Brenton
 I think that's

[00:32:34:11 - 00:32:37:18]
Brenton
 like you said earlier, like it's best shown by action.

[00:32:37:18 - 00:32:48:08]
Chris
 Yeah, I mean, none of my kids have gone into like pastoral ministry at this point.

[00:32:49:19 - 00:32:56:00]
Chris
 I have a daughter that is in what we call ministry for sure.

[00:32:57:03 - 00:33:05:01]
Chris
 But you know, you talk about my two older sons, like they're not pastors, they're not trained to be pastors.

[00:33:06:19 - 00:33:17:04]
Chris
 But like, I want them to have the understanding, hopefully they do that, that they still, that's meant like whatever God's calling them into this ministry.

[00:33:18:07 - 00:33:40:23]
Chris
 And they don't, they don't like, I don't talk to my boys and like, you need to be a pastor or you should be a pastor or anything like that. And then I just want them to use their gifts and talents and abilities and opportunities to, again, to be good citizens of this world as we prepare for the world that is to come.

[00:33:40:23 - 00:33:42:09]
Brenton
 Yeah. Okay,

[00:33:43:10 - 00:33:44:06]
Brenton
 we'll end with this.

[00:33:46:04 - 00:33:50:11]
Brenton
 For families who kind of heard all this, this Sunday,

[00:33:51:22 - 00:34:07:05]
Brenton
 and like looking into the next few weeks, they hear it and kind of immediately feel behind in how they've parented their kids or raise their family or whatever, or they feel like a failure. How would you encourage them to approach the rest of the series?

[00:34:08:10 - 00:34:16:10]
Chris
 Well, I'm going to talk about this briefly again, the Sunday, but I mentioned at the beginning,

[00:34:18:01 - 00:34:41:03]
Chris
 this past Sunday is like there's, we got to always remember there's truth and there's grace. And those two things are not opposed to one another. And we always need to walk this in this life in light of both of those things. And the gospel provides us not only with pardon,

[00:34:42:19 - 00:34:44:01]
Chris
 but also with power.

[00:34:45:08 - 00:35:00:16]
Chris
 And by that, I mean like there's forgiveness for our failures. And so God doesn't treat us as our failures, like deserve, and He's gracious with us.

[00:35:02:07 - 00:35:08:20]
Chris
 And at the same time, the gospel, this is what people miss a lot of times too, is that it gives us power.

[00:35:10:00 - 00:35:14:23]
Chris
 Paul talks about in Titus 2, he says, "The grace of God has a pure bringing salvation for all people."

[00:35:16:02 - 00:35:39:07]
Chris
 Okay, and so, and we tend to think like He's saying salvation is in the past paid for our sins. That's part of it. We know it's only part of it that he goes on because it's training us to re-announce on godliness and to live upright lives as we wait for the return of Christ essentially. And so the gospel is,

[00:35:40:08 - 00:35:47:15]
Chris
 my answer to your question is that the gospel of God's grace is that there's forgiveness for our failures and there's power for change.

[00:35:48:21 - 00:36:12:19]
Chris
 And we're never at a place where we just look and say it's over, it's done, and like there's no hope. And so that's, yeah, that's the answer. And that's why we got to go back to the gospel again and again and again, because like no matter how good of a parent you are, husband or wife,

[00:36:13:21 - 00:36:17:00]
Chris
 you're gonna fail, right?

[00:36:19:16 - 00:36:23:13]
Chris
 But there's a difference between failing and being a failure.

[00:36:24:21 - 00:36:42:01]
Chris
 And in Christ, we are not failures. We still fail because we're still sinful people, but we're not failures. And because of Him and that distinction means all the difference in the world.

[00:36:43:22 - 00:36:47:03]
Brenton
 Good. All right, we'll wrap it there. Thanks, Chris.

[00:36:48:21 - 00:36:53:08]
Brenton
 Any questions? I assume we'll get some questions through this series. I hope so. Engage with it.

[00:36:54:18 - 00:36:57:18]
Brenton
 Askitfurtherpodcast.com and we'll talk to you next week.