288 | Partnering with the Holy Spirit, Walking in Authority, and Raising Righteous Children (Lisa Max)
Episode Description
Before Lisa Max was a parenting coach or ministry director, she walked her own journey of brokenness. She experienced a childhood of hurt and later witnessed her own children face the emotional pain she had once endured. However, God redeemed her family's story. In this episode, she provides fathers with tangible wisdom and practical solutions to walk in authority and partner with the Holy Spirit in parenting.
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Lisa Max is the director of Let the Children Fly, a ministry that empowers families around the globe to partner with the Holy Spirit in their parenting. Lisa and her four children love playing in the Kingdom and igniting fires in others to do the same.
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· Your children are your ministry team.
· There's no such thing as passive fathers; your behavior can be passive, but your influence is not.
· Model your earthly home after the Father's.
· Fear is a welcome mat, so don't fear the things you must take authority over.
· Teaching your children how to hear God's voice is essential.
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Let The Children Fly Website
Papa's Pocket
Code for $15 off your first box: awesome
Conversations with our Creater EBook
Code for free EBook: hear4you
· Let the Children Fly Website
· Papa’s Pocket
(Code for $15 off your first box: awesome)
· Conversations with our Creator Ebook
(Code for free Ebook: hearforyou)
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I’m going to be an awesome dad because I’m gonna give it my all.
Lisa Max: [00:00:39] Dads, you have the most significant role in a child’s life and you’re either going to use that power or either kingdom, but there’s no such thing as passive fathers. You are really powerful for this kingdom or that kingdom. So our behavior can be passive, but it doesn’t mean your influence is passive. It doesn’t mean how you’re saving that child is passive. There’s no such thing as, like, insignificant fathers.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:00] This is episode 288 of DadAwesome. Guys, Welcome back. My name is Jeff Zaugg and today we’re actually going to slingshot back or boomerang, maybe boomerang is the right perspective. The month of May was Mom Month and I knew when I had this conversation way back in, I believe it was the month of April, I had this conversation with Lisa Max from the organization Let The Children Fly, I knew this was a special conversation. I knew that timing might not be right when we first interviewed and had this conversation, but I wasn’t sure when. So the last episode of Mom Month this year in 2023, I said, There’s another one coming. Well, it’s time. Here we are, end of July, and we’re going to boomerang back to Mom Month with a special bonus conversation. This is a little longer conversation. It’s about 50 minutes long. It is so worth it. Guys, since I met Lisa Max back three or four months ago, she has connected with me over the Zoom line and phone calls, you know, maybe a handful of times. We actually just this morning, my wife, Michelle and I, we did a coaching session with Lisa. It was so helpful, transformational for our parenting, for our marriage. She does coaching sessions. That’s something available. She has a I’m online, a community, a kind of a closed group that people opt into to get all this resource called Ascend. It’s phenomenal. We’ve been members for about a year now. She also has a program called Papa’s Pockets. I’m going to talk about this more at the end of the conversation, but I just got my first box and this is why we delayed the launch of this episode. Let The Children Fly has released a special offering for dads that once a month you get a box of prompt cards and actually tangible tools that you can use in conversations with your kids. And I just kicked off using one of the prompt cards yesterday, two days ago, and my little girls, their eyes just shined as I walked through. It was like a five minute little connection moment with each of my big three. So not the not the youngest, the two year old, but my other three daughters I did individual time with each of them going over this prompts card called Yes Daddy was the theme around, man, just training them to take ownership. I’m training my girls to to say I see this this this direction that I’m giving as their loving father and they can joyfully say, okay, Dad, with an optimistic ownership oriented like I can step in, do this thing with strength. I’m a girl who can move in with strength and do what I’ve been instructed to do by my loving father who loves me. So anyways, more about that at the end of this podcast, but I want you guys to know about these three offerings from Lisa Max and she has a podcast as well, YouTube channel, lots of resources, we’ll have her website linked. But coaching the Papa’s Pocket are specific fatherhood tools that come out once a month, you get a box, and then third is the Ascend program that she has. Guys, this conversation is going to ignite all kinds of, like this, lean in today, please. I say this every week, but episode 288, today, with Lisa Max. Guys, her dream and prayer is to see children soar, Let The Children Fly. Enjoy this conversation. Today, I have Lisa Max joining me from North Carolina. So welcome to DadAwesome.
Lisa Max: [00:04:28] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m super excited about what He’s going to do.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:31] Well, so am I. And my wife, Michelle, you were the top vote. So when we talked about Mom Month, she’s like, Lisa, get Lisa Max on. Let The Children Fly, which the name of your ministry, I let my four girls fly in a physical sense. I throw them.
Lisa Max: [00:04:48] Yeah. Right. Come on.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:50] Sometimes into a deep swimming pool, sometimes back in my arms. Sometimes they do a ball pit. But I love, like a visual of letting children fly, God’s heart for kids to soar to fly. That’s my just quick, like when I hear your ministry. But Lisa, would you just give us, give us just a like a flyover of your heart for parenting, your heart for being a mom and and why, why Let The Children Fly?
Lisa Max: [00:05:14] Yes, so good. It’s so good. So, yeah, if you were to make a list of everything that could go wrong in childhood, you know, everything that might be outside of God’s design and God’s plan, I probably could check most of those boxes of what I experienced and and what our life was like growing up. And, you know, it’s an accumulation of previous generations. It’s not just your childhood. It’s an accumulation of your mother and father’s childhood and grandparents and whatever. And so we were raised in the church, but obviously quite powerless and no relationship, it was just the rules and whatnot. And, you know, God started doing a really good work in me. I felt like Humpty-Dumpty, my heart was just smashed in a bazillion pieces, which is actually the definition of trauma. And He did a good work in me, and he was restoring things. And He was, He was just bringing me back to joy and just setting my feet on solid ground. But then I had four kids, and when I had brought home my newborn baby, I had a three year old and two four year old’s. So I had a lot of kids real quick and real fast. And now they’re starting to walk through some of the check off boxes. And we became a single family when my my youngest was one years of age and he completely walked away and signed off on all of those parental rights. And so now my kids are walking through that and there became this wrestle in me, okay God, you’re good. You’re good and thank you so much for the redemption of my story. But I am actually not okay that of believing in Your heart for my children is that they have to go walk out the same journey for 20, 30 years just to have You redeem it. I think it’s both. I think He is proactive and reactive. I think He’s a redeemer and I also think He gives us tools and He gives us the life and the blessing and the things to follow for our children so they don’t end up in some of those places. It’s not to work them out of a job, but it’s actually to apply Him for the one year old, the two year old and the three year old. So, Let The Children Fly is simply just, we never set out to have a ministry, we never set out to have a business. It simply is me stewarding and being faithful with the incredible miracles that He did in the living room with my own four children. And He literally said, Go put that on Facebook and I was like, okay. And all these people liked it and it was mainly the non-Christians. And then He did something else and He said, put it on Facebook. And I’m like, Well, this feel vulnerable, but I obeyed. And here we are, you know, all these years later and people still come daily to come feed off of what God has done. But, Let The Children Fly is not a parenting formula like come and understand the ABC’s and the 123’s of what He did and do it in your family and it works. It won’t work. It won’t work. I want to connect you to the river of life in parenting with a pastor for your model, for your family, which will probably be very different than my model, be very different from my model. So that’s a, that’s a flyover.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:11] Wow. Lisa, just to pan out, you mentioned the the visual of of Humpty-Dumpty and being shattered and then you mentioned that it’s generational, that it’s not just singular. I fell down, I got broken, I have my hurts, but we actually experience the hurts upstream from from previous generations. So I’m looking at a picture right now, just in my my homework, I believe you, do you pronounce her name, Frida? Is Frida her name? Your great, great, great grandmother.
Lisa Max: [00:08:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:40] So, so I’m looking at her pictures, I just found this on your Instagram. 1894, your great, great, great grandfather came over and just as an image and a visual for this is how a specific theme within generational hurt can be passed forward, Would you tell a little bit of that story?
Lisa Max: [00:08:57] I’ll start the here and now. So I noticed there is the thing in my life that I was really good at managing it, but I knew it was not what God had for me and I couldn’t totally put my finger on it. It was relational and had to do with people. Had to do with kind of getting my heart hurt, but I was like, Is this them, is this me? And, you know, you get much stronger sometimes in managing stuff, that you have no business managing it. You know, God doesn’t want us to manage that, He wants us to overcome it, okay. And when we moved out to California, it followed me and it came with me. And I was so mad because I thought for sure it was those people back home. I thought for sure it was just that community and I had to have an honest assessment and look at, you know, I brought this with me, so maybe there’s something in me. And I sat down one day, 8:00 in the morning, kids were off in school, and I literally was like, God, I’m not going to get off the couch until I know what this is. Like, there was no violence and this was out of alignment, and I want it in alignment. And I know You do, too. And as I was wrestling, it literally was an all day wrestle, you know when you’re with the Lord, it goes by real fast. And all of a sudden my kids came home from school and I was like, I have this, no, no, you can’t come home right now. I don’t want to be a mom right now. I’m a daughter and I’m in the middle of a wrestle and I don’t want to get up until this thing reveals, because I’m in so much pain. And the Lord was like, No, no, no, no, no. Your ministry team just walked in. And so I sat in a circle with my kids, and, you know, sometimes you let your children play in the kingdom, but you don’t put all the burdens on your children. But they can still play. They can still hear from the Father, their family line, it’s their story to. And all I said, was, there’s something in our bloodline, there’s something in our family that is not pleasing to the Lord, but I can’t put my finger on it. And so I just said, Let’s just ask Jesus. And each of the kids heard the weirdest things, like incredible hulk and like the anger and of one of the kids actually started crying and she said, Mom, I just see this this newborn baby and she’s so sweet, but nobody likes her and I can’t figure out why. But she was connecting to the Father’s heart for this child. And when the last child said something and each one of them didn’t make any sense on their own, when the last child released what they heard from the Father, I was like, the affair. It stems from my great, great grandfather, if I said that right, that he came over to America, left the family in Germany. Two years later, he had enough money and sent it to his wife and the little boy to come over. And when they first saw each other the wife was carrying a little bundle, a little pink bundle. And what he said is, I will, I will feed her and that’s it. I will feed her. So that’s not rejection, that’s not abandonment. Those are generally one and dones. This is an unloving spirit. And that’s how it was following me around, it was an unloving spirit. It didn’t come from within me, it was coming on me. My mom had it, my grandmother had it, and on. And so, yeah, that’s an example of generational stuff that we’re bottling things and it’s like we can’t figure out where because it doesn’t go back to when we were two, when we were five, You know, it’s something in the bloodline.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:03] And in that case, you knew about that story from just hearing from your, you know, parents, grandparents, great grandparents. Now, if if we don’t know, you know, I don’t know the stories of my, in the 1800s from my family. How would we go about like trying to identify or hear God’s voice in, this is something that needs to be prayed through and broken off?
Lisa Max: [00:12:23] Yeah. You know, God is so faithful and, you know, God sent his son to die for us when we were still yet sinners. God sees us as I was there. Like, He’s always there. He’s never like, not there, right. So He knows every part of our generational story. Every day, every hour, every minute. We don’t need to have information. We don’t have to partner with our brain in order to know all of the stories. We do parent coaching, and I would say over half of them are generational issues. And so it’s they’re struggling with something. They can’t figure out why. I don’t know the answer either, but Holy Spirit does. And so we set His feet and we partner with Him, we let Him shine the flashlight into our hearts and search out and show us what isn’t pleasing to the Father. And He will say, so generally it lines up with, Who do I need to forgive? Oh, my mother, okay. Who do I need to forgive for introducing my mother to that? Who do I need to forgive? You know, and when you start going back to three generations, you know, it’s generational. And sometimes when we know my great grandfather partnered with and unloving spirit or whatever, then we ask, Jesus, what do you want us to know about that? And oftentimes He will say, there was an abortion, there was abuse, there was, you know, some violation, there was something. Sometimes Jesus says, you don’t need to know. You’re on a as needed basis here and you don’t need to know that. And you just got to trust that. You got to trust that. But most often the Lord will say, so he has this angry grandfather that partnered with alcohol and brought stuff into the Family, and then God starts showing you his story and what he went through and come on, what are you moved to? You’re moved to compassion, but then you get those hooks out of you and there’s freedom. Just freedom.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:14:03] Wow. Thank you for just that sliver of coaching. And I’m so grateful that through our conversation today, there’s gonna be so many areas that I want to turn that dial way, if you want to go way deeper on that you have so many resources that will make sure everyone’s directed over to. But you say right at your home page and your website at Let The Children Fly, you know, empower parents to discover the tools they need for freedom, tools they need for encountering Him, the tools they need for connection. And as you thought about today’s conversation with DadAwesome, the dads listening, is there, I’m sure all three of those we could spend the whole conversation on, but is there any like, oh, this is part of the reason that you said yes, Lisa? You’re like, like, man, I want to make sure we talk about this. Any any of those tools that is right top of mind?
Lisa Max: [00:14:47] Well, first of all, I’ll just say this from From the Mountaintop stance, you have the most significant role in a child’s life. And you just do. And you’re either going to use that power for for either kingdom. But there’s no such thing as passive fathers. You know, there’s no such thing as passive fathers. You are really powerful for this kingdom or that kingdom, right. So I want to say that so our behavior can be passive, but it doesn’t mean your influence is passive. It doesn’t mean how you’re shaping that child is passive. There’s no such thing as, like, insignificant fathers, right. As I was doing some research for that a while back, I started coming underneath like, the passivity thing or the I can’t figure it out or it was almost like hopelessness. And you know what I realized, there is kind of the judgment against fathers, against dads that I believe is spirit. I believe it’s spirit. And, you know, what happens is I think wives partner with that spirit and she doesn’t realize she’s partnering with a spirit. And when the wives start declaring that over the, over the husbands, come on, over the dads, you know, some of it is behavior, some of it is stories, some of it is truth, you know, that kind of stuff. But but I think there’s a spirit that needs to be dealt with. The spirit not of actually being like passive or not plugged in, but actually a spirit coming over them. Does that make sense? There’s a difference of coming from within and coming up, because I came under it, I’m not even a dad. I came under that spirit just in my research and the Lord allowed me to see that so we could develop a product that would go after that.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:20] Well, we have to go there. Let’s not wait. Like because I want to, I want to know and I want a little bit of like, what is the, what’s the process of breaking off that spirit and experiencing freedom, experiencing power like you talked about? So will you go a little deeper to what the product is and how we can move in that direction?
Lisa Max: [00:16:38] Absolutely. Well, let’s just deal with the spirit real quick because, you know, we’re mind, body and spirit, and if it’s soul issue, there’s a daddy wound, there’s like trauma there that sometimes takes time. Sometimes you know, that that’s just a little bit of a journey. But when you discern it as a spirit issue, they’re fastest to resolve because that’s authority, you simply use your authority. And I think this one really needs to be husbands and wives doing this together because the wives have such a significant gatekeeper role in that. And so it’s husbands and wives coming together and just saying, we’re not all, we’re not going to assume that all passivity or lack from a from a man is solo or story or character. That there is, I think you sked me this, is there a spirit of this passivity that’s here. And if it is, how would, how would you handle an intruder coming into your house? You know, hey, where’s your son’s room? You would rise up in authority and you would take authority over that. Well, I think there’s a spirit of passivity, there’s a spirit of judgment that’s coming over fathers, that we need to rise, husbands and wives rising up together and saying, we get to be on a journey, we get to walk this out with a Father. We get to not have it all figured it out. But I will not allow that spirit in my home and just taking authority over the spirit, commanding that spirit to go. And I’m being really sensitive to when it is heart character journey, and when it is actually a spirit that we’re declaring. Come on, they don’t want to do that. We don’t want to do that.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:07] For dads that want to go deeper and actually, I don’t know, is it out yet or is it something?
Lisa Max: [00:18:12] So years ago, moms started really pulling at me. And they said, how did you teach your children about character? Or how did you teach your children about hearing God’s voice or whatever? And I was getting so tired of repeating myself over and over. And, you know, I’m a single mom, but I don’t feel like a single mom. I’ve never identified with that. I’ve never signed up for single parenting thing because I’m actually not parenting single. I am physically solo in my home as the only adult, well, now I’ve got four teenagers, but I also partner with God in my parenting that I just don’t feel alone. I just feel so covered and supported and we talk together and we make decisions together. And He tells me things about my kids and I tell Him things, but we just do it together. And anyway, He’s given me so many different creative teaching tools, tangible ways to teach different things. You can’t always open up the word of God and start telling your child, you know, be anxious for nothing and expect that child, with their brain capacity, with where they’re at to apply that and know what that means. So He’s given me an anointing for taking “be anxious for nothing,” and how do you teach that to a child. How do you teach Obey? How do you teach honor mother and father? How do you do that and the child obeys. So, anyways, so I created this kit and it’s embarrassing, our first round of it, you know, it was like ten something years ago, but we just called Papa’s Pocket. Inside Papa’s Pocket are the, are the keys to your, to your child’s heart. And they’re little objects that go with these little lessons, they’re this big, and we decided to send it out to parents. And I’ll be honest with you, it was wildly successful from a financial or from a business standpoint, it was super successful. But I didn’t want to have a business, I wanted to have a ministry. So I laid it all down and I went after the ministry and I’m glad, that was a good choice. And about a year ago, not quite a year ago, the Lord said I want you to dust off Papa’s Pocket and I want you to drop the moms, and I want you just to make it for the fathers. Let me tell you, I could cry because I so feel the father’s heart for fathers over this product. And it stems from, my kids wrote most of the lessons, and it stemmed from what did they not get from their earthly father that they needed? Or what did they get from their Heavenly Father that has made a profound difference in their lives? And so each month, it goes for six months, each month there’s different themes. They’re like little teaching objects that the father opens up the kit and he gets these objects and they’re little teaching cards, and then he puts the objects in his pocket, and when he’s ready to go meet with the children or a child, he pulls out the object and he teaches the child about whatever the theme is. Let me tell you, the greatest marketing strategy in the world is because the father is successful in connecting to the child and the child is so hungry for that. The child then goes and says, Daddy, do you have another one for me? Daddy, do you have another one for me? Two things that I have really noticed as I’ve been working with dads and I’ve been I’ve been getting into their journeys, and the first one is there’s a lot of anger with dads. Dads are just angry and frustrated. They’re just they’re just mad. They’re just, you know, the shut down oftentimes just comes from being so frustrated. And as a we’ve really gotten in there like, what are you so frustrated about? What is this? I’m going to sum it up to say this, dads are football, football coaches and they’re there to get the touchdown. They are there to win. They’re not there to mess around. They’re not there to horse around. They’re not there to, you know, they’re there to win. Come on. But you’ve got this team that, you know, you picture this little football team and they’re pulling at each other and taking off their helmet and they’re I don’t want to do that play. Oh can I be the quarterback. And they’re yelling and they’re disrespectful and they’re, they’re not in alignment. They’re not in alignment. And dad’s are like, I’m trying to score a touchdown, but my team will not follow and dads quit. But dads are wired, wired to score touchdowns in their home. And so part of this product is to help dads, help the children come into an alignment so they can score a touchdown. I don’t think it’s, you know, some day I’ll have issues with anger and part of their journey and what’s going on in their own heart. But I think some of that anger and their frustration comes from, you know, I’m putting a lot into it, I’m not getting a lot of fruit out of it. The scoreboard is not saying we’re very fruitful here. And part of it, I want to expand to another key that we’ve noticed, I hear this all the time from dads, respect is earned. I just want to earn my child’s respect. Nonsense. Nonsense. That comes after they’ve been taught what respect and honor looks like. Childhood, the football team, is all about, I’m going to teach you what honor and respect looks like. It’s a win for you to be covered, and it’s a win for me to be respected and honored, it’s a win for the family to score a touchdown. But dads are waiting for the respect to come. It doesn’t work that way.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:34] Lisa, this is tremendously helpful. To go real specific, from two nights ago, my nine and a half year old, I found inside that anger rising just like you’re talking about. And part of it was I’ve got three other daughters, there’s four daughters, and I’m trying to do bedtime. And there’s a, there’s a level of pushback or I’m not listening and I want all of, she wanted all of my attention in these moments. And I, what she felt is I believe she felt rejection from me going up the stairs, another moment here, another moment with not doing that last story. And and each of those times I could tell she was feeling rejected, where I was feeling internally so frustrated at her, just only thinking of herself. Now it was a quiet anger, but inside I was angry. I was. And I actually went back to her and prayed through those three moments of just emphasizing my love and and also like it didn’t feel like it was a need to apologize for those three moments of because I wasn’t rejecting her. I was I was helping move the family. But it was a I’m emphasizing my softness and my care and my love and and and so she knows in those moments this dad’s heart is love in that moment. And it did feel like it helped, but at the same time, I still have tension of like, man, how do I parent and guide and bring but yet I couldn’t meet all of her needs in that moment. So she felt of that rejection moment. Did you understand kind of the dynamic there?
Lisa Max: [00:25:11] I do. I do. And again, like you said earlier, we could go off on so many different areas and camp out for an hour on each of them. But but real quick, that’s such a classic thing. Bedtime brings so much chaos in the homes. Why? Because that’s when the children are at the neediest. Because now they’re starting to realize, I’ve got hurt sponges, I’ve got stuff from my day, I’ve got offenses, I have needs, I have a love tank that’s low and they don’t want to go to bed like that. And so that’s when they’re like, ahhh, and they’re pulling on mom and dad the most. Mom and dad are like, We’re at the end here. It’s like, We’re at the end of the day, I’m depleted. And so we’ve got two different agendas, two different agendas. So I think some of that bedtime routine, the stuff of the heart should actually happen around dinnertime. And then bedtime is an end of the day time, not a this is the time to do all that stuff. I’m not saying you can’t have a bedtime routine. I’m saying you generally have a lot of conflict at bedtime because of the two different needs. We want to be, we need to be done and we need to, they’re just ready to get going. So a couple different, is there one specific thing that you want me to speak into? Because I could speak into a lot.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:26:18] Well, I was curious to go more into rejection and how how I like am careful and just intentional not to have small micro rejection moments for my daughter that could build up so that that was maybe the most specific thing.
Lisa Max: [00:26:35] Yeah. So her mind, body and spirit, we are a mind, that we believe things, we have in our body, which will be like our soul, our emotions, our character, our capacity. And then we obviously have a spirit. And so when you say rejection, I don’t know if you mean, she is believing Daddy doesn’t love me like she has a mindset of rejection. I don’t know if you mean she’s feeling it in her soul, like, Oh, I need him and he’s pushing me away. Or if it’s actually in the spirit realm, okay. So the Spirit realm, we want to make sure that those doors are closed, because if the door is open to a spirit of rejection, you know, that child could feel rejected because they only got three chocolate chips on that cookie. I mean, that is like, that’s rejection. You love them more than me, come on. And you can’t parent a spirit of rejection. You will never love a demonic spirit enough for that child to feel whole, never. So if it’s a spirit of rejection and this wears people out this wears parents out big time, they’re like no matter what I do, it’s not enough. You’re right, because you’re treating it as if it’s body, soul and it actually is a spirit which needs authority. So there’s that. And I think, I think the other thing is she has an opportunity at nine and a half to realize when when daddy who has authority says, no, that’s not rejection, and she has an opportunity to grow with her mind. She’s going to hear no from boyfriends. She’s going to hear no from friends, teachers, everywhere she goes, she’s going to hear that. And if her mind is going into that rejection, we want to help her pull that back up. So I would say it’s a good thing that there is a little bit of tension because it purifies and it shows, you know, is this your issue or her issue kind of a thing. I think that if it’s just a one time thing, it’s like you just roll with it. But when it starts to become a pattern, it’s like, wow, there’s a sensitivity mark there for her with rejection. This is where we get to partner with the Holy Spirit, would you show me and my child’s heart, is this mind, body and spirit? Is this mind, body or spirit? But also we see this a lot with parents, that they have a hypersensitivity in a particular area, belonging, rejection, being yelled at, whatever, discipline, authority because of our own stories that we felt rejected. And so anytime we’re firm with our kids, we’re like, I don’t want them to feel rejected. They’re not. This is just authority. This is your childhood story coming out. You see that?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:29:04] I do. I do. And that actually launches me into another just slightly different topic, but an example that I learned about from, I believe this is on your Instagram, about your son at church wanting a muffin and the way that you coached him. So this was specifically around the topic of you’re not a victim. I think in some ways this is the short term is given what they want or just say no and be like sharp and decisive versus no there’s something about the way he was asking that question for muffin/. Then framing the reason he needed it that I thought was really fascinating and I need some coaching around this. On how to help my daughters not not be a victim, but actually operate in power and confidence. Could you kind of tell that story and explain some coaching from it?
Lisa Max: [00:29:51] Oh, absolutely. I’m going to widen, widen the topic for just a second. The goal is to raise sons and daughters who have experienced family of sons and daughters. So there’s order, there’s there’s authority, there’s honor, there’s righteousness, there’s all those things. You don’t have to be a believer to run your home without order. In God’s house we don’t lie, in my house we don’t lie. In God’s house we’re honest, in my house, do you see what I’m saying? You can model your earthly home after the father’s, okay, because it gives children an experience of what the kingdom is like. Obviously when you become a believer, but then there’s that regenerative work and we become spiritual sons and daughters. But I went after expecting and treating my children like sons and daughters with me so that they would someday know what it feels like to be a son and daughter to Him. So, I know you’re talking about the muffin story, but I want to, I want to set this one really quick. My son was about seven and that’s the age, and if you have sons that are into Legos, that’s the age where they upgrade from like the $12.99 set of Legos to like the $29.99 set. So, that’s a little bit more expensive. And we were walking around Walmart or Target and this kid, out of nowhere, throws some stuff on the ground and starts lamenting about how he has to have this Lego set. I was mortified. Not for the people around him that were like, wow, look at her parenting, I could care less about that. I was mortified that he didn’t know who I am and in a very firm but not angry voice, I told him, Get up now. And I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, Look at me in my eyes. Who am I? My mom. Who are you? Hudson. So where have I taught you, you cannot trust me? Where have I taught you that I am not for you? You haven’t. So I said, then you asked me, come on there there was almost like a righteous anger in this. And I said, for this orphan-ness that was coming over my son with me as a mom. And I said, You are my son. And I said, You know that you can trust me. I said, You ask me for this Lego set like my son, trusting my response that I make good decisions. And he did. And that was so powerful in for him. I don’t manipulate my mom. I don’t thrash around. I don’t, I don’t act like a victim. I come confidently that if she says no, it’s because it’s the best thing for me. So I would say one of the top things that I have done in my parenting is I have filtered everything through a son and a daughter. My, my 12 year old’s wanted to wear makeup, they’re not 12 anymore, but when they were 12, they wanted to wear makeup. And I was like, should Christian girls wear makeup at 12? I don’t know. I don’t even know how to answer that question. And I certainly wasn’t going to throw it on Facebook, you’ll get the divided responses. And I heard the Lord say ask them if they’re doing it as a daughter. And so I went to them and I said, Do you want to wear makeup because you look in the mirror and you love that girl and just want to slap a little lip gloss on? Or do you look at the girl in the mirror and you feel that there’s something wrong with her and you need makeup to cover it up. One went on a shopping spree for makeup and the other one had to wait a year. It’s all about daughter. It’s all about you and acting like a son right now. Come on.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:33:22] So good. And, yeah, that story set up exactly what I was hoping for. So we’ll set them up and story aside. It was the same concept. Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. The zoom, the live zoom or Facebook Live that I was a part of because of being a part of your Ascend membership was was around sexual safety and around helping us parents just learn what’s our role in making sure we’re proactive versus reactive in that area. I know far too much for us to go into it in one question here, but just as a fly over, because I do know you have a resource in this area, how how would you like to encourage dads to think with more purpose and more like, now this is my role, I’m a defender? Like to bring that conversation of sexual safety up and bring guidance and guardrails for our families.
Lisa Max: [00:34:13] The number one reason why adolescents wait, is because Dad said so. My dad said, Don’t. My dad said, Wait. Number one reason. It didn’t say mom said it. It said Dad said it. Because children get protection from father, not from mother. The primary roles are protection, provider, and identity. And so when you think of protection, it lands inside their design, their soul, their mind. It lands differently then if mom says it a thousand times. I’m not saying it’s not important for mom to say it in the first place, but I am saying when dad says it, it does something to a child. So I think that, I think that we have to differentiate between sexual stuff and sexual safety. This is birds and the bees that is time appropriate, age appropriate, and it’s beautiful and it’s God’s design, and that that should happen, you know, as Holy Spirit leads. This happens the moment your children are in the world. The safety aspect of it, you know, pictures, cameras, being alone, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is an actual factual stuff, right. But I want, I want to maybe issue a word of warning. We see this all the time. Parents who are so afraid of what’s going on in the world today, you’ve got gender stuff, you’ve got promiscuous, you know, you’ve got pornography, you’ve got addiction, you’ve got all sorts of stuff. It’s not, you know, in our generation it was if you saw. If you encountered. This generation is when. When. And it’s younger, it’s happening younger and younger. But the warning is this, that parents fear that, they fear it. They think they see a story and then they’re like, oh, well, we welcome what we fear. Fear is a welcome mat. So there can be no fear over the issue, there has to be authority. Okay. And but a lot of times we see in these Christian homes of parents that are taking this really serious, this whole sexual safety thing is they’re communicating sex as if it’s bad. It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad. No, no, enemy, enemy, you know, it’s bad, it’s destructive. And that’s great. And you might win the battle. By the time that child gets married, you are warping the marriage bed. You are warping the marriage bed, because you’re using the enemy’s tool of fear to try to lead them into righteousness. So I like to use this analogy and boy, it does, if you guys could partner with this one, this would be gold for your children. Go, go buy a Betty Crocker cake, you know, a little cake mix, put it on the grocery list. And oftentimes most homes have the round cookie pan or I’m sorry, the cake pans, you know, the round ones and you get two. Bake two cakes, with your kids, Come on, crack the eggs and whip that thing up together and just have fun. Eat the batter, do whatever you got to do, partner with joy. Then go put them in the oven and set the timer. And tell them, in 15 minutes, we’re going to come get these cakes. But you sneak in and you take out one of the cakes within 5 minutes and put it on a counter. So, at 15 minutes the timer’s going to go off, you take out the other one. And you start taking photos of the undone cake. And then you bring it into a teachable moment. So the child is going to be like, something’s wrong, this one doesn’t look like this one. What’s wrong? Why is this one all mushy and this one, you know, baked? And you can’t frost this one and you can’t take that out of the pan and it’s to spread everywhere, they understand this. And then you, then you bring that into a teachable moment. This is what sex is. This is, this is what your body is. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. It has a design and it has a purpose, but if you take it out before its time, it actually will make you sick, like eating the cake batter. It’s beautiful in its time. It’s not done yet. It’s not ready yet. And so it’s good, just not yet. And that actually is very kingdom because the Father is much more about life and blessings that He puts before you much more than don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. We’re actually not just restraining from something we’re actually, we’re pro, it’s a positive, not a negative. So then there’s thing like you can’t, you can’t, like No, I actually am considering my future husband in my choice. Does that make sense?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:47] It does.
Lisa Max: [00:38:47] It’s a positive versus the negative.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:49] So you kind of set this up with two sides of the conversation, one being sex, God’s plan, trusting God for timing of what age you’d explain what. The other side, though, of the safety side with screens and with what could happen at school or at church or a neighbor or family member or babysitter, like like there’s the safety side. How do we bring some, how do we bring our intentionality to training and in preparing protection without focusing on the fear? How do we, how do we kind of approach that side from a side of of life?
Lisa Max: [00:39:26] Well, if you’re specifically talking about screens…
Jeff Zaugg: [00:39:29] Yeah, a lot of screens, but then there’s even beyond that, though, of just how to train at the playground. This is how, this is good touch and bad touch, there’s those kind of sides as well.
Lisa Max: [00:39:37] I am a firm believer of being proactive. You know, if you look at a child’s brain, it’s like a whiteboard and it’s like they don’t know that broccoli that doesn’t always taste so good is really good for you. And that sugar that tastes also good, it’s not really good for you. And so you’re painting things on the chalkboards. And I’m a, I’m a believer that it is our job as parents to get on their chalkboard first and to establish truth and right and whatever. Because if the enemy is somebody on the playground, if falsehood and lies get in there first, then you actually have to work against taking down authority there. So, I think, I think it’s a lot of that, I think it’s a healthy conversations from the beginning and I think it’s and I’ll just interrupt and I’ll say this teaching your children how to hear God’s voice, it’s essential. It’s not a spiritual or fun thing, oh, look at that child, they can hear God’s voice, it’s essential. When my daughter was five, four or five, I went off to a spiritual conference with my older kids and I left her with at a family friend’s house, you know, and he was a basketball coach and she worked on staff at the church. I mean, they were aboveboard, so aboveboard. And when I got her back that night, I knew within 5 minutes she wasn’t okay. And, you know, maybe she had to much sugar, I don’t know, maybe she stayed up too late. You know, I partner with Holy Ghost, and if my kids aren’t okay, He’ll show me. Like, it’ll come out in time, I don’t have to worry and be full of fear and anxiety and stuff. And after that couple left and she said to me, Mommy, I need to talk to you. We need to talk. And I’m like, Yeah, okay. So we went back into my back bedroom and as I was walking back, I heard the Lord say your response is the key and that was code word for she was going to drop a bomb. She’s going to drop a bomb. And so she sat down and she was just hysterical, you know, trying to get it out. And she said, well, earlier that day, they went to a friend’s house and some of the adults were inside, all the kids were outside. And she said somebody came and had exposed themselves to her and was very aggressive with what she needed to do. And of course, I’m listening to this just going, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I was at a spiritual conference and this happens tonight. I was so mad. I was so mad at the enemy. But He told me that my reaction was key and so I dialed down and I said, okay, baby. I said, Well, I’m not mad and you’re doing the right thing by telling me and I said but you have to have the courage and you have to get it all out. You can’t leave any parts in. We’ll take it all it Jesus, but now you’ve got to walk me through everything that happened. And she goes, well Mom, she said, you know, and through her, you know, between her sniffling, you know. And she said, You always tell me to ask Jesus. And so she said, when it happened, I asked Jesus. And I said, Well, what did Jesus say, honey? And she goes, Mom, It was like he was mad and He put up His finger and Jesus said, This is inappropriate. And I said, well what did you do, babe? And she goes, Well I put out my finger to this person and I said, This is inappropriate. And it aborted everything. Jesus only did what He saw and heard His father doing and saying. We can teach our children in a time of peace, Dads, when they’re at the library, when they’re at the store, or when they want to go to a friend’s house, I don’t know, lets ask Jesus. They want to see a movie, I don’t know, lets ask Jesus. If you do it in the time of peace and you develop this muscle that they have a mother and they have an earthly father, but they have a daddy in heaven that loves them and is with them 24/7. And He was actually perfect. When Dad fell short, God has not. When mom loses, you know, has emotions, Holy Spirit does not. That the Godhead is perfect and They are for your children and you develop this muscle so that in their time of need and you are not physically there, they have Him to go to. There’s no way a little four or five year old could flip through a memory bank of verses. She went to a living God in a in a real situation and she needed Him now and she knew how to listen to Him.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:43:31] Yes. Yes. Thank you. And as I mentioned earlier, we’re going to link all of your other resources and even, just even bullet them out to help all of our dads listening, like jump to some of these resources that we’ve talked about. So this is amazing. I kind of want to land here, though, in the area of hearing God’s voice and as just, I mean, so essential how that’s what we want for our kids. We have to help them be able to hear and discern the voice of their Heavenly Father. I’ve I’ve hit all kinds of like, frustrating moments in that process with my four girls of, like, feeling like I’m doing it wrong, feeling like we’re sitting on the floor on this blanket in the RV. We set the blanket up, we sit on the blanket together. We like, we try to set up these moments and and it’s just amazing how my internal, I can’t believe how short their attention spans get, in those moments versus all the other moments they can like listen, like, how would you coach me to just keep after it? Keep lovingly, calmly, we’re going to just we’re going to keep after trying to train them to hear God’s voice, what would your coaching be?
Lisa Max: [00:44:35] Yeah. Come on. And this topic I love more than anything else. And so let me just, I’ll answer your question, but let me just say that on the website we have a resource in our store called Conversations with Our Creator, and it’s a little booklet. And if you, if you get it and you use the coupon code hear, hear4, the number 4, hear4you, hear4you, you’ll get it for free. And so just download it and it’s actually you get the teaching of the mechanics of how do you teach about how to hear and then how do you actually go after it as a lifestyle. And so the mechanics of teaching children how to hear God’s voice, is really like riding a bike. Like, how many steps are there to ride a bike? I mean, you get on, you kind of push and push off. What is, how you ride a bike is you practice. Kids are like, Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to push. No, no, no, you know how to push, you just don’t know how to balance. So it’s all about lifestyle practicing. And I give you lots of examples of that in the in the thing. So a lot of times when children are starting out with hearing God’s voice, it’s a too abstract for them. They don’t understand what you mean. I’m not hearing anything. I’m not hearing anything. And then parents are like, how do you teach them how to hear God, He’s not here, but he’s here, you know, whatever. And so part of it is that faith part, right? Part of it is not all children hear, a lot of children see. So my four kids, you know, my daughters were rattling off all the stuff they were hearing God say and my son, like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. And that’s why I was ready to get really legalistic and religious on him. The God of the universe has more to say than I don’t know, you know. And I heard God say, he’s not hearing, he’s seeing. So I went back to him and I said, lets ask God to show a picture of how He feels about you. Oh, then he could rattle it off. I said, why didn’t you say that before? He goes, you didn’t ask me that. He’s not a hearer, he sees. Other kids don’t see or hear, they feel, they feel. God, could you give me, could you let me feel how your heart feels about my brother or my whatever? And so it’s about starting it. I think it’s about perseverance. I think it’s about rolling with it. And I think it’s a lot about, you know, in other words, I don’t want to hear today, don’t worry about it. We’ll do it tomorrow, like whatever. And not letting the enemy use that to try to discourage you from teaching your children how to connect with a Father. I think part of it is modeling your own, your own hearing God’s voice. So I’ll come out of my room, you know, for breakfast, and I’ll be like, do you know what Jesus told me today about you? And I tell them and they’re like, Wow, my mom hears Him for me and they’re building the, building the blocks of faith. I’m a firm believer that we need to be teaching our children how to go to God’s voice in the time of peace before we go to His voice in the time of need. Do you go down to your neighbors when you’re really upset? No, because we don’t have a connection. So, come on. They go to Him when they feel safe with Him. I think it’s, it’s perseverance, it’s practice. I think it’s we would have that’s the thing if we had a little bit of time, extra time before a doctor’s appointment or something and we would be like lets ask Jesus how to use our time. And here God would say something that was so out of my scope or whatever, and it always brought joy. And it help them to see, you heard Jesus. You heard Jesus. The last thing I’ll say this, because most of it is in the little booklet, but we were a homeschool family when they were younger, and I was teaching them how to pray. And so on the wall was this little sign that I created on a computer, it said, Dear Jesus, thank you for blank. Could you help me with blank? I was cultivating gratitude and dependence on him. And so one day my daughter said, Thank you for whatever. Could you please help me, and she said, I want a sweet treat. And I was thinking in my mind, Well, good luck with that, because you’re probably not going to get one today. You know, like we’re not doing sweet treats today, you know. But I don’t, I didn’t say. I was like, yeah, you can ask for that. Later on, we were doing errands and we were walking by in this mall, we were walking by the food court and this lady reaches out with an ice cream cone and she goes, Ma’am, ma’am, ma’am, ma’am, I made an extra one by accident would your daughter like this? And asked my daughter, I was like, you asked for this. So I saw my role as the dot connector. Never to manipulate, never to play God, never to manufacture, but I let them ask that question, would you help me with something? And then I would look for, look for it throughout the day, and I’m like, that would be God answering your prayer. What is that? That’s communicating. She talked to Jesus and He answered. And then at night, let’s go back to the bedtime thing really quick, at night I would generally ask, we would play the game the high and the low game. What was your high? What was your low? The high almost always was what they asked for in the morning. And God just delivered it in a way that we didn’t see. Dot connecting and that I would help them to see, that was your prayer this morning. That was your prayer this morning.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:49:27] Lisa, this is, I mean, we have, we’ve covered a lot. We’ve only covered about a third of my notes in my set of questions that I knew, I knew that would happen. Was there anything else, though, if you took a minute or two, is there anything else that you wanted to deposit into us dads as you were thinking about today’s conversation?
Lisa Max: [00:49:42] Yeah. Come on. Come on. There’s just so much. Dads, you are just, you are so significant in the world today, you know, in your children’s lives. I just want to say that, you know, the Father loves you so much. He loves you so much. He doesn’t just want you just to be a good dad and a robot and just being perfect for the sake of your children. But you cannot take parent, the parent out of parenting. That God really does care about you. He really does care about your journey. He cares about your child, childhood, He cares about what you got, what you didn’t get. And I think there’s the misconception with the family that it’s supposed to be this pecking order and supposed to be like a totem pole. You know, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Dads, Moms, first born child, middle, you know, dog catfish, you know. And it’s not. That’s not God’s plan. God’s plan is a circle. Yes, dad is the out of the house, mom has more authority. You know, they have more money. You know what I mean? Like, yes, of course, that’s just obvious. But God’s design for family is a circle and God knit that child together in His image, not ours, that’s a hard one to learn. In his image, not ours, but with Dads in mind. And as He’s knitting that child together, He’s like, Wow, Dad has a trigger in this area and so I’m going to knit this child to purposely poke at that dad so that the dad gets healed, so that the dad comes into an alignment. I’m going to purposely put this in this child that might agitate the father or might be annoying or something in there. Because of the dad’s story, the dad needs this child to bring the dad into fullness, and that is family. That is family and that is God’s design for family. And so I just really want to encourage you that there are areas sometimes of our children that are frustrating, that bring us to an end of ourselves, that, you know, it’s just kind of annoying. And that that God has a bigger purpose than that for your journey. And but we have to pay attention to it and we have to pay attention to it so that the next generation is coming back into alignment and we’re not furthering it out of alignment for what the Father has.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:51:49] Yeah. Lisa, thank you for just taking this time to encourage, to challenge, to, I really I feel like there’s so many practical tools that you dropped in that you’ve even, that we’re going to link out to, beyond. So thank you for helping us let our kids and watch our kids fly. Would you say a short prayer for all of us dads listening?
Lisa Max: [00:52:08] Absolutely. So, Father God, we thank You for being the ultimate perfect Father. And we thank You that You unit together dads and families for a purpose, to model your heart, to know You, to model the relationship between son and father. We thank you, Father God, that it’s all about jounry. It’s not about perfection, it’s not about arriving, it is about journey. And we thank You, God, for each and every family that’s represented. We thank you for the children. We just want to focus on the Father’s heart. We just thank You for what You’re doing in this hour in fathers. We thank you, Father God, for the authority that is rising up in the fathers in the home. It’s been no joke. There’s been a lot coming after them. But Father God, we thank You that You’re rising up an army of fathers who know who they are, who know how to rock up sons, and who are calling for the higher bar and an expectation of their children to walk as their sons and daughters. We just ask, Holy Spirit, that You would go forth in these families and that You would just convict of righteousness. You would convict of sonship, You would convict of authority and You would just bring an awakening. You would bring an awakening in these homes. We just break off hopelessness, that we break off lack, we break off just that frustration of that football coach. We just break off that frustration and we say, Father God has a plan, Father God has a purpose for your family. You’ve not ruined your children. You are born for such a time as the this, and they need you in the game. They need you in the game. And we just bless You in Jesus name.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:53:45] Amen. Thank you so much for joining us this week for episode 288. All the conversation notes, the transcript, the quotes, the links to the different resources I mentioned earlier are going to be at dadawesome.org/288. Guys, I want to encourage you, press in further to these topics we talked about today. Guys, Let The Children Fly. Picture your kids soaring. Picture joyfully pressing in, connecting with their hearts versus the potential of causing pain because we haven’t experienced freedom from stuff in our own journey. Guys, the topics that Lisa covers, the ways that she coaches, I mentioned earlier, I did a coaching session this morning with my wife, with Lisa. The Ascend, all of the videos and the resources and the articles that she offers to the Ascend community and then this this box, this box called Papa’s Pocket, it comes out once a month. Guys, we have a special discount code if you type in awesome. The discount code is awesome. It’ll be in the show notes, as well, for the Papa’s Pocket box. I think you commit to six months, so there is a cost to this, but guys, I’ve received the first month, this is going to be a resource that I can use for the next three years. Even if I only went for six months, I could use these six boxes, I mean, there’s so many prompts. I’m going to get through like 20% of the first box in this month. There’s so much content that’s helpful and valuable. So I want to encourage you guys to check out Papa’s Pocket. I want to encourage you guys to prayerfully press into these topics we talked about today. Thank you for being DadAwesome. I’m so grateful to be a part of hosting this, this conversation, hosting and leading this ministry. But it’s for you. And God has huge plans for you and your kids. Thanks for listening this week.
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36:06 - "We welcome what we fear. Fear is a welcome mat. So there can be no fear over [what is going on in our society] there has to be authority."
47:08 - "I'm a firm believer that we need to be teaching our children how to go to God's voice in the time of peace before we go to His voice in the time of need."
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