342 | DA+3 Group Guide: Seth Dahl
Episode Description
God has given fathers unique duties that they can't pass off to anyone else—not even the Church. In this DA+3 Group Guide, Seth Dahl encourages fathers to step up to the plate in the spiritual formation of their kids. You'll be challenged to avoid false comforts, pay attention to your thoughts, and discover what brings you joy.
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With over 15 years of experience working with children and being a children's pastor, Seth Dahl has cultivated a passion for helping parents create a thriving family culture at home. Seth, Lauren, and their three children homestead with a large garden and a handful of animals on a small farm in Texas.
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· Children are Arrows: Parents are responsible for shaping children into arrows that can take out the enemy.
· Misinterpretation of Thoughts: Discern where your thoughts are coming from.
· Avoid False Comforts: Be intentional about where you seek comfort after a hard day.
· Ask God for Help: Teach your kids to ask God for help since He is the only one who can guide and help us best.
· Awareness of What Makes Me Come Alive: Your self-awareness, wife-awareness, and kid-awareness can bring life to your family.
DA+3 Group Guide Discussion Questions:
Seth Dahl uses the analogy of a sporting goods store to explain how some parents shift the responsibility of spiritually sharpening their kids to the Church. Have you fallen into the same trap?
Why is it important to view our children as arrows in relation to the Armor of God?
What stands out to you in 1 Corinthians 2:16?
How do you distinguish between thoughts from God, yourself, and the enemy?
After a tough day, what false comforts do you turn to (e.g., sugar, TV, alcohol)?
What changes when you turn to the true Comforter instead of false comforts?
Have you ever tried to save or rescue your kids, putting yourself in the "God" spot?
How do you teach your kids to ask God for help when they face challenges?
What are three things that make you feel more alive?
Have you discovered what brings joy to your wife and kids?
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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.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:00:38] What's up guys? Welcome back to DadAwesome. My name is Jeff Zaugg, and today episode 34, this is the next part of our DadAwesome, DA+3, DA+3 Group Guide series. So this summer we've spent about two months going through, these are short episodes to help you have conversations with other dads. The Dad life is not lived alone, guys. DadAwesome, the way of being DadAwesome, to step into fully being DadAwesome we have to move from a solo approach of grow, I want to learn. I want to grow for myself, for my family. We have to step into thinking other dads, let's recruit some other dads. And I just had a call today with my friend Alex, and he said he's actually just using text messaging. He's sending a text out to some other dads. He's sending them, hey, here's a 12 minute podcast and just chime in with an answer to one of these DA+3 discussion questions. So I've got ten examples, and he's like, hey, let's just at least get a text thread going back and forth to discuss how's the Dad life going. And it's working. It's literally it's a 20 minute challenge. You just challenge some other dads. Hey, do you have 20 minutes this week? Listen to this 12 minute episode and then chime in to this group text thread with one answer to one of these questions. That's how simple Da plus three can be. It doesn't have to be a campfire group. It can be just get the conversation going. It can start with a text. So thank you for listening today. Episode 342, Seth Dahl. This was three years ago, he joined us. It was his first time. He's been on 3 or 4 times, a guest on the podcast. This was the very first time and here's how he kicked it off. Our first action step today is remembering that children are arrows. Here's what he had to say about that.
Seth Dahl: [00:02:26] You know, I just realized, oh, the arrow is the long range weapon of the spirit realm. You know, we're familiar with the sword of the spirit, shield with a helmet of salvation, belt of truth, shoes of the readiness, etc., etc., etc.. So but we think the only weapon we have is the sword. And God says, wait a second, you also have arrows and they're your children and if you learn how to work with your children in the kingdom, you can actually hit the enemy from a great distance like a sniper would. You can take him out before he ever even saw you. You don't have to wait for him to come close and pull out your sword and fight him in hand-to-hand combat. You don't have to wait till he kicks down your door. You can shoot him before he even sees you. And so, but that's the importance of learning to work with our children in the kingdom. And then you have the whole thing of like, hey, if we could have ten, ten arrows in the quiver, but if we don't learn how to get them out, it's the same as having no arrows. It's like you might as well, you know, if we don't learn to work with our children when it comes to the things of the kingdom, we actually limit our ability to fight, our ability to win, our ability to take dominion, and our ability to extend the kingdom to the earth, because we hide our children in the quiver and and, you know, it's like, dude, if we just protect our kids from the big bad world and we don't get them out, we don't let them loose, obviously carefully, obviously focused and aimed and wisely. But if we don't get them out, they're, we're going to struggle because arrows are not meant to sit in the quiver, arrows are meant to fly and strike the enemy. And if we don't get our kids out and let them do that, we're actually preventing them from operating in the God given identity that they've been called to. And we're just protecting, protecting, protecting instead of preparing and releasing and aiming. And it's like the whole world will be affected by what we do with our children. Like, the battle will be decided by what we do with our children. I mean, come on, why did they kill all the boys when Moses was coming? Because Moses was coming. Why did they kill all the boys when Jesus came? Because Jesus came. Why are they killing children like crazy now? Because people, kids are here that the world has never seen. And we've got to understand that. We've also got to understand as parents, we're the warriors. God calls us warriors. And He stuck arrows in our quiver, and we've got to learn to get them out and release them. We've got to learn to work together with the church, with the schools, with our, in our homes. Because the Lord also showed me I'm trying to go quickly, but He also showed me like, look, it's, I was walking in. Here's how it happened. I'm walking in a sporting goods store and I walked down the archery aisle and the Lord goes, and I'm looking at the arrows. I'm like, wow, I can buy a three pack of arrows for 50 bucks. I'll pick, I'll pick them off the shelf. I'll go to the register, they'll swipe them, I'll give my credit card. I'll walk out with these razor sharp, machine crafted, perfectly weighted balance arrows that will do everything. And the Lord goes, you know, the church, He's like, basically something like most parents, treat, treat church like a sporting goods store. They think if they just wipe their tithes, pay their tithes, pay their offerings, they'll, they'll come out with these children. Perfectly crafted, perfectly shaped, razor sharp, ready to fly straight, ready to hit the mark. And he goes, unfortunately, when I called children arrows, there were no sporting goods stores, and it was up to the archer to help choose the branch and shape the branch. And they have a part to play in crafting their arrows and learning their arrows. And yes, you got the church, that may be the guy that puts on the arrowhead or sharpens it up or whatever, or puts the fletching on the other end. It's like, hey, you need the church, the school, but if you don't have the archer, the parents, actually heavily involved in shaping children, this isn't going to work because there was no sporting goods store when God said, your children are like arrows, he's saying, you're a warrior. Craft your children, shape your children, work with the church, get the arrowhead, get the fletching, get school involved. The ultimate job is for the archer to know, the warrior to know their individual children, their individual arrows, and have a huge part in making them who they are.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:44] The second action step today for DA+3 is misinterpretation of thoughts. It says in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 16, for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him. This idea that our thoughts, we can't just trust our thoughts at a first pass. Sometimes we'll actually say, oh, that wasn't God, that was me, that wasn't God, when actually God is giving you that thought. So sometimes we have to be introspective and prayerful around where is this thought coming from? Sometimes that thought is a lie from the enemy. Sometimes that thought is just your own thought. And guys, I just want to encourage you and I want to encourage myself to really think into and pray into, man, what is my thought life? Are my thoughts from heaven or my thoughts from, man, these are destructive thoughts from the accuser? Our thought life matters. We can have lots of conversations about how's the thought life going? We talk about, hey, how's how's fatherhood going? How's the dad life? Well, we really need to be thinking, hey, what's the thought life? Our thoughts really impact our dad life. So he had a lot of great things to say about that. The third action step is around avoiding false comforters. So Seth Dahl went into saying, man, TV or sweets or other external comforters, we have to be prayerful and really think with intention around, man, what am I seeking to for comfort when, when life is hard? When I have a hard day, where am I going to for comfort? Is it a beverage? Is it a TV show? Is it a numbing? Is it too much exercise? What are we seeking for comfort in those moments of, man, my heart hurts, I'm sad right now. Where am I seeking comfort in finding relief? And avoiding false comforters. God is the God of all comfort. He just encourages us, man, we need to actually teach our kids not to go to TV or to sweets or to that snack for comfort, but instead to go to the Comforter. Powerful, powerful takeaway there. The fourth one is we need to ask God for help and teach our kids to ask God for help. So part of my job as dad is not putting myself in the God's spot. If I put myself in the God spot where my kids come to me to be their savior, we're actually misguiding them. We want to train our kids to seek help and rescue from God. So how can we, as dads, guide our kids to ask God for help when we hit a barrier, an obstacle, a challenge, a moment of sadness? And then the fifth action step from this DA+3 episode is awareness of what makes me come alive. So I asked Seth the question, hey, what's made your, what's brought more life into your family in this season? And he said, what's actually brought his family more life is his self-awareness of what makes him come alive. Because if a dad steps after, impresses into and orients themselves to, I'm going to come more alive. Figure it out. What makes you come more alive? What makes your heart come more alive? What, what brings more life into you? If we can figure that out, self-awareness, all the people around me are going to come more alive. We also can have wife awareness. What makes my wife come more alive? And how can I help her foster some of that? What is a, he goes from self-awareness to wife awareness to kid awareness. What makes my kids become more alive? And pressing in to helping foster that. So this idea of awareness of what makes us come alive, self-awareness, wife awareness, kid awareness. That was my fifth point, my fifth action step take away from this podcast back three years ago. So today, episode 342, guys, thank you for listening. But this whole idea of these group guides is let's activate brotherhood. The DadAwesome way is the way in brotherhood. Let's get a group together. Let's get a group text going. Let's, let's begin gathering other dads and saying let's grow together. How's it going? Do you have a takeaway from this podcast? Do you have an answer to one of these ten sample questions that are in the show notes? This is meant to be easy. Not a lot of time, but it takes intention and it takes taking the initiative. So thank you for being that kind of dad. Thank you for being DadAwesome. Have a great week guys.
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· 3:25 - "If we don't learn to work with our children when it comes to the things of the kingdom, we actually limit our ability to fight, our ability to win, our ability to take dominion, and our ability to extend the kingdom to the earth. [When we do this we] hide our children in the quiver. If we just protect our kids from the big bad world and we don't get them out, we don't let them loose, obviously carefully, obviously focused and aimed and wisely. If we don't get them out they're going to struggle because arrows are not meant to sit in the quiver, arrows are meant to fly and strike the enemy. If we don't get our kids out and let them do that, we're actually preventing them from operating in the God given identity that they've been called to. We're just protecting, protecting, protecting instead of preparing and releasing and aiming."
· 7:12 - "Sometimes we have to be introspective and prayerful around where is this thought coming from? Sometimes that thought is a lie from the enemy. Sometimes that thought is just your own thought. Guys, I just want to encourage you to really think into and pray into, what is my thought life? Are my thoughts from heaven or my thoughts destructive thoughts from the accuser? Our thought life matters."
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