79 | Failing as a Father & The Faithfulness of God (Paul Anderson)
Paul Anderson joins dadAWESOME for a chat on the topic of FAITHFULNESS. This is the 7th part of our 9-part series on the Fruit of the Spirit. Paul Anderson graduated from UCLA and Luther Seminary. He pastored in Southern California for twenty-five years before moving to Minnesota to direct Lutheran Renewal. During his tenure he founded The Master’s Institute and the Alliance of Renewal Churches. A young adult community called Communitas met in his home for eleven years. Now a house church gathers there on Sundays. Paul authored five books and enjoys writing his blog. He and Karen have six children and fourteen grandchildren.
Conversation Notes:
1:15 - Social Media links for dadAWESOME
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/dadawesome
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/dadawesomepodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dadAWESOMEpod
4:40 - Top dad advice = Intentionality5:25 - Apologizing to his kids5:53 - Teaching kids to appreciate being together6:25 - Question jar for dinner conversations7:02 - Being intentional about teaching kids to work and to love work7:30 - Saturday morning work party as a family. Making work fun and adding music and marching to kick off the work together.9:35 - Paul describes the special moments of celebrating birthdays by affirming and speaking encouraging words over the person.11:00 - Paul shares about the powerful conversation when he asked his kids how he had failed them as their father.12:30 - His kids were kind enough to tell him how he had failed.13:30 - Intentional meeting with his kids to follow-up. Two questions he asked them:
- What you like about the family
- What you don't like about the family
14:05 - "You need to find out where you have failed and if you're willing to ask, your kids will tell you"15:06 - Talking about generations. "It's about generational righteousness"15:30 - "I pray for my kids grandchildren that don't yet exist. We're in this for the long haul. We're in this for the legacy. We're in this to change the culture. And when you get a legacy and four generations of righteousness there is a greater potential to change the culture"16:24 - Paul telling a story about faithfulness and his wife's parents and their current role of praying for their great grandchildren.17:40 - The powerful moments of seeing the fruit of obedience and faithfulness and passion.18:15 - Seeing gentleness in his parents and then pass that on to our kids18:40 - Seeing a love for God's word and his church and seeing that passed along to our kids.19:45 - "I think of faith as believing in God and if faith is the lips of our obedience, faithfulness is the legs. Faithfulness walks out what you believe in your heart."21:15 - Story of Paul's daughter yanking the flowers up out of the ground one by one.23:40 - "I'm struck by the faithfulness of God. I'm not struck by my own faithfulness but I'm really really struck by the faithfulness of God"24:00 - "You'll do what you can, but God will will do what you can't because He is faithful to his promises"