Episode 268 ( Danny Silk: Part 1)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 give it my all.Jeff Zaugg: [00:00:38] This is episode 268 of dadAWESOME and today is actually just the first half of my conversation with Danny Silk. So I decided after, it's about a 42 minute conversation, that instead of trying to pack all this wisdom into one episode, it's going to make more sense 20 minutes today and then next week it'll be about 22 minutes of this conversation. Danny Silk, he leads an organization called Loving on Purpose, and he has dedicated decades now to helping with relationships. And one of those relationships is the parent child relationship. He drops so much wisdom in this conversation. In fact, this was recorded a couple of months ago and when I listened back to kind of prepare to release this, I was like, Whoa, there is so much here for me. I mean, every week I'm like, There's something for the Zaugg family, something for Jeff Zaugg, for me and my four little girls. Guys, I guarantee, if you lean in today, there's going to be at least one, like I can put this into action today as a young dad. So lean in, buckle up, take some notes. Here's the first half of my conversation with Danny Silk. I thought it'd be fun to start, because I know so many of your friends, I know so many people who have been impacted by your work, if you could tell us about your family. How many kids, grandkids and just something that brought you a little extra joy in the dad life in the past month or two?Danny Silk: [00:02:10] I got married. You know, I got married back in 1984, back in the 1900s, I got married. I have three kids. I have two boys and my daughter's my oldest, Brittany. Brittany, Levi and Taylor. They are all in their thirties now. So how old do you have to be to have children in their thirties? I'm grandfather of three. My my daughter and her husband, Ben, and their three kids and Sheri and I, we all live together. And and we have a little, little patch of land in Northern California. And we raised chickens and goats and a livestock guardian dog and we're good and we've had pigs and lambs and so it's a super desirable. I think it's you know, I, I watched a few episodes of Yellowstone and I somewhere in there they said all the billionaires want to be cowboys. And I'm like, I bet that's true. I mean, if you could do whatever you wanted, you would want to work outside with your tractor, getting dirty and and taking care of stuff. So, super fun stuff. And then in that process, I used to be a meat cutter, I was a butcher. So that's all really familiar to me. And then I got into social work and then ministry and traveled to 35 countries around the world. Have you know, this guy from Weaverville, California, never thought any of this would happen. I grew up not knowing what a passport was and now here we are. Authored nine books and really just dialing in, equipping leaders and men and women for whole healthy families that we actually believe are going to save the world.Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:19] Well, I'm thankful that you've been guided to that pursuit and that I get to benefit from, in fact, in the preparation for this conversation, Danny, I, you know, the last few days, I like to just binge before a conversation. I'm just like, as much as I can learn. And I, of course, have learned from you for that. But I as I was walking up from my RV to this little farmhouse that I'm recording from in Texas today, which speaking of kind of being on a farm or ranch, I feel that, in fact, we're in a horse pasture, the RV right now, it's the horses in the middle of the night were right outside our window of the RV. But as I was walking up, I thought to myself, hey, if something, somehow the Internet goes down or somehow we don't have the conversation today, I already just took so many from just on YouTube, on your podcast, through your books, just like so many deposits have already been made into my heart. I'm going to link in the show notes, several of those research, like the things that I found, like start here, this will be helpful for the dads listening. So I just want to say thank you to start with, even if this conversation didn't happen. Thank you. And this is this is a, I mean, talking about some of these things we're we're going to chat about today are like Center of God is doing work in this area of continuing to learn to love well and to forgive well to to draw closer to my wife and my girls and their hearts and how I approach disciplines so, so many of these topics. But I thought it would be fun because I studied two verses this morning, early this morning, in the RV, 1 Timothy 1:6-7. I just kind of dialed in on these two verses, which I know inform and guide many much of the work that you do, but I'll read it in The Passion translation, to paraphrase, and I'd love for you to riff on anything that just stokes your heart and you're like, Oh, I want to talk about this for Dads. So here, I'll read it briefly, says, This is verse six and seven of 1 Timothy 1. I'm writing to encourage you to fan into a flame and rekindle the fire of the spiritual gift God imparted to you when I laid my hands upon you. For God will never give you the spirit of fear, but the Holy Spirit who gives you mighty power, love and self-control. What kind of jumps into your heart there that you'd want to talk to us dads about from those verses?Danny Silk: [00:06:23] Oh, I probably just the the power that is in self-control. I mean, when we nail that, when a man nails that, he basically has one job. You basically have one job, tell yourself what to do and do it. But if you will just tell, if you will just do what you tell yourself to do and then point yourself at a smart target. You are going to rock life.Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:55] That's amazing. It's so simple.Danny Silk: [00:06:58] That's just it. I mean, if I could just tighten that verse down to, you have the mind of Christ because many translations say a sound mind, you know. And it's it's it's the literally the mind of Christ. You have been given the mind of Christ. You have that ability. Self-control is not saying no to porn, no to alcohol, no to pot, no to lust, no to, that's not self-control. Self-control is pick a target and say yes with all your heart. Just say yes with all your heart and you've automatically said no to the stupid stuff because you have lined yourself up with the genius stuff.Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:47] Yes. Yes and that, those those last three things, the verse lands on which you are you talking about the last one, self-control. I reframe it to mighty power, mighty love, mighty self-control, in that translation of just like we can be amped up to more than kind of the expectation that the norm that we would hope for. And I know that kind of being powerful is something that you are like, you know, we can step into being powerful leaders, powerful dads. Would you kind of unpack a little further what you mean when you talk about kind of inviting someone to live in power?Danny Silk: [00:08:20] Well, it would be exactly what I just said in that you have the power to make choices. You know, you've been empowered with to resist what others can't, to choose what others don't value, to nurture things that others don't see. I mean, you have you have the power, by the spirit of God, to want to please God, to want to tend to your heart connection with the Father. You know, other people just don't even want it. That's what's wrong with the world. The world is is sliding into the toilet because they have zero awareness of their connection with the Father and how powerful and meaningful that is. And when you have nothing like that to protect, all you protect as yourself and you live a constant state of self-preservation.Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:31] Yep. Yep. Survival mode. And the world, would you say when you say kind of sliding into the toilet? Isolation is one of the directions of of that? Like the world slides that direction versus togetherness? Danny Silk: [00:09:42] Absolutely. Proverbs 18:1 says, you know, a man who isolates himself, seeks his own desires and rages against wise counsel and judgment. So the the the trap of the enemy for men in particular, is isolation, because now you become master and ruler of reality. And that is the fast track to deception. And that's exactly the kingdom Where the devil rules is deception. So once you leave the kingdom reality that has a king and then you become the king and now you too, are an opponent of God.Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:31] We don't want to be opposing God. Danny Silk: [00:10:33] No. What a dumb idea. Right? That's the gist of it. What were you thinking? Oh, you know, you didn't see it. Okay, well stop.Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:41] So living together with your your wife, your daughter, your son in law, your three grandkids like that to me is not normal. Although I want that. I admire it.Danny Silk: [00:10:53] It depends on what country you live in, right?Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:55] Well, exactly. Exactly. So I'd love for you too, like, whose idea was it and what have you learned in this journey? How long have you guys been living together? Tell us more about that.Danny Silk: [00:11:05] We about nine years ago, so Ben and Britt, have been married almost 20 years and they got married at 18 and 19. You know, they they they are old/young people. I have a 17 year old granddaughter and yeah, it's it's cray cray. About nine years ago when we left Redding and Bethel, we came down with Jesus Culture to help Banning Liebscher or Banning and SeaJay start a church. So it took us about a year to make the transition just because of the disruption that it was causing at Bethel. And my daughter and son in law did not want to come. They were both employed at Bethel. They were going to stay there and raise their family in Redding, but by the end of the year they had changed their mind and they said, We want to go with you. So we all came down together and decided to get one house and have since moved three times together. And now we bought a house together and we live on a little farm and it's awesome. The grandkids work the farm, they do 4-H, they, you know, their cutting wood, and it's super fun to have a place for your kids to learn how to be responsible and work hard and, you know, something to take their face out of the screen.Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:36] Yeah, the the purchase in the house together, though, you tested it maybe with some rental houses or those other homes, but then I feel like it gives you a spot where you've locked yourself in as family to we're going to work through disagreements. We're going to work through, it just kind of back to that self-control, I feel like, and back to the theme of isolation we talked about. Families, multigenerational families living together and purchasing property together, I feel like is rare because of selfishness. Right? And maybe unhealed areas of just like, this comes up. How would you coach me and the other dads around, like the benefits and the like, this is real, you're going to have to step into real, deeper relationships here and press through hard things? Danny Silk: [00:13:23] Well, it's you know, in a sense, it's like marriage, right? It's like a covenant of like we've not decided to live together for the rest of our lives, but it's work and fantastic and we love it. And our our our grand children's normal is Mimi and Papa are on the other side of that door. So it's it is something that we also work together. We're also in the ministry together. So, I mean, there's it's pretty much like it, there's no place to hide if we have a conflict or anything like that. So in that way, it's it's very much like marriage. We work it out. We we communicate, we strategize. We, we, in particular, Sheri and I have hosted a partnership of many of their dreams. Many of the things they want to see happen, we're living the end of our life to leave an inheritance for our children's children so that so that my grandchildren have a leg up when they start. So I think as a as a young man, I thought a lot about how responsible I was for my kids, my family. As an older man, I think primarily about the responsibility I have for my grandchildren's success. And and there's there's a partnership, a generational partnership that I want my kids to feel that propels them, because there is that that whole, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. There is a truth to that, meaning that my life sucked and I had a ton of obstacles to sort. As a result, I have a resolve to never let that touch my kids, right. Well, as a result, they can be really soft. They could be really underdeveloped and didn't work that out. So. I think part of our our work really is living together and sorting things out. And they have hard work in other ways than I had at hard work, but they still have hard work. And that and then how do I pass that on to my grandchildren? Well, we're farm life is is a great childhood.Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:04] Yeah, that's a gift, for sure. I'm hearing, maybe it's being picked up on the mic, cows right through the window here, in the front yard. This is perfect to be talking about farm life. Danny Silk: [00:16:11] Get that, moo, Amen. Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:15] That's right. It's happening. Family culture, so in your case, you're kind of a blend, like you need to kind of create a co family culture that spans generations. But how would you just encourage the RV family culture for my family and beyond, you know, other dads to to think intentionally about the culture that we're creating?Danny Silk: [00:16:35] It's like anything and begins with giving it thought, consideration. Like just the idea of having a family culture, begins to generate the questions, where does it come from? How do you end up with a family culture? Well, you you make agreements and you either make agreements invisibly or intentionally. Everybody's got one. Everybody has a family culture. Satan has a family culture, if you will. You know, so it's not like you only have one if you design it like, Oh, no, no. It it's the areas that you and your wife in particular agree how we will measure respect, measure responsibility, measure connection. You know, these things you had better figure out how high is that value that you'll practice with each other in your marriage because that is your family's culture. So if you give yourself permission to lower respect or responsibility or connection for these reasons, please understand that is your family's culture and your kids will return the favor.Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:00] Yeah. Yeah, It's clear. We're exporting all the time.Danny Silk: [00:18:06] Yeah, We're creating the temperature of the water everybody swims in and it it's shocking when somebody throws a bucket of cold water in your face and you go, Where did you get that bucket of cold water? And they say, I got it out of our pond. Like, Oh, that's oh, I'm so sorry. And it takes a while to heat that water back up again once you let it go cold.Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:30] Yes. Now, I know one of the kind of foundational areas that you've written about is and this even comes back to those couple verses that we read, but using control behavior as the focus versus our relationship and just this like choice that we make as parents, am I going to work towards outcomes of their behavior or connection with their heart? I'm probably setting it up, yeah, really, really soft set up. But could you take us into the heart of, I believe it ties with culture directly, of how are we choosing to say this is the bottom line for how we operate as a family?Danny Silk: [00:19:09] Yeah, well, mostly, the back story on what you're describing is is written in the book I wrote, Loving Our Kids on Purpose. It's in culture of honor as well and it's it's at a higher level in unpublishable. But the the application in the family is really an attempt to help us to see how our father parents us as sons and daughters. You know, he like he is not screaming in my face, he's not grabbing me by the shirt and throwing me up against the wall, he's not kicking me in the butt because he's pissed, you know. He's not, you know, intimidating me into submission. The church will, you know, the church will gladly intimidate the world into submission and, you know, scare everybody onto the bus, but that's not my Father. That's the spirit of fear. And when the the most used tool in my toolbox as a parent is some form of intimidation or the threat of punishment, then I have created a culture in my home that does not resemble heaven. It does not, you know, I pray Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, in my home, as it is in heaven. So that book is really attempting to show us that my Father is much more concerned about my heart connection to Him than He is controlling me. And that kind of blows our mind and takes us out of a a skill set because most of us really only understand how to try to control our children. And we've actually heard it from other people. You need to control your child. Something, someone needs to control that child. And you're like, Well, good luck. You know, I can't find the remote. I lost the remote in the couch somewhere. We don't know where the remote on this child went. So there'll be no controlling other human beings. You don't control your wife, You don't control your children, you don't control your your adult children. This is why learning to control yourself is so important. Because if you don't learn to control yourself, you are out of control. And the false sense of control, it comes from orchestrating and intimidating, manipulating, dominating other people. So it it's a it's a, it's a it's a retooling, if you will, learning how to communicate in such a way that you are leading yourself and you are stewarding consequences for choices, but you realize the whole time I do not control you. You better learn to control yourself.Jeff Zaugg: [00:22:36] As you can tell, we are still right in the middle of my conversation with Danny Silk, but decided to hit pause at this point and conclude the first half of this conversation. All of the conversation notes are going to be at dadAWESOME.org/268. Guys, he was talking about self-control at about the five minute mark of this conversation, and he said, Man, self-control is not saying no to all these bad things, self-control is picking a target and saying yes with all of your heart. Guys, we have picked this target of being loving fathers, of choosing to be intentional with our kids, choosing to pursue their hearts and we're saying yes with all of our hearts. But I think there's probably additional areas or specific areas within your fatherhood journey that, guys, we can pick that as our target and say yes with all of our hearts. That's my encouragement to you guys this week. Next week, we're going to jump into the second half of my conversation with Danny Silk, so don't miss that, tune back in. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for prayerfully saying I'm going to be a dad who brings life, who chooses life for the dad life. Who fills the dad life with life. Who chooses to to lean in with shiny eyes and tell our kids, I love being your dad. I'm going to bring my whole heart, all my intentionality to this area, imperfectly, but man, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be dadAWESOME for my kids. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.