While there is no one key element to raising godly children while being a business owner one super important thing is to show up for your kids.

You show up for work ready to make it run smoother, stronger, faster but what about your family.

Today we enter into a practical conversation with J Hall, author of the book “God Help Me! I’m a Young Dad”. A practical guide on what you need to know as a young father.

Learn the value and benefit of just being there for your kids as an example and support in your journey of rearing godly children who love the Lord.

If being a dad who is connected and intentional with the activities and training does not come natural for you this episode will give you practical tools to help you down that road. Enjoy.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Take the opportunity in being a representative for Jesus in a place not always friendly to Christianity to talk about God when it comes up. Pray for those around you. If you are open, God will give you ample opportunity to be a light in this dark world.

One challenge from today:

1. Your kids have a perfect Father, and it’s not you. But you are the perfect father for your kids.

2. Keep showing up for your children.

More About J Hall

Website: https://www.jhallwriter.com/

Podcast: https://www.okiebookcast.com/

More About David Schmidt

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David:

[0:00] So where's your heart? Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And it's easy to be present at work and the things you are passionate about. But often our work is our passion and we get pouring in our life into our work to make it better. And that kind of becomes our treasure because that's where our heart is. But what we need to do is, and we tend to forget our family because working on the family doesn't pay the bills. But it's an important part of our life. Investing in your families is very important, but not urgent work that needs to be done because that has huge ramifications in the long run. And so today I brought Jay Hall on to talk about what he has learned about being present with his family and being involved in how to train up children to follow Jesus, because that's not always our first thing we think about. Jay, welcome.

J:

[0:47] Thanks, David. Excited to be here.

David:

[0:49] Yeah. And to start off, what is one way that you have found to honor God in your life and or business?

J:

[0:56] So I am a community college dean. I work for a large public community college, and that is not a space where it is encouraged to talk openly about your faith and do things like that. But I have been very fortunate in that I have been allowed to be who I am and who I am as a follower of Jesus in the midst of that space. And what's really fun, but also cool, I think, is the opportunities for conversations about God and about spiritual things that rise up in the midst of a space where it's not always, well, it's never encouraged, but it's also, you know, sometimes it's not even allowed. And, but, you know, if the conversation starts, if it's invited, then it's not easy necessarily to talk about it. And I have been pleasantly surprised through the years as I've had the chance to talk with folks who claim that they don't have faith, they're not interested in faith, they're not interested in spiritual things or things of God. I've had some of those folks ask me to pray for them just because they know that I do. And it's one of those, well, it couldn't hurt.

J:

[2:02] And I'm happy to do that. But also, I mean, I've performed weddings for people. I have prayed for sick kids. I've done funerals, just all kinds of things to be. So I love the opportunity to be a person of faith and a person that represents Jesus in a space that is not terribly interested in having Jesus represented and sorting out how to do that in a way that is both honoring to who he is, but also that honors the people around me without kind of beating them to death with, I'm a person of faith and you're going to have to deal with it. I don't know if that's a terribly humble answer, but I think it is that whole idea of being a light in a dark, not a dark place, but a darker place, and also always being ready to give a reason, right, for the hope that I have.

David:

[2:52] Yep. Very good. I do find that interesting though, that people say, would you pray for me?

J:

[2:57] Yeah.

David:

[2:58] They don't necessarily go follow God or go to church or nothing, but they realize, I don't know if it's somewhere behind them to think that, like you said, maybe there's a God. If he is not, it won't hurt.

J:

[3:09] That's it. Right. It doesn't hurt them if they do that. It is interesting. Some of the folks who've asked me, I thought, fortunately, I didn't say, really, you want me to? Really?

David:

[3:17] It's a problem. No, I'm not going to pray for you.

J:

[3:21] But, you know, always love to do that and love the opportunity then to follow up with, hey, I was praying for you. How are things going? Just so that they know they matter to me.

David:

[3:30] Yeah.

J:

[3:30] And they matter to God.

David:

[3:31] Yeah. So you've written a book called God Help Me. I'm a young dad. You're in the academic world. Why'd you write that book or what led you to write that book? It sounds like a great title.

J:

[3:43] Well, you know, you've been a young dad. I've been a young dad. God Help Me is kind of what I said a lot. I started working on the book when I found out that my son was going to have his first child, my grandson that we were just talking about came on that I spent the last week with, and wanted to make sure that I shared with my son, all the things that I thought were significant about being a dad that I hoped he'd observed in me for the 25 years up to that point, but didn't necessarily articulate. And you don't know how conscious any of that is anyway. Right. And as I wanted to start sharing things with him, I realized I also knew a lot of other young men who either had just had kids or in the process getting ready to have kids. And I wanted them to have this stuff too. And so if I was going to write it down anyway, might as well write it down in a way that was shareable. And I recognize that, and I think you said a version of it in the, in your introduction, a lot of times young men are encouraged to be great in their work, to be great in all of these different spaces. And family.

J:

[4:45] Come second or third or whatever, just because it's not as loud. I like the way that you said important, but it's not always urgent. I think that's an important distinction. And so I wanted to encourage young men to think about the things they needed to build into their lives to be great dads, but also to take those same things, love and joy and gratitude and service, and begin the process of building them into the lives of their children, not just through saying, hey, do this, but being intentional about conversations that are had and, and being in spaces with them where they could watch dad be loving and joyful and thankful and all that.

David:

[5:22] Yep. Yes. It is very interesting being a dad and yeah, all the kids are different. I realize that dads are different, just personalities and what some things are very easy for me to do.

J:

[5:33] Right.

David:

[5:34] Some things are not, I'm not a big storyteller and I don't, I mean,

David:

[5:37] I appreciate stories, I don't feel like I'm a big storyteller. So that's difficult for me sometimes. But overall, whether you're outgoing or not outgoing, what is a couple of the main key components, duties you think a dad has for his children?

J:

[5:56] I think the biggest thing we can do is show up, is just be present in their lives. So the last words of the book are keep showing up. Just that encouragement to young men to be present in the lives of their children. And you're right. Sometimes our kids do not make sense to us. I have kids who were interested in things that I didn't know anything about. I have kids that were just like me. And so, you know, you kind of gravitate more towards one than the other because you just get them.

J:

[6:25] But I, I had a dad, I have a dad who, even though he was working sometimes 16, 18 hours a day, would take off and come to a choir concert. And my dad knew no more about music than I do about particle physics. I mean, there was no connection there, but he'd come to a choir concert. He'd come to a band concert. He would come to baseball and football games and that kind of thing, which he was far more comfortable at just being there. And it mattered to me, not that my dad could break down how the band concert went, but that he showed up knowing that there wasn't a thing that he was all that into. So I think, you know, the, yes, we need to pray for our kids. And obviously that needs to happen. Yes, we need to do everything we can to, to mentor and help build them in the faith. But I think so much of that comes out of our presence because for dads to be this guy that just shows up every now and then and reads a Bible story at bedtime or that says, hey, this is what the Bible says. This is who you need to be or even that praise for us. All that's great and good. But there's also this relationship that we need to have with our kids and relationships take time and they take presence and we presence with a C, not the T, S, although I guess that would work too. But we have to have that time with them so that they know who we are and we know who they are.

David:

[7:41] Absolutely.

David:

[7:42] Yeah. So for a busy business owner or even not a business owner who's busy at work, do you have any suggestions of what they can do to disconnect when they come from home? Because sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's not, especially if there's some things blowing up at work and you are the person to take care of it.

J:

[8:03] I have a friend who has this philosophy where he takes the drive from work to home to shift out of work gear and is intentionally thinking about, you know, there's a, he says there's a certain driveway that he passes where he no longer is thinking about work. He's just conditioned himself that now, now we're in home mode and when kids go to bed at nine or 10 or 11 o'clock, whatever it is, then I can shift back into work mode. But having that intentional mindset of when I get home, I'm going to be dad. And I know that's a, that's not always possible because sometimes something breaks or, you know, something blows up and you've got to deal with it and the phone rings.

J:

[8:45] Having that mindset of when I'm home with my kids, as they're awake and doing whatever they're doing, I'm dad, I'm not business owner or I'm not dean, right? I'm dad and I'm going to operate out of that for however many hours it is that I have. The other, and this is as simple and practical as it gets, and I wish I was better at this, so I will acknowledge right now that this is a do as I say, not as I do moment. If you can take your phone and put it in a room where you are not and don't look at it again until you're out of dad mode, it changes everything. We've gotten so good at pretending, not pretending, but trying to spend time with people while we're also spending time with the internet or email or whatever's coming through. So just jettisoning the phone. I accidentally the other day, it was my wife and I just had our 33rd anniversary and we were going to dinner. And I realized as we were in the car driving away that I'd left my phone on the table. And it was great because there was no opportunity for me to even think about, well, gosh, I hope nobody's texting me. I hope nobody's emailing. So I think very practical, but just making that decision and then making a practice of taking those devices that pull our attention away from our family and put them somewhere else until it's time to deal with them again.

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