Rebuilding Strong Families Starts with Strong Fathers

think a lot of times we've drunk our kids to church and hope that the preacher or the Sunday school teacher et cetera will do the work of raising the children and here let me send them to public school 40 hours a week and let them watch TV when they get home during that gap before their home at three I'm not off till six so I'm just going to let them sit in front of the TV any relationship with longevity man you're gonna see you're going to see the best and the worst of people and you've got to have love and you got to have forgiveness operating in your life at all times and so that's what we were modeling for a few past generations of children and as that marriage started to break down now we're we're right smack dab in the middle of a total societal collapse because just because of the Simplicity of God's model for a family well Terence how are you tonight oh doing well so tell us a little bit about the podcast before we get into our conversation and what you've got going on with your weekly show that you've been doing and the direction that you're heading with that well I've been probably about the last six or seven years probably been doing a podcast called Simple Truth we're going to go another direction as far as I'm gonna be more of a lead host I really want to focus on like what we're going to talk about tonight things that are important but not necessarily always talked about in a church setting they do need to be talked about because most of your people vote some of them vote because that's just the way they've always voted without really a lot of information and then some people of course are keenly aware of why they vote for who they vote for so just things like that I'm just hoping to keep it going and actually kick it up a not by inviting some guests and try to continue it so you're saying you're going to stay away from all the controversial stuff no I enjoyed our conversation about that last time we talked about the role of politics in the church and how we've pulled back from those controversial topics in the church world and I don't think anybody enjoys diving into controversy having to deal with some of the virtual and comments that come as a result of just saying things but I think what people misunderstand a lot is that we're not saying things to be controversial we're just speaking the truth now it may be received as controversial and that is what it is but I'm not going to mince words or hold back on Truth just because it may offend we're not setting out to offend but if that's the result of the truth even the Bible is offensive the word of God is foolishness to those who are perishing but to those of us who are saved it's life it's the word of God and so I think about that a lot and so tonight we're going to dive into another not so controversial topic right in the the issues of masculine and are you on I asked you about what we wanted to talk about in this conversation and you mentioned some of the dumbing down of male figures and media over the years and what we've seen on television and Terence the first show that I thought about when you mentioned that was home improvement do you remember Home Improvement I love that show it was hilarious Tim this whole Man Taylor was hilarious he was a man's man but he was always jacking something up like everything he did now fortunately 20 25 years later he redeemed himself on Last Man Standing right when he came back as my Mike Baxter he was that solid strong man very strong with his family and all that during that show now that you mentioned it I started just recalling all these shows from when I was younger growing up and just watching this like buffoon type male being presented constantly what do you think led to that is there an agenda behind that or what's the purpose you think well I believe there's definitely an agenda as we see more and more females step into the Forefront we had a significant move toward feminism in the 60s as well as the sex Revolution and things like that just those roles have just began to the lines between those genders have has gotten thinner and thinner with women leaving the home to work and be becoming more independent which I'm not in any way saying that's a bad thing totally but that's not the America from the 30s 40s 50s on up was not that was not the case it was mom was taking care of the home taking care of the children dad was working and he come home to to his family come home to a cooked meal all those things are probably long gone modern in the modern world now as far as home go coming home to a meal most the time you grab something or order pizza or something like that so the world's changed a lot and we've just seen the role of again I said the role of men and women has changed families look different there's a lot of broken homes there's a lot of out of wedlock births that has created single parents that are working and trying to find child care and all those different things so a lot of challenges and let's be fair we take it on the channel a lot but it's true there's a lot of men that don't hold up to their responsibilities which create some of that Brokenness so we've had some pretty poor examples of men down through the years I've I grew up in a single parent with a single mom never had a relationship with my dad so it's it's those things have just become the norm unfortunately two parents is just almost a foreign concept you and your wife me and mine or where we're not we're the exception now we're not the rule and so all those things have an impact you start to create mentalities the children grow up with that being if they grow up in a single parent home then they don't know that dynamic they don't know they can observe it and maybe some of their friends might be blessed enough to have two parents but they don't understand what that is in their home and the Dynamics of how they're raised how they're and all that stuff of course is shifted and so yeah I think it's by Design obviously from the enemy but I also think that some things have contributed over the last probably 40 Years of maybe trickling in a little bit at a time the way things are viewed I was just talking to my wife earlier you brought up the show you brought Tim the Tool Man I wasn't obviously I'm I'm older than you but probably a lot older than you but I probably you would have to go to maybe Nick at night or the meat me TV to see some of the really old the really old shows like Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver so shows like that you had those family units that were two parents mom was at home with the children taking care of the home and but those things we've slowly gone away I guess the one of the later shows was of course Bill Cosby's no longer a shining example but The Cosby Show too upwardly mobile parents that were a two-parent home two careers solid kids that was one of the last remaining shows of that type of family Dynamics so yeah I remember watching bill was it a full house for Bob Saget growing up right and he was those were the shows that were on all the time I remember on I think it was TGIF is what they call it thank goodness it was Friday yeah and there was a whole lineup of these shows and on the Full House show and he was a single dad lost his wife tragically I think in the story and when you start to see that become the majority it's like the Chicken and the Egg here what led to the absence of fathers in the home was it the down plane as you mentioned earlier this push for feminism and there's nothing wrong with women having Independence and feminism nobody wants to hold women down right we can all agree with that but like when you get to the extreme Terence what do you say to those who would say you guys are just old-fashioned right you're just trying to hold women down trying to pull us back to this time when women didn't have any rights Etc et cetera what was your thought process be to somebody who might respond to a conversation like this with that type of response I would say first of all I agree with you I am old-fashioned even though I would be quick to tell them look I didn't I wasn't blessed to have that family Dynamic but I do know as a minister of God what God's designed for family was what his original intent was husband's husbands and wives and children Godly Offspring releasing Godly Generations from that household and all we've seen is Brokenness things that we're dealing with now in terms of gender with the dysphoria and confusion and all that stuff we know that God's not the author of confusion we know that he's the author of Peace but we do know who is the author of Confusion And when you break up that family Dynamic and you create something else on your own it doesn't really have God's blessing on it now will God bring blessings out of it I tend to think that I'm hoping that I'm one of the proofs that does happen that God can in the curse doesn't have to continue it can stop with anyone but to answer that person's question yeah again I am old-fashioned and I believe that the Bible gives us the the best recipe for a healthy functioning home and and the fact that we've gone away from those standards and we consider them Antiquated outdated some even consider them hateful it doesn't doesn't mean that what we put in this place is working either because they're not and you wonder when we open our eyes and look around at society and say something in the system is broken right we're we're pushing this model and yet it's just not working we've got a whole generation of confused teenagers and Jen's ears that don't know who they are they don't understand our identity and it's unfortunate to see the impacts the far-reaching impacts of us Sliding Away from God's design more and more the more we slip further away from how God designed things and I think that's the beauty of Leaning into the specific gender roles I think we got into this a little bit last time so I don't want to go too deep into it again but like when we lean into being who God created us to be there's so much Beauty and purpose for that where life gets chaotic and stressful and messed up is when we start to look for fulfillment outside of who God created us to be and that's what leads turmoil I was Googling earlier when we were shooting articles back and forth to talk about this conversation and on I saw an article that popped up and it was interesting because it didn't just talk about media it started to talk about how the courts have incentivized family court for instance has made it very advantageous to be a single mother and I was thinking about some of that in regards to this Dynamic and the incentive for people to stay single not get married and you're a single mother and you've got children there are a long laundry list of benefits whereas you bring the dad into the home and there's marriage and all of that it seems that the courts and the system isn't really that favorable have you seen any of that do you have any thoughts around that whole thing well as far as as far as the ethnic culture that I'm I belong to gosh that whole thing in the 60s was an incentive for single women to raise children and they got more money the more children they had as long as the dad wasn't around and so just being honest we exchanged we saw women exchange husbands for to be married to the government and to get those benefits and of course it's it's spread to other ethnicities but it was definitely something that characterized US during the Civil Rights movement the Great Society as they call it with Linda beige Johnson and so you got more money but you had a broken home mother has to work so who's with the kids kids are raised starts to be raised by television they're out on the Block they're out in the neighborhoods with other guys with other kids and they're going to find Mischief at some point their education is going to suffer their future is going to suffer as far as their earning potential things like that because most of them didn't didn't finish school because it's just a snowball going downhill I don't have the statistics in front of me but your chances of graduating high school and even possibly going to college shoot way up when you're coming from a two-parent home that you had some stability versus a single parent home and again they're always there are always exceptions to those things again I am one of them I went to college I have a college degree and I was a single mom a product of a single home single mom home but again just because it can work doesn't mean it's God's plan God's plan I grew up not knowing not knowing what a father how a father function and now I've I've raised four children of my own I've had to play catch-up when you think about terms of how many sons do you have parents I have three sons and one daughter Three Sons okay and I've I've had to I've I've actually probably learned a little bit from some of the television dads and maybe also some dads that I got to learn from as far as playing sports some of my coaches became very huge in my life so it's possible God can do it but the fact is we he shouldn't have to create a miracle we should just be obedient to live by the standards that he gives us husband he finds a wife finds a good thing not he who finds a woman finds a good thing so it's very important for us to find someone who's preparing themselves to be married and we as husbands have to prepare ourselves as well we have to make solid found financial decisions solid decisions about how we're gonna be in a moral sense to prepare ourselves for that lady that God wants to bring to us and then we build our life together a marriage and marriage in itself is difficult enough before you throw kids in and what's the what's what's happening in this generation and even Generations even in my generation kids come before marriage unfortunately a lot of times and if marriage ever comes we have the whole baby mama baby daddy syndrome in this generation now and it's just creating dysfunction that's not supposed to be there yeah I made this test driving the car right for 10 years before people just had to finally get married it's like you've been living together for two three years and you're not willing to commit to marriage you're not going to commit it's it's a cheap way out it's just it's it's unfortunate yeah I heard an internet preacher say the other day you're talking about just because God can do a miracle doesn't mean we want to make him have to do a miracle and I think the Pastor said I can't remember which preacher it was that said he said the Bible says all things work together for the good and a lot of times we look at that and we're like oh yes my life's a mess all things work together for the good but then he went on to say he's like but did that all things can just work like we don't have to find ourselves in that position where we're think thankful that and I'm grateful in those seasons of my life when things are a mess that all things do work together for the good but there's a lot of learning that comes in that when we realize that sometimes we're praying for God to do things that had we just followed his original order we would have never had to have those prayers later on and that's really what it goes back to we talk about God's design for men and for women and the family and the home being centered and I think a lot of times my opinion and this is something on John and I are pretty big ones talking about from the pulpit up at Brookside quite a bit is like the church's secondary to what happens in your home and we're really consistent on that I think a lot of times we've drug our kids to church and hope that the preacher of the Sunday school teacher et cetera will do the work of raising the children and here let me send them to public school 40 hours a week and let them watch TV when they get home during that gap before their home at three I'm not off till six so I'm just gonna let them sit in front of the TV where oh by the way they're showing broken families they're showing absent fathers they're showing bumbling idiots as dads they're showing on newly redefined relationships and all these new identities kids are just being educated to that and then it's like oh God here's my 45 minutes please disciple my kids in that period and it's just like it doesn't work no we wonder why they run from the church because 45 minutes is just not enough right an hour is just not enough like the word this building God's Foundation teaching his order teaching his design it's a daily that's a daily discipline it's a daily process and I've actually posted something the other day I think it was a Paul trip quote where I said if God didn't just call us to influence the lives of our children to do the work of God in the lives of our children but he's also brought our children in our lives for God to do his work in us as well and that's such a great a picture of parenting really a following because yeah we try to do our best to raise them and show them the way but we learn our own shortcomings our own weaknesses our own failures and our own mistakes like I don't need a guy on TV to show me what it looks like to blow it like I do that pretty well by myself sometimes and the thing about parenting is that it doesn't end it just switches from disciplinarian to coach to mentor to someone at some point with your kids you'll you'll go from do this because I Told You So to where they're gonna do some things and they're going to mess up just like we did and we're gonna have to give them wisdom when they need it and I'm in that stage now where it's really difficult to sit back and watch them make mistakes and they don't always come until it's maybe they've really blown it and they get some perspective and realize yeah that I remember Dad saying something about that years ago when I was young and and so now I understand and so that's the tough thing of us waiting for them to learn those lessons on their own and trying to be patient and so that's the season that I'm in you're in a little bit different Terrence all your kids are out of the house no they're not out of the house they all graduate in high school they're all done at this point what would you say and I know every season a parenting has its challenges but for a dad that might be listening what would you say was your hardest season the first one the second one where y'all the third one where y'all are playing zone defense or four when you're just Plum out number two to one and it's like man what the heck that's where we're at now but what would you say was your most difficult season of parenting the most difficult was going from one to two because you had to then divide your attention in two ways when you have the first one everything's about that one and your total attentions on that one and then when the second one comes then you have to learn how to divide that attention that to me that for to go from two to three you've already done that it's just a little more work but you've and then obviously from three to four it's just once you go from one to multiple then it becomes it comes a little more of a challenge as far as attention wise and of course to me the most difficult season is probably what anyone would say is probably that those teenage years when they start to when they believe that they know as much as you do and they regardless of the wisdom that you give them they make decisions to try some things that they want to try or hang with some people that maybe you wouldn't advise them to be with and ultimately you have to trust God with all of it from the time that they're crawling to the time that they're done with or done with school and into the work for course or into college or military but that's those were my I wouldn't say going from one to two was super difficult it was just it was just switching it was just something in your mind you have to do yeah you're now divided as far as all the love that you were pouring on that one you now you have to make your heart a little bit bigger and so I've had the quadruple my heart over the years to make space for all four and to give attention all four to make all four feel like that they're special in their own right even though they're they're they're all different so that's that's it's I wouldn't advise it for anyone unless you're going to be totally committed and something me and my wife made the decision to do early on is knowing the world that we're about to send our children into you have to parent with that in mind you can't just you can't have this Pollyanna type of approach that you have to have a keen discernment as what environment because we we weren't able to send our kids to we weren't able to homeschool or send them to a Christian School but we made we have we had discussions oftentimes and I told them look there are some things you may have to put down on paper there's some things you might have to there some things you'll have to learn in a book that you have to put down to put to get a test just know that not everything that you are being educated with is the truth and we had conversations about some of those things and we were pretty heavy-handed on them as far as knowing where they were knowing who they were hanging with and I don't I'm pretty sure they didn't understand all that but I think they're I think they're starting to understand a little bit now what our methods were because they look around and see some of their former classmates and just see the way the world is now and I think that Vindicated us in their hearts it's that assertiveness right it's the I'm I'm gonna risk offending you for a few moments while I grab your iPod out of your hand and I take a look through it and I scroll through everything we're going to do spot checks we're going to do accountability checks and so what did that discipleship look like for you Terence like when it came to balancing that you said the kids were at Public School you knew there was a lot of garbage that they were taken in and so in the home or in your relationship I know you all have been highly involved with church and whatnot and so how did you balance that of being intentional about discipling your kids to the point where ultimately I don't want to speak for you but ultimately they would make the decision to follow Jesus on their own as they got older well like you said part of their lives I was pastoring the other part of it I was leading worship so my kids were sitting on the floor when I'm where when I'm on the platform leading worship so they didn't know a life where that wasn't a part of it and then from a very young age I really didn't Shield them from a lot of conversations about things going on in the world and talking about it from a Biblical perspective letting them know what things were right what things weren't right we were pretty open with them as far as like I said for any topic if it was something going on in the world if it was something on the news we talked about it around them and and because I know some parents don't really talk to their children openly they feel like some things maybe aren't kid-friendly subjects I believe that they can handle a lot more than we give them credit for yeah my mine grew up here in drug addict testimonies from Teen Challenge from like two they could handle it they survived it's it's it's funny those are things that again we were pretty open with them we had conversations a lot they were they were sitting there they weren't neces they didn't necessarily know how to add anything to the conversation but they were in the they were an audience to it in the home and now that they've gotten a little older they realized man a lot of stuff we've been talking about for years their eyes are totally open they weren't caught off guard at all and so I do smile a little bit on the inside knowing that well that part of it what I did right because like you said earlier we agonize over the things that we didn't do right but it's it's trial and error a lot it's just like our lives are as just us living as individuals is trial and error most definitely parenting you're gonna make mistakes you're gonna have be angry you're gonna over react to things all things like that but it's not for the faint of heart and more most importantly discussion we're talking about tonight with as far as what's going on in the home where we got the trends of away from two parent homes the traditional family if it's difficult with two parents and it was it goes up exponentially with with one and trying to find sitters trying to that opens up a whole other Avenue with kids being molested kids being violated kids just not being supervised putting them in front of a TV putting them in front of a iPad putting them in front of things like that as as babysitters because Mom just got home from work and she's gotta catch a couple hours of sleep and then go in again night shift you're hoping we see a trend a lot of grandparents are raising children now after they've raised the child now they're raising grandchildren you talked about that like the the whole two-parent home and it really comes back to looking inwardly right because it's like there's got to be something in my relationship with my life that my kids see and they want that for themselves and that's a difficult question right for those who for all of us to look at it and just say man am I modeling something that's attractive and with everything else in the world and I don't want to put undue pressure on people but marriage relationships parenting there's a lot of pressure and it's not there's a lot and that's why the Bible admonishes us to take his yoke upon us because his yoke is easy his burden is light it goes back to that whole following his design for it all like when my relationship and our relationships with our spouses are functioning biblically they're beautiful they're exactly as God intended them to be our children see just as much love 15 years later as they did when they were brand new they see that love growing they see that relationship that desire to be with each other and be close to each other growing and hopefully that my girl my daughter goes out and she starts to choose a husband been for herself I've modeled enough that I can say I hope she picked somebody like me and that's that's just one of those thoughts like man I'm fortunate because you're not married I married a woman who is like she's been following Jesus her whole life she didn't live the life that I lived she she on she's been modest by choice since the moment I met her she dresses up your dresses appropriately and of course even saying that is sexist these days but whatever it's like my wife models the woman that I want each of my daughters to be and I hope that as a man I model the husband I model the man that they would want their husbands to look like one day and that's the pressure right we go back to that conversation at the beginning we were talking about it really the lack of fathering the examples of following on culture that we don't have the support from the culture anymore so that puts a little bit more weight on us right to be those examples and the cause is vital as our future Generations at stake yeah you have any thoughts on that well again I believe generational curses happen obviously from sinful behavior and so until someone in that family line decides I'm going to live for god we can reverse that Trend and so what we see in our communities is the reason why we see it spiraling is because every each subsequent generation is venturing a lot further away from God and God's ways and God's standards we know those things work we know who created them from the beginning that they work in a society where we are just we're just we're held at to do what it is in our hearts we're in the middle of a generation that thinks everything that we feel is the most important when it comes to gender when it comes to any of those things what we feel whatever we choose to identify as is what you must recognize us as and so but where did all that come from it all if you go all the way back it starts in the home we used to have a society that you didn't dare want to talk about divorce now marriage is very disposable I haven't done a whole lot of marriages so but I've done one that quite recently a couple years ago that really didn't make it a year and is this the younger generation doesn't know a lot about commitment and because feelings mean so much I don't feel I don't feel the same way about you that I used to feel not knowing that a long-term commitment you're gonna see your partner at their worst and at their best you're gonna have to love them sometimes when you're upset with them if you've had a disagreement you're gonna have to fight through those things because a long any relationship with longevity man you're gonna see the best and the worst of people and you've got to have love and you got to have forgiveness operating in your life at all times and so that's what we were modeling for a few past generations of children and as that marriage started to break down now we're we're right smack dab in the middle of a total societal collapse because just because of the Simplicity of God's model for a family yeah that's why I like appealing to our feelings so often is so daggling dangerous right that's where the abortion issue it's it's if there's no self-control and I get that a lot of times those who argue against this and argue for it they want to bring in a .02 percent of people who have been impregnated and less unfortunate circumstances that we would never wish on anybody but like the reality is like we know what causes it and it's like there it's feelings it's the whole idea of self-control is like you're trying to oppress me you're trying to hold me down you're trying to steal my right to choose if you will it's like no you've got the right to choose all along but that means your feelings have to take a back seat for a few moments we were at the concert last night and on Pat Barrett sings the song the canvas and the clay and the very first slide of the song he says Fallen is easy staying in love is hard and that line stuck with me last night I actually put the song on my iTunes playlist because that's the truce right it's like we're looking for the emotion to fall in and of course there's some attraction there's some emotions there's feeling those are all God's god-given gifts but the reality is that true love is about the commitment on the other side of it's knowing that if I play this thing out there will be children one day there could be and then that's an 18-year commitment longer than that really it's a Lifeline commitment to both your spouse and all your children but we're so quick to write on feelings these days instead of just understanding that the word of God is the standard it is the truth it holds it all up and some days I feel like following the word other days I feel like giving into my flesh and that's that battle that's that constant self-sacrificing I've got to Die daily because this isn't easy to do but on the other side of it there's fruit there's righteousness it's like you said it's I'm intentional because I was a drug addict I've got to break that generational curse I don't want that going down to the Next Generation and man I am fighting like how to do it excuse the French but it's just it's the appropriate expression like I am fighting like crazy to make sure that thing doesn't pass down to my girls because they deserve a life better than that we go through the struggle so they don't have to right they can learn from our mistakes and but it takes that fight and another question I wanted to ask you because it seems like that fight so this maybe this ties into what we were talking about with on maybe the men are seeing how we're being presented in culture they're seeing the breakdown of everything and it's just like [Music] [Music] [Music] it can be a bit demoralizing what do you think about the men out there who maybe feel like they've lost their will in a fight right that there's this battle is just so big how what would you say to them I'd have to say to them again there's only one that's only one place I know to point them to the one place that there is no dysfunction God has a standard God has a design and I'm not saying it's easy and in fact it's it's it's even harder because everything in culture you're you're pretty much swimming Upstream with everything going one way and you choosing to go against the grain so finding a spouse is going to be that's like-minded is gonna probably be your first hurdle that you gotta find and that's probably the hardest one again so you gotta get that choice right yeah like you've got to it's a lifelong commitment it's too important right and ain't gonna if you're gonna parent kids man that's the most important thing that's the most important choice you got to make is who you're who your partner's gonna be in life because there's all kinds of sources of conflict and bringing kids into a marriage that is not on equal footing to begin with may be unequally yoked that's that's that just that's just throwing a bomb into it kids don't fix problems kids amplify problems if they're probably there they're gonna make them louder and they're gonna make them more evident [Music] [Music] [Music] and yeah just by being kids they're not gonna you've got to create the atmosphere that you want to bring them into and so to me that's the number one thing so man if you're out there your choice of a spouse you it's got to be more of it's got to be more about how she looks in her clothes the width of her hips to the shape of her thighs all those things have got to how she how her hair is how beautiful you think she is how she thinks is probably the most important aspect of of choosing someone to be with they've got to have similar values no matter how a person appears if you get in you get behind closed doors with them you might find that she's gorgeous and you just can't live with her tell my wife we talk about this all the time I said the actress Halle Berry is one of the most beautiful actresses in the world and she's been married four or five times that ought to tell you something who wouldn't want to stay married to her man look at her on your arm but behind the scenes who is she when the camera when the lights are not shining on her she's had five spouses and it's ended all the same way so yeah what we choose is not what our flesh it's not with our flesh it's got to be who does God have for us and what values does this person have what Standards do they live by because we've got to be compatible we've got to be on the same page and again we can't choose from our flesh and the world is doing that at an alarming rate right now yeah if you're choosing more time picking your fantasy football roster than you did picking your future spouse then there might be a problem right like because God will do the research right they'll know all the stats no digging all the background of all the players every single year but then when it comes to picking a spouse it's like oh she looks good I could take her home she's good and it's really an ego thing because it's like she's gonna make me look good she's standing behind me beside me and I'm fortunate to have that in my life but man when we well we made the decision to get married and I think she had a better idea of God's designer relationships than I did because when I was an addict I was sleeping around doing all that stuff I had been in a bunch of relationships thought I was going to get married a few times and on when I met her she was very much you're keeping this thing above board staying focused on that and then like she's the first person that when I said do you want a date well I got to pray about it first and I'm like what like I'm like what's this what is this and it was just such a it was such a rare saying but both of us had a list of what we wanted and qualities in our spouse before we met each other and each of us were on each other's list in that regards and so for me it was I'm not marrying somebody that has a drug pass that I do like not that God can't redeem somebody else but in my mind I know that if I was ever gonna head down the road to relapse she's not going there as fast as I would right she's never been there so she's not going to go there at all and so having that in my life and then all that good stuff I could go into an hour-long discussion about Ashley but but yeah man the other thing I would say to the men who may be out there watch watching is like Terence and I both got our backstories of where we've come from and how God did the miracle in our lives and neither of us are perfect and I don't think you've heard either of us express that we're perfect by any stretch of the imagination in this conversation but I think the encouragement here is that men you're not alone like there are guys out here that are wanting to stand for truth that are wanting to break this generational cycle off their life no matter what it is we want to reset the standard we want to point people back to the standard which is the word of God and it it may be old-fashioned some may feel it's Antiquated you can call it whatever you want all I know is it works yeah and so I used to hear people say all the time Terence church is just a crutch for the religion for the people who are broken and I said I'd rather walk around with a crutch than be laid out with broken legs not being able to move anywhere and so that's not an insult to me because it holds me up and it does more than hold me up it holds me together and so well we're coming to the end of our hour Sarah I know we started at TV shows and then ended up on Marriage I think the conversation took a good direction do you have any parting thoughts well we talked about marriage because why start a family why start a family unless you've already done that's that's first base actually no it's not first base is your relationship with God second base is you preparing yourself for to be a Godly Man or to prepare yourself to meet someone who's Godly and have that as a goal to meet someone as Godly some marriages that part three third base if we're using a baseball analogy finding that finding the right spouse and then you guys planning together getting your life straight getting ready to bring children into the world and so it's so to talk about family a husband and a wife constitutes a family with God before the children come and so if we don't get that right we have no we have no business bringing children on the scene because then we create dysfunction within them we create confusion in them and again we don't have to point very hard at Society just look at it what they're calling Freedom what they're calling Liberty what they're calling Equity or whatever all those terms are really just fancy terms for bondage they don't see it that way they see it as freedom but it's not God whatever's not God's standard is bondage ultimately it's bondage and so this all obviously this whole feelings thing came from Genesis 3 came from the garden did God really say and so when we ate from that tree and Adam and evade from that tree and awake it awakened the other senses it made feelings so very important we went away from just relying on God's voice and relying on what God Said as the standard and now we've got feelings and opinions that we give greater emphasis on than we do God and so we bit that Apple so to speak and the rest has been history and so we've got to get back to God's standard and that's the way maybe we're not going to fix the whole world but we certainly can fix the portion of it that we have control over and if everyone does that we can have Godly families we can have Godly Offspring as the Bible declares we can yeah that's good Terrence yeah you were talking just in and there and on Galatians 5 13 popped into my head as we as you were talking about that where Paul says for you Brothers we're called to freedom but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh rather serve one another and love the entire law is fulfilled in a single decree love your neighbors yourself but if you keep on biding and devouring one another watch out or you will be consumed by one another and that really is the reality right of living on feelings it's it's really just a fancy word for giving into the flesh whatever the flesh wants is what the flesh gets and unfortunately Paul goes on to talk about a lot more in that passage regulation 26 but that's the world we live in now it's it's feelings it's flesh it's we're using our freedom to do whatever we want but Christ gave us freedom for a purpose and that was to serve other people in love and that and it starts by again that commitment to Christ and that I'm going to dedicate my life and then my family life everything I'm doing with him is the foundation and it's not easy but it's definitely doable well Terence I appreciate you jumping on tonight and for those who are watching definitely check his show out Simple Truth radio I don't know you said something about rebranding but for now everything is still simple truths right yeah and so people can search him on Facebook at Simple Truth radio and he does some I don't know if it's we is it weekly right now it's bi-weekly it's every two weeks yeah five weeks has been a relaunch on April 19th and we're on Spotify Google Google podcast and apple podcast as well so yeah well fantastic I definitely don't Chuck terence's show out he is he is a passionate man of God a very confident very very consistent in speaking the truth and I think that's something that is definitely lacking in our culture today so Terence I appreciate you man I appreciate all of our private conversations that we have all the time man just engaging back and forth with each other what do you think of this well what do you think of this and having those back and forth discussions but knowing that if I ask you a question I'm not gonna get anybody beat around the bush I'm going to get the truth and I really value that and I appreciate that out of you Terence yeah I appreciate you as well we're we're Cut From the Same Cloth I praise God for that amen well God bless you thank you guys for watching y'all have a wonderful evening thanks again Terence all right man