137 | Spirit-Filled Parenting, Hearing God’s Voice, & Shaping our Kids as Arrows (Seth Dahl)
dadAWESOME
We’re on a mission to add LIFE to the dad life. We’re passionate about helping dads live fully alive as they lead their kids to God’s awesomeness. | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Seth Dahl
Seth and Lauren love to empower families to build a strong connection that fosters peace and creates a thriving family culture. Seth, Lauren and their three children homestead with a large garden and handful of animals on a small farm in Texas.With over 15 years experience working with children and being a children’s pastor, Seth has cultivated a passion to help parents create a thriving family culture at home. Sometimes parenting is overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! Seth and Lauren love being able to equip people with the practical and spiritual tools they need to create the thriving family culture they’ve always dreamed of.
Conversation Notes:
Fathers for the Fatherless >> help our team reach the $100,000 goal.
5:58 - Seth Dahl’s story of growing up with a single mom and encountering Jesus. Working in Children’s ministry.
7:59 - On encouraging family and parent ministry - “If what happens in church doesn’t happen in the home it’s not Christianity. If this is something we DO not someone we ARE, we are wrong, it’s event-based religion.”
9:08 - Hand to hand combat vs. sniper/archer combat
9:21 - Psalm 127:4 - Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands and blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. “The arrow is the long-range weapon of the spirit world.”
9:50 - “God says you also have arrows and they’re your children and if you learn 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 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 can shoot him before he even sees you. But that’s the importance of learning to work with our children.”
10:58 - “Arrows are not meant to sit in the quiver, arrows are meant to fly and strike the enemy, and if we don’t let our kids get out and let them do that, we are 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.”
12:18 - Analogy of purchasing pre-made arrows and the attitude of some parents toward the church. Treating church like a sporting goods store.
14:00 - The way God text in the Bible is visions and dreams
14:53 1 Corinthians 2:16 - for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ”
15:46 - When I say I hear the voice of God, “99% of the time what I’m really saying is an idea popped into my head when I needed it most, and I sort of aimed my heart toward the Lord like, ‘Help! Help!’ and an idea pops into my mind and I’m like, ‘God is talking to me.’ Why? Because I don’t need him to speak in a certain way, he can drop an idea.”
16:40 - “I can actually pick up thoughts from people around me, from the spiritual atmosphere around me, or I can have thoughts that God sent me. I attack myself thinking that it was my thought, when it was really the enemy. Or I dismiss God’s voice thinking it was my thought. And when I dismiss God’s voice, when I think I made it up, then I live in a whole bunch of uncertainty because if I don’t think it was God talking, faith doesn't come. Whereas if I think ‘that might have been the Lord,’ Boom. What comes? The faith of God comes with that thought.”
17:28 - “Faith comes by hearing. So if I think I’m not hearing, I’m actually not able to walk in faith at all if I don’t think I can hear Him. Faith doesn’t come by reading. Faith comes by hearing.”
18:06 - What do you do if you’re struggling to hear God’s voice? “His job is to lead us and guide us into all truth”…. Comparing God to a tour guide. “The Lord is our guide. He is our shepherd. He’s constantly leading and guiding. He may just use a language we think he’s going to, so we end up missing his voice, thinking it was something else. Or if I believe God’s not talking to me, that right there is the problem. If I believe God is not talking to me, then that belief blocks me from hearing.”
-----------------------------
19:46 - Partnership with Connected Families. Discipline that Connects with Your Child’s Heart (Book & Course)
8-Part Parenting course that starts on Oct 6.
Registration opens today, Sept 1.
Use the code: "AWESOME" to Save 15% on the registration fee.
-----------------------------
21:28 - There is discomfort in letting our children fly
21:48 - “Part of my job as their dad is to make sure I’m not putting myself their ‘God-spot’ and that I’m not putting other things in their ‘God-spot.’” Have our kids ask God to help them.
22:24 - Story of how Seth began helping his son hear the voice of God.
24:20 - How to have Spirit-led parenting. We want to teach our kids to go to the Comforter, and there are other times we are representing the Comforter to them.
25:25 - We don’t want to teach our kids to go to other things (TV, sweets, etc) for comfort instead of going to the Comforter. “I don’t want my kids to go to anything else but Him for comfort, otherwise I create a false comforter for them...”
26:31 - “ As a dad, I want the comfort sometimes of a peaceful home, so I will fuel false comforts to my kids so they don’t whine, etc...so I’ll be quick to bring a solution which reinforces a behavior so it’s like it layers to my own source of comfort and my daughters’ comfort.” - Jeff
27:15 - What has added more life to his family. “If I know what makes me come alive because I know me, then I can actually head that direction. Heading that direction makes me come alive, whether I’m fully walking in it or not, just knowing and actually going that direction...that makes me come alive. But I have to have self-awareness for that and I have to have wife awareness, and I have to have kid awareness.”
figure out what makes you come alive and head in that direction
29:57 - he never wanted us to eat from the tree that made things fair he wanted us to eat from the tree that gave us life.
30:02 - my job is not to make things fair my job is to give you life, so if that thing doesn’t give you life, or if it’s going to take life away from you
30:52 - Have awareness of what gives our kids life
31:00 - Raising Spirit-Led Kids Book by Seth Dahl - coming out in Dec - available now for presale
32:29 - Seth’s resources: win-win parenting (for everyday life.)
33:58 - “The dad’s role is more important than we know. There’s a reason God calls himself the everlasting father. Your role is super important as a dad, no matter where your kids are at, no matter where your relationship’s at, your role is important. I’ve had the Lord several times [tell me] it may not look like this, but they’re actually begging for you in their life, it may not look like that’s what they’re saying but they are ....begging for you to be there...you’re very necessary to your family.”
35:05 - “The Lord has said, ‘I’m very committed to helping you succeed....I gave you the privilege of being a father and feeling what I feel. I gave you privilege to step into that part of my identity and I’m fully behind you I fully support you. I want you to succeed as a dad because when you succeed it shows the earth who I am. We have a really important job and we have an amazing Father fully helping us all the time.”
Conversation Links:
Partnership with Connected Families. Discipline that Connects with Your Child’s Heart 8-Part Parenting course that starts on Oct 6. Use the code: "AWESOME" to Save 15% on the registration fee.
Raising Spirit-Led Kids Book by Seth Dahl - coming out in Dec - available now for presale
We are part of the Amazon affiliates program, so any resources mentioned and linked above do support the ministry of dadAWESOME.