In this episode, Brian Doyle shares what it was like to parent through the unimaginable. After losing his wife to cancer at age 54, Brian had to navigate his own grief while guiding his teenage and young adult kids through theirs. His story will challenge you to keep your eyes on the future, disciple your kids with purpose, and take initiative to invest in the dads around you.
TAKEAWAYS:
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Instead of avoiding grief, learn to walk through it in a healthy way so your sorrow can eventually lead to joy.
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If you want your kids to follow Christ, you have to show them what that looks like in your everyday life.
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You’re not raising kids; you’re launching disciples.
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No one else can do what God designed you as a man to do.
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The time you invest in younger dads today can equip them for the challenges they’ll face decades from now.
GUEST
Brian Doyle is the Founder and President of Iron Sharpens Iron and serves as the National Director of the ISI Ministry Network. The mission of Iron Sharpens Iron is to equip churches to train men for spiritual leadership in the home, church and community.
#DadAwesome #christiandad #dadlife #parenting #dadpodcast #fatherhood
Links mentioned:
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Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text the word “Dad” to (651) 370-8618
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(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 descent 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
(00:22):
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 gonna give it my all.
It was my great privilege
to shepherd, first
(00:43):
of all to shepherd my wife through
this adventure of cancer
and help her take the next step
which she did remarkably
well and
was a model to me and
to anyone who knew her of
fighting the fight, keeping the
faith, finishing in the race, 2nd
Timothy, 4-7.
(01:05):
This is episode 378
of Dad Awesome.
And guys, I wanna wish you a happy
Easter.
This is releasing just the day
before Good Fridays.
We're headed into Easter weekend
celebrating the resurrection
of Jesus and just
the love of God.
And I feel like this is just a
perfect time to
(01:25):
remind us, all of us as dads,
John 3.16, for God
so loved the world that
he sent.
His one and only son, Jesus,
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish, shall not die,
but will have everlasting life.
Guys, God so loved.
You. He so loved your
(01:47):
kids that he gave, that
he he gave everything.
He gave the unimaginable.
He sacrificed in ways we can never
imagine. So we celebrate Easter,
but we also celebrate a moment
to bring Easter to life for
our family. So I just want to just
encourage you guys to share about,
to tell about, to explain
(02:07):
how the love of God
has changed your life.
Tell your kids, tell your kids.
This is not an encouragement
to be public on social
media about your love for the Lord.
It's a reminder at the dinner
table while flipping
pancakes for breakfast, while
cuddling with your kids before
bed or through sending a text
(02:28):
message if you have older kids to
remind your kids how much God loves
them and that, man, what a
gift they are to your family.
But you want to just sure to use
your words to tell your kids how
much God loves them.
Today's conversation with Brian
Doyle, the founder and president
of Iron Sharpens Iron,
is a conversation that talks
(02:49):
about a dad walking through the
unimaginable.
Children, junior high, high school,
college, when his wife went
through a journey of going home to
heaven.
The way he unpacks grief,
and this story, I think will inspire
us to live with love,
more love in the chapter that we're
at today with our kids.
It's gonna inspire us with the love
of God and how it brought him
(03:10):
strength and how we can bring us
strength in the present and in
future chapters of trials,
future chapters.
The unimaginable, because we as dads
need to be ready.
We need to take action today to
be ready for what might be
coming in the future.
And the future is not a guarantee of
all up and to the right.
Every good story has moments of
(03:30):
pain. We live in a broken world.
And I just want to remind you guys,
today's story, the strength we can
learn from Brian Doyle,
can bring amazing transformational
impact in the today, in the present,
but building type impact into
the future, so.
Yeah, excited about this
conversation. It's a little shorter
conversation. On Easter week to
give you guys more time back with
(03:51):
your families.
So praying for you as you listen,
let's lean in with our full hearts
and I'm praying that we all as dads
would take courageous, loving
action to bring the story of Jesus
to life to our kids.
So, praying for you guys.
We're going to jump right in.
And this has been a 25
plus year history of
serving men, serving dads that
Brian has led through Iron Sharpens
(04:12):
Iron. And so we kind of jump right
into talking about the theme of
initiative, but I just want to honor
Brian for all of the years.
I mean, it's countless.
The impact is hundreds of thousands,
but it's, countless men have been
impacted through this ministry, the
ripple effects.
So grateful for him, grateful for
his story, his testimony today that
he's going to share.
So this is episode 378
(04:32):
with Brian Doyle.
I love the approach of choose your
own adventure, because every
man is at such a different place.
And I just want to celebrate
initiative.
(04:52):
You saw a need, you rallied with
some friends, and you brought
the need into fruition with a couple
of events the first year.
It was fun to even read on your
website through the timeline of just
like how this thing snowballed.
But it truly...
Taking initiative, so somebody
listening, taking initiative could
be saying, I'll start a campfire
and invite some guys over.
I could do this
(05:14):
men's ministry.
You could look so many different
ways, but it takes someone who says,
I'll go first.
I'll take initiative.
You have created though, and now
guys can go to your website, look at
all the events. Taking initiative of
just inviting some other guys to
one of these iron sharpens irons
one day events could be
the next step.
Take initiative of hosting one.
Learn about the resources, host one
(05:34):
so there's so many like possible but
if a guy doesn't take the initiative
which am I hypothesis here
is that men don't take initiative
because they feel like who
am I to take initiative?
Who am I, to lead, to invite?
I have all this stuff going on.
How would you combat that?
Well, I would say we do live
in a professional culture.
(05:55):
We hire people to do things who
are trained, who have expertise, who
are educated.
So there's some sense that that
makes sense.
But now when it comes to being a
dad, you're
not a professional dad, you're a
dad.
We can't give away,
no one can do, Jeff, what
God designed a man to do.
(06:16):
The Church
which is completely
well-intentioned.
The staff of the church, the
volunteers in the youth ministry and
children's ministry, who are all
some of the most wonderful people,
will probably ever meet.
Nobody can do what
God intended a
man to do. So I
(06:38):
intuitively knew that,
and so I just kind
of, I mean, I was a young dad like
you. I kind of looked to
the left, look to the rain realized
There's nothing for dads.
There really is nothing for men,
for husbands.
So I've got to do something.
So I just started in, like you said,
(06:59):
I started in
the mid-90s and early
90s with my own local church,
which is the place you should start.
I volunteered, I raised my hand.
And the first fathering
thing that I ever did,
because I was a, I don't
even think we had our first baby
yet. We were due. We had a.
Barbara and I had about seven years
(07:21):
of infertility, so we were
anticipating for a long
time. And then the prayers
of the saints and of some drugs
and the first baby came in
1995.
I remember hosting
or organizing something.
I didn't go out and get a speaker.
(07:42):
I didn' go on the web because I
don't think there was a web.
I asked four guys
in my church who
had all launched
their children, I mean,
out of high school, so they had all
launch children.
And I said, would you be willing
to share with the younger guys
about what worked
(08:04):
for you as a dad?
And of course, they were hesitant
because they're not speakers.
And so I said I'm just going to set
up a couple tables.
Uh, there's four of you, two guys
behind this table, two guys behind
that table, each year for 10
minutes. And then maybe a little Q
and a, they go, all right.
And that's where it started.
(08:24):
And it was complete rockstar
success.
Yeah. I mean, I mean no budget.
And why would you need a budget?
I mean I think we had some snacks,
not much.
Uh, we just pulled the guys and
guys came, you know what?
These guys want to,
they want.
The most important heart
(08:45):
area of their life,
especially when you give them a
personal invite, especially when
it's in their own local church.
They don't have to go, you know, an
hour and a half to that and give a
poll Saturday.
This is like an hour-and-a-half on a
Thursday night.
So the setting up tables so
they don't have to stand on the
stage with a microphone, you know,
There was no microphone.
(09:06):
I love it.
And then also knowing I'm one of
four, like this is all, we can
borrow this concept.
Any of us could find tap four
grandpas or dads who have launched
their kids.
If I asked you that question
just broadly, what would you want to
share with some younger dads
specifically around the topic of
infertility or waiting.
And there's a delay, we thought it
(09:28):
was gonna look like this.
What are some of the things you
would share, top of mind?
Well, I would say
shepherd your wife
through this.
You're a guy, you don't know
how hard it is
for the average
Christ-following
woman.
(09:48):
All women are wired
this way because God designed all
women like that.
But if you're
bathing yourself in the Word of
God and you're around
a Christian community.
Uh, with, you know,
reproducing families, you,
you want to be part of that.
You want that for yourself.
(10:09):
You, you wanna experience
motherhood.
So you really, number one, have to
shepherd your wife. That was my
first job.
Second job is you
just have to walk by faith and not
just by sight.
And spend time in God's Word.
One of the things I remember having
a devotional time
(10:31):
somewhere along the lines, let's say
halfway through the infertility,
and I'm reading Malachi, which,
you know, you think of Malachi.
What's that got to say?
Well, in Malachi 2,
you know Malachi's quoting
God about how he hates divorce
and,
you
(10:51):
and how he wants
oneness in marriage.
And then he says this, and why one?
I think this is verse 15, because
I desire, I, God,
desire godly
offspring.
I remember reading that go,
all right, well, you
want it, let's go.
(11:12):
And so I was a little more
aggressive in my prayers,
a little bit more intentional,
brought my wife in.
So we were in one accord,
and I became completely
convinced. We actually looked at two
adoption agencies.
We just became more intentional
because we knew what God wanted
was offspring, not just offspring,
(11:34):
but godly offspring.
Well, Barbara and I were all in for
that, for discipling our own kids.
We were ready to go.
All we needed was the offspring.
So, that was part of it, too, is
we were in God's Word, and God
spoke to us.
Through His Word.
Stay the course.
Baby's coming.
You know, like Abraham,
(11:55):
you know, many nations.
Yeah, but where's it going to start?
It'll happen.
Just keep walking by faith.
And it was seven years later.
What's the chapter of dad life
today?
So give us a framework of how old
your five kids are now.
Yeah, so that's them.
If you're on video, if you're
just listening, my kids are all
in their 20s.
(12:16):
So I call that the launch
stage. I've launched them.
You know, if you have little kids,
you're not launching them, you
are discipling them.
But you're discipling with the
launch in mind.
And this is usually what I encourage
young dads.
You know, it's not just about today
and getting them to obey and
all that kind of stuff.
(12:36):
You're looking ahead at
them being world-changing,
Christ-following disciples
who make disciples, and so you
have so. Now I'm in the stage
where pretty much there's
nobody here. There's nobody living
here. Susie is my youngest.
She's 21.
She is here sometimes.
Tim is 23.
He's getting married next month.
(12:58):
Matt's 25.
He's married.
And in the military.
Mike is 27.
He's married, living in
Texas and had his first
baby last month.
Just sent me some more photos this
morning. Yes.
And then Jessica is 29.
She lives in Kentucky
(13:19):
and she's married and has
two little girls.
So they are
launched. I'm still launching Suzy.
So I still, I'm
excited to be part of that life.
I think.
Tim getting married next month
is kind of, you know, he's
got his own apartment now.
You know,
(13:40):
the wedding's in what?
Three weeks. So it's
a fun season of life for us, really.
I want to go back in time to
a previous season and, you know, the
guys listening to Dad Awesome know
my journey of five and a half years
ago.
The word launch can be launching
kids, but we launched and
saw my dad launch from which we
called it paradise to paradise where
(14:00):
he went home to heaven after a
couple of or fight with
cancer.
I know you had a
season, no seasons alike,
but a season of saying goodbye to
your wife, Barbara.
And I'm curious what age, well, how
long was the journey, the health
journey and what age were your kids?
Yeah, and it was completely
out of nowhere.
(14:22):
I mean, it was, you know, cancer
is tough for everybody.
Some cancers are,
they're all tough.
This particular cancer was
hidden, so
it was down in her bile, duct, and
liver, so he didn't know anything
about it until It
started to manifest a little bit.
(14:42):
So that was July
of 2016.
And then, 19 months
later, Barb passed away.
That would have been March of
2018.
When Barb passed, away the
kids were 14,
(15:03):
16, 18, 20,
and 21.
It was my
great privilege to
Shepard.
First of all, to shepherd my wife
through this
adventure of cancer,
and help her take the next step,
which she did remarkably well,
(15:27):
and is a model to me
and to anyone who knew her
of fighting the fight,
keeping the faith, finishing the
race. 2Nd Timothy 4.7.
It's hard for me,
you know, it's hard with my kids.
I mentioned that we had
a grandson last
(15:49):
month.
It's a hard, I
don't know what the word is, it's
emotional, if I can say that.
It's emotional to hold the baby,
and I kind of wish my
wife was here so she could hold
the the baby.
But when I do hold the Baby, I
realize that 25%
of that baby.
Is Barbara Doyle.
(16:11):
It'll be hard next month when
Tim gets married.
We just went over the
seating chart I think this
weekend and Tim and
his sweet fiance Mia they've
got a chair right there front row
on the aisle that's
for Barb.
It's
(16:33):
Yeah, because she can't be there.
So it's challenging.
I would go back to
what I share with
men is
when I came to Christ at
19, I had
men who invested in
(16:53):
me, who invested time in
me. That's what they did.
They helped me to
study the Bible, to pray.
To be a man of faith, to live under
the Lordship of Christ,
to help make disciples and be a
disciple and make disciples,
to submit, to, you know,
live the Christian life as an
adventure and be in with all,
(17:13):
both feet. And I did that and
I helped other men do it.
And of course you do it, it's
your 20s, your 30s, your 40s,
and then at some point,
you're married, you got kids, and
then your wife gets cancer and she
passes away.
But you go back to that time
of some older
(17:34):
men investing in me as
a very young man in college and
post-college who equipped
me for what would happen 40
years later.
So these guys, Mike
and Lee and Fred who were
investing me, give or take
when I was 20 years old,
fast forward to 60
(17:55):
when bar passes away
because that's how old I was, I
know knew how to walk
with God in
a difficult time.
And I knew how to
shepherd my children and
my extended family because
everybody's looking at me like
this.
What now?
(18:16):
What do you do when the most
important person in your life is
gone?
We were a homeschool,
home education family,
and obviously.
Barbara's the center of that,
and now
she wasn't there.
So that was quite challenging.
(18:38):
And although the
kids had a lot in common, there's
still five different kids,
five different personalities,
temperaments, five different walks
of God, five different stuff
going on. So you can't just kind
of run them through a manufacturing
plant. You got to shepherd them
together and individually.
What a wonderful challenge
(18:59):
it was for me.
And honestly,
the most rewarding thing I've
ever done in my life.
You know, I mentioned I think
earlier, a couple minutes ago, we
have like over 600,000
men that come to these conferences,
blah, blah blah.
The most rewarding things I ever
have done in life
(19:19):
is shepherd my children during
this very difficult time
and helping them now five
years late.
No, seven years later,
walk with God in victory and
joy.
We talked about it, I
think it was last night, Susie and
Tim were over for dinner.
We just talked about the joy that
(19:41):
we have. We talked remembering mom
with joy,
not with sorrow, with joy.
I needed to learn how to
grieve.
One of the things i've seen among
men like myself.
Many men like myself is
that we
push back on
(20:01):
grief.
I probably had that tendency
also, Jeff, because I'm a
guy, I'm an American male.
You know, I got it, I'll do
it, yeah. But I had five
kids, so bar
passes away.
If I had no kids, or if the
kids were all out of the house,
which they weren't.
(20:21):
Then I may have said, I'm fine.
But because they were young,
14, 16, 18, 20, and
they're going to school locally and
college at UCF,
Florida, they were
all right there.
I mean, in the kitchen, you know,
I had to figure out
how to help them.
So I jumped into what
our church provided, which was grief
(20:43):
share.
And so I learned something I did
not know.
I did know about grief.
I mean, I know what everybody else
knows, which is basically nothing,
but I learned how to grief.
I learned to step into
grief, healthy
grief, the kind of
grief that everybody experiences
and some people do it well and some
(21:04):
who don't. So I learned for
myself how to grieve
and then I invite my
kids into the journey of
learning how to Grieve,
how to step into that grief.
How your sorrow
can turn to
joy, but not immediately.
You needed to go through
(21:25):
the sad times.
No one really wants to, but you need
to.
That's the way you heal.
And so it was about healing.
So over the course of the next few
years, not all at once,
the girls, pretty quickly,
they stepped into it and, you know,
the boys were like, I'm good,
took the boys.
Six months to a year before they
(21:47):
said, uh,
me too.
So, cause they're American
males also.
And so you needed, they
needed to come to the place where
they wanted help on
how to learn, how to grieve because
it wasn't getting any better.
So again, uh
great joy, very rewarding,
I still miss
(22:08):
her like crazy,
but what I
do miss is...
That, you know, especially as a
homeschool mom, she gave her life
and everything in her life
to these five children.
And now I get to see them succeed
and do remarkably well and
walk with God.
And I don't know how it all works,
(22:29):
but I'd love to just sit
and talk to my wife about it and
just affirm the daylights out of
her.
That's just part of me grieving as
well.
Ryan, thank you for
the sliver that you just shared with
me. And I do want to go back
to 30, 40 years before,
(22:49):
you know, you're six years old and
you're grieving.
You said a couple older men
invested in you.
What else to help us
dads prepare?
Things will be thrown at all of us.
It's going to look different for
different, but like grief is coming
at us in a different shapes and
different sizes. How do how else
(23:10):
would you say?
Hey, focus here,
grow here, invest here to
be ready for, uh, so that you
can shepherd versus, uh crumble
when, when something hard comes.
Well, again, back to what we
talked about earlier in our
conversation is that even
if your kids are little, 1, 3,
5, 7, 14, whatever their
(23:30):
age is, you're looking ahead.
You always got an eye on
the future.
You got an I on the season of
life I'm in, which is
launching children, being a
grandfather.
You're doing things in
such a way, 1 Corinthians 11, 1
where you can say to your kids,
FOLLOW ME!
(23:50):
As I follow Christ.
You want your kids ultimately to
follow Christ, that's
what's happening now because my kids
aren't living with me.
But when they're living with you,
you give them a visual
of what it is to
follow Jesus, to submit
to the Lordship of
(24:11):
Christ, to live a life
fully engaged with Jesus.
You know, there's a saying, you
probably have heard this, to teach.
What you know and you want to teach.
Deuteronomy 6, you
want to teach, share God's Word,
so you teach what you know, what you
to be true, you share life
principles, but you reproduce
(24:32):
who you are.
You teach what you know,
you reproduce who you.
Your kids are likely
not going to follow Christ
and submit to Him and
be a disciple
makes disciple if that's not
So where do you start as a dad
with the hope that your children
(24:53):
will walk with God for a lifetime?
Well, you need to be that kind of
man. That's what you need.
You need to that kind man.
Just to double-click on this
one level deeper, Hebrews 13.7,
there's an image of your whiteboard
that I've had the joy of
reading, and you've got the, this
(25:14):
is so precious.
What, WWMD, what would
mom do? Do I have that right?
Yes, so I'll
read the passage, and then,
I mean, it's just beautiful.
Hebrews 13, 7, remember your
leaders, and then you have in
parentheses mom.
Who spoke the word of God to
you, consider the outcome
(25:35):
of their way of life,
and imitate their
faith.
Remember, consider, imitate.
Would you just kind of elaborate a
little bit on why that whiteboard,
why that passage?
Well, I've been speaking
as a husband,
(25:56):
and we're
all going to go through this.
I remember my mom when my
dad died.
Her greatest concern was,
would we remember dad?
And I'm like, well, of course we're
gonna remember dad.
It's just what you do think when
you're a spouse.
So here's Barb, Barb passed
(26:18):
away at 54.
And I realized my kids were
gonna live much of their life,
most of their lives without their
mom.
But would they remember
their mom?
I was concerned about that.
Not overly concerned.
It was probably not practical
to be that concerned, not logical,
(26:38):
but I was still concerned.
So I wanted my kids to
understand that
the model
of their mom, that's who you want to
follow.
So this is a whole idea of what
would mom do. So you process life
through a
person who loved
Jesus and loved you.
(27:01):
That's mom.
She loved the Lord, and she
loved you.
So it's okay to think through,
consider, as the scripture
would say, consider think
about.
And that's a pretty good grid.
I mean, for my kids, that was
a pretty good grid for
them to run their life
decisions through, who they're gonna
(27:22):
marry, what they're going to do with
their life, what are they gonna do
tonight on the college
campus when people are doing certain
things. So it is a...
You know, as a parent, as father
and mother, we want
to give our kids the
model that they
can consider following, a compelling
(27:43):
model, a winsome model.
So, my wife did that very good,
she's a winsom person.
There were very little rules.
If there were rules, they were
probably my rules.
She just won them over with her
love. And so they
were, I mean, they were all in for
her because they knew that.
Or mom loved them unconditionally.
(28:05):
So when someone does that, moms
and dads,
you're winning the hearts of your
kids.
And here we are, seven years later,
I'm on the other end of a podcast
crying, hearing about, and I'm
looking at pictures of your wife,
and these words in the lower right
are, to me, The
gravity of these words of how you
(28:26):
describe her and what you can
imitate, I think about what would
be the words written on my
whiteboard. So it kind of catapults
into legacy thinking, but these are
what's written there.
In the word daily, always
positive, God-centered,
servant spirit, others-centered.
Cheerful, smile, supportive,
(28:46):
comforting, prayerful,
persevering, determined.
And then the photo cuts off.
I don't know what the last one was.
Yeah.
So thank you for sharing
about Barb.
Thank you for letting
me be another ripple of her
life as you reflect
on. And you used a
phrase light in the darkness.
(29:07):
And I actually found in my
research for this conversation that
that was the name and theme of
the first two gatherings.
It was light in darkness.
That means a lot to my family,
that phrase.
My six year old wrote a song a few
years ago when she was like four
about being light in the darkness
and I'd love to just,
wherever the Holy Spirit guides you
(29:29):
to land a challenge to
all of us dads around that
theme. I'd love to just hear
whatever comes to your heart.
Well, I mean,
the point of
fatherhood is
not to raise kids,
it's to disciple
your kids.
(29:50):
Now, you're discipling them so
they can be light
in the darkness.
We live in an increasingly secular
age. There was a time,
you know, in the 60s when I
was growing up. Where my mom and
dad, who were not believers.
We went to church, but we
weren't following Jesus.
They could just put me in the river,
(30:11):
not literally, but the river of
culture.
And, you know, I went down the river
and I did school,
public school, and Boy Scouts,
and band, and sports,
and church.
And that was the river.
And I just went down river and
came out just fine and dandy.
It's a different world now.
(30:31):
That was the 60s.
This is 2025.
Dads, the dads that are joining us
today,
you have to be much more intentional
now. If you are gonna make
a disciple
who makes disciples with
your children, you can't
just put them in the river.
(30:51):
I know you kind of want to.
Because you got a lot going on.
You got your own job and stuff
going on, and you just want to
kind of put them in the river.
It worked for me, it should work for
them. It's not working
anymore.
It's now working anymore, I'm
sorry to disappoint you,
but I'm gonna speak the truth and
(31:12):
just tell you, you're gonna be way
more intentional.
Now what that looks like for you,
you have to figure it out.
The key word though, is you
have be intentional.
If you're going to disciple your
children in a lost culture
that's essentially dark, light in
the darkness, you're gonna have to
do it like God's Word
gives us instruction to do.
(31:33):
Back to Deuteronomy 6,
you are gonna have take God's
word and talk about it
when you sit at home,
when you walk along the
road in your minivan,
when your rise up, when you lie down
and every time in between.
The culture is no longer neutral.
It's hostile to what we're about.
(31:55):
The church is not up to the job.
The church desperately wants to do
the job for us.
But the church can't do our job.
Because remember, no one can do what
God called a man to do.
And as a man, as a dad,
God's called me to disciple my
children, to be intentional,
to do it on really a
(32:15):
daily basis. That's why they live
with me. You know, the disciples
live with Jesus.
They just weren't in as group.
They live with them.
And so, you
live with your children, you want
to disciple them.
And so if your children
are gonna be light in the darkness
or looking ahead again, thinking,
(32:36):
launching, think of them like
my kids now in their 20s and
beyond, then you're gonna have
to prepare them now by being
very intentional,
not just putting them in the river.
Very grateful for this conversation.
Would you say a short prayer over
all the stats?
I'd love to. Thank you, Lord.
(32:56):
What a joy it is, what a
privilege, what an honor it is
for us to be dads.
What a calling we
have on our lives.
Lord, I think of me now as
kind of an elder statesman.
I look back and I
recognize the blessing it
is to have men who
(33:17):
invest in me, help me to continue
to do that.
And I pray for the guys
who are listening today that they
would get everything they can,
not just for themselves,
because I'm sure they're feeling
fine, but so that they could
be representatives of
you, ambassadors for Jesus,
that they can stand up when they go
(33:37):
through the trials that if
they're not here now, they're
around the corner.
And they'd be able to shepherd that
great privilege of shepherding their
children through challenges.
And through all that you have in
store for them, all that's ahead.
I do pray for Jeff
and myself and every man that's
listening today, that we
(33:59):
would be intentional.
We would not give this away to
professionals, but we'd own
it, take it, run hard
with it.
We'd lock arms with our sweet wives
and we'd do the job that
you've called us to do.
We would make disciples right
here in our home.
So we need your help, we ask for
your grace, in Jesus' name,
(34:21):
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us for
episode 378 with
Brian Doyle.
All the show notes, the...
Key takeaways, the quotes,
the transcripts, the links to Iron
Sharpen's Iron, the ministry that
Brian Doyle founded back over
(34:41):
25 years ago.
It's all gonna be listed at
dadawesome.org slash
podcast.
And then just look for episode 378.
Guys, happy Easter,
happy easter weekend, just
celebrating with your families the
death and resurrection of Jesus.
And wanna remind you to
send me a voicemail.
I love receiving voicemails
(35:02):
from our DadAwesome community.
It's linked right in the show notes
on every single application
that plays podcasts and it's also
listed on our website.
Send a voice message up to 90
seconds long.
I just love hearing feedback, love
hearing about you, your family, ways
I can pray for you, but also let me
know if you'd be open to scheduling
a 30-minute one-on-one phone
(35:23):
call. I've been scheduling these
calls and just loving connecting
one-to-one. I schedule one or
two of these calls per week, so I
can't say yes to every single one,
but man, it's a gift when you reach
out and leave me a voice message.
So just look in the show notes for
that. And again, guys, happy Easter.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you being dad awesome.
I'm praying for you guys.
Have a great week.
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 descent 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
(00:22):
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 gonna give it my all.
It was my great privilege
to shepherd, first
(00:43):
of all to shepherd my wife through
this adventure of cancer
and help her take the next step
which she did remarkably
well and
was a model to me and
to anyone who knew her of
fighting the fight, keeping the
faith, finishing in the race, 2nd
Timothy, 4-7.
(01:05):
This is episode 378
of Dad Awesome.
And guys, I wanna wish you a happy
Easter.
This is releasing just the day
before Good Fridays.
We're headed into Easter weekend
celebrating the resurrection
of Jesus and just
the love of God.
And I feel like this is just a
perfect time to
(01:25):
remind us, all of us as dads,
John 3.16, for God
so loved the world that
he sent.
His one and only son, Jesus,
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish, shall not die,
but will have everlasting life.
Guys, God so loved.
You. He so loved your
(01:47):
kids that he gave, that
he he gave everything.
He gave the unimaginable.
He sacrificed in ways we can never
imagine. So we celebrate Easter,
but we also celebrate a moment
to bring Easter to life for
our family. So I just want to just
encourage you guys to share about,
to tell about, to explain
(02:07):
how the love of God
has changed your life.
Tell your kids, tell your kids.
This is not an encouragement
to be public on social
media about your love for the Lord.
It's a reminder at the dinner
table while flipping
pancakes for breakfast, while
cuddling with your kids before
bed or through sending a text
(02:28):
message if you have older kids to
remind your kids how much God loves
them and that, man, what a
gift they are to your family.
But you want to just sure to use
your words to tell your kids how
much God loves them.
Today's conversation with Brian
Doyle, the founder and president
of Iron Sharpens Iron,
is a conversation that talks
(02:49):
about a dad walking through the
unimaginable.
Children, junior high, high school,
college, when his wife went
through a journey of going home to
heaven.
The way he unpacks grief,
and this story, I think will inspire
us to live with love,
more love in the chapter that we're
at today with our kids.
It's gonna inspire us with the love
of God and how it brought him
(03:10):
strength and how we can bring us
strength in the present and in
future chapters of trials,
future chapters.
The unimaginable, because we as dads
need to be ready.
We need to take action today to
be ready for what might be
coming in the future.
And the future is not a guarantee of
all up and to the right.
Every good story has moments of
(03:30):
pain. We live in a broken world.
And I just want to remind you guys,
today's story, the strength we can
learn from Brian Doyle,
can bring amazing transformational
impact in the today, in the present,
but building type impact into
the future, so.
Yeah, excited about this
conversation. It's a little shorter
conversation. On Easter week to
give you guys more time back with
(03:51):
your families.
So praying for you as you listen,
let's lean in with our full hearts
and I'm praying that we all as dads
would take courageous, loving
action to bring the story of Jesus
to life to our kids.
So, praying for you guys.
We're going to jump right in.
And this has been a 25
plus year history of
serving men, serving dads that
Brian has led through Iron Sharpens
(04:12):
Iron. And so we kind of jump right
into talking about the theme of
initiative, but I just want to honor
Brian for all of the years.
I mean, it's countless.
The impact is hundreds of thousands,
but it's, countless men have been
impacted through this ministry, the
ripple effects.
So grateful for him, grateful for
his story, his testimony today that
he's going to share.
So this is episode 378
(04:32):
with Brian Doyle.
I love the approach of choose your
own adventure, because every
man is at such a different place.
And I just want to celebrate
initiative.
(04:52):
You saw a need, you rallied with
some friends, and you brought
the need into fruition with a couple
of events the first year.
It was fun to even read on your
website through the timeline of just
like how this thing snowballed.
But it truly...
Taking initiative, so somebody
listening, taking initiative could
be saying, I'll start a campfire
and invite some guys over.
I could do this
(05:14):
men's ministry.
You could look so many different
ways, but it takes someone who says,
I'll go first.
I'll take initiative.
You have created though, and now
guys can go to your website, look at
all the events. Taking initiative of
just inviting some other guys to
one of these iron sharpens irons
one day events could be
the next step.
Take initiative of hosting one.
Learn about the resources, host one
(05:34):
so there's so many like possible but
if a guy doesn't take the initiative
which am I hypothesis here
is that men don't take initiative
because they feel like who
am I to take initiative?
Who am I, to lead, to invite?
I have all this stuff going on.
How would you combat that?
Well, I would say we do live
in a professional culture.
(05:55):
We hire people to do things who
are trained, who have expertise, who
are educated.
So there's some sense that that
makes sense.
But now when it comes to being a
dad, you're
not a professional dad, you're a
dad.
We can't give away,
no one can do, Jeff, what
God designed a man to do.
(06:16):
The Church
which is completely
well-intentioned.
The staff of the church, the
volunteers in the youth ministry and
children's ministry, who are all
some of the most wonderful people,
will probably ever meet.
Nobody can do what
God intended a
man to do. So I
(06:38):
intuitively knew that,
and so I just kind
of, I mean, I was a young dad like
you. I kind of looked to
the left, look to the rain realized
There's nothing for dads.
There really is nothing for men,
for husbands.
So I've got to do something.
So I just started in, like you said,
(06:59):
I started in
the mid-90s and early
90s with my own local church,
which is the place you should start.
I volunteered, I raised my hand.
And the first fathering
thing that I ever did,
because I was a, I don't
even think we had our first baby
yet. We were due. We had a.
Barbara and I had about seven years
(07:21):
of infertility, so we were
anticipating for a long
time. And then the prayers
of the saints and of some drugs
and the first baby came in
1995.
I remember hosting
or organizing something.
I didn't go out and get a speaker.
(07:42):
I didn' go on the web because I
don't think there was a web.
I asked four guys
in my church who
had all launched
their children, I mean,
out of high school, so they had all
launch children.
And I said, would you be willing
to share with the younger guys
about what worked
(08:04):
for you as a dad?
And of course, they were hesitant
because they're not speakers.
And so I said I'm just going to set
up a couple tables.
Uh, there's four of you, two guys
behind this table, two guys behind
that table, each year for 10
minutes. And then maybe a little Q
and a, they go, all right.
And that's where it started.
(08:24):
And it was complete rockstar
success.
Yeah. I mean, I mean no budget.
And why would you need a budget?
I mean I think we had some snacks,
not much.
Uh, we just pulled the guys and
guys came, you know what?
These guys want to,
they want.
The most important heart
(08:45):
area of their life,
especially when you give them a
personal invite, especially when
it's in their own local church.
They don't have to go, you know, an
hour and a half to that and give a
poll Saturday.
This is like an hour-and-a-half on a
Thursday night.
So the setting up tables so
they don't have to stand on the
stage with a microphone, you know,
There was no microphone.
(09:06):
I love it.
And then also knowing I'm one of
four, like this is all, we can
borrow this concept.
Any of us could find tap four
grandpas or dads who have launched
their kids.
If I asked you that question
just broadly, what would you want to
share with some younger dads
specifically around the topic of
infertility or waiting.
And there's a delay, we thought it
(09:28):
was gonna look like this.
What are some of the things you
would share, top of mind?
Well, I would say
shepherd your wife
through this.
You're a guy, you don't know
how hard it is
for the average
Christ-following
woman.
(09:48):
All women are wired
this way because God designed all
women like that.
But if you're
bathing yourself in the Word of
God and you're around
a Christian community.
Uh, with, you know,
reproducing families, you,
you want to be part of that.
You want that for yourself.
(10:09):
You, you wanna experience
motherhood.
So you really, number one, have to
shepherd your wife. That was my
first job.
Second job is you
just have to walk by faith and not
just by sight.
And spend time in God's Word.
One of the things I remember having
a devotional time
(10:31):
somewhere along the lines, let's say
halfway through the infertility,
and I'm reading Malachi, which,
you know, you think of Malachi.
What's that got to say?
Well, in Malachi 2,
you know Malachi's quoting
God about how he hates divorce
and,
you
(10:51):
and how he wants
oneness in marriage.
And then he says this, and why one?
I think this is verse 15, because
I desire, I, God,
desire godly
offspring.
I remember reading that go,
all right, well, you
want it, let's go.
(11:12):
And so I was a little more
aggressive in my prayers,
a little bit more intentional,
brought my wife in.
So we were in one accord,
and I became completely
convinced. We actually looked at two
adoption agencies.
We just became more intentional
because we knew what God wanted
was offspring, not just offspring,
(11:34):
but godly offspring.
Well, Barbara and I were all in for
that, for discipling our own kids.
We were ready to go.
All we needed was the offspring.
So, that was part of it, too, is
we were in God's Word, and God
spoke to us.
Through His Word.
Stay the course.
Baby's coming.
You know, like Abraham,
(11:55):
you know, many nations.
Yeah, but where's it going to start?
It'll happen.
Just keep walking by faith.
And it was seven years later.
What's the chapter of dad life
today?
So give us a framework of how old
your five kids are now.
Yeah, so that's them.
If you're on video, if you're
just listening, my kids are all
in their 20s.
(12:16):
So I call that the launch
stage. I've launched them.
You know, if you have little kids,
you're not launching them, you
are discipling them.
But you're discipling with the
launch in mind.
And this is usually what I encourage
young dads.
You know, it's not just about today
and getting them to obey and
all that kind of stuff.
(12:36):
You're looking ahead at
them being world-changing,
Christ-following disciples
who make disciples, and so you
have so. Now I'm in the stage
where pretty much there's
nobody here. There's nobody living
here. Susie is my youngest.
She's 21.
She is here sometimes.
Tim is 23.
He's getting married next month.
(12:58):
Matt's 25.
He's married.
And in the military.
Mike is 27.
He's married, living in
Texas and had his first
baby last month.
Just sent me some more photos this
morning. Yes.
And then Jessica is 29.
She lives in Kentucky
(13:19):
and she's married and has
two little girls.
So they are
launched. I'm still launching Suzy.
So I still, I'm
excited to be part of that life.
I think.
Tim getting married next month
is kind of, you know, he's
got his own apartment now.
You know,
(13:40):
the wedding's in what?
Three weeks. So it's
a fun season of life for us, really.
I want to go back in time to
a previous season and, you know, the
guys listening to Dad Awesome know
my journey of five and a half years
ago.
The word launch can be launching
kids, but we launched and
saw my dad launch from which we
called it paradise to paradise where
(14:00):
he went home to heaven after a
couple of or fight with
cancer.
I know you had a
season, no seasons alike,
but a season of saying goodbye to
your wife, Barbara.
And I'm curious what age, well, how
long was the journey, the health
journey and what age were your kids?
Yeah, and it was completely
out of nowhere.
(14:22):
I mean, it was, you know, cancer
is tough for everybody.
Some cancers are,
they're all tough.
This particular cancer was
hidden, so
it was down in her bile, duct, and
liver, so he didn't know anything
about it until It
started to manifest a little bit.
(14:42):
So that was July
of 2016.
And then, 19 months
later, Barb passed away.
That would have been March of
2018.
When Barb passed, away the
kids were 14,
(15:03):
16, 18, 20,
and 21.
It was my
great privilege to
Shepard.
First of all, to shepherd my wife
through this
adventure of cancer,
and help her take the next step,
which she did remarkably well,
(15:27):
and is a model to me
and to anyone who knew her
of fighting the fight,
keeping the faith, finishing the
race. 2Nd Timothy 4.7.
It's hard for me,
you know, it's hard with my kids.
I mentioned that we had
a grandson last
(15:49):
month.
It's a hard, I
don't know what the word is, it's
emotional, if I can say that.
It's emotional to hold the baby,
and I kind of wish my
wife was here so she could hold
the the baby.
But when I do hold the Baby, I
realize that 25%
of that baby.
Is Barbara Doyle.
(16:11):
It'll be hard next month when
Tim gets married.
We just went over the
seating chart I think this
weekend and Tim and
his sweet fiance Mia they've
got a chair right there front row
on the aisle that's
for Barb.
It's
(16:33):
Yeah, because she can't be there.
So it's challenging.
I would go back to
what I share with
men is
when I came to Christ at
19, I had
men who invested in
(16:53):
me, who invested time in
me. That's what they did.
They helped me to
study the Bible, to pray.
To be a man of faith, to live under
the Lordship of Christ,
to help make disciples and be a
disciple and make disciples,
to submit, to, you know,
live the Christian life as an
adventure and be in with all,
(17:13):
both feet. And I did that and
I helped other men do it.
And of course you do it, it's
your 20s, your 30s, your 40s,
and then at some point,
you're married, you got kids, and
then your wife gets cancer and she
passes away.
But you go back to that time
of some older
(17:34):
men investing in me as
a very young man in college and
post-college who equipped
me for what would happen 40
years later.
So these guys, Mike
and Lee and Fred who were
investing me, give or take
when I was 20 years old,
fast forward to 60
(17:55):
when bar passes away
because that's how old I was, I
know knew how to walk
with God in
a difficult time.
And I knew how to
shepherd my children and
my extended family because
everybody's looking at me like
this.
What now?
(18:16):
What do you do when the most
important person in your life is
gone?
We were a homeschool,
home education family,
and obviously.
Barbara's the center of that,
and now
she wasn't there.
So that was quite challenging.
(18:38):
And although the
kids had a lot in common, there's
still five different kids,
five different personalities,
temperaments, five different walks
of God, five different stuff
going on. So you can't just kind
of run them through a manufacturing
plant. You got to shepherd them
together and individually.
What a wonderful challenge
(18:59):
it was for me.
And honestly,
the most rewarding thing I've
ever done in my life.
You know, I mentioned I think
earlier, a couple minutes ago, we
have like over 600,000
men that come to these conferences,
blah, blah blah.
The most rewarding things I ever
have done in life
(19:19):
is shepherd my children during
this very difficult time
and helping them now five
years late.
No, seven years later,
walk with God in victory and
joy.
We talked about it, I
think it was last night, Susie and
Tim were over for dinner.
We just talked about the joy that
(19:41):
we have. We talked remembering mom
with joy,
not with sorrow, with joy.
I needed to learn how to
grieve.
One of the things i've seen among
men like myself.
Many men like myself is
that we
push back on
(20:01):
grief.
I probably had that tendency
also, Jeff, because I'm a
guy, I'm an American male.
You know, I got it, I'll do
it, yeah. But I had five
kids, so bar
passes away.
If I had no kids, or if the
kids were all out of the house,
which they weren't.
(20:21):
Then I may have said, I'm fine.
But because they were young,
14, 16, 18, 20, and
they're going to school locally and
college at UCF,
Florida, they were
all right there.
I mean, in the kitchen, you know,
I had to figure out
how to help them.
So I jumped into what
our church provided, which was grief
(20:43):
share.
And so I learned something I did
not know.
I did know about grief.
I mean, I know what everybody else
knows, which is basically nothing,
but I learned how to grief.
I learned to step into
grief, healthy
grief, the kind of
grief that everybody experiences
and some people do it well and some
(21:04):
who don't. So I learned for
myself how to grieve
and then I invite my
kids into the journey of
learning how to Grieve,
how to step into that grief.
How your sorrow
can turn to
joy, but not immediately.
You needed to go through
(21:25):
the sad times.
No one really wants to, but you need
to.
That's the way you heal.
And so it was about healing.
So over the course of the next few
years, not all at once,
the girls, pretty quickly,
they stepped into it and, you know,
the boys were like, I'm good,
took the boys.
Six months to a year before they
(21:47):
said, uh,
me too.
So, cause they're American
males also.
And so you needed, they
needed to come to the place where
they wanted help on
how to learn, how to grieve because
it wasn't getting any better.
So again, uh
great joy, very rewarding,
I still miss
(22:08):
her like crazy,
but what I
do miss is...
That, you know, especially as a
homeschool mom, she gave her life
and everything in her life
to these five children.
And now I get to see them succeed
and do remarkably well and
walk with God.
And I don't know how it all works,
(22:29):
but I'd love to just sit
and talk to my wife about it and
just affirm the daylights out of
her.
That's just part of me grieving as
well.
Ryan, thank you for
the sliver that you just shared with
me. And I do want to go back
to 30, 40 years before,
(22:49):
you know, you're six years old and
you're grieving.
You said a couple older men
invested in you.
What else to help us
dads prepare?
Things will be thrown at all of us.
It's going to look different for
different, but like grief is coming
at us in a different shapes and
different sizes. How do how else
(23:10):
would you say?
Hey, focus here,
grow here, invest here to
be ready for, uh, so that you
can shepherd versus, uh crumble
when, when something hard comes.
Well, again, back to what we
talked about earlier in our
conversation is that even
if your kids are little, 1, 3,
5, 7, 14, whatever their
(23:30):
age is, you're looking ahead.
You always got an eye on
the future.
You got an I on the season of
life I'm in, which is
launching children, being a
grandfather.
You're doing things in
such a way, 1 Corinthians 11, 1
where you can say to your kids,
FOLLOW ME!
(23:50):
As I follow Christ.
You want your kids ultimately to
follow Christ, that's
what's happening now because my kids
aren't living with me.
But when they're living with you,
you give them a visual
of what it is to
follow Jesus, to submit
to the Lordship of
(24:11):
Christ, to live a life
fully engaged with Jesus.
You know, there's a saying, you
probably have heard this, to teach.
What you know and you want to teach.
Deuteronomy 6, you
want to teach, share God's Word,
so you teach what you know, what you
to be true, you share life
principles, but you reproduce
(24:32):
who you are.
You teach what you know,
you reproduce who you.
Your kids are likely
not going to follow Christ
and submit to Him and
be a disciple
makes disciple if that's not
So where do you start as a dad
with the hope that your children
(24:53):
will walk with God for a lifetime?
Well, you need to be that kind of
man. That's what you need.
You need to that kind man.
Just to double-click on this
one level deeper, Hebrews 13.7,
there's an image of your whiteboard
that I've had the joy of
reading, and you've got the, this
(25:14):
is so precious.
What, WWMD, what would
mom do? Do I have that right?
Yes, so I'll
read the passage, and then,
I mean, it's just beautiful.
Hebrews 13, 7, remember your
leaders, and then you have in
parentheses mom.
Who spoke the word of God to
you, consider the outcome
(25:35):
of their way of life,
and imitate their
faith.
Remember, consider, imitate.
Would you just kind of elaborate a
little bit on why that whiteboard,
why that passage?
Well, I've been speaking
as a husband,
(25:56):
and we're
all going to go through this.
I remember my mom when my
dad died.
Her greatest concern was,
would we remember dad?
And I'm like, well, of course we're
gonna remember dad.
It's just what you do think when
you're a spouse.
So here's Barb, Barb passed
(26:18):
away at 54.
And I realized my kids were
gonna live much of their life,
most of their lives without their
mom.
But would they remember
their mom?
I was concerned about that.
Not overly concerned.
It was probably not practical
to be that concerned, not logical,
(26:38):
but I was still concerned.
So I wanted my kids to
understand that
the model
of their mom, that's who you want to
follow.
So this is a whole idea of what
would mom do. So you process life
through a
person who loved
Jesus and loved you.
(27:01):
That's mom.
She loved the Lord, and she
loved you.
So it's okay to think through,
consider, as the scripture
would say, consider think
about.
And that's a pretty good grid.
I mean, for my kids, that was
a pretty good grid for
them to run their life
decisions through, who they're gonna
(27:22):
marry, what they're going to do with
their life, what are they gonna do
tonight on the college
campus when people are doing certain
things. So it is a...
You know, as a parent, as father
and mother, we want
to give our kids the
model that they
can consider following, a compelling
(27:43):
model, a winsome model.
So, my wife did that very good,
she's a winsom person.
There were very little rules.
If there were rules, they were
probably my rules.
She just won them over with her
love. And so they
were, I mean, they were all in for
her because they knew that.
Or mom loved them unconditionally.
(28:05):
So when someone does that, moms
and dads,
you're winning the hearts of your
kids.
And here we are, seven years later,
I'm on the other end of a podcast
crying, hearing about, and I'm
looking at pictures of your wife,
and these words in the lower right
are, to me, The
gravity of these words of how you
(28:26):
describe her and what you can
imitate, I think about what would
be the words written on my
whiteboard. So it kind of catapults
into legacy thinking, but these are
what's written there.
In the word daily, always
positive, God-centered,
servant spirit, others-centered.
Cheerful, smile, supportive,
(28:46):
comforting, prayerful,
persevering, determined.
And then the photo cuts off.
I don't know what the last one was.
Yeah.
So thank you for sharing
about Barb.
Thank you for letting
me be another ripple of her
life as you reflect
on. And you used a
phrase light in the darkness.
(29:07):
And I actually found in my
research for this conversation that
that was the name and theme of
the first two gatherings.
It was light in darkness.
That means a lot to my family,
that phrase.
My six year old wrote a song a few
years ago when she was like four
about being light in the darkness
and I'd love to just,
wherever the Holy Spirit guides you
(29:29):
to land a challenge to
all of us dads around that
theme. I'd love to just hear
whatever comes to your heart.
Well, I mean,
the point of
fatherhood is
not to raise kids,
it's to disciple
your kids.
(29:50):
Now, you're discipling them so
they can be light
in the darkness.
We live in an increasingly secular
age. There was a time,
you know, in the 60s when I
was growing up. Where my mom and
dad, who were not believers.
We went to church, but we
weren't following Jesus.
They could just put me in the river,
(30:11):
not literally, but the river of
culture.
And, you know, I went down the river
and I did school,
public school, and Boy Scouts,
and band, and sports,
and church.
And that was the river.
And I just went down river and
came out just fine and dandy.
It's a different world now.
(30:31):
That was the 60s.
This is 2025.
Dads, the dads that are joining us
today,
you have to be much more intentional
now. If you are gonna make
a disciple
who makes disciples with
your children, you can't
just put them in the river.
(30:51):
I know you kind of want to.
Because you got a lot going on.
You got your own job and stuff
going on, and you just want to
kind of put them in the river.
It worked for me, it should work for
them. It's not working
anymore.
It's now working anymore, I'm
sorry to disappoint you,
but I'm gonna speak the truth and
(31:12):
just tell you, you're gonna be way
more intentional.
Now what that looks like for you,
you have to figure it out.
The key word though, is you
have be intentional.
If you're going to disciple your
children in a lost culture
that's essentially dark, light in
the darkness, you're gonna have to
do it like God's Word
gives us instruction to do.
(31:33):
Back to Deuteronomy 6,
you are gonna have take God's
word and talk about it
when you sit at home,
when you walk along the
road in your minivan,
when your rise up, when you lie down
and every time in between.
The culture is no longer neutral.
It's hostile to what we're about.
(31:55):
The church is not up to the job.
The church desperately wants to do
the job for us.
But the church can't do our job.
Because remember, no one can do what
God called a man to do.
And as a man, as a dad,
God's called me to disciple my
children, to be intentional,
to do it on really a
(32:15):
daily basis. That's why they live
with me. You know, the disciples
live with Jesus.
They just weren't in as group.
They live with them.
And so, you
live with your children, you want
to disciple them.
And so if your children
are gonna be light in the darkness
or looking ahead again, thinking,
(32:36):
launching, think of them like
my kids now in their 20s and
beyond, then you're gonna have
to prepare them now by being
very intentional,
not just putting them in the river.
Very grateful for this conversation.
Would you say a short prayer over
all the stats?
I'd love to. Thank you, Lord.
(32:56):
What a joy it is, what a
privilege, what an honor it is
for us to be dads.
What a calling we
have on our lives.
Lord, I think of me now as
kind of an elder statesman.
I look back and I
recognize the blessing it
is to have men who
(33:17):
invest in me, help me to continue
to do that.
And I pray for the guys
who are listening today that they
would get everything they can,
not just for themselves,
because I'm sure they're feeling
fine, but so that they could
be representatives of
you, ambassadors for Jesus,
that they can stand up when they go
(33:37):
through the trials that if
they're not here now, they're
around the corner.
And they'd be able to shepherd that
great privilege of shepherding their
children through challenges.
And through all that you have in
store for them, all that's ahead.
I do pray for Jeff
and myself and every man that's
listening today, that we
(33:59):
would be intentional.
We would not give this away to
professionals, but we'd own
it, take it, run hard
with it.
We'd lock arms with our sweet wives
and we'd do the job that
you've called us to do.
We would make disciples right
here in our home.
So we need your help, we ask for
your grace, in Jesus' name,
(34:21):
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us for
episode 378 with
Brian Doyle.
All the show notes, the...
Key takeaways, the quotes,
the transcripts, the links to Iron
Sharpen's Iron, the ministry that
Brian Doyle founded back over
(34:41):
25 years ago.
It's all gonna be listed at
dadawesome.org slash
podcast.
And then just look for episode 378.
Guys, happy Easter,
happy easter weekend, just
celebrating with your families the
death and resurrection of Jesus.
And wanna remind you to
send me a voicemail.
I love receiving voicemails
(35:02):
from our DadAwesome community.
It's linked right in the show notes
on every single application
that plays podcasts and it's also
listed on our website.
Send a voice message up to 90
seconds long.
I just love hearing feedback, love
hearing about you, your family, ways
I can pray for you, but also let me
know if you'd be open to scheduling
a 30-minute one-on-one phone
(35:23):
call. I've been scheduling these
calls and just loving connecting
one-to-one. I schedule one or
two of these calls per week, so I
can't say yes to every single one,
but man, it's a gift when you reach
out and leave me a voice message.
So just look in the show notes for
that. And again, guys, happy Easter.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you being dad awesome.
I'm praying for you guys.
Have a great week.
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