July 15, 2025 • 46 mins
We remember the life of Dr. John MacArthur who passed away on July 14. Then we turn to our topic. Seth Troutt has these words of encouragement for young men: Don't be a sluggard. Don't be lazy. He believes the inability or unwillingness to work hard is corrosive, lethal, and tempting. How is sloth ruining the lives of the next generation? And how do we ruthlessly eliminate it? Don't miss the conversation on Chris Fabry Live.
Featured resource:
The Ruthless Elimination of Sloth: An Appeal to Young Men (article)
Mentioned resource:
Chris Fabry Live interview with John MacArthur, January 8, 2019
July thank you gift:
Drive Through the Bible by Colin S. Smith
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:06):
Welcome to our Tuesday edition of Chris Fabry Live! The
program from the heart to the heart for the heart.
A new guest for you today, a pastor from Phoenix
who has expertise in Gen Z in digital technology, gender identity.
And he's going to narrow down on a topic that
we've discussed here before, sloth, or the big word for
(00:27):
this technical term is acedia. Doctor de rosette dealt with
that and how to recapture our delight. And I'm guessing
our guest is going to agree that being online is
not a great deterrent to sloth. He wrote an article
that caught my eye on the Gospel Coalition's website titled
The Ruthless Elimination of Sloth An Appeal to Young Men.
(00:51):
So if you're a young man or you know one,
don't miss the conversation straight ahead. Plus, I want you
to hear the voice of Doctor John McArthur, MacArthur, who
passed away yesterday at the age of 86. All that
and more is coming up straight ahead. First, a thank
you to our team. Ryan McConaughey's doing all things technical.
Trish is our producer. Ryan will be answering your calls today.
(01:12):
This is what it said in Christianity Today. Expository preacher
John MacArthur Jr, who taught scripture to millions through taped sermons,
radio broadcasts, Bible commentaries and a best selling study Bible,
died Monday at the age of 86. The New York
Times said John MacArthur, fiery preacher and culture warrior, dies
(01:34):
at 86. He was a theologically uncompromising pastor in Southern
California who influenced generations of evangelical preachers. And grace to
you posted this our hearts are heavy, yet rejoicing as
we share the news that our beloved pastor and teacher,
John MacArthur, has entered into the presence of the Savior.
(01:54):
This evening, his faith became sight. He faithfully endured until
his race was run. Second Timothy, chapter four, verses one
through eight. And I thought we would take just a
couple of minutes here at the beginning of the program,
and I want you to hear him. In 2019, he
(02:15):
joined me and I brought up his conversations. He would
he would talk with anybody, anywhere about Jesus. Larry King,
he had had a recent discussion with Ben Shapiro at
this time. And I said, in every one of those situations,
you're so consistent with your message. You don't mince words.
You're direct. You're clear with what energizes you, which is
(02:39):
the gospel. And I asked him to comment on that.
Here's what he said.
S2 (02:44):
Well, I think, Chris, I think that basically comes from
my conviction about the word of God. First of all, uh,
that the word is alive and powerful, sharper than any
two edged sword. I'm enough of a of a Puritan
lover to to to buy completely into the fact that
(03:06):
all the power is in the Bible. All the power
is in the living Word of God. And, uh, my
responsibility is to speak the Word of God. I'm not
the author. I'm just the messenger. I just bring what
God has written. So it begins with a very, very
strong commitment to the authority, the inspiration, the inerrancy, and
(03:28):
the power of the Word of God. Secondly, I believe
that the work of God is done by the Holy
Spirit through the word. So, as Ben said to one
of his friends a few days later, somebody he asked him,
are you offended by Christmas? Are you offended by all
the talk about Jesus? And he said, no, I'm not
(03:48):
offended at all. In fact, he said earlier this week,
John MacArthur tried to convert me and I wasn't offended. So, uh,
I honestly believe that, um, since the Holy Spirit does
the work and he does the work through the word,
we're begotten again by the word of truth. Peter says.
So it's my view of Scripture and my view of
(04:10):
of salvation, or for that matter, sanctification being the work
of the Holy Spirit. My responsibility is to is to
put the truth there, biblical truth there. And and that
tool is the tool that the Holy Spirit uses, uses.
And and I hope through the years when I've done that, um,
basically that I've done it with a measure of compassion
(04:33):
and love. Speaking the truth in love is important because
I realized that it is an offense to to confront
someone with the gospel. But I, you know, you want
to do it in such a way that it comes
across as an expression of love for that person.
S1 (04:48):
And I think that excerpt from six years ago really
captures his heart. It's hard to find, uh, going in
any interview that he's done. It's hard to go down
and find something that's not germane, that isn't cogent, that isn't.
You know, you could excerpt this. And because he was
so everything was, well, so well thought out. And I've
(05:10):
been reminiscing for the last day or so about some
of the things that he talked about, some of the
controversies that he went through and the way that he
seemed fearless to to be able to tackle the really
hard issues. So before we get to the topic today,
Pastor Seth Trout is with us teaching pastor at Ironwood
Church in Phoenix or near Phoenix. I wanted to give
(05:32):
you an opportunity to respond to that. Seth, tell me
what comes to mind when you hear his voice?
S3 (05:38):
What comes to mind is my high school small group.
My discipleship group leader had us read MacArthur's book, 12
Ordinary Men when I was in high school, and at
first I saw this kind of boring looking book with
a boring sounding title in my discipleship leader, said, this
is a good book. We should read it. And I
respected him. So I remember reading it and feeling compelled
(05:59):
at how I'm not all that different than these disciples
of Jesus, and his just, faithful exposition has shaped my
ministry and heart in a variety of ways. You know,
John's book slave came out when I was a sophomore
in college. I remember reading it with a small group
of guys when he was reflecting on when Paul calls
himself a servant or a slave, a doulos of Christ,
and how it's liberating to completely submit yourself to the
(06:23):
Lordship of Jesus. And so, at an early age, MacArthur
affected me and shaped me as just a Christian. And
then his pastoring the simple work of unpacking the scriptures
and bringing them to people and the freedom of that,
that as a pastor, you don't need to create gimmicks
and slick marketing, and you don't need to be necessarily
the most compelling, but you can just give people the word,
(06:45):
give people the meat, give people what God has said,
unpack it, unfold it, apply it. And that's the basic
role of the pulpit. And it's been liberating trying to
follow in his footsteps as an expositional preacher. That's how
we do it at our church. And I think there's
a lot of churches that exist now that give their
people good Bible teaching. And I'm not sure they would
(07:06):
have done that had it not been for MacArthur's influence.
And so I'm grateful for the man. I think the
church history will remember him. Um, almost exclusively, positively and
for his benefit to the to Christians and to pastors
and the freedom that comes from just giving people the
Word of God and believing that the power is in
the word and the spirit brings it to life in
(07:27):
people's lives. And it's a beautiful thing. He'll be missed.
And I'm thankful for his influence in my life.
S1 (07:33):
The other thing I think of him is his rock
ribbed belief in the sovereignty of God. In that same conversation,
we talked about believing in God, being in control, and
then how that affects the way the Christian lives his
or her life.
S2 (07:51):
He will build his church. The gates of hell will
not prevail against it. That that is true. But we're
not fatalists. And we don't just flop over on the
sovereignty of God and say, well, that settles that. I
don't need to live a godly life. I don't need
to evangelize because the Lord has not only chosen the ends,
(08:12):
but he's chosen the means, and he will build his church.
But the means that he has chosen is to build
his church through the instrumentation of faithful men and women.
And while your little role may not make a difference
in the ultimate end of the church, or my little
role might not make a difference in the ultimate end
(08:33):
of the church, because the Lord will do what he
will do. It makes a huge difference in the joy
and the blessedness of my life here. And it makes
an eternal difference in the life to come. When every
one of us will have the wood, hay, stubble stripped
away and receive an eternal reward based upon the gold
(08:56):
and silver precious stones that are left.
S1 (08:59):
That eternal difference was what he was after. And that's
what he's experiencing now. Not because he was such a
great man or because he was flawless. He was without sin. No,
but because of the grace of God at work, in
his life and through his life. So I wanted to
take a time out here at the beginning of the
(09:22):
conversation today with Seth Troutt and talk about that and
that whole idea of the sovereignty of God. And if
I believe God's sovereignty and God's going to do what
he's going to do, then I don't know what difference
can I make? Well, that may play into the topic
that we have for you today, which is sloth or
(09:43):
just kind of letting things go and how it's affecting
young men in our culture. That's what Seth is going
to talk with us about again. He's teaching pastor at
Ironwood Church in the Phoenix metro area. Find out more
about him at Chris Fabry Live.com. And we're going to
open the phone lines for you, too, at (877) 548-3675. More
(10:07):
straight ahead on Moody Radio.
S4 (10:19):
Today on Chris Fabry live, meet Seth Trout. Trout has three.
S1 (10:24):
T's in it. You do the homework. He is teaching
pastor at Ironwood Ironwood Church in Phoenix. Near Phoenix, near Gilbert.
He has a doctorate focused on digital technology, generation Z
and gender identity. He provides biblical guidance on both complex
cultural issues and practical personal challenges. Find out more about him.
(10:44):
He's an alumnus of Arizona State, and I'm near the
University of Arizona. So there's and I think your wife,
didn't your wife go to the U of A?
S3 (10:53):
She sure did. But she did her master's degree at ASU. So.
S1 (10:56):
Okay.
S3 (10:57):
Our households at peace.
S1 (11:00):
Uh, you've been married to Taylor since 2013, so that's
about 12 years. You have two children, and, uh, what
is life? What is life for you, like as a
pastor in this season of your life, what gets you
up in the morning?
S3 (11:14):
Well, our church is growing, and it's a real blessed
place to work. Real healthy culture. I love my coworkers,
love the congregation. My family has a lot of great
family friends here. Um, you know, my wife's a speech therapist,
works two days a week. We got family in the area,
got great grandparents support. I'm really kind of living the
idyllic life for someone in their mid 30s with two
little kids. So every day is kind of feels like
(11:37):
Groundhog Day when you have a five year old and
a three year old kind of rinse and repeat. But
it is a joy and it's easy to find delight
in in between the tantrums. But that's all it comes
with the territory.
S1 (11:47):
Yes. And it is. It is a day by day,
sometimes an hour by hour proposition, isn't it?
S3 (11:53):
Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
S1 (11:55):
So you wrote this article in May. The ruthless Elimination
of Sloth and Appeal to Young Men, which is a
play on the ruthless elimination of hurry, I think. Am
I right?
S3 (12:06):
Yeah, yeah. The book Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, I think
is a great book, especially for people in their 40s
and 50s, people who have spent a good chunk of
time burning the candle at both ends. And now their
kids are teenagers and they're trying to restore balance to
their overworked life. And one of the things I've noticed
is that people read that book before they should. Sometimes,
(12:28):
like in their teens or 20s, and you got some
guys who are 18, 19, 20 trying to eliminate the
hurry from their life. And I'm going, you never had
it in the first place. You you got to when
you're young, you got to look at the ants, you know? Look. Oh, slugger,
look at the ants. Look how they work. and you
try to prematurely have the life balance or the maturity
of someone in their 40s. You know, it's a common
(12:50):
thing that people have talked about is how people tend
to graduate college and then kind of assume they'll move
right into the same standard of living as their parents,
who have who are, you know, 30 years ahead of
them or so. And I think it's similar with people
who graduate from college and think they'll have the same
work life balance as their parents, who are 25, 30
years into their careers. And that can be a real
(13:11):
trap for young men. And people will tend to feel
a lot of guilt around working really hard and trying
to build a life and trying to develop skills and talents,
and it earlier in your career, you're less competent, so
what you accomplish in 40 hours is just objectively less
than what your peers who are 20 years in can
accomplish in 40 hours. And so you may have to
work more to develop skill and ease and quickness and instincts.
(13:33):
And I really want young men in particular, to feel
a real permission or a sense of peace around the
fact that you have to grind, especially early in your career,
especially early in your life. And a lot of like
the biblical instruction would say that you should be more
worried about being slothful or lazy than you should be about,
you know, so-called making an idol of work, which is
(13:55):
definitely possible. But I think, uh, the book of Ecclesiastes,
you know, vanity, vanity is more for the middle aged
type person who's experienced some of the worldly success and
is going, this isn't doing what I hoped it would
for me. And so they have to look to the
next life for meaning and purpose. Or as someone in
their 20s, you do have to work harder. You know,
(14:16):
you're kind of pushing it uphill a little bit, and
that's okay. And and I want young men especially to
feel license, to grind, to have holy ambition and to
make something of themselves. And writing the article is not
really meant to dunk on John Mark Comber's book, but
more to say, especially if you're in your teens or 20s,
probably even in your 30s, you. It's okay to be
(14:39):
preoccupied a Occupied a bit with some sense of holy
ambition and and ruthless work ethic, rather than kind of
being preoccupied with working as little as possible.
S1 (14:48):
Especially with what's going on in the culture, or at
least the way that when I look at the culture,
I can see this kind of happening. And I believe
that more. You could talk about this spiritually or you
can talk about it in this work area. More is
caught than taught because I caught from my dad, for
(15:09):
better or worse, who was up at the crack of dawn.
You know, he was a frustrated farmer because he had
to work a full time job, but he would go
work the full time job, come home and then do
all the stuff around the farm. So I very rarely
saw him not in motion, not doing something. He was
always at work on something. And you look at that
(15:33):
and again, that you can go the other way and
you can, uh, base your worth on your work and
what you do. Get your identity from that. But what
I saw from him, I caught and it was. And differently,
because I'm not a farmer and I didn't work at
a chemical plant. I was more in the in the
arts and, you know, asking questions and doing things like this.
(15:55):
But do you agree with that? That you catch it
from somebody else?
S3 (16:01):
Oh, I totally agree. I do think that what we
see modeled in our household of origin has incredible power
over us, for good and for bad. Like I think about,
you know, when Isaac lies and says, this is my sister,
and he repeats the same thing his father did. You know,
I don't think that was probably an instinct. You know,
he saw what his dad did and repeated the pattern
of Abraham. That's not my wife, that's my sister. And
(16:21):
so even in the chapters of Genesis, you see a
real sense of generational power. And if you had a
father who loved you and worked hard, you kind of
are born on third base a little bit because you
had two very important things modeled to you. And so
few men nowadays have that like being under fathered is
a real epidemic that we can see. And that under fathered,
(16:42):
this can play out in a thousand ways. One of
which is obviously dad just leaves. The other one is
that dad didn't set a good example and love and
affection and blessing and correction and work ethic. And so
some people listening may see like a real family pattern.
They need to correct. And if you need to correct
a family pattern, that's doubly difficult. And it's important and
(17:02):
noble work to break generational patterns. But it is additional work.
And so some men are unfortunately assigned that greater burden
to correct what their father didn't give them. And other
people have the joy of imitating their father. You know,
nobody's father is perfect. They're all sinners. They all leave wounds. Uh,
but most of us have at least some really good
(17:23):
things we got from our dad, and we can be
thankful for those. And. Sounds like you had a dad
who really modeled. Hey, you do what it takes to
make it to provide. And I think as the culture,
broadly speaking, gets wealthier and wealthier and like influencer Instagram
culture normalizes the lackadaisical. Laissez faire life. It's, uh, the
temptation to, like, see billionaires and just kind of feel
(17:45):
entitled to other people's wealth. Is is a real trap
for young men who feel like, uh, I should just
have what I want and not have to really grind
or make something of myself to to get it. And
it is truly difficult when you kind of get sucked
into the dopamine doomscrolling cycle of social media, and especially
with like the problem of pornography as being as prevalent
(18:05):
as it is, like there's, you know, fake ambition, fake
video games, fake victories, fake sex, fake wealth. And it
there really is a trap that gets people trapped into
or stuck in a way that makes them less productive
than they could be otherwise.
S1 (18:20):
I think the thing that I caught from my dad and,
and tell me if you caught this from yours, um,
the thing that I caught from him was not, you
need to go out and work. Work is going to,
you know, do something for you. When he he was
the most happy on his tractor. He was he was delighted.
He loved, you know, to work with the animals, to
(18:42):
work with the crops. He loved growing. He loved to
get his hands dirty. He loved to, you know, to
fix things that broke down, to try to figure it out.
It's like this made him come alive to be out there.
And what it showed me was that if you find
the thing that you really that makes you come alive inside,
then I've heard it said, you'll never work a day
(19:04):
in your life. You know, everything that you do is
going to be an extension of who you are rather than, oh,
I got to go out and do this in order
to pay the bills. Uh, it was so much more
than that for him. Was your dad the same?
S3 (19:18):
Yeah. My dad just retired a couple of weeks ago, actually.
He's 36 years as a PE teacher at the same place.
You know, he taught freshman boys P.E. at Chandler High School,
and he he definitely appreciated his work. But there's definitely
days where it's laborious. Curious. You know, if you read
Genesis one and two, you definitely know that work is
not a curse. Work is a blessing. God blessed them
(19:39):
and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, subdue, and have
dominion over the earth. That's the work of unfolding the creation.
And you get to partner with God and unfolding the
potential he's put within the earth. At the same time,
you go to Genesis three and it says, by the
sweat of your brow you'll bring forth a food to eat.
And so there is a sense in which work is cursed.
And so, you know, if you go back 150 years ago,
(20:03):
people didn't really choose careers almost all the time. You
just did the family trade. And so the idea of
like finding fulfillment in your work is, is relatively modern.
I do think if people can do that, they should
definitely try to do that. I also have some dear
friends who I just think are noble, hard workers who
don't particularly love their work, but they love their families
and they love contributing to society, and they love the
(20:26):
sense of accomplishment and productivity. And so they do kind
of have to be a little more creative as they
find joy in their work. Uh, but I do think
if you're able to find something that naturally fits your passions,
that's great. Unfortunately for some people, especially young men, their
passions will never amount to more than hobbies because they
can't monetize them. And there's no supply demand for what
(20:47):
they love to do. And so they're in a tough place.
And so there that's part of what can create some
of like the slothfulness is well, I can't monetize what
I love. So I guess I'll just not monetize anything
and I'll just kind of be dependent and fail to launch.
And so, uh, finding passion in your work and being
able to do that, I do think some of that's
just attitude, not necessarily the work itself. Like, am I
(21:07):
able to find the joy in my labor or am
I not? You know, even as a pastor, I enjoy
my work most of the time, but there are days
I have a bad attitude and it sucks the life
out of me.
S1 (21:18):
Yeah, because you work with people and people are hard
to work with sometimes, aren't they?
S3 (21:21):
Oh, absolutely. But I know what I signed up for.
I know what it is, and there are days that
it's fulfilling, and there are days that it's draining. And
some of that has to do with The framework, the
mental state I'm in, my attitude that I bring to
the office with me that day. And so sometimes the
problem is the nature of the work. You may need
to find a different type of work. Sometimes it's just
your bad attitude is shaping your attitude. And so you
(21:44):
got to work through that and change your perspective and
reframe it a bit.
S1 (21:47):
I sense, though, from you that Seth Trout is not
a pastor who sees a young person come in and
wags his finger at them and says, you're playing too
many video games and you ought to go out and
get a job and etcetera, etcetera. There's there's not this
shaming shame on you type feeling that comes from you.
So when you meet a young man who comes into
(22:10):
the church and there are some that are beginning to
give their lives to Jesus and come to your church,
what what's the first step? What do you talk about?
S3 (22:20):
So some of it like, if I meet with a
guy who, you know, within the first couple of minutes,
I'm going, this guy is beset with sloth. Like he's
just kind of in the river, not really paddling. That's
almost always some type of function of shame or feeling
like a feeling of meaninglessness. My work can't make a difference.
So does it matter at all? And so a lot
of it's trying to help them creatively see or just
(22:42):
notice the way that their basic monotonous work can make
a huge difference in the world. Like, I remember discipling
a guy a few years ago who was stocking shelves
at a grocery store, and he's going, my work is dumb.
This is just what I can do. I can't do
anything better than this. And he just was kind of
moaning about his work. And I asked him, you know,
visualize with me a single mom with five kids who
(23:07):
has very little margin in her life at all. You
don't know why she's a single mom. You don't know
what her life is like. And she comes to the
grocery store looking for this stuff that she's going to
feed her kids with, and imagine everything was stocked incorrectly.
There are things that you're looking for that weren't there?
Some things were in the wrong place, and it takes
her an extra 30 minutes at the grocery store because
you did a really crappy job. Now imagine that same
(23:30):
woman comes in and she doesn't notice you. She doesn't
give you thanks, but she goes. Everything is right where
I want it to be. At checkout, they said, did
you find everything you're looking for today? And she said, yeah,
actually it was great. And she gets home 30 minutes earlier.
That's more time to function with the things that matters.
And so if you can visualize the person you're serving
and the person who's being blessed by your work, and
you can try to connect the fruit of your labor
(23:51):
to the sweat of your labor, I do find that
men are able to kind of get back on the
horse a bit, on the work hard thing. So some
of it's that it's just kind of they feel like
their work is meaningless, even though it isn't, and helping
them see the meaning in it. Sometimes it's a matter
of just the economic pressure and the fear, the fear
of failure and helping people work through that. Like, what
(24:13):
if I try my hardest and then I fail so
people will just not try their hardest. And so then
they have kind of like a plausible deniability around some
of their work and going, hey, what do we think
about Grace? What do we think about the father given
for you? Do you think God has prepared good works
for you beforehand? Like Ephesians 210 says, because he has
and he's designed meaningful things for you to do, and
(24:35):
he hasn't necessarily designed easy and meaningful things for to you,
but just meaningful things. And so the meaning question, like
the fear of failure question the concern about will I
be loved if I fail? Question. That's all kind of
operating in people's mindset. And so those tend to be
some of the more spiritual issues that are that are
there sometimes for guys, it's just straight up phone addiction,
(24:57):
technology addiction, entertainment addiction, and they hate themselves for it.
You know, nobody doom scrolls TikTok for three hours and
feels good afterwards. And so but I just can't turn
it off. I I'm not I'm staying up too late
because I'm just scrolling and I'm wasting my time meaningful.
And so then you kind of go to like this.
Let's try a tech detox situation, you know, for 40 days.
Let's turn the internet off your phone and let's try
(25:20):
to help you break the cycle of tech addiction. And
I'm so glad.
S1 (25:24):
That you.
S3 (25:24):
Bring that up.
S1 (25:25):
Days that that shame component because that is so prevalent
in what I see as well. And I'm going to
turn to you, friend. Are you are you a young person?
Do you identify with what you're hearing here today? I'd
love to hear from you. (877) 548-3675. Or maybe you're a
parent or friend and you're trying to help a younger
(25:46):
man launch. Give me a call (877) 548-3675.
S5 (26:03):
I love Colin.
S1 (26:04):
Smith's approach in Drive Through the Bible, because he understands
the whole Bible is one story. It has a beginning,
has a middle, it has an end, begins in a
garden and ends in a city. There's a river running
through it, and all the way through there is a
crimson cord of grace and mercy that finds its way
to the cross and the empty tomb from the grave
(26:26):
to the skies. But you know what? A lot of
people taking a tour of the Bible aren't able to
see Jesus like that. If you give a gift of
any size today to Chris Fabry live, I want to
send you that book, drive through the Bible. It'll help
you or someone you know. See the way the entire
scriptures connect with each other. Old Testament, New Testament, wisdom, literature,
(26:47):
the poetry, the prophecy, the Gospels. This is our thank
you right now, and I'd love to send you a copy.
Call 866958669532279. Give a gift of any size or go
to the website Chris Fabry. Org. Scroll down. You'll see
right there. Drive Through the Bible a 30 day Journey
(27:09):
by Colin Smith. And this is the way that we
come to you each day. So people get involved with us,
participate with us with a gift. You could do that
easily at the website. Chris Fabry Fabri lived where? You'll
find out more about our guest today, Seth Trout. With
(27:29):
three t's t r o u t t. And I
just learned. I had no idea. He's writing a book
on authentic masculinity that is coming out in the spring. So, Seth,
you're coming back. You're going to talk about that in
the spring. Okay.
S3 (27:44):
That's the hope. I'd love to be here again.
S1 (27:46):
Good. All right. So for those who have been listening
and who say, I know exactly what you're talking about,
talk to anybody else. Who else who says, I don't
know what you mean by sloth or Rosie used the
the term acedia. How do you know someone is slothful?
S3 (28:05):
Yeah, well, the term got first introduced to me, or
my dad in high school said, you can be anything
you want, but you can't be a loser. And that
sounded a little harsh. Like, what do you mean by loser?
And he's like, oh, you know, someone who doesn't work hard.
You know, someone who just kind of mopes about someone
who's not productive, doesn't contribute to society. And, you know,
he was a basketball coach. So that that loser language
(28:26):
kind of resonated a little bit more. But if you
go to the scriptures, there's this idea of like sluggard
ness or slothfulness thinking about the the animal, the sloth.
It's just slow moving. It's just not it doesn't have
a real sense of urgency or purpose, just kind of
going at a painfully slow pace. And so I think
it's really this inability or unwillingness to work hard. Uh,
(28:48):
it's laziness. It's being not like the ant, you know,
Proverbs six says, consider the ant, o sluggard. Uh, without
having any chief, she prepares and gathers. How long will
you lie there? A little sleep, a little slumber, a
little folding of the hands. And poverty will come upon
you like a robber. This kind of idea. It's like
the lack of umph, the lack of energetic movement forward. Uh,
(29:09):
it's being pro-work, pro-labor. Uh, and I think that slovenliness
or slothfulness, it's really just like a disposition of, uh,
slowness or non-movement. And if you think about like having
a lazy, slow Saturday, it's kind of living your life
like that.
S1 (29:27):
Yes. I asked somebody what retirement was like, and they
say every day is Saturday. Which that sums it up.
And if you worked really hard for a long time,
it's like, yeah, you want to have more restful days.
I just I don't I don't see in the makeup that, um,
my own makeup and perhaps I do need to slow
(29:48):
down more, but I don't see not doing anything as
the goal as, as, as a as a desirable life,
maybe different pursuits, you know, when you get to that age.
But we're talking about young men. And Miguel is on
the line from Chicago. Miguel, why'd you call today?
S6 (30:09):
Hey, guys, how's it going? Uh, so I just had
a quick question. Um, so I heard you guys talking
about the, like, generational habits, And, um, you know, like
you guys are talking about. And I know sometimes, like myself,
I'm going to church with my family. Uh, I have
a two year old son. And, uh, sometimes I feel like, man,
(30:31):
am I doing enough? You know, I'm trying to make
time for God, my family. I heard you guys talking about,
you know, a stage in a man's life when he's
older and, like, in his late 40s, you know, he's
kind of past the teenage years of his son. And, uh,
you know, I'm trying to create good habits. And, uh,
you know, I just feel like. Am I doing enough?
(30:51):
You know, I'm very blessed. You know, I have a home,
my wife, everything. And, you know, you just can't help to, uh,
wonder sometimes. Are you doing enough? You know, it's just.
S1 (31:02):
Is there something, though, that is holding you back? Miguel,
is there something you're doing that is taking more time
than you think? I probably shouldn't waste my time on that.
S6 (31:14):
Uh, you know what? Uh, so, you know, I go
to work, like, right now, I'm coming home from work.
You know, I relax with my son. And sometimes, like,
you guys are talking about scrolling on your phones and stuff.
Sometimes an hour turns into two and it's like, oh, well,
that's the day. You know, it's like. And like sometimes
I feel like, okay, do I just like, do I
deserve this time or should I be doing something else?
(31:35):
Am I being lazy, you know?
S1 (31:37):
Yes. Okay. That's it. You hit the nail on the head.
Thank you for being honest with us, Miguel. Uh, Seth,
what do you say about that?
S3 (31:44):
Yeah. Miguel, I appreciate that tension. You know, I have
kids about the same age as yours. And I do
think what's helpful to me when I'm trying to process
through that is, uh, thinking about different types of work
or different types of labor. And when I say something's work,
I don't mean that it necessarily needs to be like
something you don't like. Like, I do think playing with
my kids, it's work, you know, I'm burning calories. I'm
(32:07):
emotionally engaging. I'm offering my presence when I'm sitting with
my wife on the couch at the end of the
day after bedtime, like, that's that's work. Like I'm getting
to know her. I'm I'm, you know, trying to draw
out her heart, trying to let myself be known, trying
to connect with her. And when I'm doing chores around
the house, that's work. You know, it's not paid labor,
but it's labor. And I do think sometimes we think
(32:30):
about our work only as, like our employment and, uh,
as opposed to, like, just all productive activity. And I
do think, you know, being with your kids, doing chores,
spending time with the Lord, all of this is a
form of labor, and it's a form of work. And,
you know, the Bible gives us the command, you know,
six days you shall work, and one day you shall rest.
And I think if you understand the word work as productivity,
(32:53):
broadly understood, you know, it's wildly productive to be employed
or be an entrepreneur. It's productive to spend time with
your kids and coach their sports leagues. It's it's a
lot of work to spend time with your wife. And again,
I don't mean that negatively, but that can work, can
be joyful. And I do think if you're kind of
feeling a sense of, uh, guilt around, you know, the
scrolling that one turns into two, Then I'll take that
(33:15):
as a prompt from the spirit and go. Okay, maybe
I need to put a limit on this and spend
more quality time with my wife. Or maybe I need
to put a limit on this and spend more quality
time with the Lord. Maybe I need to put a
limit on this and, uh, you know, increase my understanding
of my workplace so that I can advance and provide
more bountifully. Uh, but at the end of the day,
there's this reality that you go, I kind of have
(33:36):
need people in my life to speak into my life,
because the easiest person to lie to is yourself. And
so I'd encourage you to ask your wife to ask
elders in your church, other wise men in your church
and go, here's here's the flow of my week. What
do you see? What do you think about it? Because
it may end up being wildly encouraging. And you can okay,
I can put that kind of insufficient insecurity shame thing aside.
(33:59):
Or they may say like, yeah, you know, 17 hours
on Twitter is probably too much. Go ahead and reign
that in and make that 17 minutes, you know, and
you can you can take that more objective feedback. It's
really hard to evaluate or speak into someone's life at
a distance. And so getting some men in your life
who could, who could see you and speak into your
life and encourage you where you need encouragement and maybe
challenge you, would be a really helpful step there.
S1 (34:20):
Which leads to the question of a small group. Are
you part of a small group at all? Miguel. Oh, because.
Not right. Ryan says it was his fault he wasn't
working hard enough. So, Miguel, you can call us back. But, um,
that that tech thing, you know, he was so honest
(34:43):
with us that it's like one becomes two. What do
you say to young men who are listening? Because the
thing that I find is that most young people don't
see it. They can see it in other people. Even
most middle aged and older people don't see how much
they scroll or they can get, you know, have the
TV on in the background. So there's something going on,
(35:05):
you know, back there. They don't see how much they
lean on that. So it almost as you're saying, it saying,
it almost takes like somebody else in your life to
speak in, to see it for you and to help you, right?
S3 (35:18):
Oh for sure. One of the things I tell myself
and tell other people is if your wife thinks you're
playing too much video games or on your phone too much,
then you are. Period. So that's part that's part of
the one flesh feedback loop that you got to take.
And I do think there's like a big over promise
under deliver even on restfulness from the phone. Like you
think oh I'm just gonna kind of veg out for
a minute and decompress, but you actually don't. It doesn't
(35:40):
actually provide the rest of your nervous system needs. Like, uh,
being unplugged a bit is good. And for so, so
many of us, the phone serves as like a pacifier
or even an umbilical cord to go a step further.
And being able to cut that cord and leave the
phone in a box when we come home is a
is a big step of that because there's, you know,
there's always a bottomless pit of dopamine at the other
(36:01):
end of the phone that's not your wife and kids
or your work and just trying to recognize that temptation
and try to recognize the trap of it. You know,
I think there's a lot of men who are worried
about being an alcoholic like their father. And I think
the next generation will be worried about being a workaholic
like their father. And so, yes, the the example we're setting,
I had a close friend, you know, her phone got
(36:23):
broken and she was telling, you know, her kids, kids
are the same age as mine. And the five year
old said, oh, maybe you'll spend more time with us now.
And she cried, you know, and, uh, you know, as
your kid gets older, Miguel, from two to 4 to 5,
you know, he'll he'll tell you the truth about what
he feels like your priorities are. And that'll be hard
to hear. But our kids are gifts of our sanctification
(36:45):
as well as our joy.
S1 (36:46):
Bingo. Okay. Miguel is back. We got him back. Miguel, um,
I asked you if you're a part of a small group.
What do you say to that?
S6 (36:54):
Yeah. Um, at the moment, I'm. I'm. I would say
am and I'm not, because, like I said, I go
to church and my church is actually in, uh, Hobart, Indiana. It's, uh,
and I'm like, on South Side of Chicago. It's a
little bit of a drive, but it's a great church,
you know. Sure. But, um, you know, it'd.
S1 (37:12):
Be hard to get into a small group. It would.
Going that far, right?
S6 (37:16):
Yeah, yeah. And no excuses, you know? Uh, you know,
we we drive for silly things, right? We might as
well go drive for church. You know, in the Lord. But, um. Yeah. And,
you know, it's. I've just come home and I'm with
my son and my with my wife. And you already
feel like there's no time for anything else, you know? Right.
But I do think I do. I will take that
(37:38):
in consideration. Uh, you know, iron sharpens iron, right? So, um, and, um,
as a man was a man sharpens another man. Right.
S1 (37:48):
Exactly. And, yeah, I'm so encouraged by what you're saying, McGill.
Because you're right in the middle of of what we're
talking about here now. And you. It sounds like you
work really hard. There's not a lot of sloth in
your life because you have to provide. But you're asking
these hard questions of the heart of yourself. And I
want to commend you for doing that and taking the
(38:09):
time to give us a call here and then to
pick it up when we called you back. God bless you, friend.
We're talking with Seth Trout today. You can find out
more about him. He's teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in
the Phoenix metro area. To find out more at Chris Fabriclive. Org.
Chris Fabriclive more straight ahead. Seth Trout is joining us today.
(38:43):
Pastor Seth from near Phoenix. He wrote The Ruthless Elimination
of Sloth, an article that is our featured resource today.
You can get a link to that. If you go
to Chris Fabry live on our main page, you'll see that.
You'll see a link to the interview with John MacArthur
that we played a little bit from January of 2019. Wow.
(39:06):
Six years ago. And then the thank you gift that
we have for you this month, drive Through the Bible
by Colin Smith. That's all on the the home page.
And you can suggest this program to others as well.
Click through the program details and the audio there at
Chris Fabry Live here in our final segment. Seth, I
really want you to talk to parents, to the mom, dad,
(39:30):
to the friend, the older friend, the uncle, maybe the grandparent,
you know, grandma, grandpa who are seeing their grandkids or
their child scrolling. The young man not, you know, getting started.
There's no motivation there. How do you do that? How
do you speak into the life of that young man
(39:52):
without coming off as, uh, you need to do this.
You need to do that. Shame on you for not
doing this. What do you say?
S3 (40:00):
Well, first, I'd say the best place to begin is
before there's a problem. Ideally, you're able to talk about
the temptation of slovenliness or sloth as as a threat
to them, like the warnings of the proverbs are there
as warnings, not necessarily responses to situations. And so in
our development, in our discipleship and our care of people,
broadly speaking, generally speaking, we want to be warning people
(40:23):
about laziness. You know, Proverbs says the sluggard does not
plow in the autumn. He'll seek a harvest and have nothing.
Don't let that be you. You know, as you consider
your future, you know that. So there's like the preemptive
warning piece. The second one is more personal. And I
think this is probably true anytime you're trying to confront
anybody about anything. This is a doctor Henry Cloud talks about,
you have to connect before you. Correct. Which means to
(40:45):
be able to personally identify with the temptation or even
with the sin where you go, hey, I've noticed that
I'm on my phone way too much, and it doesn't
really bring me joy, but I think it will. And
then I kind of feel better after I'm scrolling for
an hour and a half. Like, how do you feel
after you're on your phone for a long time, does
it do for you what you hope it does for you?
(41:06):
You know, and so you're able to lead with some
vulnerability even to discuss the difficulty. Like I keep putting
boundaries on my phone that I'm on it too much
or I, I find myself, you know, not working as
diligent as I could at work. And partly that's because I'm,
you know, just dreaming about the vacation prematurely, you know,
or other things like that. So trying to identify with
the with the person, with the temptation, with the sin
(41:26):
and being able to do so in a way where
you're kind of confessing and being the lead repenter or
modeling repentance in some of that. Um, and so you're
trying to, uh, recognize and come to the table as
someone who's a co recipient of grace with this person.
I do think there there does reach a point where,
you know, you're parenting a child who maybe they're in
(41:46):
their early 20s and they're not really going anywhere and
they're not really doing anything. And absent some like developmental um, abnormalities,
you're going, this is a problem. It needs to stop.
Then there is like a role that parents have in
particular of putting boundaries, you know, like, uh, you cannot
do this to this degree. And if you do, then
the internet will turn off. You know you cannot do this.
(42:08):
I remember even like as a kid, my parents had
a rule you can only play video games for as
much time as you spend outside, you know, which in
Arizona in the summer was a tough sell, but you
kind of that was. So that was more of a
playful way of putting boundaries on things. But as you
get older, there's a little bit more of a, hey,
are you building a life you want to live? Are
you happy with the direction things are going? And most
(42:29):
of the time they're not happy. They're there's malaise. There's
like low grade depressive symptoms, even if it's not like
a depressive disorder. And you go, do you want my
help with that? Do you want my feedback? Because the
hard thing about wisdom is the first mark of wisdom
is the desire for wisdom. And how do you get
someone who doesn't want wisdom to want wisdom? Like that's
one of the mysteries of the Book of Proverbs is
(42:50):
the fool doesn't want it, so they can't hear it
and they won't hear it. And so there's a lot
of praying involved, a lot of tact, a lot of
looking for opportunities. Uh, and I think even asking, Asking teenagers,
people in their 20s, hey, when you're on your phone
for a long time, like, what's that do? How's that
working for you? Do you enjoy it? Is it bringing
(43:10):
spark to your eyes, or are you kind of just
feeling purposelessness? Because a lot of it's going to fruit
like come from the lack of passion, lack of drive, lack,
lack of purpose, frustration, futility, feeling like their work doesn't matter.
And so back to my original point. I do think
discovering the purpose that God has for them is a
big part of the remedy. They're not just kind of
(43:32):
the whip on the back of the horse, but the
carrot in front of the horse. Like trying to help
them dream and imagine what a meaningful, invested life could
look like, and giving them a target to shoot at.
Because sometimes people feel like, well, what's the point of
spinning my tires if I'm just not going to go anywhere?
And so some of vocational discipleship tends to need to
be a part of that. But every person's different, and
(43:53):
that's part of what makes some of this stuff hard.
S1 (43:55):
Well, that was my final question. Is the spiritual component
to this because as we bookend the program, we began
with Doctor John MacArthur and his death and his desire
to make the Bible come alive, to let the Bible
speak for itself and to, you know, give that to
other people so that they would catch that spark. It
(44:15):
seems to me that you can do an awful lot
of good in ways, different areas removing tech. ET cetera,
et cetera. But until you get that spiritual spark inside,
it can be this meandering, aimless kind of life. And
then when you when that component comes in there so
(44:35):
that that needs to be kind of at the top
of the list of what you're praying about, isn't it?
S3 (44:41):
Yeah, absolutely. You think about the book of Ecclesiastes says,
whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all
your might. You know, and we want to work diligently
unto the Lord. And sometimes people are struggling with finding
something for their hands to do. And there's like just
vocational discernment, discipleship. And sometimes there's the need to teach
people to work hard. That has to come from somewhere,
(45:01):
and it can be a bit of a pain tolerance thing,
you know? If you've never gone to the gym and
then you go to the gym, it hurts and you're
sore for multiple days afterwards. We say keep going. It'll
get easier and it becomes a habit. And so hard
work and diligence is a is a spiritual formation thing. Like,
you don't wake up one day and you're good at
working hard, like it tends to be something you have
to build and develop over a lifetime. And if someone's
(45:23):
bad at that, you can just say like, hey, I'm
going to help you keep getting better at that. This
is a lifelong process, and I'm here for you, and
I'm here with you, and I'm growing and you're growing
and we're in this together.
S1 (45:32):
I went to your website, which is Seth. Seth. Com
and there are so many articles, spiritual disciplines for tired
dads what Gen Z men need to hear from their pastors.
And then today's article, the Ruthless Elimination of Sloth and
Appeal to Young Men. So take a look at that.
Resist the cultural tide. Go to church and a whole
(45:56):
lot more. Seth, it's great to meet you. I'm so
excited to hear about the book on authentic masculinity that
you're in the last stages of working on. Come back
in the spring and join us again and we'll have
another good conversation, okay?
S3 (46:10):
Thanks for having me, Chris. This was a joy.
S1 (46:13):
Seth Trout three T's well, actually four if you include
the one in Seth, just go to Chris Fabry live.org
and you can find out more about what he's written.
Some of those articles that we have linked as well
Chris Farrell, archive.org. And come on back tomorrow, because Nancy
DeMoss Wolgemuth talked to us a couple of years ago
(46:34):
about journaling the Bible, and she has something that's so
excited for you to hear about it. We're going to
talk about it right here. We'll probably talk about doctor
MacArthur a little bit, too. On Chris Fabry Live, a
production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Welcome to our Tuesday edition of Chris Fabry Live! The
program from the heart to the heart for the heart.
A new guest for you today, a pastor from Phoenix
who has expertise in Gen Z in digital technology, gender identity.
And he's going to narrow down on a topic that
we've discussed here before, sloth, or the big word for
(00:27):
this technical term is acedia. Doctor de rosette dealt with
that and how to recapture our delight. And I'm guessing
our guest is going to agree that being online is
not a great deterrent to sloth. He wrote an article
that caught my eye on the Gospel Coalition's website titled
The Ruthless Elimination of Sloth An Appeal to Young Men.
(00:51):
So if you're a young man or you know one,
don't miss the conversation straight ahead. Plus, I want you
to hear the voice of Doctor John McArthur, MacArthur, who
passed away yesterday at the age of 86. All that
and more is coming up straight ahead. First, a thank
you to our team. Ryan McConaughey's doing all things technical.
Trish is our producer. Ryan will be answering your calls today.
(01:12):
This is what it said in Christianity Today. Expository preacher
John MacArthur Jr, who taught scripture to millions through taped sermons,
radio broadcasts, Bible commentaries and a best selling study Bible,
died Monday at the age of 86. The New York
Times said John MacArthur, fiery preacher and culture warrior, dies
(01:34):
at 86. He was a theologically uncompromising pastor in Southern
California who influenced generations of evangelical preachers. And grace to
you posted this our hearts are heavy, yet rejoicing as
we share the news that our beloved pastor and teacher,
John MacArthur, has entered into the presence of the Savior.
(01:54):
This evening, his faith became sight. He faithfully endured until
his race was run. Second Timothy, chapter four, verses one
through eight. And I thought we would take just a
couple of minutes here at the beginning of the program,
and I want you to hear him. In 2019, he
(02:15):
joined me and I brought up his conversations. He would
he would talk with anybody, anywhere about Jesus. Larry King,
he had had a recent discussion with Ben Shapiro at
this time. And I said, in every one of those situations,
you're so consistent with your message. You don't mince words.
You're direct. You're clear with what energizes you, which is
(02:39):
the gospel. And I asked him to comment on that.
Here's what he said.
S2 (02:44):
Well, I think, Chris, I think that basically comes from
my conviction about the word of God. First of all, uh,
that the word is alive and powerful, sharper than any
two edged sword. I'm enough of a of a Puritan
lover to to to buy completely into the fact that
(03:06):
all the power is in the Bible. All the power
is in the living Word of God. And, uh, my
responsibility is to speak the Word of God. I'm not
the author. I'm just the messenger. I just bring what
God has written. So it begins with a very, very
strong commitment to the authority, the inspiration, the inerrancy, and
(03:28):
the power of the Word of God. Secondly, I believe
that the work of God is done by the Holy
Spirit through the word. So, as Ben said to one
of his friends a few days later, somebody he asked him,
are you offended by Christmas? Are you offended by all
the talk about Jesus? And he said, no, I'm not
(03:48):
offended at all. In fact, he said earlier this week,
John MacArthur tried to convert me and I wasn't offended. So, uh,
I honestly believe that, um, since the Holy Spirit does
the work and he does the work through the word,
we're begotten again by the word of truth. Peter says.
So it's my view of Scripture and my view of
(04:10):
of salvation, or for that matter, sanctification being the work
of the Holy Spirit. My responsibility is to is to
put the truth there, biblical truth there. And and that
tool is the tool that the Holy Spirit uses, uses.
And and I hope through the years when I've done that, um,
basically that I've done it with a measure of compassion
(04:33):
and love. Speaking the truth in love is important because
I realized that it is an offense to to confront
someone with the gospel. But I, you know, you want
to do it in such a way that it comes
across as an expression of love for that person.
S1 (04:48):
And I think that excerpt from six years ago really
captures his heart. It's hard to find, uh, going in
any interview that he's done. It's hard to go down
and find something that's not germane, that isn't cogent, that isn't.
You know, you could excerpt this. And because he was
so everything was, well, so well thought out. And I've
(05:10):
been reminiscing for the last day or so about some
of the things that he talked about, some of the
controversies that he went through and the way that he
seemed fearless to to be able to tackle the really
hard issues. So before we get to the topic today,
Pastor Seth Trout is with us teaching pastor at Ironwood
Church in Phoenix or near Phoenix. I wanted to give
(05:32):
you an opportunity to respond to that. Seth, tell me
what comes to mind when you hear his voice?
S3 (05:38):
What comes to mind is my high school small group.
My discipleship group leader had us read MacArthur's book, 12
Ordinary Men when I was in high school, and at
first I saw this kind of boring looking book with
a boring sounding title in my discipleship leader, said, this
is a good book. We should read it. And I
respected him. So I remember reading it and feeling compelled
(05:59):
at how I'm not all that different than these disciples
of Jesus, and his just, faithful exposition has shaped my
ministry and heart in a variety of ways. You know,
John's book slave came out when I was a sophomore
in college. I remember reading it with a small group
of guys when he was reflecting on when Paul calls
himself a servant or a slave, a doulos of Christ,
and how it's liberating to completely submit yourself to the
(06:23):
Lordship of Jesus. And so, at an early age, MacArthur
affected me and shaped me as just a Christian. And
then his pastoring the simple work of unpacking the scriptures
and bringing them to people and the freedom of that,
that as a pastor, you don't need to create gimmicks
and slick marketing, and you don't need to be necessarily
the most compelling, but you can just give people the word,
(06:45):
give people the meat, give people what God has said,
unpack it, unfold it, apply it. And that's the basic
role of the pulpit. And it's been liberating trying to
follow in his footsteps as an expositional preacher. That's how
we do it at our church. And I think there's
a lot of churches that exist now that give their
people good Bible teaching. And I'm not sure they would
(07:06):
have done that had it not been for MacArthur's influence.
And so I'm grateful for the man. I think the
church history will remember him. Um, almost exclusively, positively and
for his benefit to the to Christians and to pastors
and the freedom that comes from just giving people the
Word of God and believing that the power is in
the word and the spirit brings it to life in
(07:27):
people's lives. And it's a beautiful thing. He'll be missed.
And I'm thankful for his influence in my life.
S1 (07:33):
The other thing I think of him is his rock
ribbed belief in the sovereignty of God. In that same conversation,
we talked about believing in God, being in control, and
then how that affects the way the Christian lives his
or her life.
S2 (07:51):
He will build his church. The gates of hell will
not prevail against it. That that is true. But we're
not fatalists. And we don't just flop over on the
sovereignty of God and say, well, that settles that. I
don't need to live a godly life. I don't need
to evangelize because the Lord has not only chosen the ends,
(08:12):
but he's chosen the means, and he will build his church.
But the means that he has chosen is to build
his church through the instrumentation of faithful men and women.
And while your little role may not make a difference
in the ultimate end of the church, or my little
role might not make a difference in the ultimate end
(08:33):
of the church, because the Lord will do what he
will do. It makes a huge difference in the joy
and the blessedness of my life here. And it makes
an eternal difference in the life to come. When every
one of us will have the wood, hay, stubble stripped
away and receive an eternal reward based upon the gold
(08:56):
and silver precious stones that are left.
S1 (08:59):
That eternal difference was what he was after. And that's
what he's experiencing now. Not because he was such a
great man or because he was flawless. He was without sin. No,
but because of the grace of God at work, in
his life and through his life. So I wanted to
take a time out here at the beginning of the
(09:22):
conversation today with Seth Troutt and talk about that and
that whole idea of the sovereignty of God. And if
I believe God's sovereignty and God's going to do what
he's going to do, then I don't know what difference
can I make? Well, that may play into the topic
that we have for you today, which is sloth or
(09:43):
just kind of letting things go and how it's affecting
young men in our culture. That's what Seth is going
to talk with us about again. He's teaching pastor at
Ironwood Church in the Phoenix metro area. Find out more
about him at Chris Fabry Live.com. And we're going to
open the phone lines for you, too, at (877) 548-3675. More
(10:07):
straight ahead on Moody Radio.
S4 (10:19):
Today on Chris Fabry live, meet Seth Trout. Trout has three.
S1 (10:24):
T's in it. You do the homework. He is teaching
pastor at Ironwood Ironwood Church in Phoenix. Near Phoenix, near Gilbert.
He has a doctorate focused on digital technology, generation Z
and gender identity. He provides biblical guidance on both complex
cultural issues and practical personal challenges. Find out more about him.
(10:44):
He's an alumnus of Arizona State, and I'm near the
University of Arizona. So there's and I think your wife,
didn't your wife go to the U of A?
S3 (10:53):
She sure did. But she did her master's degree at ASU. So.
S1 (10:56):
Okay.
S3 (10:57):
Our households at peace.
S1 (11:00):
Uh, you've been married to Taylor since 2013, so that's
about 12 years. You have two children, and, uh, what
is life? What is life for you, like as a
pastor in this season of your life, what gets you
up in the morning?
S3 (11:14):
Well, our church is growing, and it's a real blessed
place to work. Real healthy culture. I love my coworkers,
love the congregation. My family has a lot of great
family friends here. Um, you know, my wife's a speech therapist,
works two days a week. We got family in the area,
got great grandparents support. I'm really kind of living the
idyllic life for someone in their mid 30s with two
little kids. So every day is kind of feels like
(11:37):
Groundhog Day when you have a five year old and
a three year old kind of rinse and repeat. But
it is a joy and it's easy to find delight
in in between the tantrums. But that's all it comes
with the territory.
S1 (11:47):
Yes. And it is. It is a day by day,
sometimes an hour by hour proposition, isn't it?
S3 (11:53):
Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
S1 (11:55):
So you wrote this article in May. The ruthless Elimination
of Sloth and Appeal to Young Men, which is a
play on the ruthless elimination of hurry, I think. Am
I right?
S3 (12:06):
Yeah, yeah. The book Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, I think
is a great book, especially for people in their 40s
and 50s, people who have spent a good chunk of
time burning the candle at both ends. And now their
kids are teenagers and they're trying to restore balance to
their overworked life. And one of the things I've noticed
is that people read that book before they should. Sometimes,
(12:28):
like in their teens or 20s, and you got some
guys who are 18, 19, 20 trying to eliminate the
hurry from their life. And I'm going, you never had
it in the first place. You you got to when
you're young, you got to look at the ants, you know? Look. Oh, slugger,
look at the ants. Look how they work. and you
try to prematurely have the life balance or the maturity
of someone in their 40s. You know, it's a common
(12:50):
thing that people have talked about is how people tend
to graduate college and then kind of assume they'll move
right into the same standard of living as their parents,
who have who are, you know, 30 years ahead of
them or so. And I think it's similar with people
who graduate from college and think they'll have the same
work life balance as their parents, who are 25, 30
years into their careers. And that can be a real
(13:11):
trap for young men. And people will tend to feel
a lot of guilt around working really hard and trying
to build a life and trying to develop skills and talents,
and it earlier in your career, you're less competent, so
what you accomplish in 40 hours is just objectively less
than what your peers who are 20 years in can
accomplish in 40 hours. And so you may have to
work more to develop skill and ease and quickness and instincts.
(13:33):
And I really want young men in particular, to feel
a real permission or a sense of peace around the
fact that you have to grind, especially early in your career,
especially early in your life. And a lot of like
the biblical instruction would say that you should be more
worried about being slothful or lazy than you should be about,
you know, so-called making an idol of work, which is
(13:55):
definitely possible. But I think, uh, the book of Ecclesiastes,
you know, vanity, vanity is more for the middle aged
type person who's experienced some of the worldly success and
is going, this isn't doing what I hoped it would
for me. And so they have to look to the
next life for meaning and purpose. Or as someone in
their 20s, you do have to work harder. You know,
(14:16):
you're kind of pushing it uphill a little bit, and
that's okay. And and I want young men especially to
feel license, to grind, to have holy ambition and to
make something of themselves. And writing the article is not
really meant to dunk on John Mark Comber's book, but
more to say, especially if you're in your teens or 20s,
probably even in your 30s, you. It's okay to be
(14:39):
preoccupied a Occupied a bit with some sense of holy
ambition and and ruthless work ethic, rather than kind of
being preoccupied with working as little as possible.
S1 (14:48):
Especially with what's going on in the culture, or at
least the way that when I look at the culture,
I can see this kind of happening. And I believe
that more. You could talk about this spiritually or you
can talk about it in this work area. More is
caught than taught because I caught from my dad, for
(15:09):
better or worse, who was up at the crack of dawn.
You know, he was a frustrated farmer because he had
to work a full time job, but he would go
work the full time job, come home and then do
all the stuff around the farm. So I very rarely
saw him not in motion, not doing something. He was
always at work on something. And you look at that
(15:33):
and again, that you can go the other way and
you can, uh, base your worth on your work and
what you do. Get your identity from that. But what
I saw from him, I caught and it was. And differently,
because I'm not a farmer and I didn't work at
a chemical plant. I was more in the in the
arts and, you know, asking questions and doing things like this.
(15:55):
But do you agree with that? That you catch it
from somebody else?
S3 (16:01):
Oh, I totally agree. I do think that what we
see modeled in our household of origin has incredible power
over us, for good and for bad. Like I think about,
you know, when Isaac lies and says, this is my sister,
and he repeats the same thing his father did. You know,
I don't think that was probably an instinct. You know,
he saw what his dad did and repeated the pattern
of Abraham. That's not my wife, that's my sister. And
(16:21):
so even in the chapters of Genesis, you see a
real sense of generational power. And if you had a
father who loved you and worked hard, you kind of
are born on third base a little bit because you
had two very important things modeled to you. And so
few men nowadays have that like being under fathered is
a real epidemic that we can see. And that under fathered,
(16:42):
this can play out in a thousand ways. One of
which is obviously dad just leaves. The other one is
that dad didn't set a good example and love and
affection and blessing and correction and work ethic. And so
some people listening may see like a real family pattern.
They need to correct. And if you need to correct
a family pattern, that's doubly difficult. And it's important and
(17:02):
noble work to break generational patterns. But it is additional work.
And so some men are unfortunately assigned that greater burden
to correct what their father didn't give them. And other
people have the joy of imitating their father. You know,
nobody's father is perfect. They're all sinners. They all leave wounds. Uh,
but most of us have at least some really good
(17:23):
things we got from our dad, and we can be
thankful for those. And. Sounds like you had a dad
who really modeled. Hey, you do what it takes to
make it to provide. And I think as the culture,
broadly speaking, gets wealthier and wealthier and like influencer Instagram
culture normalizes the lackadaisical. Laissez faire life. It's, uh, the
temptation to, like, see billionaires and just kind of feel
(17:45):
entitled to other people's wealth. Is is a real trap
for young men who feel like, uh, I should just
have what I want and not have to really grind
or make something of myself to to get it. And
it is truly difficult when you kind of get sucked
into the dopamine doomscrolling cycle of social media, and especially
with like the problem of pornography as being as prevalent
(18:05):
as it is, like there's, you know, fake ambition, fake
video games, fake victories, fake sex, fake wealth. And it
there really is a trap that gets people trapped into
or stuck in a way that makes them less productive
than they could be otherwise.
S1 (18:20):
I think the thing that I caught from my dad and,
and tell me if you caught this from yours, um,
the thing that I caught from him was not, you
need to go out and work. Work is going to,
you know, do something for you. When he he was
the most happy on his tractor. He was he was delighted.
He loved, you know, to work with the animals, to
(18:42):
work with the crops. He loved growing. He loved to
get his hands dirty. He loved to, you know, to
fix things that broke down, to try to figure it out.
It's like this made him come alive to be out there.
And what it showed me was that if you find
the thing that you really that makes you come alive inside,
then I've heard it said, you'll never work a day
(19:04):
in your life. You know, everything that you do is
going to be an extension of who you are rather than, oh,
I got to go out and do this in order
to pay the bills. Uh, it was so much more
than that for him. Was your dad the same?
S3 (19:18):
Yeah. My dad just retired a couple of weeks ago, actually.
He's 36 years as a PE teacher at the same place.
You know, he taught freshman boys P.E. at Chandler High School,
and he he definitely appreciated his work. But there's definitely
days where it's laborious. Curious. You know, if you read
Genesis one and two, you definitely know that work is
not a curse. Work is a blessing. God blessed them
(19:39):
and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, subdue, and have
dominion over the earth. That's the work of unfolding the creation.
And you get to partner with God and unfolding the
potential he's put within the earth. At the same time,
you go to Genesis three and it says, by the
sweat of your brow you'll bring forth a food to eat.
And so there is a sense in which work is cursed.
And so, you know, if you go back 150 years ago,
(20:03):
people didn't really choose careers almost all the time. You
just did the family trade. And so the idea of
like finding fulfillment in your work is, is relatively modern.
I do think if people can do that, they should
definitely try to do that. I also have some dear
friends who I just think are noble, hard workers who
don't particularly love their work, but they love their families
and they love contributing to society, and they love the
(20:26):
sense of accomplishment and productivity. And so they do kind
of have to be a little more creative as they
find joy in their work. Uh, but I do think
if you're able to find something that naturally fits your passions,
that's great. Unfortunately for some people, especially young men, their
passions will never amount to more than hobbies because they
can't monetize them. And there's no supply demand for what
(20:47):
they love to do. And so they're in a tough place.
And so there that's part of what can create some
of like the slothfulness is well, I can't monetize what
I love. So I guess I'll just not monetize anything
and I'll just kind of be dependent and fail to launch.
And so, uh, finding passion in your work and being
able to do that, I do think some of that's
just attitude, not necessarily the work itself. Like, am I
(21:07):
able to find the joy in my labor or am
I not? You know, even as a pastor, I enjoy
my work most of the time, but there are days
I have a bad attitude and it sucks the life
out of me.
S1 (21:18):
Yeah, because you work with people and people are hard
to work with sometimes, aren't they?
S3 (21:21):
Oh, absolutely. But I know what I signed up for.
I know what it is, and there are days that
it's fulfilling, and there are days that it's draining. And
some of that has to do with The framework, the
mental state I'm in, my attitude that I bring to
the office with me that day. And so sometimes the
problem is the nature of the work. You may need
to find a different type of work. Sometimes it's just
your bad attitude is shaping your attitude. And so you
(21:44):
got to work through that and change your perspective and
reframe it a bit.
S1 (21:47):
I sense, though, from you that Seth Trout is not
a pastor who sees a young person come in and
wags his finger at them and says, you're playing too
many video games and you ought to go out and
get a job and etcetera, etcetera. There's there's not this
shaming shame on you type feeling that comes from you.
So when you meet a young man who comes into
(22:10):
the church and there are some that are beginning to
give their lives to Jesus and come to your church,
what what's the first step? What do you talk about?
S3 (22:20):
So some of it like, if I meet with a
guy who, you know, within the first couple of minutes,
I'm going, this guy is beset with sloth. Like he's
just kind of in the river, not really paddling. That's
almost always some type of function of shame or feeling
like a feeling of meaninglessness. My work can't make a difference.
So does it matter at all? And so a lot
of it's trying to help them creatively see or just
(22:42):
notice the way that their basic monotonous work can make
a huge difference in the world. Like, I remember discipling
a guy a few years ago who was stocking shelves
at a grocery store, and he's going, my work is dumb.
This is just what I can do. I can't do
anything better than this. And he just was kind of
moaning about his work. And I asked him, you know,
visualize with me a single mom with five kids who
(23:07):
has very little margin in her life at all. You
don't know why she's a single mom. You don't know
what her life is like. And she comes to the
grocery store looking for this stuff that she's going to
feed her kids with, and imagine everything was stocked incorrectly.
There are things that you're looking for that weren't there?
Some things were in the wrong place, and it takes
her an extra 30 minutes at the grocery store because
you did a really crappy job. Now imagine that same
(23:30):
woman comes in and she doesn't notice you. She doesn't
give you thanks, but she goes. Everything is right where
I want it to be. At checkout, they said, did
you find everything you're looking for today? And she said, yeah,
actually it was great. And she gets home 30 minutes earlier.
That's more time to function with the things that matters.
And so if you can visualize the person you're serving
and the person who's being blessed by your work, and
you can try to connect the fruit of your labor
(23:51):
to the sweat of your labor, I do find that
men are able to kind of get back on the
horse a bit, on the work hard thing. So some
of it's that it's just kind of they feel like
their work is meaningless, even though it isn't, and helping
them see the meaning in it. Sometimes it's a matter
of just the economic pressure and the fear, the fear
of failure and helping people work through that. Like, what
(24:13):
if I try my hardest and then I fail so
people will just not try their hardest. And so then
they have kind of like a plausible deniability around some
of their work and going, hey, what do we think
about Grace? What do we think about the father given
for you? Do you think God has prepared good works
for you beforehand? Like Ephesians 210 says, because he has
and he's designed meaningful things for you to do, and
(24:35):
he hasn't necessarily designed easy and meaningful things for to you,
but just meaningful things. And so the meaning question, like
the fear of failure question the concern about will I
be loved if I fail? Question. That's all kind of
operating in people's mindset. And so those tend to be
some of the more spiritual issues that are that are
there sometimes for guys, it's just straight up phone addiction,
(24:57):
technology addiction, entertainment addiction, and they hate themselves for it.
You know, nobody doom scrolls TikTok for three hours and
feels good afterwards. And so but I just can't turn
it off. I I'm not I'm staying up too late
because I'm just scrolling and I'm wasting my time meaningful.
And so then you kind of go to like this.
Let's try a tech detox situation, you know, for 40 days.
Let's turn the internet off your phone and let's try
(25:20):
to help you break the cycle of tech addiction. And
I'm so glad.
S1 (25:24):
That you.
S3 (25:24):
Bring that up.
S1 (25:25):
Days that that shame component because that is so prevalent
in what I see as well. And I'm going to
turn to you, friend. Are you are you a young person?
Do you identify with what you're hearing here today? I'd
love to hear from you. (877) 548-3675. Or maybe you're a
parent or friend and you're trying to help a younger
(25:46):
man launch. Give me a call (877) 548-3675.
S5 (26:03):
I love Colin.
S1 (26:04):
Smith's approach in Drive Through the Bible, because he understands
the whole Bible is one story. It has a beginning,
has a middle, it has an end, begins in a
garden and ends in a city. There's a river running
through it, and all the way through there is a
crimson cord of grace and mercy that finds its way
to the cross and the empty tomb from the grave
(26:26):
to the skies. But you know what? A lot of
people taking a tour of the Bible aren't able to
see Jesus like that. If you give a gift of
any size today to Chris Fabry live, I want to
send you that book, drive through the Bible. It'll help
you or someone you know. See the way the entire
scriptures connect with each other. Old Testament, New Testament, wisdom, literature,
(26:47):
the poetry, the prophecy, the Gospels. This is our thank
you right now, and I'd love to send you a copy.
Call 866958669532279. Give a gift of any size or go
to the website Chris Fabry. Org. Scroll down. You'll see
right there. Drive Through the Bible a 30 day Journey
(27:09):
by Colin Smith. And this is the way that we
come to you each day. So people get involved with us,
participate with us with a gift. You could do that
easily at the website. Chris Fabry Fabri lived where? You'll
find out more about our guest today, Seth Trout. With
(27:29):
three t's t r o u t t. And I
just learned. I had no idea. He's writing a book
on authentic masculinity that is coming out in the spring. So, Seth,
you're coming back. You're going to talk about that in
the spring. Okay.
S3 (27:44):
That's the hope. I'd love to be here again.
S1 (27:46):
Good. All right. So for those who have been listening
and who say, I know exactly what you're talking about,
talk to anybody else. Who else who says, I don't
know what you mean by sloth or Rosie used the
the term acedia. How do you know someone is slothful?
S3 (28:05):
Yeah, well, the term got first introduced to me, or
my dad in high school said, you can be anything
you want, but you can't be a loser. And that
sounded a little harsh. Like, what do you mean by loser?
And he's like, oh, you know, someone who doesn't work hard.
You know, someone who just kind of mopes about someone
who's not productive, doesn't contribute to society. And, you know,
he was a basketball coach. So that that loser language
(28:26):
kind of resonated a little bit more. But if you
go to the scriptures, there's this idea of like sluggard
ness or slothfulness thinking about the the animal, the sloth.
It's just slow moving. It's just not it doesn't have
a real sense of urgency or purpose, just kind of
going at a painfully slow pace. And so I think
it's really this inability or unwillingness to work hard. Uh,
(28:48):
it's laziness. It's being not like the ant, you know,
Proverbs six says, consider the ant, o sluggard. Uh, without
having any chief, she prepares and gathers. How long will
you lie there? A little sleep, a little slumber, a
little folding of the hands. And poverty will come upon
you like a robber. This kind of idea. It's like
the lack of umph, the lack of energetic movement forward. Uh,
(29:09):
it's being pro-work, pro-labor. Uh, and I think that slovenliness
or slothfulness, it's really just like a disposition of, uh,
slowness or non-movement. And if you think about like having
a lazy, slow Saturday, it's kind of living your life
like that.
S1 (29:27):
Yes. I asked somebody what retirement was like, and they
say every day is Saturday. Which that sums it up.
And if you worked really hard for a long time,
it's like, yeah, you want to have more restful days.
I just I don't I don't see in the makeup that, um,
my own makeup and perhaps I do need to slow
(29:48):
down more, but I don't see not doing anything as
the goal as, as, as a as a desirable life,
maybe different pursuits, you know, when you get to that age.
But we're talking about young men. And Miguel is on
the line from Chicago. Miguel, why'd you call today?
S6 (30:09):
Hey, guys, how's it going? Uh, so I just had
a quick question. Um, so I heard you guys talking
about the, like, generational habits, And, um, you know, like
you guys are talking about. And I know sometimes, like myself,
I'm going to church with my family. Uh, I have
a two year old son. And, uh, sometimes I feel like, man,
(30:31):
am I doing enough? You know, I'm trying to make
time for God, my family. I heard you guys talking about,
you know, a stage in a man's life when he's
older and, like, in his late 40s, you know, he's
kind of past the teenage years of his son. And, uh,
you know, I'm trying to create good habits. And, uh,
you know, I just feel like. Am I doing enough?
(30:51):
You know, I'm very blessed. You know, I have a home,
my wife, everything. And, you know, you just can't help to, uh,
wonder sometimes. Are you doing enough? You know, it's just.
S1 (31:02):
Is there something, though, that is holding you back? Miguel,
is there something you're doing that is taking more time
than you think? I probably shouldn't waste my time on that.
S6 (31:14):
Uh, you know what? Uh, so, you know, I go
to work, like, right now, I'm coming home from work.
You know, I relax with my son. And sometimes, like,
you guys are talking about scrolling on your phones and stuff.
Sometimes an hour turns into two and it's like, oh, well,
that's the day. You know, it's like. And like sometimes
I feel like, okay, do I just like, do I
deserve this time or should I be doing something else?
(31:35):
Am I being lazy, you know?
S1 (31:37):
Yes. Okay. That's it. You hit the nail on the head.
Thank you for being honest with us, Miguel. Uh, Seth,
what do you say about that?
S3 (31:44):
Yeah. Miguel, I appreciate that tension. You know, I have
kids about the same age as yours. And I do
think what's helpful to me when I'm trying to process
through that is, uh, thinking about different types of work
or different types of labor. And when I say something's work,
I don't mean that it necessarily needs to be like
something you don't like. Like, I do think playing with
my kids, it's work, you know, I'm burning calories. I'm
(32:07):
emotionally engaging. I'm offering my presence when I'm sitting with
my wife on the couch at the end of the
day after bedtime, like, that's that's work. Like I'm getting
to know her. I'm I'm, you know, trying to draw
out her heart, trying to let myself be known, trying
to connect with her. And when I'm doing chores around
the house, that's work. You know, it's not paid labor,
but it's labor. And I do think sometimes we think
(32:30):
about our work only as, like our employment and, uh,
as opposed to, like, just all productive activity. And I
do think, you know, being with your kids, doing chores,
spending time with the Lord, all of this is a
form of labor, and it's a form of work. And,
you know, the Bible gives us the command, you know,
six days you shall work, and one day you shall rest.
And I think if you understand the word work as productivity,
(32:53):
broadly understood, you know, it's wildly productive to be employed
or be an entrepreneur. It's productive to spend time with
your kids and coach their sports leagues. It's it's a
lot of work to spend time with your wife. And again,
I don't mean that negatively, but that can work, can
be joyful. And I do think if you're kind of
feeling a sense of, uh, guilt around, you know, the
scrolling that one turns into two, Then I'll take that
(33:15):
as a prompt from the spirit and go. Okay, maybe
I need to put a limit on this and spend
more quality time with my wife. Or maybe I need
to put a limit on this and spend more quality
time with the Lord. Maybe I need to put a
limit on this and, uh, you know, increase my understanding
of my workplace so that I can advance and provide
more bountifully. Uh, but at the end of the day,
there's this reality that you go, I kind of have
(33:36):
need people in my life to speak into my life,
because the easiest person to lie to is yourself. And
so I'd encourage you to ask your wife to ask
elders in your church, other wise men in your church
and go, here's here's the flow of my week. What
do you see? What do you think about it? Because
it may end up being wildly encouraging. And you can okay,
I can put that kind of insufficient insecurity shame thing aside.
(33:59):
Or they may say like, yeah, you know, 17 hours
on Twitter is probably too much. Go ahead and reign
that in and make that 17 minutes, you know, and
you can you can take that more objective feedback. It's
really hard to evaluate or speak into someone's life at
a distance. And so getting some men in your life
who could, who could see you and speak into your
life and encourage you where you need encouragement and maybe
challenge you, would be a really helpful step there.
S1 (34:20):
Which leads to the question of a small group. Are
you part of a small group at all? Miguel. Oh, because.
Not right. Ryan says it was his fault he wasn't
working hard enough. So, Miguel, you can call us back. But, um,
that that tech thing, you know, he was so honest
(34:43):
with us that it's like one becomes two. What do
you say to young men who are listening? Because the
thing that I find is that most young people don't
see it. They can see it in other people. Even
most middle aged and older people don't see how much
they scroll or they can get, you know, have the
TV on in the background. So there's something going on,
(35:05):
you know, back there. They don't see how much they
lean on that. So it almost as you're saying, it saying,
it almost takes like somebody else in your life to
speak in, to see it for you and to help you, right?
S3 (35:18):
Oh for sure. One of the things I tell myself
and tell other people is if your wife thinks you're
playing too much video games or on your phone too much,
then you are. Period. So that's part that's part of
the one flesh feedback loop that you got to take.
And I do think there's like a big over promise
under deliver even on restfulness from the phone. Like you
think oh I'm just gonna kind of veg out for
a minute and decompress, but you actually don't. It doesn't
(35:40):
actually provide the rest of your nervous system needs. Like, uh,
being unplugged a bit is good. And for so, so
many of us, the phone serves as like a pacifier
or even an umbilical cord to go a step further.
And being able to cut that cord and leave the
phone in a box when we come home is a
is a big step of that because there's, you know,
there's always a bottomless pit of dopamine at the other
(36:01):
end of the phone that's not your wife and kids
or your work and just trying to recognize that temptation
and try to recognize the trap of it. You know,
I think there's a lot of men who are worried
about being an alcoholic like their father. And I think
the next generation will be worried about being a workaholic
like their father. And so, yes, the the example we're setting,
I had a close friend, you know, her phone got
(36:23):
broken and she was telling, you know, her kids, kids
are the same age as mine. And the five year
old said, oh, maybe you'll spend more time with us now.
And she cried, you know, and, uh, you know, as
your kid gets older, Miguel, from two to 4 to 5,
you know, he'll he'll tell you the truth about what
he feels like your priorities are. And that'll be hard
to hear. But our kids are gifts of our sanctification
(36:45):
as well as our joy.
S1 (36:46):
Bingo. Okay. Miguel is back. We got him back. Miguel, um,
I asked you if you're a part of a small group.
What do you say to that?
S6 (36:54):
Yeah. Um, at the moment, I'm. I'm. I would say
am and I'm not, because, like I said, I go
to church and my church is actually in, uh, Hobart, Indiana. It's, uh,
and I'm like, on South Side of Chicago. It's a
little bit of a drive, but it's a great church,
you know. Sure. But, um, you know, it'd.
S1 (37:12):
Be hard to get into a small group. It would.
Going that far, right?
S6 (37:16):
Yeah, yeah. And no excuses, you know? Uh, you know,
we we drive for silly things, right? We might as
well go drive for church. You know, in the Lord. But, um. Yeah. And,
you know, it's. I've just come home and I'm with
my son and my with my wife. And you already
feel like there's no time for anything else, you know? Right.
But I do think I do. I will take that
(37:38):
in consideration. Uh, you know, iron sharpens iron, right? So, um, and, um,
as a man was a man sharpens another man. Right.
S1 (37:48):
Exactly. And, yeah, I'm so encouraged by what you're saying, McGill.
Because you're right in the middle of of what we're
talking about here now. And you. It sounds like you
work really hard. There's not a lot of sloth in
your life because you have to provide. But you're asking
these hard questions of the heart of yourself. And I
want to commend you for doing that and taking the
(38:09):
time to give us a call here and then to
pick it up when we called you back. God bless you, friend.
We're talking with Seth Trout today. You can find out
more about him. He's teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in
the Phoenix metro area. To find out more at Chris Fabriclive. Org.
Chris Fabriclive more straight ahead. Seth Trout is joining us today.
(38:43):
Pastor Seth from near Phoenix. He wrote The Ruthless Elimination
of Sloth, an article that is our featured resource today.
You can get a link to that. If you go
to Chris Fabry live on our main page, you'll see that.
You'll see a link to the interview with John MacArthur
that we played a little bit from January of 2019. Wow.
(39:06):
Six years ago. And then the thank you gift that
we have for you this month, drive Through the Bible
by Colin Smith. That's all on the the home page.
And you can suggest this program to others as well.
Click through the program details and the audio there at
Chris Fabry Live here in our final segment. Seth, I
really want you to talk to parents, to the mom, dad,
(39:30):
to the friend, the older friend, the uncle, maybe the grandparent,
you know, grandma, grandpa who are seeing their grandkids or
their child scrolling. The young man not, you know, getting started.
There's no motivation there. How do you do that? How
do you speak into the life of that young man
(39:52):
without coming off as, uh, you need to do this.
You need to do that. Shame on you for not
doing this. What do you say?
S3 (40:00):
Well, first, I'd say the best place to begin is
before there's a problem. Ideally, you're able to talk about
the temptation of slovenliness or sloth as as a threat
to them, like the warnings of the proverbs are there
as warnings, not necessarily responses to situations. And so in
our development, in our discipleship and our care of people,
broadly speaking, generally speaking, we want to be warning people
(40:23):
about laziness. You know, Proverbs says the sluggard does not
plow in the autumn. He'll seek a harvest and have nothing.
Don't let that be you. You know, as you consider
your future, you know that. So there's like the preemptive
warning piece. The second one is more personal. And I
think this is probably true anytime you're trying to confront
anybody about anything. This is a doctor Henry Cloud talks about,
you have to connect before you. Correct. Which means to
(40:45):
be able to personally identify with the temptation or even
with the sin where you go, hey, I've noticed that
I'm on my phone way too much, and it doesn't
really bring me joy, but I think it will. And
then I kind of feel better after I'm scrolling for
an hour and a half. Like, how do you feel
after you're on your phone for a long time, does
it do for you what you hope it does for you?
(41:06):
You know, and so you're able to lead with some
vulnerability even to discuss the difficulty. Like I keep putting
boundaries on my phone that I'm on it too much
or I, I find myself, you know, not working as
diligent as I could at work. And partly that's because I'm,
you know, just dreaming about the vacation prematurely, you know,
or other things like that. So trying to identify with
the with the person, with the temptation, with the sin
(41:26):
and being able to do so in a way where
you're kind of confessing and being the lead repenter or
modeling repentance in some of that. Um, and so you're
trying to, uh, recognize and come to the table as
someone who's a co recipient of grace with this person.
I do think there there does reach a point where,
you know, you're parenting a child who maybe they're in
(41:46):
their early 20s and they're not really going anywhere and
they're not really doing anything. And absent some like developmental um, abnormalities,
you're going, this is a problem. It needs to stop.
Then there is like a role that parents have in
particular of putting boundaries, you know, like, uh, you cannot
do this to this degree. And if you do, then
the internet will turn off. You know you cannot do this.
(42:08):
I remember even like as a kid, my parents had
a rule you can only play video games for as
much time as you spend outside, you know, which in
Arizona in the summer was a tough sell, but you
kind of that was. So that was more of a
playful way of putting boundaries on things. But as you
get older, there's a little bit more of a, hey,
are you building a life you want to live? Are
you happy with the direction things are going? And most
(42:29):
of the time they're not happy. They're there's malaise. There's
like low grade depressive symptoms, even if it's not like
a depressive disorder. And you go, do you want my
help with that? Do you want my feedback? Because the
hard thing about wisdom is the first mark of wisdom
is the desire for wisdom. And how do you get
someone who doesn't want wisdom to want wisdom? Like that's
one of the mysteries of the Book of Proverbs is
(42:50):
the fool doesn't want it, so they can't hear it
and they won't hear it. And so there's a lot
of praying involved, a lot of tact, a lot of
looking for opportunities. Uh, and I think even asking, Asking teenagers,
people in their 20s, hey, when you're on your phone
for a long time, like, what's that do? How's that
working for you? Do you enjoy it? Is it bringing
(43:10):
spark to your eyes, or are you kind of just
feeling purposelessness? Because a lot of it's going to fruit
like come from the lack of passion, lack of drive, lack,
lack of purpose, frustration, futility, feeling like their work doesn't matter.
And so back to my original point. I do think
discovering the purpose that God has for them is a
big part of the remedy. They're not just kind of
(43:32):
the whip on the back of the horse, but the
carrot in front of the horse. Like trying to help
them dream and imagine what a meaningful, invested life could
look like, and giving them a target to shoot at.
Because sometimes people feel like, well, what's the point of
spinning my tires if I'm just not going to go anywhere?
And so some of vocational discipleship tends to need to
be a part of that. But every person's different, and
(43:53):
that's part of what makes some of this stuff hard.
S1 (43:55):
Well, that was my final question. Is the spiritual component
to this because as we bookend the program, we began
with Doctor John MacArthur and his death and his desire
to make the Bible come alive, to let the Bible
speak for itself and to, you know, give that to
other people so that they would catch that spark. It
(44:15):
seems to me that you can do an awful lot
of good in ways, different areas removing tech. ET cetera,
et cetera. But until you get that spiritual spark inside,
it can be this meandering, aimless kind of life. And
then when you when that component comes in there so
(44:35):
that that needs to be kind of at the top
of the list of what you're praying about, isn't it?
S3 (44:41):
Yeah, absolutely. You think about the book of Ecclesiastes says,
whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all
your might. You know, and we want to work diligently
unto the Lord. And sometimes people are struggling with finding
something for their hands to do. And there's like just
vocational discernment, discipleship. And sometimes there's the need to teach
people to work hard. That has to come from somewhere,
(45:01):
and it can be a bit of a pain tolerance thing,
you know? If you've never gone to the gym and
then you go to the gym, it hurts and you're
sore for multiple days afterwards. We say keep going. It'll
get easier and it becomes a habit. And so hard
work and diligence is a is a spiritual formation thing. Like,
you don't wake up one day and you're good at
working hard, like it tends to be something you have
to build and develop over a lifetime. And if someone's
(45:23):
bad at that, you can just say like, hey, I'm
going to help you keep getting better at that. This
is a lifelong process, and I'm here for you, and
I'm here with you, and I'm growing and you're growing
and we're in this together.
S1 (45:32):
I went to your website, which is Seth. Seth. Com
and there are so many articles, spiritual disciplines for tired
dads what Gen Z men need to hear from their pastors.
And then today's article, the Ruthless Elimination of Sloth and
Appeal to Young Men. So take a look at that.
Resist the cultural tide. Go to church and a whole
(45:56):
lot more. Seth, it's great to meet you. I'm so
excited to hear about the book on authentic masculinity that
you're in the last stages of working on. Come back
in the spring and join us again and we'll have
another good conversation, okay?
S3 (46:10):
Thanks for having me, Chris. This was a joy.
S1 (46:13):
Seth Trout three T's well, actually four if you include
the one in Seth, just go to Chris Fabry live.org
and you can find out more about what he's written.
Some of those articles that we have linked as well
Chris Farrell, archive.org. And come on back tomorrow, because Nancy
DeMoss Wolgemuth talked to us a couple of years ago
(46:34):
about journaling the Bible, and she has something that's so
excited for you to hear about it. We're going to
talk about it right here. We'll probably talk about doctor
MacArthur a little bit, too. On Chris Fabry Live, a
production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
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