Ask Pastor Mike Live

Speaker 1

Welcome to Focal Point. Today we've got a real treat for the ladies in the house. Pastor Mike's lovely wife, Carlin Fabarez, joins us in the studio for a very special parenting edition of Ask Pastor Mike. It's coming right up.

Well, all week long we've been talking about God's design for marriages. A primary charge from the beginning was to go forth and multiply. Today, you see celebrity babies with their designer clothes looking like accessories for their A-list moms and dads. But God's purpose for children goes far beyond merely bringing status to parents.

Let's join Pastor Mike and executive director Jay Worton in the pastor's study now as they welcome a special guest and unveil the true purpose and calling of parenthood.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike and our special guest Carlin Fabarez this morning.

Speaker 3

Yeah, good to be here.

Speaker 2

Little bit of a different APM this week, Ask Pastor Mike, but we've got a special event going on. Pastor Mike just released his latest book, Raising Men Not Boys.

I thought it would be good to bring them into the studio here and we should talk about raising men, not boys, in the family household.

And we need both parents for that. So welcome Carlin and Pastor Mike.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 2

And let's get back to a little bit of what we talked about last week in our last Ask Pastor Mike, which was on divorce and how important it is to have an intact household and a God-centered marriage.

Marriage is the primacy of the household. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 4

Well, we know the world is imperfect, obviously, and every home is imperfect. But one of the best things we can do for our kids is to work on our marriages. And that is going to make a big difference in raising boys and bringing them into manhood.

We want to make the marriage a priority. I think that's what Carlin isn't. I mean, that's what we've tried to do in our marriage: to show our boys from the youngest ages that our marriage really comes first. It's the foundation; it's the launching pad for sending them into life.

Speaker 2

And Carlin, you have firsthand knowledge of what that was like growing up as a child. Your parents were divorced. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that and how that household worked out.

Speaker 3

Yes, well, it's, we hoped to have a much more intact launching pad in our own home than the one that I was raised with two loving parents, but they weren't in the same home.

And it does make a huge difference on how you look at the world and how you look at marriage.

Speaker 2

Absolutely. Pastor Mike, you talk about in your book children as not being pets. Can you maybe elaborate on that?

Speaker 4

Well, if you see God's purpose for children, which is to replace a Christian godly generation coming after us, then I think parents need to think more strategically about what their kids are intended for. God wants us to disciple our kids, prepare them, and launch them into the next generation. Now, they're going to bring us joy; they're going to make us happy at times. And I mean, we're going to have some of those experiences.

But if you go into it saying, "I'm just here to have some personal fulfillment out of a kid," that's where I say we've gotten to the place where they're almost like pets in a lot of people's minds. If it's not fun or it's not bringing happiness, then, you know, they get frustrated.

If our homes are more of a place where we're thinking we are here to disciple people to make a difference in the next generation, I think it changes everything. The marriage is a big important part of that, right? We're modeling what Christian virtues are, what values are, and trying to see those lived out every day in front of the eyes of our children, especially our boys. They need that now more than ever.

Speaker 2

And Carlin, I know that you're spending all day long with the boys in the family while Mike is at work here at Compass Bible Church.

Talk about the importance of the husband and wife supporting one another in the decisions and not letting the children drive a wedge in that, because they're bound to.

Speaker 4

Wouldn't do that.

Speaker 2

I know, not your children, but other people's children.

Speaker 3

No, absolutely. This is definitely an issue in many a home. And I think it starts with especially the wife being positive and saying encouraging and supportive things about their husband when they're out of the home. In other words, speaking well of your husband before your children.

And that's something that, you know, I tried to do, always to speak well of Pastor Mike. Not that you would ever think badly of Pastor Mike. Yes, I'm hoping you're speaking well, but also to always, when we talk about decisions that were made and things that were rules or things we were going to do that day, that the children always knew it was something dad was in agreement with.

So they always saw us as a team. I was always saying, remember dad said this, or remember we decided this. And the kids knew that from the beginning.

Speaker 4

You can expect your kids. I mean, maybe we've got some listeners that have infants or they're just starting in this process of parenting. You can expect your kids to try to drive wedges between mom and dad. They're master manipulators. They're born that way.

And so, you know, Carlin said it, and certainly on my side, the same way I would come home. I didn't know exactly what was going on necessarily that afternoon, but I wanted to fully support, as best I could, whether I understood what the scenario was or not, to say, hey, if that's what your mom said, then this is what we need to do.

And sometimes that means that we've got to go along with that, whatever the situation was, until mom and I can get behind a closed door and discuss it. We wanted to minimize as much as possible having the disagreement about any parenting issue in front of our kids. We just didn't want to have that because we wanted to present that united front to our children.

Speaker 3

It's important. And we certainly didn't want them to think that they could say one thing to one of us and that we would convince the other parent to go against, you know, what we had already discussed.

In other words, they never thought that I would be their advocate before dad in something that we had decided as a team that our family was going to stand for, our family was going to do as a practice in our life.

So they just could never get that negotiating power of one of us against the other.

Speaker 4

See, and I know there's listeners, and I'm sure you want to get to this, Jay, eventually, but there's listeners in blended families. And when you have those blended families, this makes this particular principle so difficult because you've got stepchildren now that are for sure going to try to say, well, this. You're not my dad, or, you know, my mom is the only one I'm listening to. She's the authority.

When you have that dynamic, if you are in a blended home, it is time to work double time on this principle. You have to say, we are going to work super hard to be united as parents, and it is difficult, but you have to have the optimism that God can take a situation like that.

As you look at your past, whatever might have gone wrong, you confess it, you move forward, you say, God, we are moving now into a direction of trying to have you be honored in the decisions we make.

And one of the decisions you are going to have to make is a unified front, a marriage that is strong and not allowing the kids to drive a wedge between mom and dad's commitment to one another and their mutual commitment to parent with an agreed set of rules and how we go about the decisions we make with our kids every day.

Speaker 2

Carlin, you and Mike, you both touched on the blended family and being in lockstep together on decisions.

How would you counsel wives out there who have a husband that maybe they make a decision that you don't agree with? When does that discussion happen and how does it come out?

And how would you counsel them in enforcing it in the home?

Speaker 3

Well, I always use the wonderful biblical example of Esther. I can't not think of her when you ask me that question and what I affectionately call having an Esther banquet. I mean, here she was, married to a full-blown pagan, non-Christian king who was a sovereign and did all kinds of wicked things. If you look at the history of what this man did and what he was capable of, here she was stuck in his palace as his wife. Yet, she had a problem and she needed help to eventually save the Jewish people from extermination.

But she went about preparing to speak to her husband in a very calm fashion. She found out about what the situation was and got the information she needed. She wasn't just harebrained and emotional; she got the information she needed from Mordecai. She gathered people around her to pray, and she prayed and fasted for a few days in order to approach his throne. She knew that there was great risk involved. If you remember the story, she could have been killed by the king for approaching his throne, but she was willing to risk it all to communicate with him.

After she got the information and prayed, she was courageous and walked in there. But then she didn't just blurt out her request; she very carefully came before him and actually invited him to a party where she looked beautiful. It says she was in her royal robe and had prepared all these amazing foods. And guess what? At the first banquet, she didn't even present her need. She waited for a whole second banquet.

If you know the story of Esther, God sovereignly allowed some things to happen overnight that made the king so ready to hear what she needed to communicate. Because he was so ready, and she had prayed and prepared, he was able to be favorable to what she was saying. To not allow the Jews to be killed at that point would actually have caused havoc for him. Haman was his second in command. This was risky for the king, and yet what did he do? He listened to the voice of his wife because she was calm, prayerful, and peaceful.

Speaker 4

So I think, Esther, the example you give Carlyn is an example of self-control and being able to deal with disagreement in a measured, thoughtful, careful way that has a setting that's prepared. Because as Christians, one of the fruits of the spirit is self-control.

It's hard when we disagree, and of course we do, just like every other couple about things. Certainly in parenting, we disagreed about things to hold off the debate. We don't want to have it in front of our kids.

We have to be patient and self-controlled to say, we're going to deal with this later. Frankly, one of the reasons we break that rule is that we want to be liked by our kids. Right? We want our kids to say, I'm the reasonable parent. I have the right perspective here. Your mom is, you know, she's going a little crazy there with that idea.

Speaker 3

That never happens.

Speaker 4

But you're tempted to do that because you want to be the hero of your kids. But I mean, I hate to compare it to my role in the church, but there can be a pastor, a youth pastor. I hate to pick on youth pastors. They're great.

But you know, you may make a decision about something in a ministry situation. I might have a congregant say, hey, what's going on with that? I can lack self-control and just try and agree with the congregants. Yeah, well, that was a little off the rails. Or I can say, listen, we're going to meet, we're going to talk, we're going to figure this out and to have that unified front that we're working together as leaders in the church.

I need to understand the decision that's made. I need to talk about it. Maybe it was completely the right decision that was made. But we're going to deal with that in a way that is measured, it's thoughtful, it's in a meeting.

And in essence, that's what the Esther banquet was. It was a meeting. It was a carefully planned, graciously prepared for meeting to say, we have a disagreement, let's see if we can get on the same page.

Speaker 2

Well, it's great you talked about prayer there because I want to talk about spiritual disciplines as well in the home and how that works out between you two.

But also then how do we instill those spiritual disciplines in our kids? What are the things you do in the home to get the Bible into their hearts and help them to learn to pray in those types of endeavors?

So maybe you could speak to that, Pastor Mike.

Speaker 4

Yeah, well, you've got to remember. And unfortunately, people are going to listen to our stories and our, you know, experiences and think we're in some idyllic situation. And Mike must be, you know, walking the dog and going to Starbucks, getting to the office at 11, going home at 2. You know, my life is incredibly busy. My wife's is incredibly busy. I mean, we're up super early. We got almost every night booked. So we've got a typical American life in terms of the busyness of our lives.

So spiritual disciplines and the training of our children has to be intentional. It has to be prioritized. It has to be something we make happen, and it has to be something that we do because it's a priority to us. And so we've had various things that we've implemented, you know, trying to teach them an overview of the Bible, our Bible survey for kids, which is something I know you've made available through Focal Point, where I'll go and teach our kids in a time at night, usually when I come home from work or on an off day. I would have a scheduled time to teach Bible to my kids. It didn't matter if they were homeschool, public school, or Christian school. I'm going to sit down and teach them as much as I can about the scripture from the earliest age.

And then my wife, you can talk to this. But every morning, it's been a pattern for years, until our kids left the house, that we're going to sit at the breakfast table and Carlyn's going to take them through a biography. Why don't you tell a little bit about some of the things you do and have done for our kids and still do for our youngest at the breakfast table every morning?

Speaker 3

Right. Well, I think it's really imperative for you to bring up our own spiritual disciplines first, because if you don't have your tank full, you have nothing to give to anybody else.

There's a great passage in the book about how your child will probably not go farther than you in their disciplines, in their spiritual life.

Speaker 2

If you're not modeling it, how do you expect them to go?

Speaker 3

Absolutely. And for both Mike and I, we get up very early in the morning. That is the only way for us to bat back the distractions of life and the business of life, to have that time in prayer and Bible study every day. And your kids should actually discover you doing that. That's almost more important than the breakfast table time is for them to discover that mom and dad pray and read their Bible. How else can you do Deuteronomy 6 and talk about the Word as you walk, by the way, and as you drive and as you do all those things? So your spiritual disciplines are really important.

But from there, of course, I do do a time at the breakfast table. It was the only time where I knew my family would be together, which is hard because when they leave for school at different times, someone invariably had to wake up earlier than they really had to in order to be at the table. But we just adjusted our schedule to make it work for the three that we had.

Depending on the age of your kids, of course, we always did some kind of Christian biography or maybe a book like a Sticky Sit that helps the younger kids to think through applying God's word to their life. For example, what would you do if you saw someone steal an umbrella? How would you respond? And those kinds of things at school.

We always had prayer time, but we also prayed when we went anywhere. I mean, as we're in the car approaching school or Little League or church, we're always praying. And of course, we also did bedtime where they were learning the Bible.

Speaker 4

Right. I was going to mention that, of course. And it almost goes without saying, I hope every Christian parent at bedtime is reading the Bible to their kids. You can start from the time I remember before our kids could even speak. Finding those simple little tots' Bibles and just reading the stories, reading the principles, reading verses to our kids and reading to them. I mean, it's so good. Any secular person will tell you reading to your kids is invaluable, but reading the Bible to your kids is critical.

I'm sure I quoted the line in the book, but J.C. Ryle talks about how you can't expose your kids to the Bible too young, too soon, or too much. We've got to get them saturated with the Scriptures. So there's the nighttime and at the dinner table when we're together. As the older they got, it was harder to be all together at dinner. But we made it a point to pray through the congregants in our church. We had a big church, but we tried to get through as many families as we could pray for as possible.

Speaker 3

Christmas cards, photo. Christmas cards, they're key.

Speaker 4

We would use those as our cue for prayer for them and just trying to teach our kids. Like Carlin said at the beginning, if we're not disciplined in our own spiritual lives and if we don't think to pray, I can think of Carlin going past an accident or whatever. And, you know, we want to pray. We immediately get our family to pray. You know, someone's in an accident, let's pray for them, or wherever we're headed, let's pray for that event.

And those are the kinds of things that flow naturally, I think, out of our concern to be connected with God. Then we just bring our kids along in that and say, we're going to do this together. We do a lot of prayer, a lot of Bible reading.

Carlin, the older they got, we got more involved in biographies, Christian biographies, and Christian history, to teach them not only Scripture but how other people throughout the history of the church have applied the Bible.

Speaker 3

Absolutely. And, you know, we want them to know all the Bible. So I would say another little tidbit is making sure that you find a children's Bible storybook that has a lot of Bible stories. You don't just want them to know about Jonah, right? And, you know, Jesus fed the 5,000. Those are amazing stories, and of course, they have great spiritual lessons. But you want them to know about Ruth, or you want them to know about how the sun stood still in the book of Joshua, and not just that the walls fell down at Jericho.

So definitely finding a children's Bible that has a lot of different stories for children to learn is important. We also supplemented that on road trips and various times around the dinner table with a really fun activity, which was a Bible trivia book. We just want our kids to know the Bible. We want them to know that John 15 is talking about the vine and abiding in the vine, and, you know.

Speaker 4

So we want them to know a Bible trivia book. We probably have about 12 Bible trivia books around our house.

Speaker 3

But you want your kids to know the Bible, so do it however you can.

Speaker 2

Yeah, a great launching point to talk about the Bible. That's awesome.

Last thing I want to talk about before we go here is walking away from God. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the stats of high schoolers after they get out of high school and their walk with God.

Speaker 4

I read several statistics over the years, and they haven't changed too much from the time I started in ministry over 30 years ago. But generally, between 70, 80, and 85% of kids that are involved in some churches claim some kind of adherence to Christianity. Once they go off to college, within a year or two, they're gone. They never check back into any form of Christianity. In other words, they don't go to church, and they don't claim to be Christians. I mean, some may claim to be Christian, but they have no fruit at all or evidence of Christianity.

If you're saying that four out of five kids that sit there and sing Christian songs in their Bible clubs or their youth groups are going to be, by college, hoisting their beers and getting drunk on the weekend and doing what everybody else does, that's a sad reality. Of course, the scripture is pretty clear about the reality of our faith being evidenced by our deeds. What we know is that kids can conform. I was just talking recently about that; it's easy for kids to conform to an external kind of template of Christianity, but what we're looking for is a heart conversion, and that's something we need to desperately pray for.

Carlin talks about prayer with our kids. There’s a lot of prayer for our kids that is always driving toward wanting to see their hearts converted. I think that comes out in our discussions. Caroline and I were just talking about Spurgeon's biography, and I posted a few things about that recently, particularly how his mother was so concerned about his heart being converted. Of course, Spurgeon was smart; he was a precocious little kid who knew a lot of the Bible. But his mom would sit there and have the guts to pray about his conviction of sin and his need for regeneration, and the threat, even, of the fact that if you don't get right with God, there's judgment to pay for that.

To have moms that have that kind of attitude, even though Junior has made some pro-Jesus statement or prayed a prayer or walked an aisle, is crucial. Spurgeon is a good example; he was out there rebuking people that were living licentious lives, even before he was converted, at his grandfather's church. And mom was still praying. Even though he was making those pro-Jesus statements, his behaviors and actions led her to say, "His heart needs to be converted. His heart needs to be converted." So, we’re praying for their hearts to be converted.

Speaker 3

Absolutely. And we talk often with our kids about their need to become Christians, but we actually didn't even use the word Christian.

We were constantly saying, we're praying for a day when you make a decision to follow Christ and you never turn back from that.

You make a decision to say, I'm going to follow Jesus for the rest of my life.

Speaker 4

And that's the experience that the kid has. But we understand the theology of it. This is an act of God. Right. This is something that God does.

This is a, we know that we want them to make every move toward Christ and encourage every move in the direction of Christ. But we know that they're even going to have to seek God and pray that God would bring them to that place of just conviction and brokenness over sin.

So we, we, we speak in those terms, in terms of we want you to be right with God, we want God to have that encounter with you where your heart is changed.

Speaker 3

Yes. And, and you know, we pray that for them, but we also pray that about them in front of them. As they were growing up, we would continually pray that someday they'd be able to make this decision. Not someday you'll be a Christian, because, you know, using Christianese all the time, our children just assume they came out of the womb Christian because they grew up in a God-fearing Christian kind of home.

Anyway, we didn't want them to be confused. We want them to remember that there was a decision they made to follow Christ and that they bore fruit because of that. So that's the way we talked about it with our kids and prayed about it in front of our kids.

Speaker 4

Right.

And the concept, if you're a listener focal point for any amount of time, you understand that getting right with God involves not just a pro-Jesus decision; it's about a brokenness over sin.

And it's a penitent faith, it's a repentant faith.

And so we always recognize the need for speaking in biblical terms about that biblical conversion experience.

And that's our prayer.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you Pastor Mike and Carlyn for this time.

There is so much more we could talk about on those topics. Luckily, you cover a lot more in your book *Raising Men Not Boys*, which we are going to be giving away this October.

And Dave will tell you how to get that.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Jay. And thank you, Pastor Mike and Carlin Fabares. What a delight to have you join us today for a very special couples edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

Now, to hear this interview again, you can find a free downloadable audio file at focal.radio.org. As Jay mentioned, Pastor Mike's new book is titled *Raising Men Not Boys*, and the subtitle hints at a critical point you make here.

Pastor Mike, you're talking about shepherding your sons to be men of God. Can you tell us more?

Speaker 4

Sure, Dave. You know, in all my years of discipling and coaching parents, the one thing I think every dad and mom shares is the desire to see their kids grow up to be who they should be in Christ—who God made them to be. You see, your little boy was not entrusted to you to just bring you joy and to fulfill you, to make you happy, though I hope he does. I mean, the point really is an assignment from God, a temporary assignment to prepare him to take his place in this world as an agent of God's values and priorities in this upcoming generation.

Your job is to point him, to launch him, to propel him, to make a strategic impact for the Lord's good purposes. Romans 12:2 says, "Don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect." That's the goal of what this book is all about—to say we're not going to follow the world's pattern. We're going to do this according to what God's Word says.

We're going to have our minds renewed. You need to raise your boy not the way the world does. Raise him for God. Raise him for God's glory.

Speaker 1

Such an important distinction. Thanks, Pastor Mike. Now, if you're raising sons or know someone who is, or maybe you're a coach or teacher working with young men, this is a book you'll want to keep handy. We'll send it along. When you give a financial gift this month, just ask for it when you call 888-320-5885. The title, once again, is *Raising Men, Not Boys*. Find it at focalpointradio.org.

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I'm Dave Drury wishing you a wonderful fall weekend ahead. Pastor Mike Fabarez continues his study of marriage next week, so be sure to come back Monday for Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.