Pastor to Pastor

Dave Stone: Your church comes to you each week to fill their cup. But when the crowd leaves, who's filling yours? That's exactly what I'm here to do with my new podcast from Focus on the Family. It's called Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I'm so excited to help you navigate the unique challenges that pastors face in their ministry journey, both personally and professionally. So, I invite you to listen and subscribe to Pastor to Pastor wherever you get your podcasts.

Danny Huerta: As parents, we put the expectation on ourselves that we're supposed to be experts in parenting right off the bat. Yet in any other thing, you take masterclasses, you get schooling, you get all kinds of things to master it well. And our assumption is, well, since I have a child, I must be a good parent. No, it takes intentional practice, awareness as a community, and encouraging each other.

Dave Stone: Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I am your host. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you haven't already, make certain that you subscribe to Pastor to Pastor wherever you listen to podcasts. And if this podcast has served you in any way, let us know by leaving a positive review.

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Our guest today is Dr. Danny Huerta. Danny is the Vice President of Parenting and Youth here at Focus on the Family. He is a psychologist, he's a licensed clinical social worker. He has served families through his counseling practice and through the Focus on the Family ministry for over 20 years.

Danny has some enlightening information and he's going to share some statistics with us that are really going to make us stop and think. He also is going to share a little bit about a new Christian parenting course that can be of help to you in your church, in your ministry organization. I know you're going to benefit from this. This man has touched my life in a lot of different ways through his ministry and I know he's going to touch yours. Listen into my conversation with Danny Huerta.

Danny Huerta, it's great to have you here on Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. Thanks so much, my friend.

Danny Huerta: I get to be on your podcast, Dave. This is so exciting.

Dave Stone: What’s exciting is you are the guy who I was picking your brain when they first started talking to me about this because you were the expert, you had a lot more miles on you when it comes to podcasts. I can just remember talking with you and saying, "Help me out here, give me some tips." You gave me some great tips, but more importantly than that, you gave me just some assurance and confidence that God could use this because He certainly has done that with a couple of different podcasts that you work with.

Danny Huerta: Absolutely. It was fun to talk to you about that. It can be an intimidating thing, but it's such an exciting opportunity and invitation to be able to speak into people's lives and to have conversations with people that maybe aren't here. It is truly an honor, Dave, to know that you are ministering to leaders that are pouring into families. Part of the audience are people that are just wanting to listen to what God has to say through you. I’m excited to continue to see how God takes this in the years to come.

Dave Stone: You said something to me, I don't know if you'll remember this, but you said one of the greatest parts is the conversations that you get to have and that you get a front-row seat to learning. That's kind of how I feel. I love parenting, I love the topic of parenting. Now I'm in the grandparent stage. I’ve got 11 grandkids with two more on the way, and so I'm trying to learn as much as I can about that.

Everyone who's listening here is either a parent, a grandparent, or the odds are pretty good that they're going to be a parent at some point. So it's a critical topic. I want to jump in because I know you've done a lot of research when it comes to data and there have been a lot of studies that have been out recently.

When a child leaves home, some of the studies are showing that anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of those leave their faith and don't return. That is one of the most disturbing statistics for Christian parents to hear. Do you think that has to do with how they were raised? What are some of the different reasons that you've come across that cause that great exodus from the church or from faith?

Danny Huerta: I would say let's be careful not to become fearful in our approach to faith. It's really about equipping and figuring out where can I find confidence in it. It begins with "Can I have a relationship with my child?" That's where it all begins. Do I have enough time? Am I paying attention? Am I having intentional conversations? That's where it really begins.

A lot of parents have told us in polls say that they lack confidence in their ability to pass on their faith. Now, in the Pew Research 2025 study, it revealed that 78 percent of kids and young adults believe they can be moral without religion. These are Christian kids. 64 percent question religious teaching, and 54 percent feel they don't need religion to be spiritual. That's about half of the teens and young adults feel they don't need religion to be spiritual.

What does that mean when we're thinking about the church wants to mobilize adults and youth leaders to pour into these teens, yet they're saying, "I picture church as a religion and I can find my faith elsewhere," maybe they go to social media or other places? And then 53 percent said they made this decision before 18. They were already questioning the faith.

Something that I've noticed in my practice and in working with parents is that teens begin to ask big questions. If we haven't established a strong relationship with our kids, those questions are going to be asked in other places. Sometimes parents assume the youth pastor will take care of that.

That's not the youth pastor's job. They get to be a helper, but as a parent, you need to be intentional in opening up these conversations and developing invitations with your kids to continue to challenge a worldview that they are forming. Just because they question doesn't mean they're going to leave the faith.

Dave Stone: That's a great point. I’m reminded just as you're speaking that for those of you who are Christian leaders and God has given you a mouthpiece on a weekend to be able to speak to your flock, this is the time to drive home that point of saying, "Listen, we are here to be a supplement, to come alongside of you as parents, but please don't." We don't have anywhere near the time and the opportunities that you all have as parents.

I see parents that abdicate their responsibility. This gets to be emotional, who abdicate their responsibility when it comes to raising their kids to love the Lord. I also see a lot of dads that do that. When a child at a young age asks a spiritual question of their dad, their dad will just say, "Hey, that's your mom's department. Why don't you go ask her?" as if I'm in charge of the yard work and the tools and the manual labor stuff around here and she's this touchy-feely stuff, that's more her area.

I just cringe on those things. I love to see a dad that dives in and says, "Hey, let's wrestle with this. Let's try to find out this answer together." Because if we just relegate those responsibilities off to the church, well, all that kid's going to get is at best four to eight hours a month of somebody pouring into them. In some of those cases, they might not even really be pouring into them God's Word. It might be more of just attracting them to being in a social club.

Danny Huerta: Dave, I'm thinking about the three different types of dads that I've come across in this topic. One you described, and that's the dad that's saying, "I didn't grow up with this. I'm busy. I've got a lot going on. My wife stays at home or my wife has more, she grew up Christian or she can articulate herself better. I can't say it like her." So they just say, "How about you take it?"

There are many dads in that that have pretty good intentions or really good intentions. They just don't feel equipped or they don't feel they have the time. Then you have another dad that says, "I need to bring down the law and there's a spiritual authority that I've got in this home." They become oppressive and a bit controlling in that, and that pushes the family away.

It's with good intention. They want to pass on a faith, but maybe this is how their personality operates and they assume the whole world operates the same way in their personality. By taking leadership, it means strength, it means coming on strong. I want to remind that dad, it needs to be meek, the meekness of strength under control with a love and an attentiveness.

Then you have these other dads, and I just met a bunch at an event. It was a homeschool conference and we had a panel speaking to dads. There were about 400 or 500 dads in there asking questions. Many of those dads, as I got to talk to them throughout the weekend, said, "I really want to be better at listening, teaching my kids, and they're so different. Sometimes I don't know how to switch that up or to lead the whole family."

They're asking questions and they're wanting to be equipped. So I see this other dad hungry to be equipped in a place where they have a pretty good emotional attunement that they've developed over time. I see them showing affection and love to their kids and that is so important. If we think of God, we think of the affectionate side and the strong side, that fear of the Lord where we know He has authority, but there's such a softness to Him and a love.

As dads, we get to bring that. I've seen dads do that. Just watching them in action, hugging their kids, holding their hands, carrying their kids during worship time at the conference, holding them during the whole worship time, the younger kids, working through the cramps, those bicep cramps you get when you're holding a kid. You're going, "I don't want to put them down, but I'm cramping up."

You see that affection and then you see them guiding their kids with firmness. That's the goal. There are dads doing that. If you see that going on in your church, don't compare in a way that, "I'm not doing that so I'm a bad person." It's, "How can I learn from this dad that has that emotional presence with their kids?" Maybe that's something I need to awaken in me.

Dave Stone: We had Gary Chapman on this program and he talked about the five love languages. We talked a little bit about marriage with that, but also about parenting, how important that is, finding out what your child's love language is. Every one of them is wired differently. It's finding that how to decipher the exact code in order to get to each one.

I used to take a child with me on every speaking engagement from about 10 years on. I planned my speaking schedule based upon where each one was that I was going. We planned some pretty cool trips and it might be by car, it might be not real glamorous, but we made it fun. It was that uninterrupted time of 36 hours just with that kid where I got to find out and it unlocked, "How are they wired? How do I get into this little heart?"

If you can find that out early on, then you can stay on that pathway. Yes, there'll be some times where my daughter Savannah, when I worked at fourth-grade camp with her, all the other fourth-graders loved me, and if she saw me coming, she would take her posse and they would go the other direction. It crushed me.

But all of these different ways that we make these efforts, just like you said. I love the three dads because you said something in that third grouping: emotional attunement. I've never heard that word and I love that because I knew exactly what you meant. It's an opportunity for us to get inside of their mind and inside of their heart and to live that with them. Who do you think taught you to be the dad that you are? What was the influence that you had around you that caused you to do that and be aware of that? Because some dads are just not aware of it.

Danny Huerta: See, I'm already crying. It shows it's deep.

Dave Stone: I had a mom and a dad. My dad was a pastor and he was the same man at home that he was in the pulpit. I love that. I was attracted to Christianity because I saw my mom and my dad flesh it out for me. I saw their dependence on prayer and I saw their dependence on God's Word.

They taught us to serve in the church, they taught us to love Jesus even when things might not be going great in church world. There was a higher calling. People are imperfect and we're going to love Jesus and we're going to love His church because it's filled with imperfect people.

I think of a story, just the encouragement that was always there. I don't think I've ever told this one. I ran for senior class president when I was a junior in high school. My junior year, Danny, I grew up seven inches so it was very... I never had one of those. I’m jealous. It was an awkward adolescent stage, trust me. My parents didn't have much money so they kept putting off buying pants for me or jeans. They kept saying, "No, knickers are in style, right?" I was Payne Stewart before he was big.

I ran for office and rode the bus home. As I walked back home, we didn't have cell phones, nobody knew what had happened. On my front door of my house was this humongous poster that my mom had put on there and my dad had put on there. It said, "Win or lose, we love you." What they were saying was, "No matter what, within these four walls, we don't give a rip whether you're the president of next year's class or not. What matters is that you are loved here and that you have significance to us." That was a beautiful act. That's how I was raised.

Danny Huerta: One of the things you mentioned that I think is key here is the adjustment to each child. One of the things I hear from parents often is, "I was raised this way, so now I'm going to raise my kids the same." We miss out on something. There's a unique design to each one. You've learned to attune to that with each of your kids. That showed attunement from your parents to know, "This is big for Dave and we've got to intervene in the belief system he's creating right now about the world around him."

They needed to stop their own world and pause and understand where you were at. That takes time, it takes intentionality, but the big one is just awareness. Sometimes we're going so fast, we miss certain things. It doesn't mean we're trying to be ignorant or that we're bad parents. It's just sometimes we're not aware. They are parental blind spots. In that one, they saw it through a lens of being attuned to your world.

I think that is such a great lesson for all of us. It's not about being perfect, but being attuned and just being aware. Sometimes in the busyness and especially in leadership, we park in regrets or other places and that's not where we need to be. It's going to, "How can I be a little bit more aware today than I was yesterday? What am I missing out on?"

Sometimes that's calling on people around you and saying, "Do you guys notice any blind spots I've got? Am I going too hard and I'm missing some things that I need to be aware of to be more intentional?" So the future me is not saying, "Why did you miss that?" It's being able to be in those moments like you just mentioned, the big moments for our kids, even though they may be small moments for us.

Dave Stone: I keep writing down notes. This page is filled. But that phrase you just said, I've never heard it in my life, but as parents, we tend to park in regrets. I don't want us to miss out on that. Wherever you're listening, if you're driving in a car, if you're working out, whatever you might be doing right now, I'm guilty of having parked in regrets. I think the Lord's up there saying, "Hey, put your car in drive and move out of there and it's a new day. We can't get yesterday back."

I think it was Chuck Swindoll who said, "Failure is not falling down. Failure is staying down. Stumblers who fall down and stay down are a dime a dozen. In fact, they're useless. Stumblers who when they fall down get back up are as rare as rubies. In fact, they're priceless." Let's thank Chuck. That's not me.

Focus on the Family has a program for parents through churches that supports them in raising children of strong faith and character. You actually co-authored that curriculum, "Build for Resilience." What's the goal behind "Build for Resilience"? Because I see this as a resource that is great for churches. If you're a pastor listening to this and you're looking for something that can be a resource for the parents in your church or even something that you can refer back to in sermons or in lessons, I think it would be great.

Danny Huerta: I'm so excited about it because there's so much research to this and so much history even within Focus on the Family with this, even though it's a new curriculum. The first curriculum that came out was "Raising Highly Capable Kids" and it was based off of the research from the Search Institute, which is not part of Focus.

They researched 40 specific developmental assets that need to be built in a child's life to go after certain markers. Are they going to use alcohol or highly risky behavior, sexual behaviors? They wanted to tackle suicide, depression, a variety of factors in kids that are negative and looking at leadership skills as well.

They looked at these 40 developmental assets and they've now researched for more than five decades, I think it's now seven decades. They've researched these assets and hundreds of thousands have been part of the research. Just know that these assets are ones that truly move the marker. 30 to 40 assets in a child's life reduces alcohol use to lower than three percent, and suicide rate less than six percent, and leadership skills above 80 percent. I mean, big, great things that we want for our kids.

Now, from that, we developed a values-based curriculum that we have had for the last 15 years. It's gone into communities, it's in 41 states. We've had great success in a variety of communities taking this on. It's values-based intentionally. We wanted to see if schools, communities could come together and bring a community of leaders in that space that just wanted to facilitate a parent experience of growth for 13 weeks.

It had a five-step process that started with an icebreaker, went through to a learning opportunity, then a discussion opportunity, then a planning opportunity, and then at the end, it's a commitment. "What are we going to do this next week?" Then there's accountability and openness growing in this.

In that success, churches were saying, "Could we have one for us within the church instead of just outside the church?" They were using it as a community outreach, but what about our families inside the church? So we developed a biblically based one now for churches called "Built for Resilience."

These 40 assets truly build resilience in a child, but we added the five foundational rhythms to a Christian home based off of the 12 spiritual disciplines from Richard Foster and Dallas Willard and the spiritual formation stuff. To distill it into five core areas as foundational rhythms to a home, it begins with reading God's Word as a family, having prayer time together, a steadfast identity in Christ and talking about that all the time, humility as a highlight, as something that you're disciplining yourself as a mindset, and then rest and balance as a family.

Those five undergird these 40 developmental assets. 20 are the external, that's the environment that you're building in that child, and 20 are what are you building from the inside out in that child, from a positive identity to character formation.

The uniqueness of this class, and this is what gives it the secret sauce, is that immediately you're building community and openness and vulnerability within the second week. It's one where you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to be the teacher. You're a facilitator of an experience.

So this curriculum is really a "train the trainer." We're equipping you digitally and you can have a group of 10, 20 within your church equipped with being able to teach these classes. I had a pastor at one of the conferences where I presented on resilience and talked about this right before that they said, "I hear a lot of great parenting things and all that, but I'm so busy. Is there something that can help me delegate a bit of this and have other people facilitating teaching classes?"

I said, "We have 'Built for Resilience.' You can have 20 people show up, they're equipped." All they have to do, the PowerPoint's already done. On the leader guide, you have everything you need to be able to facilitate an experience, a class that leads parents through 13 weeks. Whoever's equipped with that can do ongoing 13-week classes.

Dave Stone: They could do it as a small group if you all have parents within those small groups and they could do it together. Focus on the Family has so many great resources. But I've got to tell you, I think this is at the top of the list because I think there is such a desire and a need for this. Let me tell you, that is a resource that could get your church so excited about parenting.

There's something that happens when parents all get on it together. There's a positive peer pressure and you start to see it within the kids. I'll give you an example. My son is in a Bible study where they go through some different parenting tips from a couple that's in their 40s. All of these couples look up to them and some of these couples, they do stuff together.

They talked about first-time obedience one week. He said the next time all of them were together, their playtime at a cookout was so different because we expect this is what our expectation is, this is where the bar is. You've got to rise to it. Now you have people calling each other out a bit. Parenting taking place, there's a commonality. There's the same expectation across the board with these three couples with their kids, and so if that's the expectation, good things will come out of that.

Danny Huerta: It's interesting, Dave, as parents, we put the expectation on ourselves that we're supposed to be experts in parenting right off the bat. Yet in any other thing, you take masterclasses, you get schooling, you get all kinds of things to master it well. And our assumption is, well, since I have a child, I must be a good parent. No, it takes intentional practice, awareness as a community, encouraging each other.

Listen to one of the things here, Dave, that they do. One of the exercises that we put in in session two that we learned works very well from the Highly Capable Kids folks. It was talking about "What are the abilities that you've got?" How many parents think about that? What are the abilities and what do you do with those and how does your family know that?

What experiences have you had? What obstacles have you overcome? What fears have you faced down? What mistakes have you grown from? What hurts have you recovered from? That's right at the beginning of these 13 weeks. You are getting into deeper places and maybe wounds that you've got and sharing it as a group.

What we found when we piloted this with a local church, it was a larger church here locally, they said this was the curriculum that opened up their parents the best that they've ever seen. They had the best retention of the 13 weeks that they've ever seen in a parenting class. That told us we are on the right track with the pilot of this.

We tested it with a small church and a large church to see how it works in both settings. It's a fantastic resource for whatever size church you have. If you have one person that gets trained, that's fine. It's more ideal to have three, four, five, maybe eight. Then in your classes, whatever size you want to have is fantastic. Don't have the pressure that you have to have this large swath. Start small and then begin to create this community and it'll become contagious as people see the communities forming and parents feeling a support system within the church.

The beauty of this, this is the other beauty, Dave, is if somebody's trained in "Built for Resilience," they're also trained in "Raising Highly Capable Kids." This is a two-for-one package for a pastor. You can meet the needs of the church inside of the walls, equip people to go outside the walls into the schools, into community centers, and to become mentors to other parents through this curriculum where you're truly being a light in your area.

You don't have to have two separate trainings. It's one, and then the "Raising Highly Capable Kids" satisfies Title I funding and all the other things that they need for a parenting class. If the church approaches them and says, "We've got a parenting class, it's values-based," they're not going to say no. They're tapped out and they would love to have that from the church.

Dave Stone: I appreciate your sharing all that. You're excited about it, that gets me excited about it. So where can our listeners get that book? I understand there's an assessment with it if I remember correctly.

Danny Huerta: That's right. You can go to builtforresilience.com. At the end, parents are invited to take the Seven Traits of Effective Parenting assessment, which is what we were talking about at the beginning: high levels of warmth and sensitivity and high levels of expectations and guidance.

It's these seven traits that guide you through that. It's a way to go from this class into an assessment, thinking about one child at a time, and then it introduces you to all the resources here at Focus on the Family. It introduces the parents, each of the parents go on their own journey, and they're introduced to our age and stage resources that are customized to the age and stage that their kids are in.

Dave Stone: I love that. That's so important. That way a parent who has a seven-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 13-year-old, they might need different things at different points. I love that there's that component as an accompanying resource.

Danny Huerta: It's free for them and it's really designed to come alongside the family, the church. We're not trying to take away people from the church or congregations. This is really truly to feed and to come beside you to reinforce what you're talking about in your church.

Dave Stone: These are different days and difficult days to be a parent. I thought it was tough when our kids were being raised; it's no comparison to how it is now. We need to pray for parents these days, but we don't need to parent out of fear, as you said earlier. I love that point, Danny. We're not parenting out of fear, we're just asking for God to intervene and to help. This is a great discipleship tool for parents. I know it starts with transforming the behavior of the parent. That's really the beginning point of it. Any stories that have come out of that? We love stories on here. Share a story or two from what's happened.

Danny Huerta: The idea with this is that you have graduations. At the end of the 13 weeks, you have a ceremony celebrating. We've gone through 13 weeks of as a community of learning, of investing in our family. One of the recent graduations had this, we got this video of a mom sharing her impact story.

She said she had a tumultuous, violent marriage. She had to change her name leaving this ex. It was a super stressful situation for her. She went to another state, had three kids. What she said is this developed for her, it helped her feel encouraged, have patience with her kids, and to not feel alone. She said this was truly a support system because she said, "I had no one," and this class provided for me the community I needed. Now this is a support system that I can come to.

She said this was the best parenting class I've ever had, and I've had many because I've had issues with my three kids. She did affirm that this was the one that moved the needle most for her from the personal community side to her growth as a parent to help her not feel alone.

When you look at the statistics, 60 to 70 percent of parents say they feel lonely. When you're trying to navigate challenges and you're comparing to other parents or assuming that you need to have it all together, it makes it hard where you can't be vulnerable with other people about what your struggles are. So you're searching at night by yourself. This class allows you to ask the questions out loud with a community and to grow together and to challenge each other. So it meets that need for parents and she affirmed that she was a single mom, no true support system.

That's one of many. This is a brand-new resource on the Christian side, biblical worldview side. But on the values-based side, whole school districts, whole communities have great stories to tell.

I remember this one dad said, "I would yell at my kids often." This was a Spanish-speaking dad. He said, "I would yell at my kids often. Now through this class I've learned tools to do that differently, to do my parenting differently where I'm more patient and I'm not going just to yelling. But now I have tools to work with to guide my kids."

Something that simple that you just shared in one paragraph is the story of the Gospel. It's transformation. It's "I was, then God, and now." It's that switch. Lee Strobel, who's been a guest on our program a couple of different times, it's his daughter describing the transformation of her dad. She didn't fully understand everything about Jesus, but Lee says, "My daughter said, 'My daddy used to punch holes in the wall, and now he doesn't punch holes in the wall anymore.'" That's what we want. We just want that transformation to take place.

Danny Huerta: You know, Dave, I was thinking not that long ago as I was preparing for a moment with a whole bunch of homeschool families. It was a large group and we're talking about resilience, and here we're talking about "Built for Resilience." There's a quote that I had run across and it was, "Adversity is your greatest competitive advantage."

Romans 5:3-5 says, "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." There's a production happening. There's a producing when we're thinking about adversity as parents. Are we allowing for, and as leaders, are we reminding parents that adversity produces?

There's an important component to that, that as we're thinking about our kids growing and developing, let's learn that we need to intentionally be in that production with them. Have intentional conversations, reprioritize our lives to be able to have the awareness that your parents had when you were facing adversity. It can produce relationship, it can also produce a strengthening, and then a strengthening of faith in our Heavenly Father.

I think that's just something we need to... I need to be reminded of. I think we all need to be reminded. Now with my kids as adult children, knowing that they're going to face adversity, I need to be reminded that's their greatest competitive advantage when it comes to the spiritual side.

I need to be praying for them and praying that when they face adversity, because they will, that they have enough of the assets poured into them environmentally and internally to be able to face it down rather than run away from it or go to look to other things to try to reassure them, but to go to the rock, to go to their Heavenly Father. They've learned that in the imperfect process we went through in our home. I just wanted to throw that in.

Dave Stone: Thank you for sharing that passage. I want to change gears as we wrap up and not talk about parenting. Maybe there is a dovetail to it, but I'll leave that up to you. I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm on the board of Focus on the Family and we were at an event with a number of different donors and different people. It was outside the United States. We had people from all over the world there and it was just a great time together. Everybody headed to the airport. You and your wife got to stay for an extra day, kind of catch your breath because you'd been working so hard.

Danny Huerta: Just a couple hours actually. So was trying to fit something in. It wasn't planned to be. It was a fitting in, just I had an hour left. It was either hot tub or snorkeling.

Dave Stone: Well, you made the right choice, I would say, but it ended up being a life-altering event. I just want you to share just how quickly things can change on a dime. What I want to ask you is what went through your mind as a husband and as a father in the midst of this snorkeling experience that really changed a whole lot of things.

Danny Huerta: I'd say that I learned a lot in this whole experience. I would say that one thing my wife would affirm here if she was sitting here is that I try to pack too much into a day. In this case, we had one hour left. It had been windy that day, the seas were rough, and it wasn't that rough in that area anyway, but the sailing had been canceled and other things had been canceled. When I looked over at the snorkeling area, it was completely empty, which should have been a pretty good clue for me.

Dave Stone: But you’re thinking "short line!"

Danny Huerta: Yeah, there's no one there. It's good, wide open. So I had an hour and the guy said, "Hey, there have been barracuda in the area because of the winds and all that, and a guy was bitten yesterday. So just watch out for that." I was like, "Okay."

So I started swimming out and sure enough, it was a little foggy and I thought, "Man, do I turn back? Maybe hot tub maybe would have been better." All of a sudden I saw starfish and a stingray go under me and I go, "Oh my goodness, this is amazing." So no, I'm going to keep going.

Dave Stone: Now you're pulled in.

Danny Huerta: I'm pulled in. So then I kept going and they said, "Go to the farthest buoy." Jet skis were going by over close to that area. So I swam out and I actually went past the buoy accidentally and turned around and said, "Oh, I better get back." I was just having a great time.

It was getting deeper and deeper. I was probably about a couple football fields away, maybe a football field and a half away from the shore. It was a ways out there. The fish were way down there until this big group of fish came right at my body and I'm just thinking barracuda. They're going to bite me and I hadn't taken any shiny things off. So I was thinking they're going for my arm.

I put them up and in the process I got a little water in my mask and then I hadn't worn a vest thinking, "It's going to be fast." I knew there was no one out there. Usually it's smart to wear a vest if you're going to be alone, just in case. I was like, "No, no, no, I'm fine. I'm a swimmer. I've grown up by the beach."

Dave Stone: Oh God, you’re in great shape.

Danny Huerta: So in that moment, I lifted my mask, kind of cleared out the snorkel, but then you're starting to paddle and so you get a little winded. And then all of a sudden a wave came in and it went right straight into my lung. I could not... I heard the crackle and then that's when a bit of panic set in. I looked at the shore and I'm going, "Can I make it?"

I tried to swim backwards for a little while to see if I could cough up or throw up and I was losing oxygen. So then I turned around thinking I'm going to make it all the way. I'm going to just swim as hard as I can. So I'm hitting it hard but I'm losing oxygen in the process and I start to feel weak. My wife is saying, "Honey, we've got to get to the airport. We're going to be late," and she knows I love to squeeze it right to the end. So she's thinking I'm just messing around because I do love to play around a bit.

But I was swimming hard and I'm going, "My wife's going to see me die here." I'm going under. I was thinking I have not said goodbye to Alex, to Lexi, my family. I was feeling the brain close in thinking, "This is it. This is the end. This is where the game's over." I was feeling my body just shut down.

So I'm swimming as hard as I can, feeling the body shut down. I look around, what can I even? I looked down, there was not anywhere to stand. So I'm just going to sink down. And then I saw a buoy laying down. Of all the buoys, there were none laying down except for that one.

It was probably about 15, 20 feet away and I said, "Maybe I can get to that buoy." I just swam as hard as I could. I gave it my all and I started to sink. Once I got to the buoy, I was able to crawl on top of that and I couldn't breathe and I started to feel like I was going to pass out and just slip under.

This loud voice, ironically his name's Marcos, I'm thinking Marco Polo, right? He starts yelling at me. "Hey, there's jellyfish in the area. You're going to get bitten because they hang on to the buoys." I didn't care at the moment. He came over, he had a booming voice. I really believe God put him right there.

God was everywhere in this whole thing. I grabbed onto his hand. He called some people over. Anyway, I ended up in the emergency room, didn't go back for a couple days back home. They said, "You can't fly. You've got water in your lungs." I crackled for about a day. The perspective I got from that is now every day is bonus. Every day is a gift. I hugged family differently at that point for sure. It gave me a different perspective, a gratitude towards God that He is truly with me wherever I go and that there's a timing. He could have chosen "This is it," but He said, "Hey, you've got a little bit more to give."

Dave Stone: I’ll bet Heather, when they pulled you out of that water, I’m just in praising the Lord that she didn't see you drown. I was on a text trail getting texts about you and every one of us was saying the same thing: this guy's healthier than anybody I know. How could this be? Thanks for sharing from your heart on that.

You just said when we take our last breath, it's then going to... our legacy is determined. What our faith was in Christ, how we pass that on to our loved ones and to others will be the only thing that lasts. Praise the Lord that you lived another day and that God's continuing to use you. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that. Every one of us was saying the same thing: this guy's healthy.

Danny Huerta: There was some teasing when I got back to Focus, naturally, right? Aquadan and all kinds of things. I was thankful that I could live to enjoy some of the razz and everything here at Focus on the Family. It's part of life and the enjoyment of being able to joke with one another and celebrate in that way that I'm alive and I get to laugh.

I get to enjoy the brotherhood here at Focus on the Family. I appreciate you being part of the board and serving here at Focus the way you do and the concern you guys have for what is happening in the ministry, the way you guys pour yourself in. Thank you for that. I did experience a tremendous amount of gratitude knowing how many people were taking their time to pray.

Through prayer, this is something that's amazed me, is that we are able to line up and show deep love to one another and line up in wanting something coming from our Heavenly Father together. It increases our attachment, literally, physiologically in our brain. There's a healing that takes place in prayer. I remember praying while I was swimming, just trying to survive, praying saying, "Lord, please one more day, man."

Dave Stone: Well, that's a good reminder for us and a great place for us to stop. As parents, as grandparents, pray that prayer: "Lord, give me one more day to make an impact on the next generation and to make certain that the legacy that I leave behind is honoring to the Lord." It's fitting that the book that you've talked about is "Build for Resilience" because that kept you going. You were resilient out there and you were not a quitter and you hung in there. May the Lord continue to use you for many, many years, my friend. Thank you.

Wow, there were so many great things that Danny just shared with us. I know you've got some great takeaways. I know you're going to want to pass this along to another parent because I know it can be an encouragement to them. That statistic where he said studies show that when a child leaves home that somewhere around 70 to 80 percent leave their faith and many of them don't return. That's eye-opening and it is frightening. I loved his reminder: "Don't be fearful about this." We have to make certain that we stay about the task that we have of paving the way for the Gospel to come into the lives of our kids, and then they've got to make that decision for themselves.

One of my favorite lines that he said is that as parents, we can park in regrets. What happens is that we end up doing all of our parenting in reflection of things from the past rather than focusing on the future. At times I can remember when my kids were younger, I found myself looking in the rearview mirror more than I was looking in the windshield, looking more at the things from the past rather than what it was that was ahead of us.

So don't get discouraged, don't grow weary in doing what is right. Some parents assume that youth pastors will take care of their kids' questions, but as a parent, Danny said we need to be intentional in having those conversations and developing invitations with our kids to continue to challenge the worldview that they are hearing right and left and that is being crammed down their throat.

I got to thinking about what would be a good story for us to wrap up with, and my mind went back to that old Josh McDowell quote where he used to say, "Rules without a relationship lead to rebellion." That's the impetus for this story. I’m going to go all the way back to when I was in high school. I was very active in every fabric of student life, you name it and I was involved in it, whether it was sports or acting.

I had a radio show every morning that was piped into everybody at home room and they would listen to the announcements, another buddy and I would do it in a creative way. I was senior class president. And yet, when I was in high school, my parents didn't believe that I should go to a dance and they felt like that was a compromising of their convictions. I didn't hold to that conviction, but they were pretty firm in it.

I accepted that pretty well, but it was really tough my senior year. Now you need to know I've always loved my parents, but I disagreed with them on this decision, but I also respected them. So when springtime came of my senior year and it was time for that last dance, I thought they might weaken a little bit and let me go. So I asked them if I could go to that dance. They prayed about it and thought about it and they came to me the next day and they said, "No, I just don't think that would be right for you to go and dance."

But they said, "If you want to go and not dance, you're welcome to do that." Well, at the time I was dating a girl who was a dance instructor. On top of that, in 1979, the movie Saturday Night Fever had just come out a few months before and had been a huge hit. To further complicate the matter, at that point in my life, I bore an uncanny resemblance to John Travolta.

Yeah, you'd have to see pictures to confirm it, I understand. But my parents were still unwavering on their decision of saying, "Hey, we just don't want you to dance. We think that would go against our Christian convictions." Rather than go to the prom and not dance and have the invisible word "loser" monogrammed on my tuxedo, I chose to save face by not going to the dance and staying home.

The only problem was that all of my closest friends were congregating at Michelle's house, which was right across the street from mine. That's where the limo was picking them all up. That's where they were having their couples' pictures taken before they all headed out. And man, I can remember it like it was yesterday.

They all pulled up over there and their parents dropped them off and pictures were being taken. I said to my mom, my dad was out of town, and I said to my mom, I said, "Hey, let's go over and see them." She said, "Are you sure you want to do that?" I said, "Yes."

So we went over and we had a lot of fun with them and they actually even took a picture of my mom and me as if she was my prom date. I kind of had a lump in my throat when they all piled into the limousine and they waved goodbye and there stood my mom and me and Michelle's parents waving goodbye to all of them.

Then Michelle's parents went inside of their house and my mom and I walked across the street. I'll never forget it. She opened the door and I walked in behind her and when she turned around, she had tears streaming down her face. She looked at me and she said, "Dave, I am so sorry, but your father and I just don't think it would be best for you to go."

Now the intent of me telling you that story is not to make some type of statement on whether or not dancing is right or wrong. I let all of my kids go to dances; that's not the intent of the story. But I started earlier by saying that rules without a relationship lead to rebellion. But let me finish the story by saying rules with a relationship lead to respect.

I had great respect for my parents and I had great respect for my parents' convictions. Even though I disagreed with them, I never questioned how much they loved me and how they were trying to make decisions that were the wisest decisions so that their son would grow up to love the Lord. Train a child in the way they should go, and when they're old, they will not depart from it.

Thanks so much for listening to this today. You know that the things that Danny talked about were some great insights and advice about parenting. "Build for Resilience" is a great resource for churches, for organizations to utilize, for parents in order to help you navigate the challenges of raising kids in this corrupt culture.

So go check this out, builtforresilience.com website, which is linked in the show notes. As always, thanks so much for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand-new episode every single Tuesday. It's designed to encourage, to inspire, and to challenge you because we know that leadership can be lonely and that's why we call this Pastor to Pastor. It's to remind you you're not alone. So until next time, I'm Dave Stone saying God bless.