009: Running on FUmes

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode nine of our Unshackled Love podcast. I am Bruce Payne sitting here with my beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, absolutely stunningly amazing wife,

Kaila: Kaila Payne.

Bruce: And for those of you who heard John Bevere at church today, I think I only used a fraction of the adjectives that he used when describing God as he finished his prayer.

 But that's actually how I feel about my wife. She's an awesome person. I can't ask for a better human being to be next to me as my partner in doing it.

Kaila: So for those of you who are just joining us, Bruce and I are both teachers in the greater Austin area, and what sets us apart is that we have the privilege of raising nine beautiful, wonderful, mostly crazy children. Our oldest is a senior in high [00:01:00] school and our youngest is in kindergarten. So we have every age in between and we get to do all the fun things.

Bruce: Yes, ma'am, we do. And in coming with nine kids, people always say, how do you do it? And the reality is it takes a village, as we've talked about, and we'll probably talk more, a lot more going forward in podcasts, but it does our schedule.

If you were to look at, you know, my wife is one of those type A personalities. She likes to put everything in a box, label it, and have it perfectly in terms of how things are supposed to run , from what color our kids' jerseys are on the schedule, to what time they need to be there, to what time the actual game starts.

But all that aside, if you're look at our schedule from the time that we wake up, which is anywhere from 5:30 to 6:00 until the time we get home, which is typically around 9:00, 9:30 at night, there is something on the calendar or our schedule that takes up our times.

Kaila: Yeah. Even besides soccer, I mean the fact that we're both teachers, so I think organizing and keeping track of faculty meetings and professional development days, and then you [00:02:00] have, we have kids

Bruce: what is professional development? I'm just kidding. Here in Texas. Those of you, we have a lot of friends back in California. You know, school starts, you go back to your classroom for a day and the kids come. Here In Texas, we get all these days where it's like professional development, which is like, oh my goodness.

I'm like, professional sleep. I can't sleep though. I actually have to do work. But anyway, sorry to cut you off.

Kaila: So then trying to keep track of kids. Our older ones, they have jobs, they're in theater, they're part of school clubs and academics, and then there's all the other school events, and then there's church and there's fitting in small groups and women's groups and Bible studies and Serve Saturday, and there's all these things.

And then not to mention, you know, we're out of town at least two weekends a month because our kids are traveling and they just play competitive soccer to where they're gonna be at any given city in the state of Texas.

Bruce: Yeah, I mean, this week [00:03:00] alone, yesterday morning we woke up, we left the house about 6:45, got into the Woodlands area, which is right next to Houston.

Went from Houston in the game all the way to Waco. Went and watched the game of Waco, came home. This morning, we woke up, went to church. my gorgeous wife then ended up in San Antonio for a kids game, and I was in Austin for two more games. And then also we met back up about four 15 and then came back home, put the kids, gave 'em dinner, gave 'em a shower, put 'em to bed, and here we are doing a podcast now.

Kaila: Right. And so if you're tired just listening to that , because I think that's what most people say is, I get tired just listening to your guys' schedule. I don't know how you do it. And that's definitely a common theme, but you know, it definitely takes a lot out of us. It is tiring and it is exhausting.

And maybe you are a new parent and or you have a toddler and you're thinking about how [00:04:00] tired you are because they have more energy than you can keep up with. Or they're still waking up every two hours in the nighttime and you don't know when the last time you got a good night's sleep is, and you're just thinking, man, I'm so tired.

we can relate, and yet we're still sitting here at nine o'clock after our busy weekend and traveling to four different cities in 48 hours. And we're delivering this message to you because I think it's a message that people can relate with.

Bruce: Yeah, and I think even more important than that, it's being obedient to God.

You know, this is something that she brought up yesterday when we were sitting there in Waco. It's something that I felt today as I'm sitting there driving home like, Hey, we gotta sit here. We got a podcast. We need to sit there and talk about being able to rely on God, when you're tired

you know, when you go to church and you go to Men's group or you go see a new movie, the new Greg Laurie movie in the movie theater. I mean, you come out energized, ready to [00:05:00] conquer the world, ready to sit there on fire, like, I'm going to go conquer life. And that high that you get from going to that movie or a conference wherever, wherever it might be, or even at church on a Sunday.

You know, it might last a day or two. But when you look at our schedule we have 7, 8, 9, 10, sometimes 14 days in a row where we did what we explained today, not necessarily going to all these different cities every day, but in terms of waking up, going to work, then going to different practice facilities or school events on a daily basis, and then getting home at 9, 9:30, even 10 o'clock at night some nights.

On the days that were filled up with Jesus, those days are easy. You know, you go to church, you're good to go. But when you're tired, when you, when you go 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days, or you don't get to go to church this weekend because our weekend didn't allow for it, because of how busy we are, you start to run on fumes, you start to sit there and be tired and what once looked like Jesus looks like the opposite of Jesus, especially here in our house.

With me this weekend, I put a text, my group text the boys like, Hey [00:06:00] man, please be praying for me as we go to a podcast. I haven't been patient this weekend. I haven't been loving this weekend. I haven't been caring this weekend, and I haven't said a lot of nice things to my wife this weekend.

And when I say this weekend, all of what I just said was towards my wife, my best friend. And then we go to church today and now I'm feeling on top of the world again. It's like, oh my goodness. And actually the reason why I feel probably more on top of the world right now is because my wife said to me, "honey, you wanna know what I will drive our nine year old to San Antonio. So you can relax."

And you wanna know what, having the chance to go to Costco and get a couple different snacks for our upcoming trip, as well as a few samples, made all the difference in the world. So here we areright now, talking about relying on God a) when we're sitting there filled up, but then also being able to rely on him when we're tired.

Kaila: And that is a perfect segue into the story that we're gonna talk about. And it's a story of Elijah and what I love is that God gives us a story because it's [00:07:00] such a perfect example of the contrast about just being on fire for God, and then what happens in our exhaustion when we take our eyes away from him.

And so we're gonna pick up in 1 King 19 with our scripture. But I'm just gonna hop back a quick step into 1 Kings 18 is this infamous battle scene where Elijah, the prophet, takes on all of the fake prophets or the prophets that are of fake gods, and he kind of calls 'em out and he is like, all right, let's see what your god's got.

Right? Let's see, let's see it. Come on. And all day they're praising and trying to call upon their gods to light this altar and after hours and hours and hours, nothing. And Elijah's kind of making fun of 'em. And then not only does Elijah build an altar, he douses it in water in the middle of a drought, calls upon the name of the Lord and fire strikes.[00:08:00]

Completely consuming the altar and all of the water in it, including, it even says the rocks. And then not only did he say, look, told you so, but he goes and he kills all of those 400 fake prophets.

Bruce: Absolutely. And if you go back into, to 1 Kings 18:27, it talks about, "about noontime, Elijah began mocking them", as my wife just said. "You'll have to shout louder. He's scoffed. For surely he is a god. Perhaps he is daydreaming or he is relieving himself, or maybe he is away on a trip or is asleep and needs to be awakened. So they started shouting louder."

like he sat there and he mocked them and he made fun of them.

He knew who his God was in the moment, in this moment, the battle. He knew who his God was. He knew what His God was capable. It wasn't like he just sat there and said, Hey, I'm gonna call my God in a time that seems pretty simple or convenient. I'm gonna call my God in a time that things are absolutely crazy.

I have 400 guys across from me. On top of [00:09:00] that, I'm gonna sit there and go above and beyond. The reality is what's about to happen shouldn't happen unless it's only done by God alone. That's the biggest thing. When you sit there and look at the number or the amount of water that was supposed to be poured on this thing.

He didn't have guys go back once or twice; three times and pour water on there to douse it. I don't know about you. I've tried to go camping before and I have a hard enough time lighten a fire with dried wood and it still doesn't, you know, I wasn't a boy scout ever so sorry there, but I have a hard time lighting dried wood, let alone wood that was soaked by water more than once.

Kaila: And so when you think about the amount of energy that that took, because first of all, it was hours and hours and hours before he even had the chance. Then he's building this altar and they're going and fetching the water. And then after he did all that, he went and beheaded the 400 prophets. Like it said, he marched them into the valley and killed 'em all.

So you've gotta think of the physical output that this took of a man to [00:10:00] follow and really be obedient to what God was asking him to do. Like that was. He might as well have gone. Not just run the marathon, but you know the Iron Man Marathon Triathlon.

I mean, he just did it all he was completely exhausted by the end of this, or at least that's what I imagine. That's how I would be, is I would just, I've spent every ounce of energy and every little bit of attention and focus to do my best and to be obedient and to follow God. And in the moment I'm on fire and I'm doing it, but then it's over and I just crash.

Bruce: He just crashed. and so, we head into 1 Kings chapter 19, and I'll start with verse one. It says, "when Ahab got home, he told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, including the way he had killed all the prophets of Baal. So Jezebel set this message to Elijah. May the God strike me and even kill me if by this time tomorrow I have not killed [00:11:00] you, just as you killed them.

Okay, so the same Elijah who just sat there and mocked 400 guys, killed 400 guys, gets a message from Jezebel, and the same guy who mocked everyone and the same guy who sat there and was on fire for God. You'd think that maybe he'd come back once again, like, haha, what are you gonna do to me?

Right? But no, he was not full of energy at this time. His cup was not refilled that week. It said he was very tired, and as a result, his response, "Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. He went on alone in the wilderness, traveling all day.

He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die." Okay? So two very different looking things. A guy who was full of God just shortly before and now a guy who's super tired relying on himself and when he is sitting here it's easy to get off track of what God intends us to do in life.[00:12:00]

 I know with us right now, we have a lot of stuff going on, both as parents and teachers and starting a ministry, and I know there are days where my wife and I, we are on fire and ready to go and lead people, lead men and women and children alike with our Growing Paynes ministry, and are able to sit there and multitask and do many things.

And then we have days or weekends like this weekend where it's like, man, I'm spitting bullets because I'm relying on myself and not God. I mean, even to the point where, like before we walked into church today, I woke up and my wife said something and she made a funny or a joke and I was like, um, if that's, that's gonna be we probably shouldn't talk this morning.

And I'm like, wait a second. And as the morning goes on, you know, we turn on, Air1 or KLove, and I'm like, did that really just come outta my mouth? And then I'm sitting there thinking, and, and the other thing that kind of happens to us as we get into to these Aspect of life or this time in life when we're tired is I start doubting everything that it is God has called us to do.

 In terms of we sit here and we live in Texas right now, but with inflation [00:13:00] and on two teacher salaries, we don't make enough money. What do we gotta do next? , that's like one of the first things that we go. Or, you know, there's other states that will pay us more as teachers, what should we do?

 And then you sit there and you lose track of why we're here in Texas in the first place. In terms of ministry, we've been called vehemently called to sit here and do growing pains. Yet when we're tired, I'm like, man, I don't have the energy for that right now, let alone try to parent nine kids, be married to my wife and go teach students all day long at school.

But guess what? That's the devil speaking lies to us when we're down and out. That's the devil sitting there trying to speak his truths, which are lies to us when we don't have much to sit there and fight back. And much like how I felt this morning, my wife and I felt this weekend towards one another.

More so me towards her is that we felt like Elijah when he was sitting there getting told by Jezebel that she's gonna kill him. He ran like a little puppy with his tail between his legs and was about to take off rather than sit there and [00:14:00] mock her, you know? Whereas if he would've been filled up, my guess is he would've mocked her and be like, what?

What are you, you really gonna kill me? What are you gonna do to me? Are you gonna sit there and poke me in the eyeball first? Are you gonna pull my ears off? What are you gonna do? Kick me in the knee? That's what he did the day before or the time before that.

And all of a sudden now it's like, like, like a puppy who just peed on himself. He's sitting there tucking his tail and he is walking off.

Kaila: And then not only that, I mean, he's pleading for God. He says, "I've had enough Lord take my life for I'm no better than my ancestors who have already died." So now he's really just throwing a pity party

like, oh no, it'd just be better for me to die. And when we're tired, it's so hard to see all the good or to see the things that are happening and to see the path that we are on. And so Elijah goes and he lays under the broom tree and he's hiding and he's sleeping and he's depressed, and he's throwing himself his little pity party.

And then, it's amazing to me [00:15:00] because God comes to him and feeds him and he's like you've gotta eat and here's some bread. And that's the whole imagery because you know, the bread of life and the bread being God's word and how important it is that we need our daily bread and God's word in our life.

And then it says he finally got up and he traveled for 40 days and 40 nights on the food that the Lord had given. But when he got to his destination, the Lord says to him, "what are you doing here? "

Bruce: And that was the same thing today when I was downstairs. What are you doing here? Like I threw my own pity party to the point where I said," honey babe, I love you. don't talk to me. We are probably better off not talking to each other today."

Just because I was throwing my own pity party, hand against my head, and then as I go downstairs and the first like three or four songs that hopped on in KLove, God's like, what are [00:16:00] you doing here? The same God back then is the same God now. The same God then who took care of those .400 people on Mount Sinai is the same God right now.

The same guy that deliver David and Daniel, and you can go through the list of people in the old and New Testament. He's right here now.

Kaila: And so when we want to. Or I guess when we don't want to , when we're, when we're tired and we're running on fumes and we start to recognize these things happening in our lives, whether it's the way that we're talking to people or our attitudes, there's a reason why they call it being hangry.

You know? Because when we're lacking that nutrition and we're lacking, whether it's sleep or energy, We need those things to keep us going, those physical needs, but I think even more so, we need our spiritual needs, like [00:17:00] we need to be spiritually filled and fed. I know for me, even though we were having a busy week, Wednesday night was pursuit night at our church where we have a night of worship and prayer to pursue Jesus.

And I decided that I was gonna fast for the day, and there were points in my day where I would get a headache, and then I would just pray to God and I was telling my husband, by the time I showed up to Pursuit Night, when I got to that church and I started seeing my ladies and the music started rolling.

I was so "Rejuvenized". Not only did I have energy and I was excited and I was singing and I was dancing, my headache was gone. But it was kind of funny because my watch actually told me that, my stress levels were high. And then I needed to take a step back, like I needed to calm down. I was too excited in the name of Jesus. It wasn't even that. I was just, oh yeah, I'm good. And I'm thinking [00:18:00] clear. Like my heart was literally beating out of my chest as I was praising God and worshiping him and saying, thank you Lord, for being so good. And I really felt his presence upon me, and that's the type of energy that we need to get through our day.

And again, I was intentionally fasting, I was really seeking God, but you don't need to be fasting to seek God when you're tired and you're getting up to change diapers, and you're chasing around a toddler and you're running back and forth between eight different soccer fields to get kids to and from practice after school, getting home, doing home.

Doing laundry, trying to keep up with dishes and all the other things that just pile on top. And it seems like we can't even catch our breath. Well, how do you catch your breath? It's about spending time with Jesus and being intentional about spending time with Jesus.

Bruce: Absolutely. I think, you know, real quick, you said, did you say re rejuvenated or reju?

You said a word that doesn't even make sense. I think it's, she tried to say rejuvenated, just by the way, [00:19:00] when you get back rejuvenated. Yeah, you said "rejuvenized" you did. Oh, . So sorry. I, I'm not even an English teacher, but I'd love to give her in her four point something GPA to my 2.83. I have to sit there and stick it when I can.

And that's one of those times right now that I can stick it. So I am , um, I'm feeling "rejuvenized" nah, just kidding. Rejuvenated as well right now. Um, and so, yeah you have to be intentional. You have to be intentional. And I mean, there's different parts of our walks that need to be intentional right.

 In terms of praying and making time for prayer. Making time to be in the word, making time to sit there and pray, not just by yourself, but with your spouse, to be in relationships with other Christ minded folks who can hold you accountable and who can check on you throughout the day.

I know for her and I, our days get so busy that if we're not intentional about our relationships with other people in terms of, brothers or our sisters in Christ, It's too much for either one of us to handle everything else going on on our own. You have to be intentional in [00:20:00] making time for God and for God's kingdom, which are other people, in my opinion.

You have to be in the Word though. I sat there all weekend and had a pity party. It probably would've been a lot better off if I read about Elijah beforehand rather than sit there and think of it after the fact.

Kaila: I'll remind you of that next time.

Bruce: Are you gonna remind me as in like, in our calendar or schedule?

Like, is that gonna be color coded? Like what color do I get?

Kaila: I'll set a reminder so that it shows up 12 hours before our first soccer game.

Bruce: That is amazing. Hey, and real quick, I'm gonna give a shout out. God's been awesome. We have a couple different things coming up and we have a couple verses we want to end with.

But when she sits here and talks about time management, my wife is an absolute stud in terms of that. And we actually have the chance to sit here and go through and we're doing, not a convention, but something where we're gonna speak to people and then we're actually doing a session on time management.

So you'll hear more about that to come. So I want to give her props where props is due her time management in terms of putting it in the calendar. Holy moly. [00:21:00]

Kaila: All right, so here's what I wanna end on, is I wanna end on the takeaway for you, because we talked about, yes, God is important, but you might still be sitting there going, I don't know how to do that.

I don't know what that looks like in my life, and I strongly believe that one of the best ways to pray is just to pray God's word back to him because his word is perfect and holy. And when I think about what word do I need when I'm tired and worn down and ragged? It's Psalms 23, it starts off with, it says "the Lord is my shepherd, and I have what I need."

And I'm gonna stop a after each verse because I just wanna drop these little nuggets of wisdom, is that you often get tired by seeking more than what you need and God will provide you what you need. So like when my husband was talking about, oh, we're not making enough. Where do we need to move to? What do we need to be doing next?

I think that [00:22:00] often we get caught in this lie of that we need more or we need to be doing more, or we don't have enough and then we get tired because we're not satisfied in what God provides. And then verse two, it says, "he lets me lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside quiet waters." So I know that there's at least half of you out there that have your white noise machines and you put those on when you need to calm down or relax or go to sleep and just think that God, He leads us besides those quiet waters. He brings us peace in the midst of our busyness. And so when we spend time with him, we find that rest.

And then verse three, it says, "He renews my life and he leads me along the right paths for his name's sake". So what I love about this verse is that it doesn't say he leads us on the easiest path.

The path will be [00:23:00] rough. The path might be narrow, the path might be bumpy. It might be even be scary as it says in verse four, "even when I go through the darkest valley". So sometimes we might go through the valley, but we have to trust that God is leading us down the right path. And when we do. He renews my life.

And so he renews our spirit and he gives us that energy to persevere and endure. And then it says, "I fear no danger for you are with me. You're Rod and your staff, they comfort me." And I just thought, rod and the staff, it's the word of God. It's the word of God that comforts us during our times of need or struggle or tiredness or anger, whatever it may be.

All of those feelings when we come to God and we just spend time with God and we recognize God for who He is, and we're just in awe of his [00:24:00] presence. We're renewed and we're refreshed, and so I just pray that you would find time. Go read Psalms 23 and pray that over your own life.

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think you summed it up pretty well.

But just like you'd reminded me or you're gonna remind me, I'm gonna remind you right now, you wanted to give a plug for our 10th podcast. This is number nine. Next up is number 10. What is so special about number 10?

Kaila: All right, so I'm really excited about

Bruce: this. She, wait real quick. She wouldn't even let me have 10 kids.

Only nine. Anyways, ,

Kaila: I'm really excited, but we just celebrated 10 years of marriage,

Bruce: marriage, loving marriage. 10 years of marriage.

Kaila: And so for episode number 10, I am really excited because Bruce and I have decided to do a Q&A episode. So there are a lot of people that like to ask us questions, you know, like, how do you do it?

I don't know. But more specific things, maybe in regards to our parenting style, we've had people reach out to us, Hey, now I'm dealing with a [00:25:00] certain issue. This is gonna be like an an ask the "Paynes" free for all. So any questions that you might have, whether it's about how we run our routines, time management schedules, behaviors, or maybe you have a thing that's going on in your life and you want our input. Hey, Paynes, what do you think about this? How would you handle this situation? We have a form that you can fill out. It's going to be dropped in the show notes below, so make sure you check that out. You can either put your name or you can ask totally anonymous anonymously.

I got it. I caught myself that time anonymously and we are going to go ahead and roll through those for our next episode. So I'm, I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be fun. I'm excited to see what kind of questions people come up with.

Bruce: I like how you make it seem like we haven't already been asked questions.

Cause we actually have had questions asked to us already since we started the podcast. So I think sitting there going forward and with some of those questions, , even though there might only be one or two. So I'd probably just say [00:26:00] question. No, maybe it's questions, but regardless, that there is a form, like she said, that will be in the link below.

Otherwise you can just, I'm old or old school. You can text me or you can just tell me on the phone and say, Hey, guess what? I have a question for you guys. How do you guys, yes. In whatever it might be. Go ahead and reach out to us through the form.

 We're thankful for the prayers coming our way as we sit here and we take off outta town. But we do have some other cool things coming up, some speaking engagements so just keep your eyes up for that, as well as some other ministry opportunities coming up.

And, just wanna say thank you to those of you who are listening and who have helped, us, provide financially for us. We have gotten some awesome gifts the last couple months that have helped us along the way, pay our bills, have helped us get us gas money getting us to and from soccer practices 25 times a week, whatever it might be.

So thank you guys for those of you who have partnered with us and who continue to partner with us as we move forward along with Growing Paynes like I said, we've done the podcast. We're in the middle of writing a book right now. Kind of started last summer, but it's kind of moving forward and hoping to get up by this summer.

And just some other ministry [00:27:00] opportunities this summer as well. So thank you guys.

Kaila: All right. Let's end with a word of prayer. Dear Father, God, I thank you for being our good shepherd and for always giving us what we need. When we are tired and feel like we're running on fumes, you give us what we need and you fill our tanks and you lead us beside quiet waters.

Father God, we know that when we are with you, you renew our life. So I pray for every person listening that they would be intentional about finding time to spend with you, father God, and that they could trust that the path that they're on is the path that you would have for them. Or if it's not, maybe they need to redirect and you need to redirect their path because you're looking at us going, what are you doing here?

What are you doing? And we just need to know that you are with us and you're guiding us, father God, and that you are [00:28:00] the good shepherd. And with you, we can do all things. So Father God, thank you for every single listener. I pray that you would be with them in their walk today and forever in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Bruce: Amen.

008: God’s Love

-Transcript-

Bruce: Good morning and welcome to episode eight of our Unshackled Love podcast. I am here with my beautiful, gorgeous, unawake, sleepy eyed wife. Kaila Payne and yes, I did say good morning and yes, I did say her name Kaila Payne for her. She's sitting over there looking at me like, what are we doing this morning?

For those of you who know me or who have known me for a long time, I'm actually a morning person when I sit there and text you, "good morning, sunshine." I really mean good morning sunshine, cause I love the morning time and this is the first time we have gotten the podcast in the morning. So now that I've taken over the microphones and done both of our parts so far, I will let her speak for just a moment real quick.

Kaila: For those of you who are just joining us, Bruce and I are two teachers in the greater Austin area, and yes, I'm a teacher, but I manage my mornings with 32 ounces of coffee. Don't judge me.

Bruce: That's not really 32 ounces. It's like 27 ounces of coffee and five ounces of half and half.

Kaila: That's none of your business.

That's personal. It's personal.

Bruce: This podcast is personal.

Kaila: Okay, so we are two teachers and we also have the privilege or blessing of raising nine beautiful children. Our children ages 18 to five, so our oldest is a senior in high school trying to figure out life. And then we've got everything all the way down to the teenage girls and pre-teen boys and rambunctious

5, 6, 7, 8 year olds and everything in between. And if you're a young parent and you have little ones, we've been there, done that, and we're just riding the waves of parenthood one age and stage at a time.

Bruce: Yeah. Well I, I think it's funny that you sit there and say, Hey, if you've young parents, we've been there, done that.

I think we were in diapers for 16 years straight in my life. And for most of that 16 years, there was two kids in diaper. At all times. Just wanna add on to that. And then when you sit there and you mentioned our oldest kid trying to figure out life, it's funny, some things don't change. You know, I'm 40 years old and I'm still trying to figure out life.

So I think it's kind of funny that I look back and you just said, Hey, he's trying to figure out life. Yeah, I think I'm trying to figure out life too right now, and not just my wife and I both, we sit here and we are teachers and we enjoy our jobs, but at the same, we kind of feel called to some other things right now, and so we're just trying to figure out life, right?

And so when we sit there and we look at our kids, we're able to sit there and interject on a similar level to where they're at.

Kaila: Absolutely. The more experience we have as parents...

Bruce: Wait is more experience, is that the word, wisdom? Hey, I'm only throwing that out there. Right there. My boy Jeremiah, he once said, the hair color on his face is the color of wisdom. AKA gray. so are you saying we have wisdom right now?

Kaila: I don't know if we've quite reached wisdom, but we definitely have...

Bruce: I'm not as old as him. He's 41

Kaila: ...experience. The more experience we have parenting, the more I do see God in a different light, because God is our heavenly Father.

And so there are a lot of times where we'll be in a certain situation with our kids, and then it's like you hear God in the background being like, yeah, that's how I am with you. You're like, oh God, why you do that? And so Bruce and I, fun just little preview, we're actually working on a book that is all about the way God has been teaching us through our kids and the lessons we learn about God through parenting.

So I'm really excited for that.

Bruce: Yes ma'am, we are. And I think a big thing to what you just said, Hey, you know, God, why did you do that? Or, God, I see you now. And I think a big thing that we've both started to see in a different way is just how God loves us.

And I think not just parenting, but in life ourselves. There are so many different things that we've gone through. We've been married for 10 years now. We've gone through the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I'd say in the beginning of our marriage we went through a lot of ugly, by the grace of God, we're here married today, and he's brought us through the pit of hell and back.

And on top of that, now we're sitting there to see his fruit in our lives and grow. And at the same time, now we're watching our kids go through some challenging situations. And I think the biggest thing as I've gotten older, I won't call it wisdom yet cause I'm not 41 and I don't have wisdom on my face, is I've shaved my beard.

But I think the biggest thing is that God loves us. We're gonna sit there and we are gonna mess up in life. We're gonna sit there and go through situations that hurt God's heart, and so I think as a parent of nine kids, we see this in different ways and I think it's grown on us as we've parented longer is I used to get angry at my kids when they did something stupid. When I used the word stupid. Yes, I used the word stupid or just dumb, or just immature, whatever you wanna use. It used to hurt my heart. Like I would sit there and I'd get so mad and then I realized like, man, you wanna know what? My heart hurts for them.

My heart hurts for what they're doing. My heart hurts for what's going on in their heart. Cause I know something's lacking in their own heart for them to act a certain way. Do you have anything you wanna add?

Kaila: I think it's just the perspective change and that that's pretty much gonna be the verses that we dive into, is we're really going to look at instead of being angry, they always say, be angry at the sin, not the sinner.

We can be mad or upset, but then we've talked in a prior episode about anger, how usually anger's a me issue. And so why do we get angry over the sin? Well, because we feel like it reflects our ability as parents. Oh. So we get mad that our kids are acting this way or making dumb decisions because we think it's a reflection of our ability as a parent when that's actually not the case.

And then that's, I think the big perspective change is it's really a heart condition. And so today in our passages, we're gonna look at a couple different passages that talk about that reflection of the heart and how God loves us through that.

Bruce: I think when looking at a perspective change, you have to have a real perspective also of the devil or you have to have a real understanding of who the devil is. And personally, when looking at the devil, I look at him through two different lenses. The one lens in which I look at the devil is, I might have believed in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but I wasn't actively walking with the Lord, reading the Bible every single day, experiencing the truths every single day, or I wasn't involved at church, or I wasn't getting sharpened by other men.

And as a result of that, the devil kind of just let me steer my own ship going down. You know, almost like the Titanic about to hit an iceberg. And he is like, Hey, you wanna. Yeah. I might encourage you to go drink Bruce, but you're gonna take care of the rest because you're gonna go have 10 beers.

I mean, when's the last time I've ever had a beer? The first time I drank, I didn't even have a beer. Or gambling, he might sit there and say, Hey, you might put the little inclination in my heart to maybe you should go gamble. But once I go gamble, he already knows I'm gonna take care of the rest myself.

That I don't need him to sit there and tell me, $5 limits good for you? Uh, no. I tell myself, let's go play a hundred dollars a hand, even though I'm a teacher and I make no money. I think a hundred dollars a hand is a better idea. And so I don't need the devil to sit there and actively sit there at the table with me and say, Hey, Bruce, go bet more.

I do that on my own. And so I think there's that aspect almost like playing checkers. It's a little kid's game. He already knows you're on your own. Go have fun with it. and then the other lens, I look at the devil through is more of like a chess, right? When you're sitting there and you live in the word of God, or you're in the word of God on a regular basis and you're doing things to further the kingdom or to better your life, you are in the word every single day you are praying, you're on your knees, you are tithing you a million different things in terms of what God has asked us to do. You like your, your, your will of your life is within God's will for your life. And as a result, now, the devil's sitting here trying to be counterproductive to what you're doing. And so he is making a chess move.

You make a chess move, he makes a chess move, often you hear why do bad things happen to good people? And the reality is because the devil is real and the devil is at work, and that goes for our kids as well. It's so often with our kids that we can go and we're like, what's going on?

Because the devil's at work. The devil doesn't want these little young creatures to sit there and know Jesus like you and I do now. And I think it's important as parents that we sit there and we raise them up to understand and to know who Jesus is, but they also need to know who the devil is

because at the end of the day, how often do our kids go to church and they come home and oh yeah, we learned about the devil today. Well, the devil's real. They have to learn about some, like, guess what if my six-year-old can learn that he didn't get money from the tooth fairy, cause the tooth fairy is not real, maybe we should be actively teaching him that the devil is real.

And then if you don't want the devil sit there and have an impact on your life, maybe you should have your own relationship with Jesus.

Kaila: and I reflect on that too because Bruce and I have very different upbringings in terms of, you know, his mom was a believer and he remembers seeing his mom be baptized, and so he was raised with a foundation of knowing God's love and knowing God's truth.

But at some point we all have to make that choice for ourselves. Whereas I was not raised with the word, I was not raised knowing God. I was not raised going to church . So for me, when I came to know Jesus, I mean it really was like a pivot. It was a complete turnaround. It ties straight into the verse that we're gonna talk about today, but the reality is both of us come from that same perspective.

Even if you're raised knowing the word of God, and this is where I just reflect with our own children because we are trying our best to raise them, knowing the word of God and knowing these truths that, you have to put on the armor and the devil is at work and there's gonna be sin and temptation in your life.

But through all of that, we can teach them and we can share them and we can give them the words, but at some point, their walk has to become their own and their faith has to come their own. Just like Zoe shared her testimony last week, she had to come to that realization that, oh, this is what my parents mean, or this is what they've been talking about.

This is what God's word really means, or this is what God's love is. And so even if you've been raised in the church, you've been raised going to church or hearing about God, there's a difference between knowing about God and then knowing God for yourself and having a personal relationship with him.

And so whatever walk you're on, I definitely challenge you just to pause and think like, how is my relationship with God? Am I really walking with him? or do I say I know him, or, oh yeah, I go to church on Sundays. But then Monday through Saturday you're living to your own vices. And I think that kind of segues into the verse that we're gonna talk about.

Bruce: Yeah. And so the verses that we're gonna start with are ephesians chapter two. I don't know. Sorry. When I read my Bible in the morning and my wife she pushed the play button and that's how the guy talked. Ephesians chapter two. Anyway, here we go.

Verse one. "Once you were dead, because of your disobedience and your many sins, you used to live in sin just like the rest of the world. Obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God . All of us used to live that way following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature, we were subject to God's anger just like everyone else."

So real quick before we move on with this chapter, guess what? The devil is at work. It just says it here in the Bible that the devil is at work. And when I sit there and I read through it the first couple times this week is it has the word obey in there, right?

Like obeying God and also has the word obey in the devil. And just that makes me cringe. And as I've lived my life, there've been many times where the thought of the fact that I obeyed the devil makes my heart hurt . And there are so many things in life, whether it's living my own life or parenting, where it's like, man, did I really sit there?

And it says in the Bible that I was obeying the devil. That is not a good thing to me as I'm older. And I, and I won't call it wisdom, but as I've gotten older that makes my heart hurt. And I find myself on a daily basis wanting to obey God.

So anyways, the devil. And our kids need to know that the devil's real. And our very own nature. I think the hardest part here for me too is that if your relationship with God is anything like my marriage, like I don't wanna see my wife get angry at me. I don't wanna see her try to bite my nose.

Like I just don't, like I want to, I want her. That was just a metaphor. I don't even know what's a metaphor. Maybe it was a simile, maybe it was the truth, I don't know. But the reality is I don't want her angry at me. I don't want her to come at me and be like, guess. You hurt me to the point where I wanna sit there and I'm gonna unleash on you.

I don't, I don't want the hap maybe early in my marriage I enjoyed it. That's why I didn't learn from my mistakes. But as I've gotten older, I do not like to see her in that stage of her emotions, if that makes sense. And so, think about that, with my wife, I look at God, I don't want God to be angry with me, but the reality is God does get angry with our sin.

God does not like us sitting there doing things outside of his will for our life. And so just like any good father, which he is, a good father, is our sins do anger him. But you wanna know what the best part is. You know what makes God, God and not me. Cuz you wanna know what? For a very long time, my kids would sit there and do something stupid or a sin and I would get beyond peeved.

I would sit there and I'd lose it. I'm like, what is wrong with you? And the reality is our God, even though he gets angry, he goes to the next verse and says, "but God is so rich in mercy and he loves us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead."

And so not only does he up the ante a little bit by saying, Hey, guess what? I'm gonna show you grace and mercy. I'm gonna send someone to die. Someone who's perfect. I'm gonna put him on a tree so that you don't have to be. So not only did I sin and mess up, not only did he show me. Or anger. Then he came back with mercy and he didn't stop there.

He went to the point and say, Hey, guess what? That's not even enough. I love you so much to the point where I'm gonna send my only son, unlemished, into this world to live, to die on a tree for you so you don't have to. What do you think about that? .

Kaila: I love it because I know for me, like I was dead in my sin because of my disobedience.

That's the big thing for me is when I look back on my life because, and again, this is not necessarily because of my upbringing, but I was on that ship of self-destruction, I was making bad choices. And you could say it's because I didn't have God in my life, or because I wasn't raised that way. But the reality is is I was making my own choices and I was definitely living a life that was far, far, far away from God.

So when I came to know Jesus, I really grieved who I was and the fact that God said it doesn't matter, all those things that you've done in the past, like I'm gonna give you a new life.

Bruce: I'm gonna take over from here. God's gonna give us a new life and he gives our kids a new life and he gave us a new life and then she goes back. I think those tears are those were alive.

Kaila: No one knows I'm crying except to you.

Bruce: It's okay. This is a personal podcast. I love my wife and I love where she's coming, where she's going. I think as a married couple, we love where we were and where we're going.

And it's living within God's will. She has this verse that she wanted to read and I don't know if she can, cuz she has tears coming down her face. I joked, I called her like phlebotomy earlier cuz she's like hacking up hairballs over there like a cat. She's had to run to the bathroom twice.

I mean, you name it, I start laughing like I'm a morning person. She's over there trying to exist. And she's doing a great job. She, you're gorgeous. Even with everything coming outta you right now, you are absolutely stunningly beautifully and gorgeous. Mm-hmm. . Mm. I love your two eyes, your mouth, and your nose.

Just kidding. She's gorgeous. Okay. Do you wanna read the Bible verse or you want me to?

Kaila: Well, just going back and tying in this idea, and we talked about this perspective change and realizing the devil's hold on us until we decide to make that decision for ourselves, and so with our kids, we can get angry at the sin, but we have to remember that they are entrapped by the devil and they're entrapped by their own sin.

And so we are dealing with unbelievers until they decide to make that decision for themselves. And so the verse that really stood out to me was First John, chapter two, verses 16 and 17. It says, "for the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for things that we see and pride in our achievements and possessions".

So this is what our kids we're seeing our teenagers as they're in high school, and there's this craving. Physical pleasure. There's a craving for acceptance. There's a craving for the things that they see other people doing, whether it's social media or the clothes that they wear, or the music that they listen to.

There is a craving. There's a craving to want pride in what you're doing, in your achievements, in your possessions, and, oh, look at me and look what I did and look what I have. These are the things that the world offers. But then the next verse says, "these are not from the Father. They are from the world, but this world is fading away along with everything that those people crave. Anyone who does what pleases God will live forever."

And so it's so hard because when we believe, and then when we step into that personal relationship with God, that's why the song Amazing Grace says, "I once was blind, but now I see". So in that moment, right now, my kids are living blindly. It's the blind following the blind, which leads nowhere good, and the blind is the way of the world.

But once we see God's ways and we accept him into our hearts, and once we accept him into our lives, and then we see his love and we can experience that love, and we can experience his mercy and grace and saying, Hey, it's okay. Like, I understand you were blind.

You were following those ways, but he doesn't hold it against us. He doesn't hold that sin over us. In fact, it says not only does He forgive us of our sins, but when we truly repent, he forgets our sins as if it never even happened. We are white as snow. That sin is wiped away because of the blood of Jesus, so he doesn't see us in our sins anymore.

All he sees is that sacrifice of Jesus that we've accepted and we wear his righteousness. And so it's hard for us with our kids when we see them. and they're blind and they're following the blind, and we just want to rescue them from that because we know that following God, that's what pleases Him..

And then following that way, it says right here like, we're gonna live forever. That's eternal reward.

Bruce: Amen. Sister. No, not sister wife, but just Amen Wife. I. Yes, absolutely. That was wonderful. Like I'm sitting here right now and the fact that you came alive in the morning and you're starting to wake up, it must be after nine o'clock.

It is.

Kaila: Or it's just the Holy Spirit speaking honey.

Bruce: It is the Holy Spirit. And I agree. This past couple weeks it is been challenging for us as parents, we've seen our kids go through some stuff and it's like, man, you wanna sit there and rescue them, but the reality is their relationship with Jesus has to become their own.

And the same goes for some other people that we know who are going through some stuff, their relationship with Jesus has to be their own. And at the same time, even if you have a great relationship with God, you need to understand that He loves you and He's willing to show you grace and mercy.

We all fall short. We all fall short and it's not living within that shortness that we've fallen or that we live but understanding that God loves us to the point where he shows us grace and mercy and we just turn away from the sin that we're living in and we make that relationship with us ours.

When you sit there and you look at life you can sit there and this one thing to be a believer, and it's another thing to be a follower, and it's another thing to sit there and surrender at the knees of the cross and actually pick up your cross and do what he wants you to do.

And there's a whole nother sermon that we can sit there, or a whole nother conversation that we can talk about, sitting there walking with God. But I really, really, really, really, really, really hope that people here, if nothing else, make your relationship with God your own, know that God loves you regardless of what you're going through.

Be obedient in terms of your walk. Don't just sit there and make it words, but make it actions. Like sit there and follow through with how you are living life. And you'll see a big, big difference in your life, I think this week we sat there and popped out a devotional earlier this week.

You give God an inch, He'll take a mile. But you have to be active in terms of your relationship. It's the same difference as a marriage, right? Like I just talked to my wife about this pre podcast and it's like, how good would our marriage be if we never went on a date, we never got naked in bed together.

We never held hands in public. We never showed affection in front of our kids. We never just snuggled on the couch, like, how, how good would our relationship be? And it would be pretty crappy that that's the reality. And your relationship with God's the same way. If you're not intimate with him, he can't be intimate with you.

You need to take the time to sit there...

Kaila: You need to be able to spend time with him, read his word, pray, and really just open up your heart to him because that's how we build that relation. That's how we maintain the relationship. Like Bruce was saying, you know, there's always that spark when you first get married and you say, I do and everything's fresh and exciting, but to continue on

that relationship. You need to be intentional about your walk and with our kids. Our kids need to see, I think more than anything is we need to show our love and yes, we can get angry about the sin or the things that they're doing, and our hearts can hurt for them, but we need to be able to show them that, you know what, beyond that, I love you and we're gonna get through this together, and then being genuine about our faith and our walk and then showing that to them,

Bruce: Hey, real quick, thank you for not throwing me under the bus and saying I was having tears come down like I did with you.

Cause I just did. I had an emotional moment and so I had some tears and so thank you.

Kaila: but I love that it's the spirit like for me, I would say I don't cry a whole lot, but , my husband jaw just dropped in his eyes, like popped out of his head. No, but hear me out. Hear me out. I am not a physical hurt crier, like I could stub my toes, sprain my ankle, get a tattoo.

I'm not going to cry over it, but there are two things that I do cry over, and one is when I get really frustrated and I can't figure something out and I'm trying and I get frustrated, I cry outta frustration, or b, I cry over Jesus. Because I can't explain to you the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so that's why even now, 10 years later, when I talk about Jesus saving me, I get emotional because it's the power of the Holy Spirit. The feeling is too big for my little human heart to handle. And so when I talk about the greatness of God and that's why I can relate.

If you are really reflecting on how just awe inspiring God is and how good He is and all the things He's done in your life, it's emotional. It's emotional in my life. And so how do we respond to that? We praise God.

Before we end and wrap this thing up, I just wanted to encourage you, if you maybe need to talk this out with someone, Bruce and I are here. We would love to connect with you guys. If you check down in the show notes, you'll find our email, you'll find our website. Bruce, this week just started a men's small group, which I'm so proud of him for doing that.

And I've been connecting with some women and so if you would like to get in on those small groups or connecting with us, please reach out, send us an email, go down below in the show notes. You're also gonna find all the verses that we talked about today. And then otherwise, I just want to pray with you guys and we're gonna pray straight out of scripture.

Prayer of praise comes from Jude, and I want this to be the last thing you know God loves when we speak scripture back to him because they're his words and his words are so much better than our words and what we could say. So we're gonna end with this prayer of praise. Jude 24, "Now, all glory to. Who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.

All glory to him. Who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord. All glory, majesty, power and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time." Amen.

007: The Power of the Tongue

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode seven of our Unshackled Love podcast. I am here with my beautiful, wonderful, crazy wife,

Kaila: Kaila Payne. And for those of you who are just joining the podcast, Bruce and I, we're married,

Bruce: for over 10 years

Kaila: and we have nine,

beautiful,

Bruce: wonderful,

crazy like their mom children made in God's image too.

Kaila: Yes. And so while we love our children very much, you know, they're kids and just like anybody at any age, we've all just got our things .

Bruce: And like my wife, who I love, she is still my wife, right? Say it's just like kids, kids, wife, wife. I don't know. Anyways, we're sitting here laughing as we sit here and say this.

Today we have a special guest that we're bringing. It is our wonderful, beautiful, crazy daughter,

Zoe: Zoe Payne,

Bruce: and she is kind of crazy. She's one of those kids who I can sit here and say, if I were to sit there and model my life and my moral compass after it would be her. The reason in which we're bringing her on this podcast today is, the theme of the topic today is the power of our tongue.

And before we get started, beautiful, crazy wife, can you please sit here and start with a word from the Bible, please.

Kaila: Yeah. So the passage that we're gonna look at to start is James chapter 3: 7-10, and it says,

"People contain all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, fish, but no one contain the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth, but surely my brothers and sisters, this is not right."

Bruce: When you look at the tongue or you think of the tongue, it's this little small, tiny thing, in our bodies, yet it produces so much good and so much bad. And looking at it, there's two things I wanna look at today.

The first one, Are the words that come out of our mouth, in particular cursing. As a public education, high school teacher, I'm just amazed at this point in time by the amount of curse words that I hear on a regular basis. You know, as a kid if I were to said curse words or maybe with you as a kid, even though you're a lot younger than me, oh, that's a funny story.

A-whole-nother funny story. She said something about somebody being in their prime. What? Go ahead. Say this funny story. This funny story.

Kaila: This is hilarious. We were having a conversation with our daughter as we were watching football, and she was talking about all these great NFL quarterbacks and she was like, man, I would've loved to have seen you so-and-so in his prime and so-and-so in his prime.

And then she mentioned Roethlisberger and she said, did he ever have a prime? I said, yeah, he was in his prime when I was like in middle school .

Bruce: And that is when I said, "Him and I are the same age." And I was like, uh, And she's like laughing as she is right now. That is a real cackle coming across, the microphone.

It was pretty funny. And so that's a good laugh for the, for the night. But anyways, yes. So the amount of cursing that has gone on or that has come to be normal at this point in time is crazy compared to when I was a kid and when my wife was a kid. And so, I just wanted to bring our daughter into it.

As I said, you know, we all have our faults. We all have things that eat in our crawl or sit there in our thorn our sides. And for her, it's cursing, which is the funniest thing. Cause if you look at her, I mean, she's this cute, gorgeous girl, young woman at this point in time, phenomenal chef, top 1% of her school has a beautiful pug that's 36 months and still wears a diaper.

What, what are some of those nicknames you have for that pug of yours? The one that has a tongue sticking out and wears a diaper at three years old.

Zoe: His name's peanut butter, but I call him a couple of names, like Bepee. Fish. Mil lil gordito mi amore. Ducky.

Bruce: Ugly.

Zoe: He's not ugly. He's gorgeous.

Bruce: Fero Perro?

Zoe: No, George.

He's gorgeous.

Bruce: He's gorgeous. And so today, Zoe at school, I know I hear it and so if I hear it, I mean, I can only imagine if you hear it or not too.

So can you tell us about where or how you hear cursing at school?

Zoe: Cursing is pretty much used all the time by a variety of people, whether it's students or faculty.

It's just used in a variety of ways as well, whether it's happy tones and describing something or out of anger or bitterness. It really just depends on the situation.

Bruce: And so you being a God-fearing young woman who loves Jesus with your whole entire heart who models Jesus on a regular basis, do you partake in this type of activity too, or do you sit there and do a good job of towing the line?

Zoe: I do my best towing the line at school. You know, there's little times where I get angry and it just comes out, but mainly it's in the car where I lose it and I lose control, and that's where I let it blow.

Bruce: Let me ask you this. When you got rear-ended last week, did you let it blow?

Zoe: Yeah, it was bad.

Bruce: That's a whole nother story.

She did get rear-end as she was leaving the parking lot. The driver who rear ended her tried to run away and some other high school kid chased him down. Priceless. Epic, I guess. Uh, anyways, so we're, we're sitting here with her and you talk about cursing. And here's the funny thing, if you were to ask my wife and I, like, we don't see her curse or hear her curse at home, Rarely, if ever.

Why is it different? Why do you find yourself cursing at school or in the car, but not at home? Like magic is like a magic wand. Is it like a dog shock collar where you're like, Hey, guess what? I know if I curse at home, my dad's gonna shock me. Like, why don't you curse at home and why do you curse? Or why is it okay for you to curse in the car or at school?

Zoe: I feel like at school it's very normalized or even in the car when people get mad, it's normal to, or at least like that's what I'm taught from teachers and other students, that it's normal in society to just cuss when you get angry, you or cuss to place emphasis on certain things, where at home like we don't cuss for that and y'all hold different standards and there's a bunch of kids to be an example for.

Bruce: Wait two things there. Okay. First off, there are kids, you are here to be examples for, aren't there kids at school that you should be an example for as well?

Zoe: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruce: And then the other thing is, is the reason why you don't curse. Is it for Kaila and I or is it for God at home? Like, why don't you curse?

Zoe: A lot of things I for God that I do, but at home mainly it's just out of respect for y'all and for the kids.

Bruce: I love the honesty there cuz this is a conversation that we've had in the past. I think the hard part here is, the reason why we have those standards isn't because it's a standard kaila and I woke up for one day and said, Hey, we're gonna have this wonderful standard of not cursing in our house. Like, hey, guess what? Today we are choosing to sit there and if you're looking in the Bible, in the 67 book of Kaila and Bruce, chapter one verse one, there's no cursing in the Payne household.

That didn't happen. The reason why we don't have you guys curse is because it goes back to what the Bible says in terms of controlling our tongue. I think it also goes back to what we've learned in life, right? I mean, we, we haven't gotten to where we're at now, and we're not even close to being really good at what we do in terms of parenting and with our own tongues, but it's stuff that we've learned along the way, and it's the importance of making sure we have good things come out of our tongues.

And so, looking at you and at school, right? I mean, you talk about students cursing. Didn't you just say something about teachers cursing as well?

Zoe: Yeah. Teachers cuss quite a bit at my school.

Bruce: Like do they sit there and curse at kids and call them names or is it more or less just part of their vernacular?

Zoe: Um, . I wouldn't say it's, it's like part of the vernacular, but they definitely use it to describe things when they're, there's like a lack for better words, but you know, sometimes they mess around with kids and call 'em certain things.

Bruce: I guess, you know, for me I get it, you know, as a high school kid, it's become commonplace.

I get, in terms of things being common placed, I don't get the cursing aspect of it. But let me ask you this. What would happen if you were to sit there and stand out and be different than the rest of the kids by not cursing or what would happen if you were the kid that sit there and was the cursing police and told kids not to curse?

Zoe: Well actually I tried doing that and I tried making other words, like plenty of my friends hear me say, golly, or like, goodness gracious,

Bruce: golly?

Zoe: Oh yeah, for sure. And they poke fun at me and they make jokes and mock, but really just like, builds an accountability for me.

Bruce: Accountability. You had a pretty funny story in terms of accountability, in terms of you in a group text message.

You wanna go ahead and share that story right now?

Zoe: Yeah, sure. So I'm in a group chat with a couple friends and one of them tells me something that throws me totally off guard and I like text in all caps. WHAT THE HELL?! Because I'm just so surprised and they totally just like got sidetracked from telling me their story of what happened.

And both of them were just like, Zoe, what are you doing? No, stop. Do better. You're not supposed to say that. That's not you.

Bruce: It's not you. Because like I said earlier, you know, in this podcast we do not hear her talk and curse at home ever. She's actually the kid who sits there and helpful. She does dishes at 11 o'clock at night.

She gets up and takes the kids to school at 5:30. She's the kid who sits there and is like, I'm going to youth group, or I'm going to church, or I'm gonna go hang out with friends. You know, whatever it might be. So when we sit here and hear these fables of sorts from other kids about her cursing at school, man, it's like, it was shocking at first.

And then when it continued and we heard more and more stories come out of our other kids' mouth, about man, you should hear Zoe talk when she's not around you guys. It's like, no way. And so as a high school teacher, it's hard to be the kid that sits there and is different than the rest.

You just wanna fit in and you wanna be like your friends and you don't wanna be looked at as different. Honey. Anything you wanna add to that?

Kaila: I think that there's a lot of people that would agree with that. But in the Bible, when it says that we are God's holy people, when you look at the root of that word, holy, and this is where I'm gonna go nerd on you, um, that word actually means to be set apart for God.

So it is, it's different from the world because you're being set apart for God and his purposes. And so I think it is natural for us to want to fit in or for us to want to kind of, oh, what are they doing? Or listen to the same music or watch the same shows. And you wanna be part of the in-group, but it's really important to have those friends that are going to hold you accountable to those higher standards.

So I do appreciate that Zoe's found herself some good friends that are going to in a group text say no. Don't use those words. let's use better words. You know, we don't, especially to me, what I don't understand about cursing is because I feel cursing is so unnecessary. And to me, I personally just think that if you are smart enough you can use other words, there is, I heard Zoe say something like, for lack of a better word, , like there's just another way to describe it.

There is like, you know, saying golly, or, oh my goodness. Or really, really, I mean, there are different things that we can say that doesn't require cursing in my humbled opinion. And so to me, I just think more or less like what is causing someone to curse, and maybe it is that it's just so normalized. And actually I have another.

Funny little tiny story. I was having a second grader today, he's one of my really advanced typers, and so I was gonna let him type m a story, and he came up to me and he's reading me his story, and he's like, so excited. And it's this drama or this action about this woman who stubbed her toe and lost her shoe.

And then she fell down the mountain and she got to the bottom of the mountain and she says, and he goes, how do you spell F U? And I was like, wait, what? And he's like, like she just screamed it like F you. was like telling, he said, could she say something else? And he's like, but she was really upset.

Bruce: kinda like Zoe when she's driving her car.

Kaila: Exactly. That's what I was thinking of. And I was like, maybe she says like, oh, farts. I was like, I was trying to help him come up with something else and he just looked at me and finally he was, Okay. And he walked away. But this is a second grader, you know, so he obviously was exposed to that somewhere or her is hearing it at home or hearing it from brothers and sisters or watching it on tv, whatever it is.

I think, like Zoe said, it's such a shame that it's becoming normalized and that people feel this is the only way to express themselves.

Bruce: Yeah, for sure. And I. You just hit on the head. What we take in is what comes out. If you take in garbage, whether it's tv, show, music, whatever it might be, you're gonna there and produce garbage coming out.

You sit there and take the Bible in, or you take wisdom in, you're gonna spit good stuff biblical stuff out. Wisdom outta your mouth and so I think it's something, that a) comes with time, but it's also on purpose. It's not by accident. It's like the same difference of sitting there. If I sit there and go and eat eight pieces of pizza, there's gonna be repercussions of it.

It's not gonna be good stuff coming outta me. Or actually, if you were to go eat, Eight pieces of pizza with red sauce. It would not be a good thing as your acid reflux would kick in. Right. And actually, a funny story about pizza and about talking about this, what comes in goes out is just a couple days ago talking about pizza.

We're sitting there, my wife bought pizza, the local pizza place. Buy one, get one free on Tuesdays. Us being teachers, limited funds, guess what? Feeding 11 kids. We sit there and take the deals as we can get it. I know typically on Tuesdays it's Taco Tuesdays, but we get buy one, get one free pizza. That's right at Tony C's.

Thank you, Tony C's, and so we're sitting there and I grab two pieces of pizza. And as I do, my little girl, our little five year old HG goes, I want some. And I said, Harvest Grace, you don't want some cuz you don't like pizza. And without a blink, without missing the beat, she goes to me, shut your mouth daddy.

And I was like, What? What? What did you just say? I said, you don't like pizza? She goes, shut your mouth, daddy. And I'm playing this through my head. Guess what? She didn't just sit there and make that up on her own. It's something that she's heard. And I go, why did you tell me to shut my mouth? And she goes, because you tell me to shut up.

And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. . And so all of a sudden I become the student. At this point in time, I'm like, okay, I wanna learn more about this right now. It is, it's something that she had heard, something that she had taken in. She had learned that when a, she talks too much. She just told to shut up. And I said to her, HG?

She goes, yes, daddy. I go, how do you feel when I tell you to shut up? And she goes, it hurts my heart. And I was like, man, now you're getting my pizza. Actually not the whole thing. I just gave her the crust cuz that's what she really wanted. And I'm feeling bad and I'm convicted and I'm like, okay, you wanna know what?

And this goes back to the same principle about Zoe. She sits there and she curses at school but she doesn't curse at home. When I go to school and teach, I don't tell kids to shut up. In fact, I tell kids to "Shutush" cuz I, that way they can go home and they can never tell their parents. I told 'em to shut up.

So a long time ago when I first started teaching, "Shutush" and they're like, what does that mean? I go, same difference is shut up. But guess what? You're not gonna go home and tell your parents, I told you to "shutush" so it's worked this many years down the road. Yet at home, my kids talk all nine of 'em, and I tell 'em to shut up and here we are.

My own learning thing that I can take from this.

Kaila: Well, that actually leads us into the second way that we use our words and how they're harmful is because sometimes we say things, and maybe it's not a curse word, but it can be a negative thing, and maybe we even spin that negative thing and we call it sarcasm.

Or we say, you know, I was just joking. And so I know sometimes, maybe we're saying, shut up to the kids or whatever, and we say like, shut up. Like, oh, come on already. Be quiet and we kind of say it in this like half joking tone of voice, but then we're like, oh, but we really kind of mean it. And I think that the other part of controlling our tongue and really thinking about our words is also our tone and how we're saying things and how that's building up people and how our words are affecting people and how they're interpret.

Bruce: I go back to when I was a kid and my dad used to always tell me one, oh crap, and you didn't use the word crap, but one oh crap, wipes out 10 attaboys. And the same thing goes for things that come out of our mouth. I can sit there and say 10 things that are very nice to my wife or kids, and then that one thing that slips outta my mouth that I just let come out, tears her down or tears them down and the 10 good things I said, just go right out the window.

They're not sitting there thinking about the 10 nice things they said, the thing they're talking about or thinking about the one mean thing that just tore down those 10 building blocks. And so I think it's important in our house, my wife has started this like little game of build up, tear down, push up, push down. What's that thing that you sit there and call? What's the game?

Kaila: Put downs and put up. So our,

Bruce: I thought that was a, our son who's six years old, who doesn't speak English yet. I thought he was trying to say pushups. But anyways, go ahead. He's like pushups. I was like, yeah, get down, gimme five pushups, put ups, put up, put

Kaila: up, put up. So what is the put up?

Bruce: So, well, it's the opposite. Is that the, is it the ice cream when we were kids or When I was a kid? No, those are push pops. No put ups,

Kaila: So, um, we have irish twins. We've got a lot of 'em, but specifically

Bruce: we have like Irish quintuplets, but whatever. That's a whole story for a different day. We've got really good at knowing what makes kids. But anyways,

Kaila: so our eight and our nine year old, they're a boy and a girl. They're 11 months apart, and I could say that it's because they're a boy and a girl, but then we have lots of other boy and girls sibling sets that do not fight as much as those two.

There is something about their personalities.

Bruce: I think it's the fact they both have big foot. We just went and got 'em shoes. One of 'em was a size seven men and the other one was a size six in women's. Anyways, sorry.

Kaila: Yeah, and they're eight and nine. So just think, run those numbers by your head. And one more time.

Um, they just tend to get in fights a little bit extra, like they're both extra spicy towards each other. And the other day one of them, Said something mean to the other. And then of course, you know the other one can't leave it down. They've gotta say something spicy back. And finally I said, you know what?

I am tired of you guys putting each other down. If I hear you say a put down, you're gonna owe your brother or sister what you're gonna owe the other person two put ups where you have to compliment them. And they both looked at me like, I might as well have been speaking Chinese because they were like, what do you mean?

A compliment, like, goodness gracious, let's say something nice for once , and it was actually really hard for them. And so sure enough, a few minutes go by. little girlfriend says something mean to her brother. I said, Finn, you owe him two put up. And her eyes got so big, she was like, what? I said, yeah, you owe her two put up.

Well then you wanna know. Sure enough, he was like, yeah, Finn, you owe me two. You can give her two put up right back. And I made them talk nice to each other and it was amazing to me and it was really enlightening to me in that moment how hard it for them to actually say nice things about each other. I

Bruce: can only imagine I, I could sit there and see the nine year old sitting into her and saying, Hey, great job on your math, math test a day.

Good job getting a 92. I got a 94. They're both on the same grade too, so I can only see him and his sarcasm coming outta his mouth just like that. And then her sitting there saying, Hey Seiders, good job running the mile today. It is great that you got seven minutes. I did six minutes and 30 seconds. And so yes, I love your put ups.

I think saying good things out of our mouth, it's life building, right? We, we have a tongue and as we kind of hit on the two different things, cursing, I just can't believe it's commonplace, but our tongues. They can be life building or they can be life killing. And it's one of those things that as parents we've been blessed with the opportunity to sit there and raise our kids and build them up.

God has entrusted us with our kids to be able to build them up, and I just feel all too often, even me and my own parenting journey as a young dad there's a lot of things I wish I could go back and take back, there's a lot of things I've said over the years that were, negative things that tore my kids down rather than build them up.

Things that tore my wife down rather than build her up. And it's something that we've learned from. And then I think as we move forward, in the world that, in which we live in today, I think it's important to sit there and have these standards. Like Zoe talks about that not only do we sit there and put the standards in front for them to live by, but more importantly it's standards that we live by and we model as parents.

It's so easy for my wife and I, especially when we're tired. Like right now, we're 15 hours into our day, could easily sit there and have stuff come out that we're just tired and it, and something negative slips up. But it's one of those things that we have tried to sit here and make a priority is the way in which we talk and the way in which we interact with our kids and with each other in front of the kids.

That way they're seeing it modeled properly and correctly in terms of what it looks like to do, put up pushups, uh, put up in front of the kids.

I'm gonna finish with the Bible verse real quick, "the tongue can bring death or life. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences." Think about that, and that's it from Proverbs 18:21. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences. Okay? Are the consequences that come outta your mouth that come because of your mouth? Are they gonna be positive consequences or negative consequences?

The next time you wanna sit there and tear someone down, there's gonna be negative consequences that come. That the Bible sits there and it tells us that very, very clearly. So I just encourage you as a parent, as a spouse, as an employee, as a father, son, mother, daughter, whatever you might be, that you sit there and you choose your words wisely because what you say can build people up and can tear 'em down just as evenly. And I just challenge you. I know it's something that we're working on in our house.

I'm gonna shift gears here. I sit here and talk about something that our daughter Zoe struggles with, which is her tongue. At the same time. She's a kid that we're very proud of.

I want to give her a chance to sit here and talk about her testimony cool thing is back in the fall, she had the opportunities, that field of faith to give her testimony in front of a couple hundred people. I think as she gave her testimony, think of that person in front of a microphone who's a little nervous cuz there are a couple hundred people sitting there looking at you.

On top of that, she couldn't hear herself just the way the sound system worked. And she has a really great message. And think of Forrest Gump at the very end of his speech and in Washington DC saying, and that's all I had to say about that. And people are like, okay, I heard what you had to say, but it was a little shaky,

due to the microphone, due your nerves. And so I just wanna give you a chance right now to do two things. A I want you to give your testimony and then I want you to sit there and close us. The word of prayer based on the tongue and everything else that we're going through, and just growth in life.

Zoe: So my testimony that I shared at Fields of Faith reflected really just what I was feeling at a certain point in my life and things that I just thought, and things that I would say that just reflected my feelings ultimately. So to start with, I've always been a Christian. That's how I was raised.

Obviously going to church, loving God, serving him, knowing him, that's just who my rock, who my rock was. But you know, those teenage years hit and you just kinda like question who you're supposed to be and where your identity's found and you might get lost, whether it's in the social life with people or fitting in to not fit in and really just trying to live up to God's standards or your parents' standards at the same time.

And it was just really hard. and you know, my brother was listening to a certain kind of music that he was into. MGK and Jayden, both rock music and they would just talk about their feelings and how they thought, like, the world sucks, people suck. There's no hope. Just like life is gonna be sad and it's gonna throw curves and you are allowed to sit there and be depressed about it.

And so I just fell into that zone, listening through music, letting them feed me their lies. And in reality, I was just like blinded so much by it, just realizing that I was okay to sit like that, which it wasn't, but I didn't realize that till I went to a concert with my brother. I went to Jayden's concert and the whole time he was just talking about his life, how he was depressed, how he just had so many failures and people have failed him.

And just like his life, he was drowning. All these people, there were so many people there, and they were just like bowing to him saying, Jayden, you saved my life, or, thank you Jayden. You were the reason. Like, I'm, I'm good now. I can relate to you. And I realize all of a sudden like, wait, I'm with these people, but I don't think this way.

Jayden's not my savior. I know who my savior is. I know where my rock is. I know where I'm found. And it definitely wasn't there. And so I realized like after the moment, like I was so happy to know. I knew the light and I knew I had that light and I could share that light, and I didn't have to continue living in such a hole.

So I was just really grateful in that moment that I could have that turnaround, um, with the switch flip. .

Bruce: That is awesome. And I think as she just said, you know, it's so easy to get caught up in what the rest of the kids or your peers are doing compared to doing what God wants you to do. I think it's easy to get, uh, Hey, guess what?

I don't wanna stick out. And for you to have that moment where you realize like, Hey, guess what? Just because the crowd thinks or says something like the music that they're talking about or that she talked about. Just because all these people, like the lyrics that are being spoken about doesn't mean I have to follow those lyrics or take those lyrics as gospel.

Just because people are acting a certain way, because that's the popular thing to do, I don't need to sit there and act that way. And I just wanna actually wanna take a verse real quick or a couple verses from Acts chapter five and here's the reality. As a kid, if you go against the grain, especially as a high school kid, people are gonna probably look at you a little funny.

And the reality is, if you go against the grain, you might get made fun of. And the reality is, if you go against the grain, look at Jesus. Perfect human being was on earth with 33 years, went against the grain and he ended up getting hung on a tree. And so in Acts chapter 5 verse 41, it says, "the apostles left the high cancel rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. "

Doesn't sound all that awesome, but the reality is, guess what? I'll sit there and take the suffering of being a Christian. These people, these apostles sat there and were stoked to sit there that they were worthy enough to be counted by God to be called worthy to suffer disgrace from the name of Jesus.

I just sit there and challenge, high school kids. I challenge parents. I challenge whoever it might be in society today, especially with our tongues. Sit there and do what's worthy to sit there to. Like I said, to be worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. And so we're gonna sit here and end the word prayer.

Zoe. Go ahead Zoe. You can sit here and, and close us in order prayer before we do so, you can go to our website, what is it? growingpaynes.org

Kaila: And it's all gonna be linked down on the show notes, so make sure you check those out. It'll have the scripture references and then it will have our email and ways to connect with us.

Bruce: Go ahead Zoe.

Zoe: Dear Lord God, I just thank you for bringing us here today to spread this message about the tongue. Lord God, I pray that we can realize just really how powerful its impact is not only for us, but the people around us and how it just truly reflects our heart. Lord God, I pray that you can just open our eyes, those little things that we might be saying that really aren't what we should be saying, Lord God.

And I pray that we can all just have that little eye-opener. Lord, I pray that we can read the Bible and really feel ourselves with your words and not our own. And I pray that we can have patience, Lord God, and self-control to control ourselves in the midst of those pieces, like of anger, Lord God, whatever may happen.

Just pray that we fill ourselves up with your words so that we feel better and we can really just attribute to you, Lord God. I pray that we have a great risk of our week and weekend, Lord God, that we can rest up. And I just pray for schools and teachers and students, Lord God, that as we are in a time like this, that we don't just all recognize and conform to cursing, Lord God, cuz it isn't right.

I pray that we truly just make a change little by little. Um, I pray that we can just unite together, Lord God in your words. Amen.

Kaila: Amen.

Bruce: Amen.

006: The Growth Cycle

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode six of our Unshackled Love podcast. I am Bruce Payne sitting here with my beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous professor of a wife,

Kaila: Kaila Payne. You threw me off there with that, prof Payne.

Bruce: Well, I just wanted to throw it in tonight. You know, we've been sitting here going back and forth as we podcast, and tonight's gonna be a night where my wife, who happens to be a professor at a university that we both attended.

I mean, we didn't meet there cause we went through like a decade apart. But, that being said, she is a professor, and so with her speaking that it was like, Hey, you wanna, I'm gonna address you as Professor Payne, so I can even take notes as you sit here and preach tonight.

Kaila: Well, yes. for those of you who are just joining us, you're gonna find that Bruce and I wear many hats, including the fact that we're both teachers in the greater Austin areas.

So teaching in the public school setting is our daytime job, and then our nighttime job is parenting nine beautiful, wonderful, also, equally crazy children,

Bruce: just like their mom. Their mom is absolutely wonderful. Yet a dash of crazy.

Kaila: Mm-hmm. sometimes. And in there daddy's like a big splash of crazy. Like if, if it's an Arnold Palmer, like he's the crazy.

and the beautiful, it's like together. It's just like,

Bruce: absolutely. And and just for those of you who listen in, I actually like my Arnold Palmer with a little bit of lemonade cuz I have enough sweetness in me. Whereas in for her, she can use a little extra sweetness in her lemonade and in her honor, Palmer, just to make her a little bit more sweet.

It's because I have more Jesus in me.

Kaila: That's such a lie. I like unsweet iced tea.

Bruce: Just like your personality . Just kidding. She is super sweet. Half the month. Um, anyway. Anyways, okay, so I digress.

Kaila: You are going to, as you get to know, Bruce and I, you are going to realize that on top of teaching during the day and parenting nine kids at night, we do also wear many hats.

Which one of mine just happens to be. A professor of early childhood education. I helped teach pre-service teachers, but I also recently joined the John Maxwell team as I work towards this new season of life that I feel God is calling us to, and that's family and parenting coaching.

I joined the John Maxwell team in order to become a certified speaker, trainer, and coach with an emphasis really on family and parenting guidance and mentorship and coaching. And one of the reasons that I really feel this is so important is because we cannot effectively lead our children, like Proverb 22: 6 says, "lead your children the way they go and they will not depart from it"; we can't effectively do that if we don't know the path we're supposed to be on ourselves. And so with this new year, still fresh, we're a week into this new year and I know that a lot of people are taking this time to assess and reflect and maybe set new goals or quote unquote New Year's resolutions.

Bruce: I love how you say New Year's resolutions. As someone who's just turned 40 I think I've had enough of those in my life to sit there and say I never need another New Year's resolution again. And, for those of you who know my wife and I throughout the year of 2022, I feel like we had a bunch of resolutions take place in our life, but none of 'em started actually in January.

Right? Does that make sense? Like we, whether it's eating healthy, whether it's losing weight, whether it's not drinking alcohol anymore, whatever it might be, we had a lot of different things that God kind of put in front of us that we chose to follow based on what he was leading us to do.

Kaila: Exactly, and so at this time, most of us, this is when we take the time to actually sit and do it, and we're thinking about, and it's at the forefront, but the reality is, is growing and having these goals.

This should be an ongoing process. This should be something that we continuously go through that maybe it's quarterly, you're sitting down and setting new goals and new resolutions okay, did I meet my old goals? Do I need to change my goal? What went well, what didn't go well?

And so today we're gonna talk about growing and self-growth. But the reason that self-growth is so important, especially if you're a parent, is because you're responsible for growing your children into adults. And so, Again, I've mentioned earlier I joined the John Maxwell team. The first book that I read through by John Maxwell was The 15 Laws of Growth, and it really just stood out to me because as a teacher who promotes a growth mindset with my students and wanting them to grow, and that this idea of fixed knowledge, right, that we're not just born with knowledge, but everybody has the ability to grow as one who feels so passionately about that inside the classroom.

I also know that that. Stop that. We are continuous learners as we go on through life. And even though John Maxwell's book is very geared towards leadership, I wanted to read this quote to you by John Maxwell and just think about it in the idea of, or in the view of parenting and how this applies to parenting.

So John Maxwell says, "growing yourself enables you to grow others. To reach your potential, you must grow and to grow, you must be intentional about it. As leaders, we must have a personal growth plan in order to lead our people well, because you cannot give what you do not have, and you cannot deliver what you have not developed."

Bruce: And I think right there, and I'm gonna let you go back into that in a second, but as a teacher, we sit here and you often hear, or even as a student, the moment you stop learning is the moment you start dying. It doesn't matter how old you are. We go back and forth, ages just a number, but the reality is you can be five and learn whether you're in kindergarten or you can be 85.

You should be learning about something in life. There's always something to learn. Just because you're 85 years old doesn't mean there's something you can't learn about life or about yourself or sit there and challenge yourself with, per se.

Kaila: And even thinking about our kids and how our teenagers, God loves them, Lord be with me.

Just say lots of blessings right now because of the fact that we have teenagers. .

Bruce: Is that like saying, hail mary, hail Mary. Hail Mary. Just kidding.

Kaila: Have mercy teenagers because they have been in school for so long. And some of our kids, our teenagers, like they've done school well and so because they do well in school, they just think like, oh, I'm ready to be an adult.

I've got life all figured out. And how many of us know that there is so much life to be learned once you're done with school? what's not? Life is the biggest lesson of all.

Bruce: That's when life begins though. Right? You know, you're sitting there in school, you're getting equipt, and we're learning all, you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic so that we're equipped for life.

And the reality is the moment you turn 18, 19, 20 is when life actually begins. That's when, you go to college or you move out and live on your own, or you start paying your own bills. Or God forbid you get someone pregnant before they're, you're 25, uh, whatever it might be. There's a lot that's going on.

I only say that cause I had my first kid before 25 and my wife had her first kid before she was 25, and we both have seen how that works out in terms of life and how it changes life and makes you change the human being.

Kaila: And so what I love about this quote is, first of all, even though he says, as leaders must, we must have a personal plan for growth in order to lead our people, we can change that and say, as parents, we must have a personal growth plan in order to lead our children.

and so we are not done growing even though we have more experience than them, we must have a personal plan for growth, even if you think that everything is going well. I mean, think about this, when normally when a woman finds out she's pregnant, the first thing she does is she goes and buys the book What to Expect When You're Expecting, right?

Like, how many mothers right now are raising your hand and saying, I have that book on my bookshelf because it's like the holy grail of this is everything you need to know. When we look up all the parenting books and we look up all the newborn articles and what to buy and what to pack, and how to pack a diaper bag and all these things about babies because maybe you haven't had a baby before.

And so you need to know how to handle babies, and you prep and you plan and you prepare. And then who goes on to buy a book to learn about toddler? Or who then goes on and reads a book about how to parent boys or how to parent girls and what to expect as they hit, pre-teens and puberty, and then the teenage years, and how many people are reading those books when they're still pregnant?

Bruce: So good.

Kaila: We're not, we're not thinking ahead. And so often we tend to react. And so maybe you'll read that parenting book for teenagers when your kid's already a teenager and you're having trouble and you're having a hard time and you're fighting and you're going head to head. And then you'll read the book.

Bruce: And at that point you're playing catch up..

Right? Rather than sit there [Absolutely]. And sit there and play from a point of strength. You're playing catch up to pretty much trying to help your deficiencies or an area that you're deficient in. I mean, I know for us, like we sit there and we have a kid who doesn't obey a teacher at school in kindergarten and it's like, oh man, what do I wanna read now?

Or we have kids who are sitting there pushing the lines of the boundaries and you know, as teenagers and it's like, oh, maybe we should read the boundaries books maybe beforehand next time, before these next kids coming through.

Like maybe we sit there and equip ourselves now before it actually happens that way, we're actually acting at a purpose instead of reacting.

Kaila: And that's what John Maxwell talks about, that intentionality. So to intentionally plan ahead and so to set a plan for growth, not because you have necessarily have a problem that needs to be addressed now,

but be proactive and think about, you know what, how can I grow so that I can be the best potential leader for my children so that I can lead them, because we never have it fully figured out, and we're never going to have it fully figured out, and Lord knows we've said lots of prayers of forgiveness and we've learned the hard way from not preparing or not planning or reacting to a certain situation when I wish that I would've handled that a different way.

I wish I would've given different words, or I wish I would've responded or wouldn't have been angry. Whatever the case may. Lord knows there's extra blessings for first children, firstborns, because we get it wrong with them and then we figure it out later. But why not get ahead of that curve?

Bruce: I agree with that. And over the years we've had our trials and tribulations as parents, and I'd like to sit there and think that as we've gone along, we've not gotten perfect or even great by any means, but we make things happen in a much more fluid way compared to reacting like we did in the past,

Kaila: and we're never going to get it.

And that's what I love that Paul says, you know, in Philippians, he's telling the church, he's giving them this letter and he's giving them advice, but then he stops just to let them know, just to remind them, I don't have it all figured out. I haven't reached perfection and I'm never going. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

Nope, I haven't figured it out, but I focus on this one thing. We forget the past and look forward to what lies ahead. Press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us. And parents, right now, I'm telling you that if you have a child, whether that child was planned or not, God called you to be a parent.

So whether you planned it or not, God called you to be the parent of that child and he's expecting you to fulfill and to press on and forget your mistakes and forget what type of person you used to be. Forget about all the things you did in the past. Forget about all the hard times, and we just press on and we keep pressing and we keep striving for better because that's what God has called us into, and that's what your kids deserve.

Bruce: Absolutely. When you sit there and look at kids, God has a purpose for every single human being that was born. There's no illegitimate children. There might be illegitimate parents, you know, when we first become a parent, but there are no illegitimate children.

There's a reason why God has put them on this earth. There's a reason why He has sit there and given us them to Stewart as we sit here and live on this earth.

Kaila: And so now that we've talked about the importance of having a growth plan, we've talked about why it's important.

Now I'm gonna give you the practical steps. So I'm about to hop into teacher mode, and I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna give you a kind of a framework or a guide of how to do this. So how do we move forward and how do we grow? Because probably one of the biggest things that prevents us from growing is that we say, I don't know how, like I don't know how to do that.

I know I need to be a better mom. I know I need to control my anger. I know that I need to stop drinking. I know that I need to lose weight. I know I need to spend more time. I know I need to set boundaries. I know I need to learn how to say no. We're aware of these things that we know are a problem, but what we don't know is how to get over them or how to fix them.

And so knowing how is gonna give you some really practical steps to getting started. And then the best part about these steps is that they're like a cycle. You can just repeat them and start over again. And this kind of helps continue us as that lifelong learner that Bruce was mentioning earlier.

So the first step to growth and setting up a growth plan is taking time to reflect. And this is a skill that really takes practice. Some of us may just be born with this natural, reflective spirit, but some of us, it's really hard to take that time and space to reflect on what's happening in our lives. What's going well, what's not going well, and then asking those really in-depth thought-provoking questions like, how do I wish this would turn out?

Where do I wanna see my kids when they graduate? What are my kids learning from me right now? What bad habits are they picking up? And what things do I need to change? What spirit do I see in my kids that I can grow? What spirit in my kids do I have turmoil with, do I conflict with, and how do I turn that around?

So reflection is deep analytical process where we're asking ourselves these questions and maybe there isn't a right or wrong answer, but they're very thought-provoking and it takes us to a world of imagination. And I think that's why it's such a skill that requires practice, because especially as adults, we like tangible things.

We like things we can see, we like things that line up and make sense and you know, here's my plan and here's my schedule and here's my budget. And so to reflect allows us to kind of open up our mind space and say, well, what would happen if I did this? Or where do I want to see my kids? What does reaching my full potential look like as a parent?

And what are my kids capable of? What is reaching their full potential look like?

But once we have that and once we see what we're capable of and we see what our potential, we can vision our own potential for ourselves or the potential for our kids, then we can set steps for, how do I get them there, man, I would love to see my child graduate college. So what is it gonna take to get them there?

Bruce: And when reflecting, I think it's important to be honest and realistic, right? I think there's a big difference between dreaming and reflection. When you're looking at the reflection. It's like, what did I do well in and what do I need to do better?

And I think for us as parents, and not even just parents, but as people in general, there's always things that we can do better. I think the big thing though is when we reflect, I mean, how often did we sit there and only do a half a reflection or a half honest truth reflection about how we are as a person?

Oh, you know, I'm not a bad person. I might sit there and stumble with my curse words, but guess what? I'm still a good person. Are you really being honest there with your reflection of who you are as a human being? Or are you sitting there making an excuse?

Or you wanna know I'm a great human being. I sit there and I tithe, I go to church, I help out people and the poor. But guess what? Every night I go home and I get wasted. Are you really being true with your reflection who you are? And I think the same goes with parenting. You know, it's like, Hey, guess what? I'm doing great in this area. I have kids who are getting straight A's or B's, but guess what?

Meanwhile, little Johnny, I'm not using one of our kids just a random kid is going to the principal's office on a regular basis. Am I really doing a great job parenting or is there something I'm missing out on that I could do better moving forward?

Kaila: Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm gonna steal his word, but I'm gonna let him explain this in a second.

When we have pet sins that we allow to run our lives, sometimes it is important to have that honest moment to say, how are my pet sins going to affect my children and their future. And so can you, this is something that you brought into me and I'd love for you to share. What is a pet sin?

Bruce: Yeah, so had the, the awesome opportunity about two weeks ago when we were in California, sitting down with this gentleman who was 97 years old.

His name is Jack, uh, he's a World War veteran, or, He fought in a war, um, back a long time ago. I'm not, I'm not a, she's laughing at me cuz she's a nerd and I'm not. Uh, but he fought in a war a long time ago, 97. You do the math.

So anyways, this guy, he's like, yeah, he goes, we as human beings have trouble with our pet sins and it sins that we enjoy and that we don't want to give up. It's sins that we are willing to sit there and continue even though we shouldn't continue.

It's one of those ones that's kind of like a little a pet that, hey, I just keep giving into it and I give it into it, and I give it into it. It's something that you allow to happen, even though you know you probably shouldn't because you're being selfish with something that you desire. It's a sinful nature. A desire that we want even though we have no business having it in our life.

Kaila: And so I love that it's called a pet sin because there's two verses I'm gonna drop on you, but the first one is Proverbs 26:11-12. And it says, "as a dog returns to, its. So a fool repeats his foolishness." And if you've ever had a puppy, you know that this is what dogs literally do.

So as gross as that image is, that is so reality. Even, you know, thousands of years ago when this

Bruce: puppies are our six year old, I mean, our six year old returns to his food that's dropped on the ground and the dogs have licked and he puts it back in his mouth. So anyway, sorry to cut you off.

Kaila: So we're just saying, but this idea of pet sins and how gross that is, but " so a fool repeats his foolishness" and so it's like if it's foolish and we shouldn't be doing it, it's the same visual of just like gross, disgusting, like stop going back to that.

But then maybe we're not really aware of it. And so if you're in that process of reflecting and you're like, well I'm not really sure, like do I have a pet sin? Is there something that's getting in the way or is there something that's selfish that's taking away from other time? The best way to figure it out is to spend time with God cuz "search me God and know my heart". Right? Search me God. Reveal that to me. And second Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives".

So the best way to figure out, am I in line with God? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Do I have a pet sin that's taking away from God's will for my life? Well, go spend time with God and get into scripture. Go read his Bible. Go read Proverbs. One of have the habits that Bruce and I when it comes to Bible reading is whatever day it is, that's the proverbs that we read for that day because Proverbs is full of wisdom and advice and hey, this is what you should be doing and this is how you should be living your life. And then we do other Bible studies on the side, or I'm currently reading the Bible through a year, and I did not start in January.

And honestly, it's actually probably taken me a year and a half, but that's okay. Like I am persisting through it and that is all right. But the rest of that verse says, "God's word corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us what to do is right".

So it is so important. We need to be in God's Word. We need to know what God's word says. We need to spend time reading our Bible, and this is the most important skill you can also teach your kids because we can talk about it but how often do you say, oh, do as I say, not as I do.

And since God's word is alive and it holds the power of God, then when your kids read it, we should be teaching our kids how to read the Bible for themselves, because then they're also gonna build that habit of turning to God's Word, and it's gonna have a much bigger impact as if it's coming from us.

And so sometimes you'll hear mesay: well, you know, we don't do this because that's what God says in his word. Not because mom says it's bad to steal or not because Mom says that you shouldn't tell a lie but because God says this is the standards that He holds us to, and this is what He requires of us being followers of Jesus.

And so first thing, open up your Bible. Do some prayer. Reflect on your life, reflect on how do I need to grow? That's the first step. And then the second step is to prepare. So now we're going into the second step. Don't just feel like you have to jump into it. Do your research. Find a resource, whether it's a book or a small group, or a community class.

Again, the biggest thing that prevents people from growing is that they don't know how. So come up with a plan. How are you going to grow? Are you gonna join a small group? Are you going to read a book? Is there something that you're gonna do every single day? And you're gonna start changing habits, or you're gonna do it a little bit at a time?

Like Bruce and I know when we first started our weight loss journey, it really started with changing our eating habits. And then we started exercising. So we kind of tied all together and then, you know, at first it was just cardio and then we started lifting. So you add onto it. So maybe you're gonna set little steps for yourself.

It has to be a tangible, I'm gonna check up on this and one month I can come back and I can say, did I actually do what I said I was going to do?

Bruce: I think when, when putting a plan together too, make sure you put a plan that works well for you biblically based, but works well for you.

Don't be afraid to go outside the box. Don't be afraid to go across a grain. I know for us, as we parent nine kids and we go through and navigate life, I mean, there's a lot of things that work a certain way or work well for families who have two or three kids, maybe four kids. But when you have nine kids, you have to do it differently.

don't be afraid to sit there and go outside the box and do things a little bit differently than what the status quo might be. I know for us, when it comes to preparing, we've often gone, across the grain in terms of how we raise and prepare and reflect with our own kids.

There are things that we do in terms of having our kids play or not play with certain clubs that people are like, you're crazy for doing that, but guess what? We've gone across the grain and it's worked out because we feel it's in the best interest of our kids based on our reflections and going to God and prayed about it.

Kaila: So there's even little funny things that, cuz you know, a family of nine people are always really curious about, I'm just like, how we do life? . Like how do you do life? And one of the things that's really important to us is family time. Would you agree? We value family time.

Bruce: We, we value family time so much that we understand that during the week we don't even have time to sit there and have dinner together.

What, eight days outta seven? Uh, just kidding. Pretty much. Almost every night. It's that busy. Rather than this week, cuz we haven't started sports back up yet for the spring, but we have made a point of it to where we have family breakfasts every single.

Kaila: Exactly, and that's, that's exactly what I was thinking is that, so we have family breakfast because that's pretty much the only time we're all at home and can sit and actually join one another around the table and spend time with one another.

And the nights, as much as we would love to have like that picturesque family dinner and everyone's around the table, that just doesn't happen when we've got practice four nights a week in six different locations, plus games on the weekends and tournaments and kids working and this and that and the other.

Like there's so much going on at night after school that family dinners don't always happen. So we make a point to have family breakfast.

Bruce: And I would say, taking that one step further, another thing that we reflected on was the amount of church that we have missed over the last couple years.

And it's based on traveling for our kids and sports. And you know, while we've thoroughly think churches. Important part or a vital part of people's lives, it's one of those things that we kind of have not avoided, but we haven't been able to go every week just due the fact that our kids schedule is so busy.

And so what we did, you know, over summertime was, Hey, let's look at churches that offer us Sunday night service. We happen to have one church in the area that offers it. It happens to be a church that we have fallen in love with and absolutely adore. But the main reason why we did it, or the two things that we looked at, When is our youth group?

It's Sunday nights. They have Sunday night gatherings that allow our kids who play sports during the week go to youth group every single week. And on top of that, it allows us to go to church as a family more times than not do the fact that they have a Sunday night service.

Kaila: So again, figure out what you need to do for your family.

Do your research, come up with your plan. Set a measurable goal that you're going to be able to check in with yourself. I think that's the other part of New Year's evolutions and why they don't work and why people give up. It's because they look at it as this year long thing, and so when they don't meet it or they fall at the wagon, they're just like, oh, well I guess I'm done until next year.

In one month, check up on it or in three months, check up on it and then see how it's going. But we're missing a step in the cycle cuz we reflected, we prepared. So there's the action part of it.

We actually have to do it . So once we come up with the plan, once we get all the resources, we actually have to do it. And you have to stay committed. And I think this is the biggest part, is really just commit. Even through your mistakes. Even through your hiccups, even through your bad days. Even through a cheat day.

Even through a day where you said you weren't gonna do it, and then you did it again. And the devil wants to tell you all the lies about how, "see, you did that thing that you said you weren't gonna do and you haven't changed," you have to keep doing it. We have to stay committ and we have to show ourself grace.

So action comes with grace because mistakes happen. And how many of you have heard: you learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are proof that growth is happening, that we're actually trying, that we're putting ourselves out there, that we're putting ourselves on the line, that we're trying something new and we're growing.

Mistakes are proof we're growing, they're going to happen. So you just have to show yourself grace through that time and you have to stay committed to your goal.

And so again, just to wrap up, after you do it for a little while, go back and reflect again and taking that reflection. What's going well, what's not, if something's not going well, Then go back to your research. Go back to your preparation. What do you need to do? So that, okay, my first plan didn't. How can I change it to make my better? Or was your goal unrealistic? And maybe you need to change your goal.

You know what? We're doing good and we're growing in this way, but maybe that's not really the goal. Maybe you realize that you thought that was the goal. You thought that's what you wanted to grow, or that's what you wanted to change. But then as you start this process, you realize, oh, what I really need to grow in is this other area, this is what I need to work on, because it's revealed to you as you start the process.

Bruce: I think more times than not, the first area that we grow in is not really the area that we need the most growth in. It's kinda like that tip of the iceberg. We sit there and think we need to lose weight.

Well, the reality is maybe God's just using that losing weight as the gateway into the area, which he's really trying to get. And I think that's something for her and I that we've seen over the course of this last year. It's like every time we sit there and say, Hey, okay, we're, we're gonna surrender.

We were made to surrender. We are surrendering in this area. And we're like, cool. It's going well. And then it's like, uhoh, actually, I want you to surrender in this area too. And then we sit there and we go and we surrendering that area and then it's like, actually that's not what I was looking for. I want you to surrender in this area as well and in this area as well.

And before you know it, it's like you're all over the place on this journey that you could never even expect to happen or a journey that you've never can even dream of. You're sitting there and going through and living it. And that's kind of where we're at right now.

Kaila: And so that's how we do it. And I just want to tie this all back into parenting because as you go through this process, this is a process that we all need to practice, we need to develop, we need to do over and over to strengthen those muscle.

But when we do this and when we can become really good and efficient at this, we help our children grow because then we can walk them through that process. And sometimes I think that it's easy to say, oh, I can't wait for my kids to just mature out of this stage. Or, oh, this, this is just a phase of life.

I hate this phase. I hate the toddler stage. Right? We can put it to chance and say, oh, I can't wait for my kids to grow out of it. And we just figure, oh they'll figure it out. Or time will go by. And time is the magic ingredient for our kids growing into better human beings.

And the reality is, good kids don't just happen. And so we need to sew these seeds. And again, we need to prepare ourselves so that we can help our kids grow through each season. Because here's a really important news flash in case anyone's ever told you that you're raising kids, they lied to you. None of us are raising kids.

You are raising adults. And so with everything we do to help ourselves grow and reach our full potential, it is to give that to our children and help them grow, help them learn how to reflect, help them set goals so that they can be better, more efficient adults.

Bruce: And so, real quick, not to cut you off if you can't tell, if you were to step into both of our classes, say you're in a block scheduled school and you have 90 minutes, she's a teacher who would go teach for an hour and 28 minutes and give you homework.

I'm the teacher who will sit here and teach for 15/20 and let you do your homework in class and give you the Cliff Notes version. So real quick, as we take this marathon and we wrap it up, I know you have a quick, cute story about our finfin that you'd like to tell us. Go ahead and tell us that and let's get this thing going.

Kaila: I wasn't even, actually, I was gonna skip the story. It's amazing

Bruce: story because there's actually been two great stories about Finn. She's gonna say the first one cause I really don't even remember all of it, cuz I'm ADHD but I'm gonna add something to it cause I do kind of know what she's gonna talk about.

So go ahead.

Kaila: Okay. So I got a text from another teacher, mom, parent at the campus that we work at, and she was apologizing for something that had happened between our girls and I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. . I was like, I didn't hear anything about it. But what had happened was the other girl had brought her phone to school and as a result, didn't want to get in trouble cuz she was afraid she was gonna get caught.

And there was this whole kind of scheme she was trying to bribe Finn I'll give you $5 if you just say it was yours cuz your, your mom won't care. But I'm gonna get grounded, and, you know, all the things that we work up in our head. But I was really proud of my daughter because she stood up for what was right.

She said, no, that's not the right thing to do. Just say it's yours. And she ended up telling the teacher, hey, this is what's going on. You know, she's in the bathroom freaking out trying to hide her phone, doing whatever. and so that other mom had really appreciated her integrity and it kind of just goes back to what I was saying, like good kids don't just happen.

And my daughter is not perfect by any means, but that's taken years of us instilling in her, you know what, we don't lie when we do something wrong because we make mistakes and it's better to just admit it so that we can move on from it.

Bruce: Absolutely. I just wanna give her a shout out. On a separate note, we're sitting here in the middle of starting the next like little venture of our growing Paynes with our little paynes.

And today she was awesome in terms of helping us out. Her and Wooden both, but her in particular in terms of just starting the next phase of what we're gonna be launching, coming up. And so I wanna give her a shout out. She's a great kid with a big heart who loves Jesus. And it's not by accident, it's because of the different things and opportunities that we've placed in her life.

Kaila: And so to wrap all this up, I'm gonna leave you with a word of encouragement. It's Philippians 1:6 "I am certain that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns." So please do not give up on your goals. You are worth so much potential and growth cuz Jesus loves you.

He loves you so much that he accepts you as you are, but he loves you way too much to leave you that way. And so he wants you to grow. He wants you to grow in his likeness and image and in his love and under his grace and his mercy. And the best way to do that is through his scripture and his word. But if you are finding yourself coming up short and you really want some extra help and you maybe want to schedule a meeting with Bruce or I, we would love to sit down and come up with that growth plan with you, help you reflect, talk about areas that you could potentially grow and those actionable next steps.

So if you don't know how to grow and you're like, yeah. Sounds great, but I'm really still not sure of what that looks like on paper. Reach out to Bruce and I our emails in the show notes. You can also go to growingpaynes.org. That's our website that's also linked down in the show notes. And just reach out to us cuz we would love to connect with you and support you as a parent.

That's what we feel God has put on our hearts is reaching out and supporting parents through God's Word.

Bruce: And that is the bell ringing as you just put your whole 90 minutes. Professor Payne , I'm gonna actually let you finish with a order of prayer too.

Kaila: Go ahead. You're gonna, I did all the talking and you're gonna make me pray.

Bruce: I'm sitting here trying to get the bells, the ring so that it sounded like a classroom bell ring at the end of 90 minutes as I'm sitting here like twitching. Um, so anyways, yeah. You know what I am. You're, you're glowing right now. You look so beautiful. I think you should pray.

Kaila: Dear Father God, thank you for this time.

Thank you for giving me the words to speak, and I just pray that they touched somebody's heart today. Even if it's one person, God, you know that one person and you know who this message was for. I pray that you just continue to plant that seed in our heart, that yearns for you, that yearns for your word, and gives us that want to grow towards you.

That desire for your word in our lives so that we can grow to reach our full potential, but so that we can use those gifts to help our children grow and reach their full potential. Thank you, God, for loving us and being a wonderful God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Bruce: Amen. I hope you guys have a blessed week.

005: Christmas Edition

-Transcript-

Kaila:
Hello there and welcome to episode five of our Unshackled Love podcast. My name is Kaila Payne, and I'm sitting across from my wonderful, super sexy, handsome love of my life, best friend Bruce Payne. 

Bruce: 
That was so many objectives, I'm sitting here right now and it brings me back to my childhood.

I'm sitting in class now like Mr. Bruce Payne. You are such a wonderful, talented, gifted, no, I'm just kidding. They never said that. When I was a kid, I was a hellan on wheels. I sat there and made my teacher's days a lot of fun. 

Kaila: 
Well, usually you do the intros and you say all those nice things about me, so I had to make sure that I outdid you this time.

Bruce:
 I think you did. That was a very good gift you just gave me, making me feel good about myself, so thank you. 

Kaila:
Oh, well I love you. Um, Bruce and I, in case you are just joining us, we are two teachers in the greater Austin area and we have the privilege of parenting nine, beautiful, wonderful, but also crazy children.

Bruce:
 I'm glad she's able to sit there and say, beautiful, wonderful, yet crazy children. Especially since you spent the last seven days straight home with them. I mean, that's pretty good for you still to say that.

Kaila: 
Yeah. I mean, it's all, we're gonna talk about it in today's episode, but it's the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But honestly, lots of blessings have come out of it, and so I think that that's what Bruce and I are most excited to talk to you about today. Our podcast is gonna be a little bit different as we've gone through this holiday season over the past couple weeks. We really just wanna share with you how God has been speaking to our hearts differently this holiday season.

Bruce: 
Most definitely, and I think for the holiday season or Christmas season in particular, it means a lot of different things. You know, it, it could be gift giving, it could be Jesus being born. There's a lot of different ways to go about it, especially in the secular world that we live in, but also within churches that we go to or within Christianity itself.

And so today we're gonna sit there and unwrap it in terms of how God has brought it to our hearts, especially like the last month or so. And so diving into his word, I just looking at what the holiday season means to us this year. I would say it's the word redemption or as a season of redemption or jesus being bored is the ultimate redemption story. Right? 

And so, you know, as we sit here and talk about it, I think it's important to kinda listen or think about it or ponder about it from that lens. Like what does it mean? And for us, as I just mentioned, it's redemption. And so, if you look back, a couple thousand years ago when Jesus was born there was a lot of stuff going on at that point in time in both Mary and Joseph's life. 

If you go back prior to that, back into Isaiah chapter seven, it talks about a child being born, to a virgin, and it kind of sets up the story of what's to come in the future. It's amazing to me as somebody who's not a great student per se, but I'm able to sit here and read in Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, when it sits there and it talks about,

"Alright then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look, the virgin will conceive a child. She will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel."

I don't have to be a good student to sit there and say on many different levels, this is kind of crazy. First off, Virgin having a kid. As I sit there and teach my own kids about this last week, about what it means to have a baby or going through that process of giving birth, it takes a man and a woman to sit there and conceive a child. I mean, I don't have to be a great student to understand that that's what it takes to have a kid. Number two, it was said thousands of years ago that this was gonna happen and then it actually happened.

Right? You don't have to sit there and be a Christian to sit there and realize that's what we're celebrating during this Christmas season. I was just joking with our little kids. When I say little, my high schooler, 14 years old and 16 years old, and I was like, how funny is it that the holiday in which the most money is spent is the holiday that we sit there and celebrate Jesus Christ's birth for a country who's running away from him as fast as they possibly can.

They're spending the most money on his birthday. It's entertaining to me. Like the last seven days, as I mentioned, we're teachers. I've literally gone to the store every single day just to watch people. Like I walk around, I'll buy $20 of the groceries, I'll go buy a final shirt for my kid, maybe a hat, whatever it might be.

Every day I go and I'll go again tomorrow on Christmas Eve. My wife will not go with me cuz she's, it drives her nuts that there's that much traffic. 

Kaila:
Heck no, I won't go!

Bruce:
But I will, I will gladly and I will have a couple crazy kids hop in there and we will go have fun buying one or two things. And so as we sit here and talk about redemption, all of us in life at some time in our life are in need of our own redemption story.

And for us, it looks differently. You know what I mean? You know, some people right now are going through financial difficulties. Maybe their marriage is on the rocks or they've been served papers. Maybe their health is failing, whatever it might be, they're in need of God stepping into the plate and redeeming them.

And I look at our marriage and I look at where we've come. And just to kind of go back into a story that we've kind of told in the past, but maybe not fully, is over six and a half years ago, we were sitting there at a time in life where I was waiting to have back surgery. I just had hand surgery and, and our money had run out and pretty much gone bankrupt and living with my parents.

I don't even know how many kids we had, 5, 6, 4, 7 at that point in time. We had quite a bit with another one on the way, and we're sitting there just lost. We're sitting there with no hope, not sure what to do, and I'm sitting there at the end of the bed and I hear an audible voice that says, You guys will move to Texas or you guys should move to Texas.

And I looked at my wife and I said, what do you mean we should move to Texas? And I go, was that you? And she's like, no, I didn't say anything. I go, somebody just said we should move to Texas. And you know, 30 seconds later, not even 30 seconds later, I get told Texas will be good for you. And I said, did you say anything?

She's like, no, what's going on? And I said, man, I just started crying and I said, I just got told Texas will be good for us. So not only you gotta move to Texas, Texas will be good for you. A little bit more backed up on that story. Within a couple years right before that or prior to that, my ex-wife had tried to move to Texas and I told the judge, there's no way in hell I will ever go and sorry for using that word, but there's no way in hell I will ever move to Texas.

Prior to that, my daughter, who's 16, when my ex-wife was nine months pregnant with her, I had moved to Round Rock area and I went home a day early and said, Nope, I can never move to Texas. Yet here I am being told by God, you are gonna move to Texas. For somebody like me who likes the beach, for someone like me who's a SoCal kid, as I sit here and wear my vans and skinny jeans, I guess you could sit there and say, going to Texas where it was flat with no ocean.

Oh, there's ocean, but not where we're at and it's a different color of water than what we're used to. It was just different. And I was like, I can't do it. And so when I decided 15, 16 years ago not to move here, I couldn't do, the people were nice. Barbecue was good, but it was flat. It was absolutely flat and there was a lot of desert and it wasn't what I thought it would be and I never thought I'd go.

But it's funny how. At that point in time when I was in a time of desperation, or we were in a time of desperation, my heart changed, like only God can change it. I don't know why at that point in time God wanted me in Texas, but it took me and my wife, and my wife and I going through all these different events and our short term marriage at that point in time in order to get us to Texas.

Right? Like, if it would've been the normal day and things are going well, do you think I'd, you know, would we ever moved here at that point in. 

Kaila:
No, absolutely not. There would been absolutely no... 

Bruce:
absolutely not 

Kaila:
...reason for us to move from beautiful Southern California where we are both from born and raised and we have family there.

Like there would've been no reason for us to leave. 

Bruce:
I even remember the day that we left. I remember it was like 4 30, 5 o'clock in the morning, and as we drove off, I'm crying as we go to the gas station, like, what am I doing? Part of it was cause I was scared. But the reality is we were at a time in life where we were all in for God in terms of his plan for us.

I mean, we didn't have a lot of other places to turn and when he sat there and told us what to do, we actually sat there and listened. And so, you know, I look at the correlation between that and I look at Mary and Joseph, right? You have, you have Mary, who's a young kid when, when she gets pregnant or told she's pregnant.

 At that point she had never had sex. She was a virgin. And she's probably like, uh, you know, God, I don't know if I wanna do this. I mean, if it was me, I'd probably to give the deuces and like, I'm outta here. This is kind of crazy. I mean, you're asking me to do something like move to Texas. Why would I ever wanna sit here and listen and do that?

But guess what? She was obedient. And then you sit there and look at the other side and you have homeboy Joseph, who's sitting there, all excited, has his hot, sexy fiance, kinda like my hot, gorgeous, beautiful wife across from me. And he is like, yeah, man, I have a good life. I'm gonna get married and we're gonna have kids and whatever I'm, and then all of a sudden he's told, Hey, your girl's pregnant.

And I know how I would've responded. I wouldn't have been too happy. I can tell you that just like I think most people in this world, they found out their spouse or, or someone that they loved was having an affair and or got pregnant by somebody that wasn't them. I don't think most people would respond very well, right.

And the crazy part is when this initially happened, it talks about it in the Bible, in the new testament that he was gonna sit there and go quietly about it. Not only was he a good enough man not to sit there and put her on blast and put her on Twitter or Facebook, whatever it might be, or announce it at a holiday party.

He was sitting there willing to sit there and say, Hey, you wanna know what I'm gonna go by the quietly I have enough Jesus in me to go by the quietly. And then on top of that, right, he goes and he has a dream and he gets told that, hey, it was an immaculate conception. And so not only now is he faced with, I'm not gonna do it quietly, I'm gonna stay with her because God told me to.

The Holy Spirit came to me and said, Hey homeboy, I'm telling you what to do and your life's gonna be very good. And not only are you gonna sit there and have to trust me that she was impregnated by me and not another man, and that she's never had sex with anyone, you're gonna also have to play dodge ball, as in people are throwing balls at you in terms of Herod or whoever might be trying to kill your kid. 

 As you can sit there and go through that, and they're throwing these dodge balls at him everywhere he goes. And so he's having to sit there and move different places in order to keep his wife and now newborn kids safe. 

Having a kid who's born in the manger, right? Like you're born in crap, with a wife who you love, who's a kid, laying crap. And as a result, you're like, yes, let's do it. Kind of like us going to Texas, right? And so we didn't know the plan for going to Texas. God had this plan. Jesus and Mary sat there and didn't know exactly what was going on back then, but they knew God had a plan and they were willing to sit there and be obedient.

Right? And so as I sit there and look at going back to us it was being obedient to the point of letting God allow our redemption season to start. If we didn't sit there and let God in at that point in time, or we didn't say yes, we wouldn't be where we're at. Like God knew it back then. Right?

And so at that point, by us saying yes and being obedient, we were able to start having our finances redeemed. Our marriage was starting to be redeemed. Our relationship with other people around us was being redeemed. Our health, my health, going from walking with a cane for over nine months was redeemed.

 All kinds of things that only God could do, he did. And the same is true when Jesus was born, right when Jesus was born, the redemption for all of our sin was taken away. We were redeemed from everything that we've ever done that has gone against what God has asked us to do, AKA sin. We were redeemed.

We were redeemed so that we did not have to die on the cross. And as a result of Jesus being born, he ended up ultimately, not only did he come in through crap, he died on the cross, hanging on a tree for you and I so that we didn't have to. So when you sit there and you look at this holiday season, it's a time of redemption.

I mean, we know a lot of people right now whose health is failing, who are choosing to believe we know people, right. Whose marriages are on the rocks, or even to the point of almost over and they're choosing to believe. And the reality is God is present in all of our situations, good, bad, and ugly.

The reality is, are you gonna let him redeem you? The reality is, are you willing to sit there and listen to him during these difficult times? When it would be so much easier. I know for me, I just had this conversation with my high school kids. When I went through my divorce, it was easier for me to sit there and drink my pain away than it was to sit there and face it. 

It was easier for me to sit there on the nights. I didn't have my kids, and when I was so lonely and I didn't want to be by myself to sit there and drink myself to sleep, so I didn't have to feel the pain. And I'd wake up at two o'clock in the morning every day like clockwork and open up Proverbs.

The reality is I probably should just open Proverbs in the start when I went to bed, rather than sit there and do it at two o'clock in the morning when Guy was gonna wake me up. either way, right? I mean, I could have at least had a good night's sleep, going to bed having been filled by the Holy Spirit or by God at that point in time.

Instead, I went to bed, passed out almost, and then woke up anyways, and then had a crappy night's sleep. So, I mean, I should have just done it his way from the start. But that's most of us, it's easier, so much easier to sit there and go against what it is he's asking us to do, especially if it doesn't sit there and feel good to us or if it doesn't look appetizing to us.

Okay. And so, I think the other part of this holiday season, which is standard and we talk about is giving, and we talk about giving in terms of presents. Quite often people spend all this money but the reality is that's not what God's asking us to give during this holiday season. 

 We sit here with our kids and I'll have my wife talk about it in a minute, but we sit here and we have the opportunity to make an impact and plant seeds in people's life by the giving of the tools that God has blessed us with.

By giving the talents that he has gifted us with. I can sit there and say, Hey, I'm gonna go bake for people. But the reality is you're not gonna want to eat my cookies because I don't know, like I look at the cookie and it looks soft still, but it's really burnt on the bottom. And my wife looks at me and says, Hey honey, I'm not gonna eat that stuff. I'm like, why? She's like, cuz it's burnt. And I'm like, that's why you should be in here helping. And I'll let her talk a little bit bit more about that right now. Go ahead, hon. 

Kaila:
Well, it was just funny because. 

Bruce:
"No, I don't wanna cook." That's what she told me. It was one Sunday. We're sitting there, I'm like, my wife is the best cook I've ever met.

She can cook with eyes closed. Eyes open, one eye open, one eye closed, both hands and she's like, no, I just wanna put my feet up. 

Kaila:
I did. I am guilty. So it was our first weekend off and I was so excited to, you know, as a teacher you, that's one of the perks. You get two weeks off and it was the first Sunday of break and I was looking forward to just starting to relax and kick my feet up and I was gonna crochet.

And so when after church, I get asked, oh, how about we bake up two batches of brownies and four dozen cookies and make peanut butter balls? I was like, no, that does not sound relaxing. 

Bruce:
And in our house, we are University of Michigan fans, so they are definitely not the B word. B U C k E Y E S's, they are actually peanut butterballs.

So go ahead. 

Kaila:
Correct. Yes. You make sure you have the right terminology there. Um, so it was, I was, I will admit, I was being totally selfish. And, 

Bruce:
uh, then she saw how the fudge turned out and then she decided to hop in. That's a joke. One of our daughters, who's a phenomenal athlete, made the fudge and it turned out in the trashcan.

But anyways. 

Kaila:
Well, I don't know which was worse, the fudge or the rice crispy treats that...

Bruce:
those are Mine! 

Kaila:
...didn't get taken off the stove. 

Bruce:
Wait, wait, I didn't know that rice crispy treats could burn when you're sitting there putting butter in a pan. She goes, all you gotta do is put the rice crispy treats in there and add butter.

And I'm doing that and I'm like, this is wonderful. It's all mixy and she's. I can smell it burning and I'm like, what are you talking about right now? You never told me they could burn. You said mix them and add in more confection and sugar, whatever you asked me to add in or marshmallows. And I'm like, what's going on?

Kaila:
It's okay. It turned into a delicious rice, crispy, brittle honey. It was a hit. It was a crispy treat. 

Bruce:
Yeah, it a hit in my face. I was getting hit by a baseball. 

Kaila:
Anyways, after we made all of our treats, we put it in bags and we stuff stockings and we decided to deliver these to friends and family and neighbors and you know, it really brought so much joy seeing the kids be excited to deliver 'em.

And then even just seeing the faces of the people. There were some old neighbors. That we made a stop to, and just to see their faces light up that we had gone out of our way to bring them a special treat. It really just melts your heart, and I think that that's the biggest part of the giving season, it's the giving. 

Because when you give, you're so blessed. You're blessed beyond what you could ever receive. It changes your heart, it changes your attitude. And I was grateful that I stepped in, not only because I saved the day with the treats, so did there were actual edible things to hand out , but to to give that blessing to other people and

I think that that's what we've really been focusing on a lot this season, is just that giving and that, you know what God gave us his son, and so we're gonna give back to people and we're gonna share. He loved us so much that he gave us his love in the form of Jesus. And so let's just love on other people.

And we've been modeling that for our kids and we've been talking a lot about it. We've made two holiday treat trips now. And on top of that, last night we took some dinner over to a friend's house and our eight year old daughter noticed that the playroom was kind of messy as it should be.

It's a playroom, you go play in it. And she just decided, you know what, we're gonna clean up this playroom for our friends. And it was so, so sweet because we had been cleaning our house that day. We were getting for family to come over. And so she had told this woman whose house it was, she said, oh yeah, I'm a professional.

I've been cleaning the last 24 hours. And I just thought, you know, she took it upon herself. She felt empowered. She put her younger siblings to work. She told them what to do. She gave them all jobs. And within like half an hour, they had the whole playroom cleaned up, organized. She had even repurposed like an old shoebox for the baby's socks,

I mean, she was like, well, she just, she didn't even just clean it. She went above and beyond and was like organizing but, 

Bruce:
but it is right, is so blown away 

during this holiday season. It's not about giving gifts. I mean, the number one thing I remember as a kid, or even I'm gonna say kid, high school kid, even into college and when I became a parent, my dad said, The number one gift you can give your kids is time.

The number one gift that they want is your time. They don't want your finances. They don't want your gifts. They want you to be there, and they want you to be present. They wanna know that you're interested in them, that you love them for who they are, that that's what they want, right?

And so, yeah, absolutely. And I think the same thing goes for, for people in our lives, right? Like the fact that we sit there and take the time to be with people. I mean, we bring cookies that cost us 50 cents to make, but the, the reaction we get back is worth a thousand fold. It's worth way more than 50 cents. And it's because they know it came from our heart and we're sitting there giving our time.

And if you look at most of the areas that we're lacking in this day and age, just personal relationships. I mean, people have gotten on the phones or people have gotten social media and it's not living real life anymore. In terms of communication face-to-face. If you were looking at a lot of marriages, that are struggling right now, I'd say a lot of 'em that are aren't struggling or are on the rocks, wherever you wanna call it, is because there's not enough communication or time being given to their spouse doing what their spouse wants to do.

I think the same thing with kids and rough relationships, including us. I mean, we're going through it right now with one of our kids, is time, you know, you have to give adequate time. And so, I mean, tie it all up and that those are both. Other podcast that we can talk about. But to tie this up during this holiday season, what areas of your life do you need to be redeemed in?

What areas of your life do you need God to redeem you? Like only he can redeem you. And as we close up, I have an awesome story just in terms of redemption. It's probably one of my favorite stories I've heard. I'm in a bible study with a group of, of gentlemen who are just awesome guys. Seasoned guys that have a lot of wisdom.

I love hopping on just to hear their stories a little bit and just what they're going through. And we're talking about the holidays and this one guy in particular happens to look like Santa Claus. Like he resembles Santa Claus just in terms of, I mean, I have a beard, but his beard's way better than mine.

And it's fluffy and it's white. And I'm like, man. And then his, the glasses he wears, I'm like, man, this is kind of, he's kinda like Santa Claus not thinking much of it. His, his coffee mug. It's the holiday seasons. It's just after Thanksgiving and right around Thanksgiving it has Santa Claus on it. I'm like it just a lot of Santa Claus coincidences going on.

And I'm like, okay. And so one day he hops on and someone asked him about Santa. And he goes, actually, when I was younger, like my teen, either late teens or early twenties, he goes, I hated Christmas. I wasn't a fan. And somebody asked why? And he goes, well, my dad took the money from my siblings and i's bank accounts spending on Christmas and ended up committing suicide in January of that year.

okay. Spent all the kids money and then committed suicide. And he goes, I didn't like Christmas at that point in time. And here we are some 40 years later, give or take. And what does he do during the holiday season? He is Santa Claus for kids all throughout the holiday season. He actually dresses up in his suit and goes to parties.

And when he is there, little did he know that 40 years ago that that season of life that he so much did not like, and that was so painful. God has redeemed it for God's kingdom like only God. Now my buddy goes to holiday parties and every kid that comes and sits on his lap, Hey, guess what? You know I'm here, I'm Santa.

But the real reason for the holiday is Jesus. And Jesus loves you. How funny is it that now 40 years later, not even funny, how awesome is it that 40 years later, he's able to sit there and tell the love of Jesus or about the love of Jesus? During the holiday season, even though he was so hurt by it 40 years ago.

Right. And that, that's redemption and it's finest. I mean, like I said, I look at us 6, 7, 8 years ago, walking with a cane. Here I am able to run around with my kids now, my marriage to my gorgeous, beautiful, sexy, wonderful wife. We're going on 10 years in the next week or so. I mean, we're only where we're at because.

I mean, if you will go through the story of us when we first got married and what we've endured. Holy moly. Only by the grace of God are we redeemed and where we're at in our marriage. And I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else. I mean, look at our finances, look at our health, look at our jobs, look at everything else we're going through.

I mean, we didn't wanna sit there and go to Texas and we did, and we still fight it often, but God's like, this is where I want you for whatever reason right now as we sit here and launch this and do some other stuff as well. And so you know, what areas of your life are Texas or is Texas, what areas of your life are you sitting there needing to say yes to God?

What areas of your life are you sitting there needing to give in and give up? And by give up, I just mean give it up to God, right? It's so easy to sit there and say, no, cause we don't like something cuz it's not appeasing to us. But we need to sit there and give to him so that it can become a redemption story.

Just like my buddies or just like my marriage with my wife and where we're at now and during this holiday season, just like John 3:16 for Gods who love the world that he gave his only son. What can we give to other people? What can you sit there and give to other people that they're lacking?

Is it time? Is it baking? Is it cooking? Is it cleaning? Whatever it might be, go ahead and give it. And just because Christmas is in two days, does it mean you need to sit there and have it done within the next two days, but in the next week, what can you sit there and go give to other people? 

Kaila:
Sometimes around the holiday season. If you've experienced that trauma in your life before then it can be really hard to come into this season, and it can be hard to want to give. Like to be in that place, to have that capacity to even want to share with other people or to value your gifts or the gifts that you have, or to think of others.

And so when Bruce and I share with you a little bit of our story, and maybe you are struggling, I think that's the biggest thing. You've just gotta get back to God. And remember the gift that he gave to you and that gift was Jesus, and he didn't send Jesus in vain. He sent Jesus because Jesus lived a perfect life and then died on the cross an undeserving death so that you and me could be made right with God. 

And because God gives us that gift of Jesus, that means we have access to His power and the power of the Holy Spirit. And then God is gonna work all things together for the good. So even if it seems like a difficult time right now, you can always remember that God's using this and God's going to redeem your story.

And sometimes he takes us to the bottom of the pit because that's the only place that we can look up and say, yes, God, I need you. Like we mentioned earlier, we would've never have moved from California had we not been to a place where God really brought us to our knees and we had no other option but to listen to him and follow him.

And so this Christmas season, if you are just struggling to find joy, I encourage you to connect with God. Get back into your Bible. Read the story of Jesus' birth and just remember that you are loved and that God loves you so much and whatever you're going through, he's right there going through it with you.

And so you've got this. 

Bruce:
Just wanna wish you guys a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 

Kaila:
Take care.

004: Giving Thanks

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode four of our Unshackled Love podcast. I'm Bruce Payne sitting here with my gorgeous wife, 

Kaila: Kaila Payne. And for those of you who are just joining us, we are two teachers in the greater Austin area, and we are blessed with the opportunity of raising nine beautiful children. 

Bruce: Yes, they are absolutely beautiful and wonderful, just like their mommy 

Kaila: most of the time.

And then sometimes they're like their daddy,

Bruce: Which is super wonderful,

Kaila: and a little crazy. 

Bruce: A lot of crazy.

Kaila: Today we come to you this day after Thanksgiving to talk about just that. We're gonna talk about Thanksgiving and what we're thankful for. And, the past few weeks we've haven't posted a podcast just because of life and the craziness that has ensued and things that have come in the way. And so this week, Bruce and I really wanted to be intentional about getting back on the horse, making this podcast for you and just really reflecting on God's goodness, even through a season of life that just seems so crazy.

Bruce: It does seem crazy. I think that would be an understatement just based on what's kind of gone on with us through, you know, starting summertime, going through now. And, you know, it's, as I say to my, my men friends who are my men's bible study, I mean, I feel like it's been a constant kick to the nuts. You know, since day one that we started this ministry in podcast from a car accident, to one of our kids almost getting ran over by a car to another car accident, to kids being sick, to work, to new jobs, whatever it might be. There's just been a ton going on. And as a result, I just feel like every step of the way that we've been going further with ministry, the more that the devil has risen up to the challenge of us trying to start this and, and trying to get in the way.

He's done a decent job of it, and it's, it's been one of those things where, you know, we've contemplated sitting here doing another podcast over the last 3, 4, 5 weeks. We actually did go through and do one that we, have to redo just because the audio didn't turn out well. And after that one it's just been kind of sitting here on, on the sideline, waiting to do another podcast.

And so, just going through our own anxieties, you know, feeling unworthy at this point in time, just tired of life and everything going on. We said, Hey, you wanna know what, what better week to get back on the horse than right now in a week of given thanks. And so, today we are gonna be in Psalms 100.

It's kind of funny, I came across this passage the week before Thanksgiving, last week, just going through, reading through the Psalms right now. And, I was like, man, there, there's so much packed in this small chapter that is so relevant to us today and even where my gorgeous wife and I stand, it was, it hit me in the face, and so I'm gonna go through and read it right now.

It says, "Shout with joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him singing with joy. Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us and we are his. We are His people. The sheep of his pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving. Go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise His name.

For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever and his faithfulness continues to each generation." 

Kaila: That's a short chapter, it's only five verses, but like Bruce said, there's so much packed into that tiny passage and when you really break it down, we see three main themes or three kind of components that we're gonna talk about, and it's: a) what we're supposed to do; b) why we should do it and c) how we do it. 

And so let's just go ahead and break it down verse by verse. And the first thing that this verse tells us is what we should do. Verses one and two say, "Shout with joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness and come before him singing with joy." And so this is kind of a command.

This is telling us what we need to do. We need to praise God. We need to worship him, and we need to worship him with joy and gladness. And sometimes I know that our hearts don't necessarily reflect that, especially whether it's a busy time or it's a time of, the desert, you know, where there's little or maybe there's struggle and we're having to rely on God. Or maybe there's tribulation and it's a really difficult time and you're fighting trials and so, to come before God and be joyful, like in this verse, to me it just makes it seem like it's a command. Like he's telling us this is how he expects us to approach Him. 

Bruce: Oh, definitely. And, and I think when you go through life, right, there are ups and downs in peaks and valleys and it's, you know, in our lives we've gone through quite a bit the last few weeks just trying to get back on this horse.

And, and throughout that time we have some of the close family friends who are going through some. Rough times in life as well. And, and it's amazing to me that their witness in my life, right? Like they could sit there, they're, they're going through some battles, with physical stuff going on with their bodies, and they choose to be glad regardless of their circumstances.

And in this verse, that's what it says. It says, worship the Lord with gladness, not with sorrow, not with pity, not with anything else. We can choose the worship with gladness. It's a choice to be glad. It's a choice to come to him when whether the circumstances are good or they're not very good. It's. Our choice to come with gladness.

Kaila: And it's also your choice, how you look at the situation, right? So we can sit there and we can look at all the negative things and we can, oh, poor pity me, poor this like I, you know, I can't do this. Or looking at all the bad things and looking at it from a view of what we lack, or we can look at it in the ways that God's providing through those challenges and through those difficult times.

I think like you were. Even with our own challenges or with our friends in the way that they're able to witness to us and be a living example of that. So with us, we got in a car accident and, we lost, we totaled our first car. So that was the first accident, but it was like, Well, looking at the good, our insurance covered the total payment of it.

We were able to get a new car. We had friends who actually were able to help us get into a new car quickly, so we weren't out of a car for that long. Like there were so many ways that God provided even in that time. And so you can choose how you look at a situation, and I think that if we focus on all the bad and all the things that we don't have, then we miss those opportunities where God is moving and the ways that God is providing.

Bruce: Correct. And I think that's been a hundred percent the what's going on with us. I think the last few weeks we've spent a lot of time not looking at the right things correctly or through the right lens, right. Just, with everything going on, I think the best way to put it is we're just tired and and rather than go through this tired part of life with gladness, it's almost been a pity party, almost like, man, I just don't have time to do what it is God's calling us to do. Or even when we do do it and we do read the Bible, whatever it might be, it's not been with a heart full with gladness. So, 

Kaila: Yeah, the next one though is why. So why do we have joy? Why should we be glad? And that comes straight from verse three. It says, "Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us and we are his." That's only half the verse. I'm gonna keep reading. But even if I just, stopped there like he made us, and we are his. And I think that that just models the Lord's Prayer, right?

Like when Jesus gives us that model to pray, the first thing he says is, "Hallowed be your name". And it's just having that reverence of who God is that he created the entire universe and he put the stars in the sky and he set the world into motion. And then that same big God, like he made you and me. 

Bruce: And he made us in his image. Right? I think that's part of it. The reality is God is God and we are not. And there are so many circumstances that, like I said, we keep going back and forth. For us, it's been a lot, a lot of stuff going on and during that time we can sit there and try to be in control, but at the end of the day, we're not. We are not in control of what has happened with anything that we've gone through. At the end of the day, God is in control. And the moment that we can sit there and realize and put that into focus, things go a lot smoother at that point. Just because we don't understand why something happens now or why it's been happening the last 3, 4, 5 weeks, God knows why it's happening.

Kaila: Mm-hmm. 

Bruce: Maybe it's to sit there and sharpen our hearts, you know, maybe it's to sit there and sharpen us emotionally, whatever's going on. And so God is God, and we are not. And the second part of this is we are the sheep of his pasture. You know, there's the song that talks about him leaving the 99 and coming from the one.

And I think it's important to understand that in life, including with us in life, God loves us so much that he's willing to sit there and drop everything else in life to sit there and help us and tend to our needs in a time of need. He's willing to sit there and leave the 99 to come find us in our pit of despair, right?

And so whatever that pit of despair is that you're going through right now, you're not alone. God knows what's going on. The reality is, are you choosing to sit there and go towards God or call for God? Or are you gonna sit there and, and wallow and pity and sit there and say, poor me. 

Kaila: Even more so than that. What's so funny to me, and I just can't help but smirk whenever I read about this analogy of humans being like the sheep because I've heard this in a couple different studies about how sheep are actually considered very unintelligent animals. They the, the dull cran in the box 

Bruce: is, is, is there a reason why they're like blonde? I'm just kidding. My wife is blonde and she's gorgeous and beautiful, and she's much more book smart than me. But she still blonde like a sheep. 

Kaila: In, but real talk sheep without their shepherd, they say that sheep would literally walk off a cliff like they don't havethe intelligence... 

Bruce: If you've seen my wife drive, it might be off a cliff as well.

Kaila: Oh my gosh. 

Bruce: I'm just kidding. 

Kaila: We're talking about sheep and Jesus. So let me, let me stay on topic. So sheep would literally walk off a cliff if it were not for their shepherd guiding them. And so, when we see that we are his people, the sheep of his pasture I think about just kind of being under God's protection. That if we were just left , on our own, we'd walk off a cliff and how comforting that even when we're going through all of those things, like my husband was saying, right, we might not know. We're just walking and we're wandering and we have no idea where we're going or where it leads, but the shepherd, our God is there to protect us and comfort us and he sees where we're going. And so I love that analogy and that picture of being the sheep of his pasture. 

Bruce: And just real quick, you know what sheep, Jesus, and Kayla all have in common?

Kaila: Oh goodness. What's that? 

Bruce: You're all five letter. 

Kaila: Okay, great. 

Bruce: Anyways, go ahead. 

Kaila: So then, now that we know why we worship God, the next verse tells us how we're to worship God. And so this is how we do it. And it says "We enter his gates with thanksgiving." 

Bruce: Wait, does it, does it say, enter in crying and complaining. No. Enter his gates with thanksgiving. 

Kaila: Go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name." And to me, I really feel like this verse is a reference to prayer. We can come and pray to God and we can, and he wants us to pray earnestly and to share our feelings and share our emotions.

But kind of going back to like the Lord's Prayer, right? Like when we enter his gates, when we come to him, I feel like starting off with Thanksgiving and praise and praising Him, praising His name, choosing to look at the good, it changes our heart it gives us that attitude of gratitude and I feel like it just puts God in his place and it puts me in mine.

And then it changes the relationship where I can truly worship Him for His goodness. And then it changes also my needs and what I'm praying for. 

Bruce: Well, I think the biggest thing there is you said the word choose. It's a choice. It's a choice to give thanks. It's a choice to praise His name. And you know, if you go through the Bible and there's all kinds of people who go through good and bad, and, and you look at the the heroes of our faith as Phil Wilkin would say, is, there's people who went through a lot of bad. Look at Job.

 How long do Job sit there and suffer for? And the reality is, during that time he sat there he gave thanks and he praised the Lord and it's up to us. The last 3, 4, 5 weeks, you know, we, we've given thanks. But has it been with the right heart? Has it been in the right context?

Has it been, you know, coming from a part of our heart that is sincere, right? Not mm-hmm. , not just because I have to, I feel obligated to sit here and pray today, but because I want to. 

Kaila: Or I think the other part of that too is just like, whew, okay, good. God will get us through it. And then moving on, instead of like really appreciating all the ways. Not to take it for granted, but kind of, you know?

Bruce: Well, it is that you sit, you sit down and pray. We sit there and pray together and it's like, Hey, dear God, it's like the same thing day after day after day for like 3, 4, 5 times, because we're doing it out of It's part of our schedule and part of our calendar. This is what we do. 

Rather than actually sitting there breaking down saying, "Hey God, you wanna know what, regardless of what's going on in our life, we're choosing to give thanks to you. Right now, we're sitting here, we're willing to, praise your name regardless of our circumstance. 

Kaila: Yeah, and I think that's why he gives us verse five, and I love that you brought up Job, because verse five is the reminder that "For the Lord is good and his unfailing love continues forever and his faithfulness continues to each generation."

And I think that when you read the Bible, And you read about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and God's faithfulness and how, he showed up for them time and time again and how the relationship that he had with those people and then we read about Jesus, right? And Jesus showing up and all the miracles that Jesus did and how Jesus pointed the people to God. 

And even after Jesus left and the apostles were doing miracles in Jesus' name, and then we get in the hustle and the grind of today, and it's like we don't see those same miraculous acts of God, or maybe you do see them, but then it's drowned out by the world of today. And I think we need to remember that the God of the Bible, Always has been and always will be the same God.

So his faithful love, the love that He had for Abraham is the love that He has for me and the love He had for Jesus is the love that he has for me. And His faithfulness continues to each generation. And so when I'm feeling like. Oh, pity me and poor me and all this is happening to me. I need to get out of that and I need to step out of that lie because God is telling me right here in His word.

Like my faithfulness and my love is there for you. It's the same love that I've had for all these other people and I love you just the same. And just cuz you're going through a difficult time doesn't mean I love you any less. 

Bruce: No, definitely. And earlier this week, we're sitting there. One morning I wake up and I'm getting ready and the next thing I know, I'm singing a Chris Toman song. "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endured forever. Sing praise" or "give praise," whatever it says. And I just keep singing it every single day.

And it's funny, today I had the chance to go to Bible study with a group of guys who I adore and admire. One of 'em looks like Santa Claus. Legitimately. I'll have to get a picture of him put on our website. But just, elderly gentlemen who are full of wisdom, who, who I adore. And it's been a while. They have bible studies on Friday, and I'm a teacher and I can't necessarily make it at nine o'clock every Friday. And today I had the opportunity to do so. And as we got started, you know, it went for a good two and a half hours today.

Normally Bible studies, maybe an hour, an hour and 15. Today, it was a good two and a half hours. And a common theme or a theme that popped up today, it brought up the word steadfast, which makes me kind of pivot from Psalms 100 to Psalms 107, which talks about God's steadfast love. 

And in Psalms 107:1, it says, "Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever." So real quick, I'm gonna ask you, I already know what my answer is for the word steadfast. What does the word steadfast mean to you?

Kaila: To me, when I hear the word steadfast, I just think of persistent, never gives up. It just keeps on going like forever and ever and ever and ever. And steadfast even too, kind of has that connotation to me that like, even when it's hard, I'm just gonna keep, keep loving you, keep loving you.

I'm just so steadfast that it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter how much you mess up. It doesn't matter if you yell at me or call me a mean word. And like God can handle all those feelings and he can handle our sin and he can handle our imperfections. And even when it's tough to love us, He still loves us.

'Cause his love is that steadfast that it just keeps on going.. 

Bruce: Amen. And so when I sat there and sang that song, and I put it together with this verse, and I'm gonna go on just a couple more verses within this chapter. Think about what my wife just said about the word steadfast, right? No matter what you do, God is there. No matter how far you've gone from Him, God is there. Regardless of how nasty or dirty or gross you think your sin is, God is there. It, it is steadfast. It doesn't waver. It doesn't go up or down. He doesn't love you more or less. He loves you. Regardless of what it is you're choosing to do in life right now, regardless of how far you are from Him. 

And, it says, "oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. Let the reedemed to the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty., Their souls fainted with them. Then they cried to the Lord in thier trouble, and he delivered them from their distress."

He didn't say just the north, just the south, just the east, just the west. It said everywhere. In this world, wherever you are right now, God is there to deliver you from what you're going through. It could be a marriage on the brink of failure. It could be a relationship you have with a family member, a kid. It could be something going on at work. It could be a loss of a job. Whatever it might be regardless of where you're at, God is there for you. God is there to rescue you from where you're at because his love is steadfast. 

Kaila: Yeah. I love that. That's so good. And so today, I guess we just want to ask you like what can you be thankful for?

Take a moment and just really connect with God and I just having a conversation with a woman this week another wonderful influence. I just love how God has been putting different people in our lives and kind of speaking to our hearts and where we're at. And we were talking about the importance of prayer and how even though prayer can and should be kind of a continuous conversation with God. Like, I can pray in the car and I can pray when I'm getting ready and I can pray in the shower and I can pray these things. It is so important to make time and space and to go into the closet like it talks about in Matthew and really find that quiet time of prayer and connecting with God, because I feel like that's when your heart starts to shift.

Like you have to have those real conversations. Texting is great text. Like that's what I think of like, like on the go prayers like shoot my text to God. Like, Hey God, pray for that person. Pray for this person. Like just shooting texts. Like that kind of prayer, like that's good, but we've gotta have a real deep conversation.

We've gotta pick up the phone, we've gotta call into God. We've gotta find that quiet time and that quiet space.

Bruce: Today, I came down the stairs today and my wife's like whimpering a little bit. I'm like, is everything okay? And she's like, yeah. I go, what's up? I go, you kind of. Same thing. It wasn't the closet, it was like our laundry room.

And she's like, I just needed a little closet time with God. And I was like, oh man. I go, you guys have a good conversation. She's like, yeah, my heart feels so much better. All the tears coming out. And I was like, man, here we go. I guess we are gonna podcast tonight. And I was like eight hours ago. 

You know, it's funny, we went weeks without doing a podcast or even a blog post and here we are today, getting both in. And it's a result of prayer, right? Not, not just us in what we have been praying for and what's been on her heart, and my heart the last week. But we've had bunches of people who have partnered with us in prayer and we continue to appreciate the prayer and would love the prayer and just in every different aspect for life, whether it's parenting our kids, whether it's our marriage, whether it's what we are supposed to do next . Last night, about 10:30 our time, I sent a text to a buddy who him and his wife have been amazing.

You know, just the finances have been tight for us and they felt it in their heart and the spirit to say, Hey, guess what? We're gonna sit there and tithe money to you guys over the last month or so. And so, even though like we've gone through some other aspects of life that have been very challenging, I mean, one of them was finances and this couple has said, Hey, guess what, we're gonna help you guys out for a bit. 

Just in terms of the ministry aspect of doing stuff, it's been amazing. So just last night I said, Hey man, I appreciate the support that you provided my family and I during this time, but, if you could just be praying there is real anxiety, maybe not even the word anxiety.

I know it's so word, someone around loosely now, but just really emotional distress as we're coming in to do this because we've been off the horse for so long or it seems so long. And he's like, yeah, man, definitely, all glory to God. 

And then this morning that Bible said once again, you know, an old coach who's the first high school coach who ever hired me. I reached out to him and I'm at the H-E-B, probably one of my favorite, grocery stores in America, here in Texas. If you're from Texas, you know what HEB is. And I'm sitting there in the produce section crying with tears down, 'cause I know what God is asking us to do. And I'm texting him, saying, Hey, can you please pray? And he's. Already am and will continue to do so. And it was just one of those moments of confirmation, just with prayer in our lives. 

So, I mean, you need to do it, and not just for yourselves, but for other people. And you need to be able to open up with other people and let them pray for you and partner with you. And so we just wanna say thank you, for those of you who are partnering with us. Thank you for, for being with us, with this journey, including getting back on the horse. 

We do have another podcast. I know in the very beginning we said that this was episode four. Technically it's episode five. We're gonna go with episode four. We do have another episode that was done with our daughter Zoe. Just happened to be that the audio did not turn out the best and that we have to redo it. But since we initially recorded that one, we've had some other life stuff happen and we've kind of been away from it. So our goal is to get that to you guys early next week as well.

Kaila: So one way that we would love to connect with you is on our website growingpaynes.org. You can find the link down in the show notes. We have a connection form where you can just fill out your name and send us a message, and we would love to hear what you're thankful for. Like what are you praising God for?

How is he showing up in your life? We would love to pray that and just praise God and thank God for all the ways that He is moving. And if you are on the opposite, maybe you're going through a time that feels like the desert. And you're really struggling to see God's goodness and God's faithfulness.

Maybe you just need someone to partner alongside of you and give you a fresh perspective. And we would love to do that as well. Bruce and I, I always joke that Bruce is like the real coach and then I kind of just like to talk to people. But together we make... 

Bruce: But no, no. On the flip side, she is the real teacher and I'm a great babysitter.

So anyways, go ahead. 

Kaila: We love to partner with people and we love to hear about your life stories, and we love to just shine the love that Jesus has poured into us and pour that out onto others. And so if you're interested in possibly coaching or connecting with one of us, please use the website and the form to connect with us and just be vulnerable 'cause like I said, this is God wanting to use us to reach others. And so we would be blessed with an opportunity to be used as His vessel if that's how we can support you. 

And normally Bruce ends in prayer, but I just really feel it on my heart to end in prayer today and so, We're gonna close this out.

Bruce: I appreciate you actually taking the time to pray now, 'cause normally it's like she looks at me with those big, gorgeous, beautiful eyes and stares at me. Like, what you gonna say? And I'm like, "I'm spent. I don't have much else to say right now." But I think the fact that she was able to go into the closet and pray and come out and be filled with the Holy Spirit, I think it's most definitely. In our best interest to let her pray right now. 

Kaila: All right, let's do it. 

Father, God, thank you for this time. Thank you for easing the anxiety and the spiritual battle that Bruce and I have been facing. Thank you for all of the prayers and the people that are praying for us and the people that are lifting us up.

Father God, thank you for your continued provisions for showing us that we are going down the right path, and you are just so faithful to provide. And sometimes we can't see the path ahead, but your word says that you are a lamp unto our feet. And so Father God, thank you just for showing us the next step and let us be looking for your next step because you are so good and you always provide and you love us steadfastly, no matter what we do. 

Father God, you love us until the end. And I am so thankful and appreciative of your love and that you guide me and you protect me, and you are our good shepherd. Father God, thank you for Psalms 100. Thank you for giving us this piece of wisdom of how important it is to praise you and to worship you, and for us to set our hearts and our eyes on you.

Father God, you are so amazing and so wonderful, and we are so blessed to have a God who gives us His Word and guides us and shows us the way to truly live and to live life abundantly. And so, Father God, thank you for taking my life and pulling me out of the depths of despair and giving me hope, and loving me and giving me purpose in your name, father God. And I pray for everyone listening today that you would just wrap them in your abundant love and so that we can praise your name for how wonderful and glorious you are, Father God.

We praise in Jesus' name. 

Amen. 

Bruce: Amen.

003: Anger & Discipline

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode three of our Unshackled Love podcast. My name is Bruce Payne. I'm sitting here with my gorgeous bride.

Kaila: Kaila Payne, and for those of you who are just joining us, Bruce and I are two teachers in the greater Austin area, and we are blessed to parent nine beautiful children, our oldest being a senior in high school and our youngest being in kindergarten and everything in between.

We are here tonight on our Unshackled Love podcast to talk about a topic that is very near and dear and fresh in our hearts,

Bruce: anger and discipline. And I'll just sit there and say this right now. I don't know if anyone else here has ever had the experience where you plan something awesome for a weekend and the next thing you know before it even gets started, the crap hits the fan.

It just does. And, the next thing you know, it's, you're tain is not just going off the tracks, but it's going off the bridge, plummeting into the ocean. If you can have that visual in your head, that's pretty much what just happened our week in this past weekend. And as a result, I, I felt it on my heart and, our hearts, as we talked about it and prayed about it afterwards to sit here and discuss it. You know, it's something that as parents, we, we go through this, the act of discipline on a regular basis with our kids, especially us with nine. Especially the kids who wanna act more like their mom than me.

I mean, if they act more like me, we wouldn't have to discipline as much cuz I'm an angel.

Kaila: Right...

Bruce: and then the anger part, you know, Anger is one of those things that, can come at any time of the day and it spares no one, especially with people who, have anger as their spiritual gift like my wife does. Just kidding. It is not your spiritual gift. That's an inside joke. We've been talking about spiritual gifts today, which is a whole nother topic for a different day. And so anyways, yeah, we are here to discuss anger and discipline.

Kaila: Now, the reason that we need to talk about anger is because it's something that resides in all of us, and I think that we can't ignore it or just push it in the closet and pretend it doesn't happen and put on our smiling face out in public.

I once heard a pastor who was talking about controlling our emotions, and he said, "Oh, you can control your emotions because think about that time when you're in the middle of a fight and the phone rings and you answer that phone, "Hello" , like nothing's wrong, right? So you have the ability, we all have the ability to control our emotions, but how often do we let our emotions control us. And with anger, if you look at the root cause of why people get angry, most of the time it's because of a me issue. It's because of my pride and me not getting what I want or someone doing something that's not the way I would do it or different than how I thought it should be done. And so if we look at the reasons why we get angry, usually it's because it's me, it's my issue. It's something that's going against what I want.

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think if you look at our kids, right? I use our five year old who's my princess. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. What are the chances she's sitting there on purpose, sitting there trying to push my buttons and tick me off.

Like the times that I do get angry with her, which are pretty much never, but I'm used using her as an example, cause I talk about her brothers all the time, so I'm gonna use her for the example. How often does she purposely sit there and say, "Hey, I'm gonna sit here and try to tick daddy off." The reality is none of our kids do right. Nor do you, for the most part.

And so the reality is you have to sit here and look at your kids and your spouse and see what they're doing that's making you angry, cause as you said, it's more of a me problem than you problem. You know, in the heart, I once certain someone say that love and anger or love and hatred or love, whatever words you want to use, they're very close in the heart, right next to each other, right?

And in order to get that ticked off at someone, you have to care about them in order for them to hurt you like that to a point, if that makes sense.

Kaila: And we also have to be aware of what is it? Like, why is it bothering us? What is it about that action that makes me upset? Knowing those triggers, knowing what gets under our skin.

So, I mean, can we, can we get real, Can we talk about it?

Bruce: Yes, absolutely.

Kaila: Okay. So for me, I will just admit, the one thing that gets under my skin, that pushes my buttons, that it's like, if the kids do this, you better "whoof boy watch out," is when they correct me.

Bruce: Absolutely. So for those of you right now, I'm gonna give you a visual, okay.

For some people, when they get angry, they're passive aggressive. For other people, when they get angry, they sit there and they use their mouth. For some, they wear their emotions on their sleeve. Or, when you're my wife, you can do all the above and you become dual-lingual, bilingual, whatever you wanna say. And she uses her hands so you know that she's mad with her mouth and her face and the blubbering tears that kind of come out and her hands moving back and forth.

If mama's hands are moving back and forth as she's sitting there talking at the same speed, you know you better run because if there's any object in the vicinity, it's kinda chucked at you.

Kaila: I mean, okay, I'm throwing things? I don't know. But bilingual and moving my hands, yes, I'm very animated and I can become very expressive.

And I think that the reason, so again, it goes back to, well, why? Why is that such a trigger for me when I'm corrected? And I think it comes back to the fact that I think of myself as a very intellectual, thoughtful person. I like to learn. I like to study. I like to research. I like to think of things from different perspectives.

I like to be efficient, so when I'm thinking about an answer, I'm thinking about on a response or I'm thinking about our plans for the day and I come up with a plan. I've put a lot of thought into it and so,

Bruce: Talk about it's all order, especially for a blonde.

Kaila: I mean, that's a compliment. Thank you. So for, you know, my seven year old to come back and say, "Well, what about this?"

or like, "What about that?" I kind of go on the defense because I'm like, "No, I already thought about that. We're doing it this way because I've already thought about all the other options and it's not your job to tell me how we're gonna do the day." And sometimes, I will admit, I overreact.

Bruce: Just a little bit. We're being real here.

Kaila: We're being real. We're being real. I overreact, but I know that it's a me issue. I know it's a me problem and I know that I need to acknowledge that in order to be able to respond better, but this isn't just about me. What about you, honey? What gets under your skin? What pushes your buttons?

Bruce: Well, since we we're talking about, you know, spiritual gifts for mine is patience, so I'm good all the time.

Kaila: Okay, we're being real. Not fake.

Bruce: That was real. Not real? No. The reality is for me, as I mentioned prior podcast, I was a fun kid growing up. I was a spirited kid. I was one of the kids who got in trouble from the time I came out of the womb, it seemed like.

And everything that my kids have attempted to do, that they do do that they think about doing, I've already been there, done that. On top of sitting there, here's a little bit more background about me teaching. I've taught behavior kids in rough neighborhoods. I've been around cops, probation officers. You know it.

So for me it's a little bit different, right? And so, being the kid I was growing up, and then teaching what I've taught and then being a coach to a bunch of different young men, in various areas of the United States, I've seen a lot. I wouldn't say all because only God's seen it all, but the realize I've seen a lot, right?

And so when my own kids wanna sit there and do something dumb, and I can see it coming from, 10 miles away, 10 steps before they even think about doing it. I'm like, "Hey homie, you might not want to do that because this is gonna happen. You might not wanna do it because you might get in trouble. Actually, you will get in trouble."

and we can get more than that a little bit later 'cause that's pretty much what started our weekend, this last weekend. And so, for me it's like, hey, I've already been there, done that, and as a result I'm trying to spare my kids. But at the end of the day, it's not for me to necessarily spare my kids.

I've learned and I'm learning and I'm continuing to learn that they're gonna be those days that I have to let them skin their knees and go through it. But what gets me the most angry more times not is them doing something dumb, even though I've already warned them 49 times not to do it.

Kaila: Mm. It's like touching the stove, right? Don't touch a stove...

Bruce: don't touch a hot stove, otherwise you can get burned. And then you do it 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times, and all of a sudden now you have burns all over your hands. You're like, what are you doing that for? It could have been avoided in the first place. I mean, especially with some of our more, strong willed children, aka "mommy juniors".

I'm just kidding. I'm probably just as strong willed. The reality is, man, I sit there and see it and it's just like, "Why?" And they look at you and I'm like, "I've been there before. I've done that before. I've done it better than you. And I got away with it. At least my parents didn't see me do it. Maybe in God's eyes I didn't get away with it, which is what counts. But at the end of the day, I did it a lot better than you did."

And then my kids just look at me and they're like, shake their head. "You're right."

Kaila: But even though anger is a natural emotion that I would say every single person on this earth faces. I think it's no coincidence that the Bible is so clear about turning away from anger and controlling our anger.

Like in Psalms 37: 8, it says "Stop being angry. Turn away from your rage. Do not lose your temper. It only leads to harm."

Bruce: And I'm gonna cut you off right there. I think this is so important. This verse is so important in so many different ways, right? In itself, stop being angry. God's saying straight up, Stop being angry.

I think especially when you're disciplining your kid, you don't want to discipline out of anger.

Kaila: Mm-hmm.

Bruce: Right? There's so many things that require discipline and require you to sit there and do something towards your kid, whether it's grounding, whether it's spanking, whatever it might be, whatever form of discipline that you believe in.

There are a lot of things that call for discipline throughout our day, throughout our week, throughout our month and year, right? The biggest difference though, is doing it out of love and in anger, right? And so going back to the heart. They're right next to each other. That heart of love and anger are right there.

And you can choose in the moment, do I wanna sit there and do it outta love and be loving and kind and caring as I discipline them so they understand why they're being disciplined. Or do I fly off the handle out of anger, which is what happened this past weekend with a kid or two, and as a result, it turned ugly.

Like it didn't need to turn ugly. And so are you disciplining out of anger or are you disciplining out of love? It's a big thing for those of us who, and this is me talking to myself like I'm looking in the mirror right now as I say this. Five years ago, maybe my wife, but right now me. When I discipline, if I can't handle and sit there and discipline outta love right away, maybe I gotta take a step away for a minute, or five, or 10 and say, "Go to your room" as I calm down.

Because like I said, just my background with teaching and coaching and being around kids a lot. It's like, man, my own TKs, you know, they talk about PKS all the time, "preacher kids". What about teacher kids? I mean, It's tough. And they know it. And they see it, and they've been around it, yet they still do it because they're human.

Kaila: Mm-hmm. And anger in itself isn't the sin either, because the reality is, is God gets angry, God got angry, God gets angry, like, God hates our sin.

And there's plenty of instances in the Bible where you see God unleash his wrath on mankind because he's a jealous God. And so when we're living in sin and we're turning away from God, that makes God angry. And you can look at Jesus, like Jesus in the temple, when he saw the people taking advantage of the temple, which was supposed to be the holy, sacred place.

He flipped over tables, man.

Bruce: Absolutely. Homeboy JC wasn't the little JC that had the lamb around his neck at all times, maybe, if at all. I don't know. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Maybe they sit there and they saw that from an image depicted of him a long, long time ago. I don't know.

The reality is our JC, our Jesus Christ, that we sit here and follow and wanna model our lives after. Had some, some waves, man, that's the end of the day. He did. He was willing to stick for what was right, including clearing out that temple that day that you're talking about. So I think it's important to understand and realize that the Jesus that we follow isn't this mild and meek Jesus. Some of the things that he did was meek and mild. The way in which he came across at times is how we should act. But it doesn't mean he was meek and mild and everything he did.

Kaila: And then I think the other lesson to take from that is that it's not bad to get angry, but we need to recognize, "am I getting angry out of my own selfish desires and my pride or is my heart angry because this is something that goes against God and my heart is angry for God and there's righteous anger."

And so there is that sense of, "Okay, well how does this apply? Am I righteous in my anger because this is offending me? What my kids did offends me? And so I'm angry 'cause it offended me, like not listening to my advice or trying to prove me wrong or tell me that I'm wrong and well, I'm just mad because you're telling me I'm wrong and that that's a pride issue.

But am I angry because they did something and I'm angry at the sin. I'm angry at, what's breaking in their lives or in their worlds or how they're not following God? What are they doing that's not following Jesus? And so making sure that there's also that distinction between, I'm angry at the sin and my heart hurts over this, but not being angry at the person.

I think it's okay also to express that to our children, that righteous anger and being angry over things. Not that we should never be angry, but just that discernment between which is appropriate and which isn't. So, as we were talking about this, I just so happened, not even me, God, so happened to give me this passage.

I'm reading through the Bible in a year and Bruce and I had already talked about our weekend and wanting to talk about this anger issue. And I'm reading my Bible today and it was like God just said, "Here you go. Here's the passage that is gonna tie perfectly into this." And so if you have your Bibles and you wanna open up with me, it's 2 Timothy chapter two, and I'm gonna read a little passage here: verses 23 to 26.

It says, "Again, I say, Don't get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach. And be patient with difficult people. Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever. He wants."

And I heard that chuckle when I said difficult people 'cause you know the difficult people I'm talking about, don't you?

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think before we go to the difficult people, I think there's another part of this verse that just sticks out to me and it says, "gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts."

And this goes back to the conversation that Kaila and I had this week, is that even though we can sit here and raise our kids in a Christian home and show 'em what the love of Jesus looks like and how a disciple of Jesus should look like, in order for it to click with them, it needs to be personal for them, it needs to be a relationship that they have and they take ownership of.

And for every kid it's different. You know, for some, you hear about prodigal sons and daughters who come back at a later date who aren't ready when they live in their parents' home, whatever might be. And that's the reality, right? And it's not in our timing. It's just like when I sit there and I tell my kids, "Don't do something because you know it's gonna bite you in the butt", but at the end of the day, Same with their relationship with God, It's like, Hey, I can tell you how much better your life will be if you follow Jesus, if you follow God.

But if you choose not to, man, you're gonna go through a lot more ups and downs. And when you do, and maybe not necessarily more ups and downs, but at least when you go through those ups and downs of life, those peaks and values that we go through, at least you have God right there by your side.

Kaila: Right, and that was exactly what stood out to me is because when we are disciplining our kids, when we don't see eye to eye with them, I need to be able to control my anger. To not engage in ignorant arguments.

ignorant.

Bruce: Ignorant. And it is, And and that's what happened with our weekend last weekend. Right.

There, there was a series of ignorance, conversations and, and we'll just start here. The ignorance started on Thursday. The ignorant conversation started Thursday when one of our kids decided it was a good idea to sleep through their alarm, and then thought that they would take a Lyft to school without us knowing.

I mean, that's what kind of started off. And from there I was trying to sit there and be understanding, understanding it's been a long year. But there's also been other things that have gone on that have contributed to this child of ours, being tired throughout the week, like having a job during the week, even though we've asked them not to work.

Amongst some other things going on. And so that was the start of the ignorant conversation on both our ends, things coming out of our mouth. That I regret saying. As the weekend started, I think the part that riled us up that went into the ignorant conversation was that, on Friday as a high school football game they wanted to go to. We were nice enough to sit there...

I don't know if you wanna call it grace or mercy or a little bit of both, but we let this child go to the game and there was some requirements that went along with it. And low and behold, Saturday morning, part of the requirements was they were gonna come to Serve Day at church with me. We were supposed to wake up, we were supposed to go to Serve Day, where we were gonna go do some outreach to some folks who needed extra help.

I wake up, alarm goes off, I get ready, and guess what? The same kid who had trouble sleeping in during a Thursday for school was sleeping again as he was supposed to be ready for when we went out to serve. So paint the picture. I'm sitting there with two of our other boys ready to go work. My 16 year old daughter ready to go work, ready to go serve.

And the next thing I know, instead of getting in our car and being super excited, I end up in the car. I take a driver around the block, I drop off our oldest kid, put 'em back in the house, take off. Cursing underneath my breath like, "why can't we just sit here and figure this out?" that was Saturday.

And then Sunday even went more downhill and there's no need to get into that. But the reality is there was a bunch of ignorant conversations happening. And I think part of the biggest thing is, is with a, with a believer who believes in God and who has a good walk with God, the conversation I had would've been different than with a kid who's still sitting there struggling to find their way.

Does that make sense?

Kaila: Yeah, absolutely. Just because they are raised under us and under our wings, and we can lead by example and we can show them, but like Bruce mentioned earlier, they at some point are going to have to choose Jesus for themselves. They're gonna have to choose to have a relationship.

And I think that's why there's verses like this that are so crucial to our role as parents because we have to realize that until they make that decision for themselves, we are dealing with unbelievers. And their heart it says, "then they will come to their senses". So we have to remember they have their blinders on.

And so everything that we do in the way that we discipline, if you joined us last week, you heard me talk about how the word discipline really comes from the word disciple. And so this is where God is telling us this is how we disciple our children as unbelievers, and the ways that we do that are that we have to be kind, we have to be able to teach, and we have to be patient.

And so that, those are straight from that passage in 2 Timothy: kind, able to teach, and patient. Again, going back to controlling our anger and controlling our emotions in order to choose kindness, teaching them through that and then teaching them what, what am what are we teaching them?

If we're doing our jobs as parents, what we should be teaching them is, what does God say about this? What is God's heart about this? Again, taking the me pride out of it and saying, Well, this is what God says and this is what God is angry over, or this is what God wants to see. This is how God wants you to live your life.

So teaching them according to God's word and then being patient. Yeah, it's gonna happen. They're gonna mess up, They're gonna scrape their knees, they're gonna fall down. They're gonna do the things you said not to do because they have to figure it out for themselves.

Bruce: And I'm gonna take this one step further. I think it's, it doesn't just go with your kids, like what we're talking about right now, the premise of what we're talking about, it's not only for your kids, man. It is for everybody we come in contact with. It's for people who we work with, people who we live with, people who we go to school with, whatever it might be. Think about this: when's the last time you've gotten on board with somebody who's straight up yelling, getting angry?

You know, think of a boss. You sit there and you mess up in your job, how much respect and how are you gonna respond to somebody who's yelling at you, cursing at you, putting you down, telling you you're not worth anything or no good compared to a boss who's like, "Hey, you wanna know what I understand you messed up, but you're human and and you wanna know what we can do it again and try it over, right?"

And so I think it's important in life to understand, especially with parenting, but in life in general, it's important to be kind and you gotta be patient. You wanna know what, think about all the things that we get mad at each other for our kids for, Right? And we can sit here and say, as I've said, I can get super angry and even ticked off to the point where like, my face is turning red.

I'm not speaking with my hands yet, but I'm sitting there, my face turning red. And it's like I've told you for the 49 time. And then I can sit here and you think about that plank in my own night or that speck in my own eye. It's like how many times has God looked at me and said, I told you that, and you think 49 times a lot?

I told you 1,549 times not to do something. You still do it. You wanna know what, I told you 1,797 times not to curse. I've told you 5 billion times not to drink. I told you 4,000 times to sit there and do A through Z and we still don't do it. Right? Yet, guess what? God still loves us. He's still patient with us.

He doesn't block us off. He doesn't get angry. He doesn't, I mean, He does get angry at us, but what I'm trying to sit there and say is He is patient and He is willing to sit there and give us a second, third, fourth thousandth chance. Yet with our own kids who he made in His image, of our dna, we don't even wanna give him 40 chances yet, God's willing to give us a million.

Kaila: And the other thing too with God, though is he loves us and he is gonna continue to give us chances over and over, but he doesn't say there are no consequences. So there are also still consequences for our actions. And that's I think where discipline comes in. And you have to provide corrective consequences and appropriate consequences that kind of match, not only match the crime, but are going to correct the behavior.

So this was one of the things we kind of sat down, talked about, like, okay, well if this child of ours is having trouble over sleeping, and isn't getting enough sleep, how do we correct that? So what consequences, quote unquote, consequences are we going to put in place that are going to help correct the behavior?

So if that's the issue, then the consequence is going to be, well, you're turning in your phone at a certain time at night, because that way it's not a distraction. And we will wake you up every morning at a certain time. So now there's no more luxury of getting to sleep in or setting your own alarm. If you can't do those things on your own, then we will help you do that.

And so I think also, discipline, think of your consequences as discipling teaching your children that corrective behavior of this isn't working, this isn't the right way. So hey, this is a consequence and it's probably not what you wanted and it's probably not gonna be fun, but it's gonna help correct the behavior of the problem that we have.

Bruce: I fully agree with that. You have to sit there and show them the steps that you wanted to see, or in any areas that you wanna see growth. You have to be willing to sit there and show them the steps. It's no different than you teaching a math class or teaching the kid how to read. You have to go sit there and go through the baby steps first in order to see larger steps made down the road.

Kaila: And then the last part too is you have to know when to pick your battles. Because with our kids, they are, again, if they are lost to their senses, as the verse said. Right? And so they're blind. They're living the life blind. Then not everything is going to be the way that we see it, because we see it from a different perspective.

And again, they're figuring things out. So, Do you think that your kids wants to hear you constantly ragging and nagging about all the things that they're not doing right, or not doing this, or they should be doing that? And there's a reason why Colossians 3:21 and says, "Fathers do not aggravate your children, or they'll become discouraged."

We also need to, when we're parenting them and when we're guiding them, and we're disciplining them, making sure do not aggravate them. Don't push them over their limits. If we're getting angry and we're yelling at them and then we're saying things that maybe that's belittling them, making them feel discouraged.

"I'm never gonna get it. They're just always mad at me. I can't do anything right."

We need to be able to correct them in a way that gives them that hope. That's why it also said, be kind. We need to teach them. There needs to be, yes, there are these consequences, but it's for your own good. We're showing you a different way.

This is what God says. So, I think it's also important that we make sure we pick our battles. What is worth fighting for? And that goes back to, well, what would Jesus fight for? What is breaking his heart? Is it something that your kid is doing? Is it breaking Jesus' heart?

Is it hurting him or is it hurting you? Is it just something that's offending you and it's a you problem and you need to handle differently? Or is this something where no, that would offend Jesus And so I'm gonna correct your behavior because I know that that's not what Jesus wants for you, and that's not what Jesus wants for your life because his Bible, the scripture tells me so. It's right there in His word.

He tells us how he expects us to live. So I think that that's also important when we're disciplining our kids or when we wanna get angry. Well, is this worth getting angry over? Is this worth correcting?

Bruce: So, so true. And at the end of the day, we can do one or two things right? We can either sit there and push our kids closer to Christ, or we can sit there and push 'em farther away and day and day out, it's up to us as parents. It's not easy, and I'm the first one to sit here and say, it's not easy to do, but the way in which we act and the way in which we respond to things plays a big part in how our kids develop as human being.

Kaila: So if you're listening to this podcast and maybe this really touched home for you. You are sitting there reflecting on your own anger issues or the way that you respond to the kids.

Or maybe the way you're responding and they're not reacting. Maybe you don't have appropriate consequences and your discipline isn't lining up and you're still having behavior problems. These are things that Bruce and I, we haven't totally figured it out. But if we're even just a couple steps ahead of where you are at, we would love to get together with you.

Talk through that with you. You can connect with us through our website. It's www.growingpaynes That's like our last name, P A Y N E S .org. On our website, you can also find links to the podcast, the women's Blog, and ways to connect with us.

Bruce: Absolutely. And thank you for those of you who have partnered with us with financial donations as well. It's been awesome to see those come in. If you feel that on your heart to do so, go right ahead and do so. If not, no worries.

I'm gonna sit here and end in a word of prayer. So here we go.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the chances to come sit here and talk about you and your love and the grace and mercy that you've shown us as human beings.

Lord, thank you for that grace and mercy. So often we do not deserve it. Even if it's the 49th time, Lord, there's so many times where you tell us not to do something, we do it anyways. Yet you still love us and you still show us what it is you want us to do correct, Lord. I pray that as we parenting our own kids, that we can show this same grace, mercy, the same love that you show us Lord.

I pray that you be with parents who are struggling right now, who are either unequally yoked and, and are not too sure how they're supposed to be raising their kid, or they might be having spouses who oppose them. I pray that you can be with them, Lord, and that they can come and and learn what it means to be the child of God, a themselves, but B, how to show that love to their own kids, to o Lord.

I pray that you can be with our friends and family who are going through it, the thick of it right now. Lord, we've had family members pass away. We've had people in and out of the hospital. We've had people healed, some other variety of things going on. Lord, just thank you for your love and graciousness during these times in life.

Lord, I pray that you can be with our kids as they move forward, Lord, hopefully that they see the light of God in Kaila and I and all that we say and do, and let them just glorify you and be lights until the kingdom of God tomorrow at school. We just pray in your name, Lord. Amen.

Kaila: Amen.

002: Behind the Name

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to week two of our Unshackled Love podcast. My name is Bruce Payne and I'm sitting here next to my wonderful, gorgeous wife. 

Kaila: Kaila Payne, and for those of you who are just joining us and don't quite know us yet, I mean it is only week two, 

Bruce: Yes, but we made it back for a week two. It's like we didn't just get shut down after being a pilot episode.

We actually made it to week two. 

Kaila: Yeah, now we have fancy intro music. We're starting to be more official. But for those of you who don't know us, we are two public school teachers in the greater Austin area. We are blessed to have nine beautiful, mostly wonderful children. 

Bruce: Crazy like their mommy. 

Kaila: Ranging all the way from a senior in high school to a kindergartner and everything in between.

So yes, our life is definitely crazy and busy, full of fun and full of love. And tonight we wanted to come share with you the meaning behind the name, Why we chose Unshackled love as the name of our podcast, what it means to us individually, but then, what it means to us as parents and how God calls us to have unshackled love.

Bruce: Yeah. And real quick, I would love to give a shout out to Sabrina Upton. Thank you. Thank you very much for letting us use that song that you guys heard as our intro. The song's name is Unshackled, it's by her husband David Upton. Over 10 years ago, I first heard the song while attending Saddleback Church in the Overdrive Venue.

 It's a song that both my wife and I have listened to regularly for the last 10 plus years. It's a song that's had a positive effect on both of our lives, our kids' lives. My parents' lives as well, especially my dad, who we'll get more into later in some different episodes, but it's a song that's near and dear to our heart.

It's a song that's made its way from iPods to iPads to iPhones, and it's still on our playlist to this day. So Sabrina, thank you very much for letting this song be a part of our journey. It's something that. It's very important to us. So thank you very much. 

Kaila: Yeah. So blessed to be able to use a song. So I, you will learn that I am the nerdy one in thisrelationship.

Bruce: She is definitely the nerd and I am the ADHD boy who likes to go outside and run around and play. 

Kaila: And I like to research and study and learn, and...

Bruce: Be a nerd. 

Kaila: Yep, Be a nerd. So I actually looked up the dictionary definition for the word unshackled because I wanted to know what does the dictionary say? What is the actual definition? And so we have one form that says to release from shackles chains or other physical restraints. But then we have this other definition that says to liberate and set free. And I just love, because that's to me, What unshackled means to liberate and set free. Why don't you share with us what does unshackled mean to you personally? 

Bruce: Yeah. The, the word set free, I mean, there's so many things in life that hinder us from loving people the way God intended for us to love people. Right. And I think a lot of that is based on hurts, based on past mistakes, based on things that have gone on in our lives that we can't get over, right?

The things that sit there and, and take us to a place that we were never meant to be, which is bondage. And looking at that, you know, for me it's. Two or three different things. I look on that profoundly affect my ability to love others, including you and including our kids, and even people around me. Right?

And, the first thing I'll sit there and talk about is my divorce. You know, prior to be married to Kayla, I was married to my high school sweetheart. And, if you would've asked most people in our family, I mean, we would probably would've been the last people to get divorced. And just due to life and circumstances, some stuff happened and the divorce happened.

The reality is, after the divorce, I went through a really dark time, you know, a time where I relied on reading, reading Proverbs. A time on where I, felt really bad, you know, not for necessarily what I did, but because I felt like I let my kids down. I felt unloved. I felt like I wasn't lovable. And it was all lies that the, the devil was preaching to me, right?

And it's something that needed to be set free from. And as a result of not being set free and being shackled at that point in time, I mean, I was withholding things from people around me in terms of love. And it was because I was so caught up in what I wasn't at that time, that I was not able to do what I was intended to do by God.

 Another area in my that I struggle with, you know, if, you talk to people who know me well, I like to have an adult beverage here or there. And when I sit there, say an adult beverage. I mean when people sit there and say, "Hey, you wanna go have a beer?" And I can sit there and honestly say, I don't know when the last time I've had "a beer" is. I mean, I'm a big dude to begin with and I like to have fun.

And for a lot of years that fun, you know, focus or centered around having a drink or five or seven or four or three, whatever it might been, right? And so, if you were to go to AA right now and look at their website, it talks about what an alcoholic is. Even without reading that beforehand, I knew I had a problem with alcohol. Reading their definition solidifies the fact that I am an alcoholic. If you a little bit further past that, I'm a third generation alcoholic. At least if, if I had a guess, probably more than that. And so over the years I've used alcohol to cope with certain things. I've used alcohol as an escape. I've used alcohol to sit there and put me into place.

That makes me be able to turn my brain off, or at least that's the, the illusion I give myself. You know, someone who's ADHD to the max, it's hard to turn my brain off. And so I'd rely on that often to sit there and and turn my brain off. So between my divorce and alcohol, and even some anger and some other stuff going on, I mean, I was withholding love for my wife and kids that I should have been provided from the start. 

And so, one of the first bullet points I'm gonna go over is you need to over be able to overcome your hurts in your past in order to love others like God intended. If you sit there and you look at Psalms 107 verses 10 through 16, it says, 

"Some sat in darkness and deepest gloom. Imprison and iron chains of misery, they rebelled against the words of God scoring the council of the most. That is why he broke them with hard labor. They fell and no one was there to help them. Lord help. They cried in their trouble and he saved them from their distress. He'd led them from the darkest and deepest gloom. He snapped their chains. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them where he broke down their prison gates of bronze. He cut apart their bars of iron for me."

I was in that area that was dark and deep and full of gloom. I was in that place that felt like Groundhogs Day over and over and over again, waking up saying, 

"Hey God, why me? Why now?"

Right. And that felt like I had nothing left to give and that's not what God intended for our lives. You know? There are so many things, like I mentioned, that we can be shackled to, whether it's our past, whether it's addiction, whether it's anger, whether it's pornography, whatever it might be, right?

There's things that we are shackled to that God never intended us to be shackled to. 

Kaila: And for me, I love that you said that because I was not raised in the church, I wasn't raised knowing religion or knowing God or that... those weren't conversations that we had in our home. In fact, it was kind of more this assumption that good people do good things. And, you know, sometimes you make mistakes in life and you grow up and you figure it out. 

And so there wasn't a lot of guidance or justification or like reasoning for why to be good or why to make good decisions. But I figured, you know, like that good people do good things. So I'll make some good choices on the surface.

I had a very, picturesque lifestyle. I was volunteering and I was helping out, and I was doing all these things, a, b, c, d, but in my private life, I was making really poor choices and so, I was kind of living in that prison and I, and I felt that depression. I experienced depression at a very young age, and I just didn't know how to overcome it.

I was just feeling that doom and gloom and not knowing where to turn. I didn't have that hope, that had never been shared with me until I started going to church with Bruce, and that was when I had my come to Jesus moment, and that's actually when I heard Dave Upton sing that song, Unshackled. And that song is just so personal for me because it was when I really started to grieve my sin.

I don't think that that's something... I don't think you can have a true come to Jesus moment until you grieve your sin and you feel that weight of the decisions and the choices that you're making. And for me, it was just realizing that God didn't want me to be doing those things. He didn't want me living that way.

He didn't want me struggling with depression. He had hope and he had love, and I just needed to accept that and know that He accepted me as I was, but that He loved me so much, He didn't want to leave me there. And so for me, you know, my life verse is second Corinthians 5:17, "Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life has gone and a new life has begun."

For me, being unshackled was literally breaking that bondage from the old me who I was, the way I thought, the way I lived, and knowing that I was able to free myself from sin because I now was able to bond myself to Christ and I was able to rely on his strength to stop my sin and say no to those temptations and turn the other way. I was given hope and purpose in Jesus. And so for me that unshackled was really just getting rid of that old lifestyle, that bondage of sin, becoming a new person, knowing that I had the power in Jesus to change my legacy, not only for myself, but for our family, for our kids.

And even though that happened, I'm still human. So I'm not perfect and, you know, I still struggle on different struggles now, but you know, I love how Paul shared in Romans chapter seven, he said, I "know that nothing good lives in me. That is in my sinful nature. I wanna do what's right, but I can't, and I wanna do what is good, but I don't..."

 You know, there's this struggle and it's like sometimes we get so wrapped up in either emotion or we respond to a certain situation and it's not in our best. It's not always going to be. Our first nature is sin. So that's gonna be the first thing we go to, and it really takes a lot of discipline to step away from that and to say, Okay, I know this is my sin nature. I'm aware of it, but I'm not shackled to that and I can turn, I can choose to turn to Jesus instead. 

Bruce: Oh, absolutely. And I think a big thing, you know, when you look at both of our past and our childhoods and growing up and everything that we've been through, is that stuff happens for a reason. And whether it's good or bad, God can take what has happened in our past and use it for good.

And if you look at Romans 8:28, it says, "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them."

I mean in our marriage, we've had some awesome people who have been, you know, sounding boards for us, people who have given us wisdom along the way.

And I had a coach I worked for at one point in time, and I'll never forget, you know, I was going through back surgery and some other things going on and he sent me that verse. It's, a verse in my email. It's a guy who I still texted this day and I look up to as a godly man, and he's like, "Bruce, Regardless of what you've been through and what you've experienced, God's going to use it for his kingdom. God's gonna use it for his growth."

And, it's realizing that... hey, guess what? Until you go through that and you learn from that and you, accept it, and you ask forgiveness, as Kaila said, you're gonna have a hard time loving other people if you don't love yourself, right? And so that bondage that you're going through of not being able to love yourself based on who you were or what you did that you think it's so heinous.

The reality is God says He wants you unshackled from that. He wants you to be able to be set apart from it so that you can move forward and love people the way He wanted you to love people. And so that is how you sit there and see how the song unshackled, but how the word unshackled unfolded our lives.

And as parents, you know, we've come together and put a couple different points together, that we try to use in terms of unshackled love with our kids aswell. 

Kaila: And those three points are we need to show unshackled genuine love to our children. We need to love them and parent them in discipline. And then we also need to love them through conflict.

And so the first one is just genuine love and I think that, again, just going back to my, come to Jesus, I struggled with loving myself for most of my life. And when I started my relationship with Jesus, one of the things that I would pray every day is, "Lord, help me to love myself the way that you love me."

 That was, you know, a prayer that, I knew that truth, that God loved me, but I didn't feel like God loved me and I had to pray every day for my feelings to start matching my thoughts. I knew God loved me and I had to start believing it. And then when I started having children of my own and they started growing and seeing all of their different personalities and how they were young, I just, I experienced this new love.

As I start to see them form into these individuals and their personalities and their quirkiness and their attitudes, and they're just so unique and I love them so much, and then I just am in such awe and wonder that God created them... 

Bruce: in his image. 

Kaila: In his image in the way in which He wanted. 

Bruce: I think real quick, just like to cut in. It's very easy, right? You know, with us with nine kids, we can sit there and say, "Hey, we have a couple kids like this, or a couple kids who act like that." The reality is there are certain kids that we have that are easier for us to get along with or easier for us to see eye to eye with, per se. Right? And we also have other kids that are more challenging just based on how we're made.

But the reality is the end of the day, God made these kids the way He wanted in His image. They might be our dna, but guess what? It's for his purpose. And His purpose trump's our dna. 

Kaila: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because we are body, mind, and spirit. We talked about that in the last podcast. If you haven't go listen to it.

And so even though their bodies, you know, they might look more like me or look more like Bruce, their mind and their soul is 100% uniquely given to them by God. And so what's crazy is that even as much as we love our children to think that God loves them way more. 

Bruce: God loved us enough. To let us have them.

Kaila: Oh, absolutely. I pray that every night. Thank you for allowing me to be the mother of these children, because it is. It's a blessing to get to know these children and to be entrusted with them. You know, God entrusted me with these children to raise them and that that's my responsibility, or our responsibility.

But just to see them and then to genuinely love them through every age and stage and trial because they're growing. And so, you know, sometimes we might get frustrated because, you know, there's tantrums or they're starting to test boundaries or they're not making good choices, or, you know, whatever it may be.

We can get frustrated with that. But, they're growing and God loves them all the same. And in fact, God loves that earnesty and that just pureness about children. In fact, you know, Luke 18:16, Jesus said, "Let the children come to me and don't stop them. For the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children."

Bruce: Just this past weekend, I'm sitting here smiling and laughing at my wife. We had a moment that kind of fits within this on Sunday. I mean, for us, our weekends are crazy, you know, with nine kids and five who play sports, two who have jobs, two little kids who barely speak English, going, "I want to go do stuff and have fun."

 I mean, there's a lot going on. And this weekend was one of those weekends where for us it was an awesome weekend to be home and in town. You know, a lot of weekends were either in Houston or Dallas or San Antonio, even outta state at points in time for our kids and their athletics, and we have decided to attend a church that has a Sunday night service because that is the one night of the week or the one point in time of the week that doesn't really conflict with a lot of other things going on .

Kaila: Until they had to mess with my schedule last weekend and plan a soccer game. Sunday night.

Bruce: Sunday night, South Austin. And so we're sitting there and I was like, "Hey, you all know what? Hey honey. What do you think about going to church in the morning? I mean, our boys' game will get over at 11 o'clock. It'll only be a few minutes late to church."

And she goes, "You know, I don't like being late."

Little did she know and, and to kind of set the story a little bit more, little did she know before I'd even walked upstairs to give this idea to her, I happened to be downstairs and four of our little kids, and by little kids, I mean under the age of nine [and there's actually five, nine and under] but four, under the age of nine, had already had their Bibles packed, ready to go.

And so knowing this, I had happened to walk upstairs and say, "What do you think about going to church after the soccer game? She's like, "You know, I don't like to be late"

 I was like, "Okay. Yes, dear." as any good husband would say... and I'm laughing in my head knowing it, and I'm like, Man, did I just make her feel bad or that her feelings were not valid?

And so I waited until I get on the road, so that way she couldn't throw something at me. Just kidding. She wouldn't do that anymore... but I waited as I get in the car and I'm snickering, I'm smiling. I'm with our son, who's nine years old, going to the soccer game. 

In my head, I'm like, I'm stoked.

I get to go to 5:00 PM service and not be interrupted and get to be on time. And, little did she know that when I had that thought, when I had talked to her, I had already had a plan. And so anyways, I give her a call and I said, "Hi honey." 

And she's like, "Hey, what's up?" 

And I said, "I feel bad." 

And she goes, "Why?"

I go, "Because you wanna know what? I had already seen the kids with their Bibles before I had come upstairs"

And she goes, "It's okay. I just need to get over myself"

 And so often. I mean, how many times can we sit there and say, as parents, we just need to get over ourselves and say, "Hey, it's not about us, it's about God."

Right? It's not about what necessarily we need or want in that moment, but it's about our children and what they need as well. And I mean, just like this, that says, don't stop them. We have little kids who want to go worship God with their Bibles and give it offering, and we're more worried about us being on time.

Kaila: Yeah. I mean, guilty as charged. When you come down and you see four kids, bright eyed, bushy tales with their bibles and hands saying, "Do we get to go to church this morning?" You know, it's like, how do you say no to that? And then it is, it's such a reminder. And I'll be honest, I had anxiety the whole time.

Parking. You know, being the last car in the parking lot, having to park four parking lots away. 

Bruce: But what she's not trying, what she's not saying is it's a megachurch, right? So guess what? Do you think they're gonna notice the last person coming in when there's already like 17,000 people there? In a parking lot the size of Disneyland. Come on girl. 

Kaila: Probably not. But what I'm saying is my anxiety was still real and I had to pray that going in. "God calmed my heart. Settled my heart. It's okay that we're going late. And it's, okay that we're gonna be late. It's okay, I'm still gonna hear the message. I'm gonna get what you need me to out of it. My kids wanna be here."

And it was, it was a great message. And I even said, I can't wait for you to go to five o'clock service. 

Bruce: I did. I went to five o'clock service. I got there 15 minutes early with two kids, and I was able to get a cup of coffee before I hung out with my boy. 

Kaila: Yeah. Okay, So don't rub it in. But the point is, is that, that's how God wants us to love Him, and that's how God wants us to love our children, is just pure genuine love.

Bruce: Coming as we are.

Kaila: As we are. Just bring it all. 

Bruce: So the next, the next point is love in parenting. 

Kaila: And so in parenting, there's two points to this that I really want to make sure to hit home, and that is, as any good parent you want for your child, better than what you had for yourself.

Bruce: Amen.

Kaila: And we want our children to be set. We got all the mistakes, we went through all those and we don't want our children to experience those hurts and those same struggles. And so we want what's best for them. We want them to have better. But in order to do that, we need to discipline them.

And I think this is a really tough topic that many people don't want to touch on, but it's biblical. In Deuteronomy 8:5 it says, "Think about it just as a parent, disciplines a child. The Lord your God disciplines you for your own good."

It is for our good that, and it's for our children's good, that we discipline them. But now here's the thing that I wanna touch on is the word discipline actually comes [again, this is my nerd side coming out, so you're just gonna be patient]. 

Bruce: Or if you've ever watched Malcolm, the Krelboyne. 

Kaila: The word discipline actually comes from the Greek word that we use for disciple. And so when Jesus was discipling, his apostles and his followers, he was teaching them and he was guiding them, and he was showing them the way. So when we're disciplining our children, it's not just because we feel like torturing them and tormenting them and taking away their phone because it's fun. That's not the purpose. The purpose of true discipline, the way that the Bible talks about it and God expects of us and the way that He disciplines us is providing correction so that we get back on the right path, teaching us the right path and the way we should go. 

Bruce: And, I think a big thing, you know, as she said, it's not taking pleasure in tormenting our kids, right? I think often. For us, like when we discipline our kids, it hurts us. I mean, there's times I sit there and look like, " where did I fail at for our kids to sit there and do what they did?" And the reality is it goes back to our sinful nature that we're born with. Right? And it's nothing, You know, oftentimes or, sometimes there are times that we can't control what our kids do.

We can control how we react to it and parent discipline them, right? And so, You know, with our kids, I look at our oldest kid, he's about to be 18 next month. I mean, he's a kid who I love dearly, who we love dearly and we've had some challenges along the way and, you know, looking at... it just funny.

I was at school today. And it's funny that she talked about, you know, we wanna learn from our own mistakes and make sure our kids have it better than us, or we want what's better for them. We want them to have a better life than what we've had her experienced, right? And so I'm sitting there today and this girl was talking about being bad. And I said, "You know what? The best part about me being a teacher is?"

And she goes, "What?" 

I go, "I was a worst kid than you were. I already know what you're about to say and what you're thinking about doing 10 moves before you even do it."

And she's like, Huh? And she's like, "Well, I'm a bad kid". I go, "kind of described bad."

So we talked back and forth a little bit and it goes on, she has a sibling and I said, "Are they, are they worse behaved than you?" And she's like, "Yes."

I go," Have they've been incarcerated?" She said, Yes. 

We talked back and forth about what that looks like. And I go, "Well, what do your parents think?" And she's like, "Well, they discipline us."

I go, "Really?"

And I go, "Maybe they do, maybe they don't. We have to discipline our kids too."

And so needless to said a few years back, we, our son, not hanging out with the greatest friends in life, thought it was a good idea to sit there and try some stuff that is not legal here in the state of Texas. I mean, it's legal in most places, but not here in Texas.

And it happened to be a couple days before we went on vacation that we found out about it. And I, him and I, we had a conversation. My wife, him and I had a conversation together, and we pretty much said that, "Hey, you're not gonna be able to go on vacation with us. Like, it hurts my heart, but I, I need to sit here and set a precedents. Not just for you, but for your siblings as well."

And the day of vacation came and the kids came out of their mom's house, the oldest four, and, they all came out with the bags, including him. And as he came to the car, I said, "What's up buddy?"

He was like, "I'm ready to go on vacation."

And I go, "Do you not remember the words that came outta my mouth a couple days ago when I said, You're not coming with this bud?"

And his face went from glee to hoping that I was sitting there like fibbing or lying about my punishment or not falling through with my punishment. And I said, No. And he turned white as a ghost.

And he walked back in with some tears coming down and as we drove away in the car, I just started bawling. I was like, I can't believe I'm not bringing my junior with me on this trip. And it was because I loved him that I didn't bring him. And it was, regardless of all the emotions going through me, the right thing was not to bring him because I had to sit there and make those boundaries with him.

And it was because of the love that I did it, or that we did it right, and it wasn't easy. I mean, there, times in in life, do you think God wants to sit there and discipline us all the time? Do you think it feels good to Him? To have us go through certain situations in life. I mean, as a loving parent, it has to hurt him that we choose to make decisions and do things that we choose to do.

And as a good parent, He corrects us. 

Kaila: I remember that time. It was so hard for us. And parenting just in daily discipline, it is hard for me to discipline my kids. So this is not something that, you know, if it's hard for you and maybe there are a lot of behaviors that are happening in your home right now because of unchecked discipline, because your kids aren't being held accountable because there aren't those expectations.

Those are things that God says as a parent. You've gotta get that under control, and having those boundaries actually shows your kids love because it gives them that road. It says, "Hey, I love you so much. I care about the type of person you're becoming, and I want you to learn from these."

Bruce: Absolutely. And that's how the conversation at school with that girl ended day.

You know, we're sitting there talking about boundaries and talking about rules and regulations. and having to follow them in her house. The guidelines which you live by in her house, (and) the expectations that we have for our kids. She goes, "Why would you do that? This sounds like torture." Her exact words to me.

I go, you know what? It's because it's what your heart yearns for and desires. It wants to be corrected. It wants to sit there and have a rubric, a guideline. And the reality is we do have a rubric and guideline. It's called the Bible. It tells us exactly how to live our life. It tells us what to do and how to do it.

It doesn't stutter. In every area from sexual, from promiscuity, to sex to everything else in between, including drinking, including the 10 Commandments, from loving people. There's so many different things in there that the Bible covers, that if you look in our world today, people are either choosing a to believe it in a manner that's not correct.

They're able to sit there and portion off part of the Bible cause they don't wanna have to live by it or believe it. Or they make an exception for their own life because they wanna live in the life the way that they want to, which is how I lived shackled up for so long with alcohol and anger and some other stuff as well.

So what is point number three in terms of as parents By love? 

Kaila: So as parents, we have to love through conflict and we need to address it. And when I say conflict, this kind of goes back to discipline as well. Conflict isn't always an argument. It's not always heated and emotional and yelling and throwing things.

When I say conflict, it could just be a disagreement, it could be maybe misinterpretation of something that someone said. And in today's day and age, I feel like people are so quick to voice their opinions and their disagreements on social media where they can hide behind a screen. But when it comes to face to face interactions, we avoid it.

We turn away, we ignore it, we harbor it inside, and then it festers and it grows into these really ugly things because we're not just bringing to light our feelings and talking about the conflict that we're experiencing with that person, and that's not how Jesus wants us to do it. In Matthew 18:15 it says, "If another believer sins against, Go privately and point out the offense so it doesn't say air out the laundry in front of the whole classroom or even in front of the whole family.

Cuz you know this is parenting. And so I want you to think about this in terms of parenting. Our kids, we can disagree with something they're saying and instead of belittling them or being like, No, you're wrong, I'm right. I'm big, you're little. I'm smart, you're dumb. There's nothing you can do about it...

Bruce: What a good movie.

Kaila: Instead of saying that, right, we can address it appropriately and have a conversation and show our children. Okay, let's talk about that a little bit deeper and how to have communication where you're actually talking and listening. 

Bruce: Wait, listening? It is because you don't know what God gave us two ears for a reason.

This is something that we talk to our kids about all the time, especially a couple of them who like to talk off and like, "Hey, God gave you two years and only one mouth, and there's a reason for that." . And going back to the conflict, you sit here and, as believers, there's gonna be conflict.

I mean, look at your marriage or my marriage. I look at my marriage right now and my wife and I, even though I love her so much and I pretend to listen and love 99% of what she says, I don't always agree with 99% of what she says. 

Kaila: You don't?!

Bruce: No, I do. Yes ma'am. 

Um, no. The reality is we don't always agree with each. And it's okay. And as a result, in the past there'd be moments where we came at each other that weren't very godly. I mean, there'd be a conflict that turned into a flat out roar, like not very nice, pretty unethical and not godly, if you were to ask either one of us, right? And as a result, as we've become unshackled, we've able to sit there and look at it a little bit differently.

Not perfectly, but differently, right? And so there's gonna be conflict in marriage. I mean, we have conflict in marriage all the time. And what better way to show our kids what healthy conflict looks like by the then by modeling it ourselves. And then that's something that her and I are able to sit there and do, not hopefully on a regular basis, but often enough. 

And, not only is it important to sit there and model that to our kids, is being able to sit there and have those conflicting conversations, those conversations of conflict with them, and then watching them sit there and do it on their own with each other. 

Kaila: Yeah. Especially I can think our girls, as they've gotten older, I love having conversations with them as they really start to think about:

"Wait a minute, why do we do things this way? Why is it that, why, you know, why do we dress modestly or why do we have these rules about dating or why do we have rules on social media."

And so when the kids were younger, it was always just, Oh, well that's what mom and dad said. And so you just did it because you obeyed.

And now as they start to become independent thinkers and they're starting to question that, it's a great way for us to open up the conversation. And, I mean, sometimes it still comes back to: "whether you agree with me or not, I'm your parent and I said so." But you know, at least we can have a conversation where it's, "Well, what do you think about it? Well, here's what I think about it." And then coming to an understanding. 

Bruce: Correct. And so as I said, the three things that we just talked about as parents, genuine love, making sure you genuinely love your kids, just like God has called us to do. Love and parenting, which includes disciplining. It is biblical to discipline your kids, especially, in today's day and age when so many people are against it or are shy about doing so, it's okay to do so because the Bible tells me too. And then I'm going to love in conflict. And whether it's conflict with our kids, with each other, with other believers, whatever it is in life, make sure that we're able to sit there and love in conflict.

Kaila: And so if you found today's podcast, beneficial if you just pulled something from it where you're like, "Wow, that was so good. This is such a good message," one of the best ways that you can help support us in our ministry is by simply subscribing to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. That really helps get our message out there and so that we can reach more parents, and we can help more parents and sharing God's word that he's put on our heart. So if you liked this podcast. Please, please subscribe and share it with a friend. 

But if you are listening and maybe you heard some things today that you know God's speaking to your heart. Maybe you have a hard time loving your kids because there's a conflict between your personalities. Maybe behaviors are out of control, and it's a result of unchecked discipline, and you know that there aren't those boundaries set in place.

Maybe you don't know how to address conflict, and you've been eating all of these things that are bothering you and you feel like you're about to explode at any moment. This is really what makes us tick. This is why Bruce and I are here and we feel God has put it on our hearts, is we want to help impact the next generation and raise God fearing children.

But we know that starts with you. Mom or dad, whoever's listening. It starts with you. You have to be the change maker for your family, and you have to be the one to break through and unshackle your love. So if that's you, I just encourage you, reach out to us! Connect with us. You can go to our website. It's www.growingpaynes.org, and it's “paynes” like our last name, P A Y N E S. I'll link it in the show notes. Go there, read our bios, get to know a little bit more about us, and then fill out a connect form and let us know how we can connect with you and help you through that. 

Bruce: Thank you so much for joining us tonight. We're gonna sit here and, and in a word of prayer. 

Dear Father, thank you for giving us the opportunity to come sit here and talk about being unshackled. Lord, there's so many people in life who are suffering from bondage, who are suffering from being shackled to things that they've done, to things that they've experienced, the things that they think they are, Lord. 

Lord, you've set us free by dying on the cross for our sins so we didn't have to. Lord, I pray you can be with these people right now, that they can overcome these obstacles in their life and live a life full of love like you've intended us to do. Lord, I pray that you can be with all of our loved ones and family friends.

We have a lot going on. We have for people in hospitals, people passing away to surgeries, just people who are super important to us. Lord, I pray that you just be with them right now during this time, that you can be with their family so they can keep focus on you, Lord. That they can know that you are with them through these valleys, Lord, right now.

Thank you for my gorgeous wife for letting us do life together. Thank you for letting us experience these growing pains together, Lord. And I pray that we can just glorify you and always say and do. Thank you for loving us. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. 

Kaila: Amen.

001: Non-Negotiable for Parents

-Transcript-

[00:00:00] Bruce: Welcome and thank you for joining us on our first Unshackled Love podcast. My name is Bruce Payne. I'm sitting here with my wonderful, gorgeous, better half Kaila Payne, my wife Kaila Payne and I, we are both teachers here in the greater Austin area. We are also blessed to be a parents of nine wonderful kids.

Our kids ranged in the age from five to almost 18 years old, and pretty much everything in between and we. Point in life right now where we feel called, to branch out and start a ministry.

Kaila: Yeah. The ministry really started, I think Bruce and I, you know, being teachers and also just being parents of so many kids and even within our life and in our marriage, we've experienced what you would call growing pains.

And I remember being eight years old and having the worst growing pains. I don't know about you. I mean, I, I got 'em

Bruce: Well, real quick. And, and as she sits here and says, when she was eight years old, she was also like five foot eight and a half or something like that. So she was really going through the thickest of growing pains

at that age.

Kaila: I mean, I did grow rather quickly in a short amount of time. Yes. And I remember just laying in so much agony, my legs would ache and hurt. My mom would just look at me and say, "That means you're growing." And her optimism killed me in the moment of. But really, growth is uncomfortable and growth is hard, and growth is challenging.

And you know, as you get older, your growing pains aren't always physical, but they're real emotional, environmental, you know, whether it's work or friends and family. We experience a different type of growing pains and then especially as Christians, you know, life is not guaranteed to be easy. There's definitely growing pains as God molds us and shapes us into who he wants us to be.

And then lastly, as a parent, you start to see your kids go through growing pains. And so, you know, it was nice that our name kind of fit into it. The pains: p-a-y-n-e-s So, here you have it. Here you have the birth of Growing Paynes and it's a, his, hers and ours family ministry.

Bruce: It is. And and I think that the big thing there is, is within a marriage, you know, you have two individuals who come together as a married couple.

And, in our circumstances, we have nine beautiful kids. Like I said before, we know our kids that range from the age of five to almost 18. And over the course of the years, we've done some awesome things as parents, we've done some not so awesome thing as parents, pretty much. I don't even go as far as saying flat out, crappy, you know, we're, we're human beings here on earth.

And, as a result, you know, we have gone through and, and learned, you know, through our mistakes and through growing pains of sorts.

Kaila: Yeah. This podcast is definitely not because we think we're perfect parents.

Bruce: Definitely not. You know, we're, we're still work in progress and I think on the, on the bigger level, Right.

You know, being a teacher, both of us being teachers, not just teachers of our own kids and teaching them how to live life and what it means to be a God-fearing human but being teachers in the public school system where things are broken, you know, from the curriculum where kids are being taught to expectations, put on them by peers to even what schools are putting out there in terms of what is supposed to be normal, what is supposed to be acceptable, or even accepted, right?

You know, we, we are told that, you know, you have a kid who sits there and is going through gender identity crisis and we're we're required to sit there and call them by their new name. Guess what, What if that's not what I feel is right or what I feel comfortable doing? Right? And so, as an adult, that's one thing.

As a teacher, that's one thing, as students having to sit there and live through that, that's not stuff that we had to sit there and live through as kids ourselves. And so, regardless of that, you know, even those kids who were going through things like that, they're hurting. And so how can we sit here and be a difference maker?

And that's where Growing Paynes comes in, is how can we make a difference in these kids'? And it all points back to the cross. It all points back to Jesus. We were sitting there in the car today. Funny side story. I'm sitting in a gas station, one of my favorite gas stations here in Texas called QT

And I'm sitting there and I'm eating healthy today. I'm stoked. I have my un sweet tea and I'm going through and I'm getting my apple and some healthy cashews, when all of a sudden I have somebody squeeze my right butt cheek. Yes. And my wife is laughing because the person who ended up grabbing it was her.

And it scared the daylight out of me. And as she laughs right now, it did. I was like, What's going on? My wife would not approve. And I just happened to realize that it's my wife who happened to be in the neighborhood who saw my car at qt, walked in, surprised me.

Kaila: I couldn't help myself.

Bruce: But as we sit here and laugh about that, the best part was we got in the car and there's a song, and the lyrics was talked about.

One way, Jesus, and it just brought us back to the reason why we're sitting here doing this ministry, which is everything needs to point back to Jesus.

Kaila: Amen. Yeah. Everything, I mean, That's even within parenting. I am only human. I am, you know, only capable of doing so much, and I am guaranteed to fail at times, but it's my responsibility as a parent to raise my child, and it's your responsibility as a parent.

You know, when you step into that role, God ordains you and equips you as a parent. To raise your child until adulthood. And you know, a lot of people look at us as teachers and they say, Oh, but you make such a difference. The reality is, is I can only make so much of a difference during my time at school for that one year that I have them, and then they're off to the next classroom.

And so my impact is, Whereas if we start impacting the home and if we start making changes with parents and we start making that change for our family, we're changing legacies for generations and generations to come. And so I really feel like that's where God put put on our hearts is yes, our love for children and wanting to help them seeing a broken generation, but we come up through that.

Setting the example and leading our children and us first.

Bruce: No, absolutely. But, but in doing so, and, and as we kick off this podcast, it kind of introduce us just a little bit. It's talking about the non-negotiables as us as parents. These are things that have come to and more to, to fruition as time has come.

And it's things that we've seen other people teach us. It's been things that we've learned from the folks who are God fearing human beings. It's from people that we value, right? People who have had an impact in our lives. I think if you sit there and you look at our lives, you know, Kaila and I, our childhoods weren't perfect by any means.

I mean, you can go on growingpaynes.org and sit there and look at our bios a little bit and you can kind of see that, hey, we're just like the person right next to us. We have some parents who love us but didn't really know what they were doing themselves in terms of raid us in a godly household.

And so it's taking trial and error and time. And by the grace of God, we are where we are today. And so, looking at our non-negotiables, the very first non-negotiable that we wanna sit here and talk about,

Kaila: Leading by example. So...,

Bruce: Wait, did you say leading by example? Are, are you sitting here saying that, you can't be a hypocrite?

And I'm, I say that word because my wife has said it to me a thousand times. You can't be a hypocrite. Or I've heard so many times from her this wonderful things that stuff is caught not taught . And so I'm sitting here as she's...

Kaila: You stole my line!

Bruce: I know, but you're gonna go through, I'll let her go through the Bible verse and everything else, but this is an important thing because as a man of a house and what God has called me to do, as the head of the house and then her and I as being equally yolked in our journey of parenting, we have to lead by example. And what honey, what does the Bible say about leading by example?

Kaila: So the first that I really like that always just sticks out to me, and you've probably heard it before, but we're gonna dive in a little deeper, is Proverbs 22:6.

and in the New Living Translation says, "Direct your children onto the right path. And when they're older, they will not leave it". And what I love about this verse is, you know, it says direct your children onto the right path. But there's an assumption there that we know what the right path is. And so if you don't know what the right path is, and I think this is also, you kind of mentioned briefly, I don't think that either one of our parents really knew what that right path was themselves.

And so now we are having to figure that out as adults and as parents. But how much better will my children be if I know the path and I'm walking down that path and then that, now that I know the path and I know what leads, and we know that that way is one way, Jesus.

Bruce: Well, real quick.

Kaila: He's dancing too.

Bruce: Yeah. As I'm sitting here thinking about though, in that path, right? And I think so many parents are like, Well, how, like, what, what does that path look like? And, you all know what I gotta say, thank you. Thank you to the thousands, the couple thousand years ago when people sit there and put this book together called the Bible, which has 10 commandments as well as it has things that we're supposed to do, like Proverbs 22.

Commandments of sorts that are telling us what it is we should be doing. It's not saying, Hey, if you have a chance, you should direct your kids or maybe you should direct your kids. Or if you feel up to today, you should direct your kids.

[00:09:53] Kaila: Or you know, they might turn out, it may turn out like you got a 50 50 chance.

You know, it's not it. The Bible is very direct and this is saying, you know, When they're older, they will not leave it. There's your efforts. It's the, seed that you're sewing, right? Like any, if you've ever planted seeds, I know tomato plants are the hardest for us. We try every year with epic failure.

It takes effort and it takes time and you have to water it and you have to, you know, there's a lot of tender love and care that goes into getting. Seed to blossom and produce fruit. And so your think of your child's lifespan, or at least the first 18 years as that seed, and we're constantly having to water it in order to see that blossom when they're in adulthood.

Bruce: Yeah. I think that's a great analogy. I think another analogy that we can sit here and use is how about an in. . I mean, how many of us are sitting here worried about a retirement or talk about our retirement or 401k or 4 0 3 B as a teacher? Or what do we gotta do to sit there and make sure we can have a nest egg so we can retire?

And I guarantee, for a lot of people, that is a conversation that you have probably had more times in the last year than you have talked, spent talking about the investment that you're willing to sit there making your kids. I mean, that's just something that just hit me right now, right. I go through it as, as beginning the school year has come up.

We have had numerous individuals come and talk to us and wanna talk to us about our investments. You know, do you have the proper investments ready for when you retire? Because between your retirement age and what you already have saved, it's not enough. Well, the reality is we have that the same amount of time, if not shorter, to invest in our own kids.

And it's crazy that we spend so much time worrying about the financial gain in our lives. The most precious thing in our lives are our kids, and that's getting neglected, and that's unfortunate. You don't know what that we sit here and we're an excited, That values money over nurturing our kids, empowering our kids, raising our kids.

The second, as you know, as we sit there and go through, are non-negotiables. The next one is being committed. Okay? This is the same thing in marriage. You look at our marriage rate in the United States especially, not just in the secular world, but in the Christian world, how many people are getting divorced because it's just not fun anymore or they don't like it, or they're not happy, or they're not full of joy?

You know, this is a podcast that you're gonna hear some stuff about divorce. I myself was divorced at one once upon a time and my beautiful wife comes from a, a family where her parents were divorced. So, we sympathize and even empathize with people going through. That being said, the commitment level here in the United States isn't what it should be or where God calls us to be.

And as parents, I mean, imagine if you sit there and said, Hey, I want a full paycheck going to work, but I'm only gonna work half the time. I'm only gonna commit myself 25 hours a week, but I want a 40 hour paycheck. And it's the same thing when we sit here and we raise our kids. Okay? You can't sit there and expect to have an awesome God fearing, God loving kid who loves their classmates, yet you're only gonna sit there and.

25% of your effort or 50% of your effort or time into raising them to be this human being, right? It doesn't matter how it's tired, we are, it doesn't matter how much we don't want to get up and do something with them today. Or maybe we don't wanna sit there and drive into a soccer game, or maybe practice is too late in central Austin and not getting home till nine 15.

Okay? Guess what? Take that 40 minutes that we're in a car and be committed to sitting there teaching them about God. Be committed to them and talk to them about, Hey, how's your day going? I mean, Kaila and I, we've had had so many conversations with our kids over the years, spent in the car, while in the car coming back from a practice that it's almost more beneficial than sitting here at home.

You know, I once heard a pastor say best part about being in the car with your kid is that you're committed. There's nowhere for them to go. You have to sit there and have the conversations with them then, because they can't hop out and walk away, especially when they're in high school and they wanna avoid you to begin with, right?

And so as we sit here and we. About being committed. The verses that we're looking at are in Deuteronomy chapter six versus five through seven. Uh, you wanna go ahead and read that, honey?

Kaila: Yeah. It says " you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength."

Bruce: Did it, did it say all your, all your..

Kaila: You’ve probably all heard that before. All of it.

Bruce: Best part is, is that my seven year old kid can sit here and read the word all and he can sit here and define what the word. Anyways, go ahead.

Kaila: So I love that it says this because it says, your heart, your soul, and your strength.

And I'm gonna just a quick interlude here because, it's also said in Genesis that man is created in God's image and God is three in one, right? God is father, son and spirit. And so I love any verse like this. Recognizes our trinity and how we are created in his image as heart, soul, and strength, right?

So there's also three parts of us. And so we have to love God with our heart, with our soul, and our strength. And then it goes on to say, "you must commit yourself wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them. When you're at home, when you're on the road, when you're going to bed, when you're getting up all the time," there's always time to talk about how God is working your life.

There is always a moment. To make that time with your children, asking them about how their day's going, asking, praying with them. How can we, how can I be praying for you? Have you prayed about this? Are you seeking counsel about that? What does the Bible say? Here's a verse. Are you memorizing your verse?

What did you read today? There is always that time and you know, whether it's in the car and just having, I ironically had a conversation with a woman just today about that, quoting that same pastor saying, you know, in the car. She said, My kids are just always on their phone.

And I said, You're the parent.

Take their phones away.

Make them talk to you because they can't go anywhere else, and that's what we need to do. It is so important. We, if we know the truth and we know the way, and we know like this, there's this Bible and it has so much truth and freedom and so many promises, but it also has life giving commands that offer correction and bring blessing.

And this verse is very specific where it says we need to commit ourselves wholehearted. Telling them to our children. And something else that, I recently read a quote by John Maxwell and he was talking about how, you know, there's two different types of growth. There's accidental growth. And then there's intentional growth.

And so we can act, right? Like accidental growth is, oh, it just happens. That idea of, oh, maybe they'll grow up to be good kids, or, you know, maybe they'll figure it out someday and you know, they'll learn sooner or later. And it's just kind of this natural progression, this natural course. But then when you take the intentionality, if you take the intentional, you know, you're really sitting down having time.

It's like we're pouring into our children and we're only gonna help them reach their full potential because instead of just tossing them out into the wild and hoping that they'll figure it out,

Bruce: On that premise alone, right? If we don't raise our kids something else will.

Kaila: Absolutely.

Bruce: Absolutely right.

And, the reality is, if you look, you know, looking at the society, societal problems that we're facing today, especially as. And just in general, you know, with the hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of kids that we come in contact with on a regular basis is parents are so worried about being cool or about being their kids' friend, right?

Yeah. And it's not asking us in the Bible or telling us in the Bible or commanding us in the Bible to sit there and say, Hey, be a great friend to your kid. It's asking us to sit there and lead by example as a parent is. Is asking us to be committed as a parent. Going back to what you said about the phone, in the car, I mean, I'm the first one to sit there and say it's easier sometimes to say, Hey, here's your device.

Be quiet. Guess what? That's a wasted opportunity. Yeah. And so it's hard, you know, parenting's hard and that's why we're sitting here doing this is so that we can have, you know, it kind of brings up, up into our, our next point. But it's so that we have other like minded people. As we raise our kid, and, and to us, we call that, you know, our village.

You know, who is your village that you are doing life with, and it's important to build your village, right? And, and so point number three is building your village. Kaila and I have been blessed to have many awesome friends. You know, it's funny is you have kids, you end up going to different activities, which you meet parents at those activities, whether it's church, whether it's sports, whether it's school, whatever it might be.

And. Beyond blessed, especially as we moved to Texas a handful of years ago, to to meet a lot of awesome people here in Texas. And then we have an even better support group back home in California. But the reality is here in Texas we have awesome Christian friends, and not just the word Christian, but Christ followers, people who are disciples of God.

And every aspect, whether it's going to church, whether it's at our workplaces, whether. In our small groups, whether it's coaches that coach our kids, I mean, our kids sit here and play soccer for some of the largest organizations, including an MLS team here in the area. And I mean, we've been blessed with some awesome coaches who sit there and pour into our kids who we've seen the difference that they've made.

Right. You know, I'll throw a name out here right now, dude named Travis Carmichael. I mean, awesome kid who because of him, my kid, and I call him a kid. He's in his twenties. I'm just getting to be an old man, I guess. But, I throw his name out there because you wanna know what the love that he has poured into my kids, you know, as Kaila and I sit here and watch this, it's immeasurable.

You know, they learn from their teachers, which is awesome. But somebody like him who shows them the love of God doing an activity they love is immeasurable as well. So it is important to build your village. You know, it's, it's awesome to, to be able to be around people.

If you're not there or if you're busy doing something, they raise your kids with the same expectations that you do,

Kaila: Right. I mean, There's a reason why they say it takes a village to raise a child. Because they were not lying and you know, it really does, and we all know too that kids sometimes just respond differently to another adult figure and when I'm not there 100% of the time.

I think you said that perfectly. It's important that you have other adult. In your children's life, who they can also equally look up to, that they can confide in and they can see an example and that, you know, those other adults are raising my children with the same expectations that I would, you know, there's not a, a conflict in our beliefs or what is important or, Oh, I know that your mom says that, but it's okay.

That's not how it really is. No! We're in alignment with what matters most. Now, does that mean we agree about everything? You know, there's a whole nother podcast episode on healthy conflict. I can feel it brewing. But, you know, it's what matters most. And so when it comes to loving,

Bruce: So it goes back to the non-negotiable. It's the non-negotiable, you know, what matters most.

You know, it's funny, over, the years as we sit here and talk about building our village, you know, I come from a household born to a household that was unequally yoked I mean, as I was born my parents, neither one was a believer. And then my mom became a believer. And, they didn't have the same values in terms of Jesus, one way to Jesus or, following Jesus, right?

And so there was always kind of a struggle based on, I mean, both good people, but early on there was a struggle because one of them was sitting there trying to follow God in His will, and the other one was trying to sit there and do their own will, which doesn't work out very well. And so same goes for raising your kids, is the importance of being equally yoked with your spouse.

but in terms of that being equally, almost equally yolked with the people who help raise your kids. And this kinda leads us into the, the next verse that we're gonna kind of follow up and finish with,

Kaila: and that's Proverbs 27 17. It says, "as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend". And so we just, you know, again, God just being so clear in his word, that when it comes to our friendships and those who are in our closest circle, We need those people who are iron, who are strong, and who are going to strengthen us right alongside them.

Bruce: Absolutely. You know, it's, I, I liken it into trying to eat, you know, here, here in Texas, people like their steak. I mean, some people like T-Bones, some people like filet, whatever it might be. we've come to like the Texas, I mean, if Texas had like a state meet, I'd think it might be a ribeye.

Kaila: I think that's ours. I think the Texas state meat would technically be a brisket.

Bruce: Yeah. That's not a steak. That's, I'm just kidding. Brisket is to die for as well. Absolutely love it. But, but in terms of a steak, it would be a brisket.

And guess what? You can take a brisket or a ribeye regardless. Try going to battle with that steak with a spoon.

You're not gonna be able to cut that very well. And I know it's cliche, but you know how hard it's gonna be for me to sit there and eat a piece of brisket or a ribeye with a spoon. I mean, unless. Nah. Even then it won't be able to do it. Right? The reality is you're not gonna be able to sit there and cut it.

And the reality is, in life, if we are not sharpen like iron sharpens iron, we are not gonna be able to go through life efficiently. You know, we're gonna get stuck at every turn. Like that spoon trying to cut a stake and getting stopped in our tracks. And I, I think this goes back to the point number one is leading by example, right?

If we want our kids to sit there and have good relationships, I mean, how often do you sit there and say to your kid, Hey, make wise choices. Have good friends. Make sure you're here. You know, hanging out with people who, who are like you. Make sure you hanging out with people who love God. People who don't curse, People who sit there don't make fun of other kids.

People who get good grades, well look in the mirror. Are you hanging out with people that are making good decisions? People that are sitting there and using good choice words, Hanging out with people who are making you. , because if you're not, you wanna know what kids are gonna sit there and say, Ha ha.

Stick their finger at their nose and make fun of you and say, Guess what? You're a hypocrite. Either you're committed to this lifestyle, you're not. Either you're committed to investing in your kids' life or you're not. And so you wanna know what you want your kids to have iron in their life. We'll start with the iron in your life first.

You want your kids to sit there and imitate Jesus on earth. Imitate Jesus on Earth first. You. Your kids will sit there and grow the kingdom of God. Guess what? You grow the kingdom of God for by sowing those seeds into your kids from a young age. And, you know, it's something that's extremely important to us.

You know, it's something that God's put on our hearts for a number of years and it's something that we've battled and gone back and forth and. As she said, and I've said earlier in this podcast, we're not perfect. I mean, it's a work in progress. We have a couple spirited kids this week that have made us wanna sit there and pull our hair out, but at the same time, we are called to, to love them regardless.

We are called to sit there and discipline and then show grace and mercy and a bunch of other things that we'll talk about as we forward.

Kaila: Yeah. So to end, really I think what he said, There's gonna be a lot to come. And in this Unshackled Love podcast, we're gonna address those things and we're gonna talk about all those topics.

But how do you do that with love? Because I think above all else, that's our biggest commandment, right? To love God and then love one another. And so with everything that we do, Love has to be the theme. And I think that there's definitely finding a balance between how do we discipline in love, how do we set boundaries in love?

How do we set, expectations and hold our children accountable to those expectations in love and, and accountability. And so we're gonna do that over the course of the podcast. But I just wanted to encourage you today if your. Wondering, man, they have nine kids. I don't know how you do it. First of all, you're not the first person who've said that.

Bruce: yes, We do have nine. We do have nine, that's the number after eight, before 10.

Kaila: Get that quite often. I don't know how you do it. So, uh, first of all, stick around.

Bruce: Actually, real quick, real quick. You know what, I think we get more than you have nine kids is, "you know, what causes that? "

Kaila: Oh my gosh, that's a whole nother tangent...

Bruce: But the reality is I think we get asked that question more often, and yes, we did not have cable once upon a time. Anyways, go ahead.

Kaila: Oh, okay. So you might be sitting there wondering to yourself, I don't know how you do it. So the first saying I'm going to just encourage you do is stay connected.

Join us next week when we post our second podcast and throughout this journey, as this becomes part of our weekly routine, we feel that God is, wants us to use our gifts to bless others and bless you. And so maybe the podcast is great and you're getting lots from it, but maybe you also just wanna have a conversation and you're like, You know what?

I think I need some more. I think I need more help. I really need to figure this out. Maybe you're struggling, you've lost control in your family. Maybe you're feeling uncertain and doubt that you aren't cut out for this job or you don't know how to start building your faith. These are all valid struggles that we've gone through at some point in time.

And so part of our growing pains, his, hers and ours ministry, is making sure that you are getting the resources that you need to grow first. And a couple of the ways that we do that is through mentorship and coaching. And so if that's something that you're like, I wanna find out more. Possibly partnering with Bruce or Kaila or both of us, through marriage coaching.

I just encourage you go to check out our website. It's Growing Paynes and that's "paynes" like our last name, P A Y N E S. Growing paynes.org. There, you can read our bios, you can fill out a contact form. Let us know, how you wanna get connected. You can also see what our vision and our beliefs are, and that's really how you're gonna get to connect with us and start building relationship and, and include us in your village.

That would be such a blessing if, we could be a part of your village.

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think not just her and I, but like I said our kids as well. We will, you know, in future podcasts, we will be doing this with them as well, and having them be a part of this. They will be available online as well to talk with your kids or whatever it might be as well.

So we're excited, you know, as, as a family. It's not just her and I, it's our village here at our house and then our extended village, of folks who know what is, you know, who know what God has put on our hearts. And so I'm gonna sit here and end just with the word of. I know a lot of people are going through a lot of things right now.

I mean, we have 3, 4, 5, 6 loved ones in our lives who are either in the hospital or about to be in the hospital who have had surgery or who are going through surgery, who have been informed by doctors, but not too sure what's going on next. And, just know that regardless of what's going on, and even though you know, you might feel distant from God right now, or you feel that he's distant from you, that's not the case.

Dear heavenly Father, just thank you for this time to come together and have this podcast. Lord, thank you for giving us an opportunity to sit here and talk about what is so precious to you and that's raising kids, Lord, the kids who you talk about multiple times throughout the Bible and just the importance of raising them and treating them right and showing 'em respect and even living life like children do.

Lord, I pray that you can be with our kids. I pray that you can be with the kids of parents who are listening to this podcast as they go through life, Lord, that you can help them navigate with wisdom, with peace, with understanding that only you can give. Lord, I pray that you can be with parents who are hurting right now.

You know, there's so many broken people due to a variety of different circumstances. Lord, I pray that wherever people are, that you can meet them where, right where they're. That you can meet them right where they're at and you can fill that void that only you can fill, Lord, that you know that void that people might turn to alcohol or whatever it might be.

That you can sit there and fill that void. I pray that you can be with all the families of our loved ones who are going through different battles right now, Lord, that you can sit there and you can just bring them peace right now, Lord, that you can sit there and you can show them your love, that you can come to where they're at, Lord, on their level, whatever might.

Maybe they're not sitting here praying to you, but that you can just sit there and know their heart that hey, guess what? They need you right now. Thank you for my gorgeous, lovely wife, and thank you for this opportunity to sit here and do this ministry. Lord, Let us glorify you with our words and actions in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Kaila: Amen.