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A podcast equipping ordinary parents to raise extraordinary kids. Join a movement of parents who are raising healthy and happy kids. Find more free resources at gracebased.com
E25 Servants Heart Final
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Cody: [00:00:00] We need to make servant heartedness beautiful. You're not losing anything by serving people. You might feel like it. And to be fair, immediately, you might be losing something. Like, I'm not saying being a servant is easy. Moving away from kind of that self centeredness to others focusedness, there is a cost to it.
But I think the more we can point out like, yeah, but the cost is nowhere near the gain. The more we can connect those dots with our kids, the more naturally they're going to grow into something like that.
Narrator: Welcome to Blueprints, a podcast helping parents thrive in today's demanding world. Join Greg and Cody as they explore God's big plan for families and the big job of raising kids.
Cody: Welcome to Blueprints. Today is actually our last episode in, uh, this season. Uh, we're going to be talking about, uh, developing a servant heart in our kids. And, uh, I'm, I'm excited to get into this. My name is [00:01:00] Cody Kimmel, and I am the executive director of Grace Based. And I'm here with
Greg: Greg, me. Greg, me.
Greg, me is not his full name. Spent 25 episodes and I'm still doing that.
Cody: Yeah, let me see. Your full name is Gregory Raymond Lunsford, right? Just Ray. Just Ray. Not even a Raymond? No, not even a Raymond. When I get mad at
Greg: myself, I do say Gregory Raymond.
Cody: So wait,
Greg: so when
Cody: you get mad at yourself, you call yourself by a name that's not actually your name.
I
Greg: do. I do. And my son will say, Dad, that's not your name. I'll go, I know, but I don't want to be mad at myself, I want to be mad at that other guy. Oh, okay. Gregory Raymond. So it's almost like an alter ego. Maybe it's Gregory Ramone from now on. Gregory Ramone.
Cody: I
Greg: like
Cody: it, you know? I mean, if you're going to make it up, just go for it.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Greg, it's been great having these conversations with you. The whole hope is that, for one, I hope you guys feel encouraged. This is part of a, kind of a larger Uh, network of resources that Grace Space makes, uh, all with the intent that we can [00:02:00] connect God's big plan for families with the big job of raising kids.
You can go to gracespace. com and get a lot more resources. You can listen back to these episodes. These are meant to be things that you can pop in and out of. You need encouragement, you need hope, you need a reminder that, hey, we're all in this journey together. It is very hard, but there's still hope.
Because God is with us in it, and you know what, Greg? I'm gonna get a little sentimental. It's been really fun doing this with you. It
Greg: has, it has, and I've, I've loved the message, and The way like we've been talking about it off recording has been like, this is like a theology of family and that's what, as we think about it in that way, it's been really encouraging just diving deeper into it with you, uh, for myself and I've seen it shift my relationship with my son just by diving into this and, and fleshing all this out with you and just learning and growing and so, yeah, it's been a, been fun.
It's been, it's been great. It's been a pleasure, yeah.
Cody: Alright, sentimentality. Thank you. Over. Done. Done. Let's get real now. One more. Now it's real time. [00:03:00] We're gonna kind of end the series by hearing from my, my dad. The man himself. The man himself. Dr. Tim Kimmel, who is going to kind of give us a big picture overview of the idea of a servant heart.
Dr. Tim Kimmel: Do you want to give your child an asset that will guarantee them great ongoing employment? A quality that will raise the odds they'll always have good friends? And a wedding gift that will make them a far more attractive spouse and parent? All you have to do is cultivate a servant's attitude into their hearts.
The good news is that a servant's heart grows naturally out of a family that makes a commitment to put Jesus first. When we make the daily focus of our family upwards towards God, He automatically drives us in an outward concern towards the needs of others. It usually doesn't come naturally to a kid, but when a servant's attitude is the default mode of the parents, and [00:04:00] selfishness never gets rewarded, It's much easier to launch a kid into an adulthood that sees lightening people's loads and empowering them to more easily succeed as standard operating procedure.
Greg: Thank you, Dr. Tim Kimmel. I, this is one of my favorite things we're going to talk about, Cody. Um, and one of it's because of my own journey with Jesus, man, I got saved when I was 11. I've been in church my whole life. Um, did the whole youth group stuff, was at church all the time growing up, but it wasn't until this moment when I was 19 that I started really taking my faith seriously, and I grew so much, and I've never grown more than when I have served in ministry, um, served others.
I have become more fully who God has made me to be, and it started with having a servant heart. And I'm [00:05:00] excited that I get to help shape my son, um, with that same spirit, but I just love this heartbeat so much because it's Jesus. It's the heart of
Cody: Jesus. You know, when we started this whole season kind of diving into the blueprint that God has for families that we kind of see throughout the scriptures, the way we kind of framed it at the beginning was, you know, our job as parents is to help our kids become fully alive in God.
Yeah. Every step of the way, that's what our hope is. What I love is that as you get to the, this topic of servant heartedness, you kind of see this like thing come full circle. If our job as parents is to help our kids become fully alive in God, what we see evident in the Bible is that being fully alive in God means being a servant.
Like, to be a servant is to be fully alive in God. It is the deepest expression of it, is the most obvious evidence of it in somebody's life. And it is the way, as weird as it sounds, [00:06:00] and as like upside down as it seems, is the way that God Made for us to get the most out of life. Yeah. And so I, I love talking about this and I love thinking about this.
What it does for parents is I think it gives us a really clear image of what it is that we're launching our kids towards. Right. Like if we, if, if we can launch them out where they See their role as to be a servant to others. That's what it looks like. That's the sweet spot. And I know it's hard to get there, but I'm glad like we have this picture.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to share just specifically some verses out of the Bible where it speaks to this. And one of the stories in the. Gospel of Mark is telling a story about James and John and them arguing over. Hey, who gets to be on the left and right hand? So Mark 10 Starting 43. He addresses James John He said instead whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first Must be slave of all For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, [00:07:00] but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
And I could just imagine James and John's demeanor, because they're like, one of us is getting the spot, right? Yeah. They're both feeling pretty good, and then this is the answer they get, of like, wait, I have to be a servant? Yeah. I'm trying to be up here with the Almighty, and now he's telling me I have to serve, and that's why he came.
Yeah. And That's, for us, we're called to do that with others. We're called to be servants, and in a lot of ways we're called to serve our kids. And the best way that they could get close to Jesus and to be made like Jesus, to look like Jesus, is for us to help them serve.
Cody: Yeah, I mean, in Philippians 2, 5 through 8, the whole, it's like this hymn about who Jesus is.
And the whole idea is Jesus who is God, who deserves everything. If there's anybody in all of creation and beyond who deserves to be served, instead humbled himself, became human, became, like, to the point of [00:08:00] death, all this stuff, on behalf of the people that he loved, on behalf of the sake of becoming a servant.
And so you see this beautiful image of Jesus, who is, you know, not even arguably is the most fully alive person to have ever existed. What that looked like for him was giving of his life, serving at every stance for the sake of God. Everyone else so you see deeply embedded if if Jesus is the penultimate of what it means to be fully alive Jesus was a servant Yeah, if there's like that's that's the summary way of understanding who he was and how he acted in the world
Greg: I just want to give you some kudos for a penultimate Oh penultimate.
Yeah, it's a great word Yeah, it's a great word. It's not used often, but it's,
Cody: I would say it's not used often enough. Yeah. Yeah. You
Greg: use it perfectly right there to describe Christ. And I just want to take a moment to commend you for that. Thank you. Yeah.
Cody: This is so [00:09:00] great. So, so grid.
Greg: Great. Oh, I'm using
Cody: penultimate.
I say grid.
Greg: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what's at stake if we don't help our kids have this servant heart and be others focused, um, other centric. I think we've hit on it in some episodes before, but like the danger of them looking at That as themselves as the most important person, I think being self absorbed or just selfish or thinking greedy, all things that lead, the Bible tells us to death and it's a danger of it.
And so that's why it's so important for us to be able to shepherd our kids in a way that we are others focused and others served and we give ourselves.
Cody: Well, I mean, there's no like uncertain language that Jesus uses that the Bible uses to describe this stuff. It says, you know, if you lose your life. You will gain it, and if you try to gain your life, you will lose it.
Like, that's, that's harsh, what he's saying. He's not beating [00:10:00] around the bush there. He's like, if you have a life that is aimed ultimately at serving yourself and getting others to serve you, that is a life that ends ultimately to destruction. And not to, you know, try to make too big of a deal of it, but that's kind of what's at stake here.
Like, if we want our kids to become fully alive in Christ. There's no room in that life for self centeredness. There's no room in that life for this desire to be served and to make others serve you. You know, like those, it's not like there's like a mix or something like that. Those are like oil and water, like completely, here's another fun word, juxtaposed Juxtaposed.
We can't stress this enough. Like, what's at stake for our kids if we are ultimately rewarding selfishness and not cultivating self centeredness is that they are really going to struggle to enjoy and find the good life that God has for them. Right. That they are going to be kept, I think, [00:11:00] from at least the blessing.
Of a lot of what God has in life and I think that's pretty serious like I think that's a big deal Yeah, and why this is so important from a parent's perspective is We live in a world that rewards and amplifies Self centeredness right, you know, like this is like this Machiavellian like you achieve you grow you succeed at all costs And the Bible would look at that and say, that is a fool's way to death.
Greg: Right, because you're losing somewhere in that. Yeah. Like, you may be thinking you're gaining so much, but really, there's people that you might be neglecting in your life, like family. I mean, we see it all over, like when people are so work based and just, that's where they find their identity. Like, everything around them.
Isn't in a good place. Isn't helpful. Yeah, and so because they're so singular focus on that, but God breaks in and says man others and people are the ones to go after to the ones to love Yeah, and we do [00:12:00] work hard. We do do things well But not at the expense of others and not ignoring others as well. But I just love Uh, one of my mentors told me once, he's like, Every, every person is a living, breathing miracle of God.
Hmm. And, it totally shifted my mindset of how I view people. Like, walking on the street, I see them as who God has made them to be. Yeah. A miracle of his that is only around because of God. And so, I think for our kids to understand that is huge too, that, Hey, that awkward kid in your class? Man, God loves him so much.
Yeah. That really rude kid in your class? Man, God loves him so much. Yeah.
Cody: I don't want to feel like this is coming across heavy handed because this is so hard to cultivate in our own hearts, so hard to cultivate in the hearts of our kids. I want to remind us that God is a God of grace and love. We're never going to be as servant hearted as Jesus.
So let's also like make that very clear. He's the penultimate. Yeah, he's the penultimate. You're never going to be the penultimate. This is not us [00:13:00] saying like, Hey, if you're not perfect in this, then you're really missing out. Right. It's more of like, there's a reason why God is pushing us towards that. And this is at the very least the direction that we should be trying to go in our own life and ultimately steer them in the life of our kids.
And what I think we have to see is that this is not something that's gonna happen naturally while swimming kind of in the same stream as the culture and swimming in the same stream even as our own, like natural inclinations towards things like part of the reason why Jesus was so radical and what he said is because this pushed up against every gut feeling and logic and Movement of power and all of that stuff in the world that he came into and spoken to and it's just as true today This is anti the ideal of This is anti the ideals of even our own like self fulfillment ideas, like this, this butts up against even like the false religion [00:14:00] of making yourself through morality or other things like that.
Right. Like this is something that is going to be hard because everything but God is against it. Yeah. Yeah. And
Greg: you think about. What the early, early church was known for, it was how they loved and how radical they served and loved and cared for one another and for others that were on the fringes, and they were known for their servant heartedness.
And that was confusing. You, you read historians that are legitimately writing that the world around them was confused about how they were loving and caring, um, for others. And, and some, it ticked them off, like, or some, it was just like so mind blowing that they wanted to, it was very attractive to them.
And they wanted to know what was so different about that. And they found freedom in Christ from that. And that's how the early church lived, and that's how we as a church should be living now, is are we known as believers of Jesus for our servant heartedness, for being others focused, to seek the well being of our neighbors and our [00:15:00] neighborhood?
Cody: So. Um, if it's this hard to do, but it's this important, let's just kind of talk about like, so what can we do to help cultivate that in our kids? Like as parents, you know, and, and this is obviously a bigger question than this. And I would say some of this is like, as you go back through and some of these other episodes that we've talked about this, like how do we help build like security and a foundation of love within our kids, give them the freedom that they need for who they are, all of these different things.
Like I would say. All of that plays in to being a servant. Yeah. So this is not an easy one to say, but I, I think what, what is wonderful about our role as parents is that we get an opportunity to help our kids swim upstream. In what I would say is a fairly low stakes environment at first. It's, it's, it's kind of like we get the chance to teach them to swim at an appropriate pace.
Where so often we can get just dumped into the deep [00:16:00] end and then expected like, Okay, now you're going to have to swim against the grain. Right. It's really hard. So we get the opportunity with our kids to start early on. Yeah,
Greg: I remember when my son was I think six and we just got a kitchen table and I was putting the kitchen table together and My son comes over and says daddy Can I help you with this and my initial instinct was no because my head I wanted to get it done I want to get it over with and then I just thought about it for a second and I'm like, really, he just wants to be spending time with me.
So for us as parents, I think we need to understand it's going to take longer, but we need to be intentional about inviting them in to work about, hey, here's a servant, not only a servant opportunity, or maybe taking time out of your week. Something my son and I just started doing a few weeks ago is every Friday we go sit, I bring a chessboard out and I just started slowly walking through the Sermon on the Mount.
Yeah. And then we'll play chess and we'll talk about the verses and other things will come up too. But it's just a, I needed, I realized I need to be intentional [00:17:00] about it. And it's a slow walk. Yeah. I'm going to, already we've talked about anger, how Jesus views anger, how Jesus views lust, how Jesus, how it's important to be salt and light, how important it is to tell the truth.
Yeah. And I'm trying to teach him this faith, this practical faith slowly, having him come along the process. Instead of throwing them either in the deep end or being like no, it's gonna take too long if you help me Yeah, I'd rather do this myself. I rather do you go do something else But yeah, I think just being intentional is a huge first step
Cody: being a servant is gonna look different right for different kids you know like I have four kids and some are just more naturally predisposed to be thinking of others.
They're more relationally oriented. Like I think one of my sons, like, it's just wired into his brain. Like, it's super sweet. It's a great trait for him to have, but it's wired into him. And so one of the, in some ways, one of the dangers of a kid that maybe is more naturally inclined to that is [00:18:00] it's. Easy to miss, like, the points where you actually need to help push them and grow them there because they're naturally in that.
But then there's gonna be other kids where, you know, a win for them might look really different than a win for another kid. But recognizing that any movement towards an outward focus and a servant heartedness
Greg: I love one of the things that just recently happened with you and your oldest son, Cody's oldest son is a pretty awesome musician and a lot of different instruments.
Cody helps lead worship at his church and a bass player was out and Cody just loves it. told the team, he's like, his son's in eighth grade and he's like, Hey, I really think my son can handle this and do this. So you invited your son into the space where he's leading this church to end to worship hundreds of people.
Yeah. And you invited him into that space to serve and you're like, you can use this gift in this context. I loved hearing that story.
Cody: Yeah. Well, and what was, I mean, it's great bringing that up. [00:19:00] Like what was really sweet for me in that moment was. He had the wherewithal at that point in time to understand.
Oh, this is important. I can I can kind of step into this and Like my job there is to serve the team it's to serve the church and I love that he was brought into a thing where like that's the heart and attitude of other people too and that like that's one thing like well That opportunity other opportunities is like you can bring them in an opportunities where not only are they seeing you And being a part of that, but they're seeing others there.
You know, it's funny, like, going back to music, one of the things that I will talk to my kids about all the time, and as a band leader for years would always talk about, is our job is not to have the most fun. playing our instrument. Our job is to serve the song. Whatever is going to be best for the song is what we're supposed to do.
Sometimes that might be having the most fun on our instrument, but usually that actually means doing something that's super boring over and over and [00:20:00] over again. Right. And that's exactly what the song needs. And what I loved about that thing for my son, like, you know what, you're probably going to play a pretty boring bass part, but it's exactly what you need to do for what we're trying to accomplish.
And he stepped into it and it was great. Challenging our kids in those things, bringing them into situations in which they need to serve, you know, and obviously this is like, there's levels of appropriateness, like don't drop your like five year old off downtown, but pushing them out of their comfort zone is actually a beautiful thing.
You know, one, um, one of my other sons, who's also a great musician, um, but he, he, he got into finger knitting. And this is something I didn't even know existed, but it's like you finger knit things and he made scarves. I think it's like the easiest thing to finger knit. So he got into that, but at the same time we were doing a lot of work.
Um, our church does a lot of work with the, the houseless population here in, in Portland. And he just got in and said, he's like, you [00:21:00] know, I see some of these, these, uh, men and women and children who are out there on the streets, it can get cold at night. It's like, what if I. was able to make scarves for them.
And it was this beautiful idea. That's cool. And, um, he actually, he wanted to start a business because he's also like, this also cost me money to do this because we're like, we, you've gotten to the point where we can no longer support your fingernitting habit. Um, so you're gonna have to figure out how to fund this.
And so we like came up with this business plan. It was like, okay, everything I sell that'll cover enough for me to give it away. So he does this whole thing and he ultimately like went and just gave these scarves away. And it was this beautiful. Beautiful image of him recognizing this thing that he loves to do is gonna find its best expression in service to other people.
Greg: He also taught my son how to fingertip. Yeah. And then my son recently taught his class in a presentation and how to presentation, how to fingertip. Look, this it just keeps going. Is spreading. It's spreading. It's
Cody: [00:22:00] the new craze,
Greg: man. It's the new Pokemon. At least it's not, at least it's
Cody: not Minecraft. It's uh, I don't think it'll ever be as big as Minecraft.
I know your son and I see, like, he has a servant oriented heart. What I think is so fun about seeing these moments is they are experiencing a joy in it that I think is that indication of the full life in God, you know? And I think that that's, that's ultimately the, the goal, you know, with us as parents, you know, as, as a, as a dad, um, who is still figuring so much stuff out as you, as a dad, as we look at the Bible, like when we can get these glimpses of seeing our kids.
Like, get even just a taste of that joy and that goodness, and it's the result of not them like getting the best present that they've ever gotten or like, like it's them giving of themselves and recognizing, Hey, I have something unique that [00:23:00] God gave me that is meant to be fully experienced and fully enjoyed as it is given to other people.
Man, that there's no greater joy as a parent to see that. And so I think from a practical standpoint, some of it is like giving kids opportunities, modeling it, helping to kind of give the story behind it. But ultimately, I think we need to make servant hardiness beautiful, like we need to show that this is not like.
Once again, and we just talked about this in, uh, other episodes, like you're not losing anything by serving people. You might feel like it. And, and to be fair, at immediately you might be losing something. Like, I'm not saying being a servant is easy, right? Giving up of yourself, giving up of your time, you like.
Moving away from kind of that self centeredness to others focusedness, there is a cost to it. But I think the more we can point out like, yeah, but the cost is nowhere near the gain, the more we can connect those dots with our kids, the more [00:24:00] naturally they're going to grow into something like that. And I love that that is kind of the goal in the picture of what all this looks like.
Hey, this is Cody from Blueprints. This concludes our 25 episode season examining God's blueprint for parenting. We will be back with more seasons to help connect God's big plan for families with the big job of raising kids. In the meantime, you can visit grayspace. com to get video resources, study guides, and more.
This conclu This could Alright.