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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tire Podcast. We're gonna be talking about Advent today. Really fun and practical conversation for you. So make sure you stick around for that. Before we jump in, do wanna thank my friends over at Oue for sponsoring today's episode. Oelo is permanent lighting that you can put on your house one time so that you don't have to get up on the ladder every holiday.
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Really, really cool product. Highly suggested you go check out what they've got going. You can go to oelo.com. That's OEL o.com Checkout. The product's there and get a quote and, uh, get all squared away with your permanent holiday lighting. Also, want to thank my friends over at Dwell Differently. I've talked about them a lot on this podcast.
If you're a dad looking to lead your family really practical. I'm, I'm always looking for practical ways to lead your family. Obviously, we want our heart changed and everything that we do as far as leading our family towards Jesus. Being an overflow of the heart from what God is doing in us personally as dudes, but I'm also looking for really practical stuff and dwell differently is one of the most practical ways that I try to point my family to Jesus.
On a weekly and monthly basis. They will send you scripture to memorize. That is designed very well. You can either get stickers that you can put on the kids' lunchboxes or water bottles or backpacks or binders or whatever you wanna put 'em on. Or you can get temporary tattoos that my kids personally love tatting themselves up multiple times a day.
But what's cool about it is it's got a great graphic on there, and it will have the first letter of every word in that verse that you're memorizing together as a family, together as a family. You're just getting the word of God sunken, deeply. Into your guys' heart. It's really, really cool and easy way for you as a dad to be talking to your kids about Jesus, memorizing the scriptures together.
They've got blogs and all kinds of digital resources that come along with your membership, but just the product alone is worth it, so. Definitely you're gonna wanna check them out. You'll, if you use a promo code Dad Tire, they'll give you a 10% off discount. If you get a membership for the whole year, you can go to dwell differently.com and uh, check out all that they've got going.
Again, that's dwell differently.com. Use the promo code Dad Tire to get squared away there. That being said, let's jump into today,
Danielle, I am like, uh, super giddy as. Just a dad to have you on our show today because I got your book, sacred Seasons, and again, I just got it as a dad. Like I'm, I'm trying to find own resources for me to lead my family, and I was reading it and I'm like, this is so, so good. Then I'm like, I need to have you on the podcast.
But anyway, I'm gonna have a million questions for you. But before I jump into all those, tell us who you are and what you're up to these days. Well, thank you so much for having me on today. I'm thrilled to be here. I am Danielle Hitchen. I'm the founder of Catechesis Books, which, um, up until Sacred Seasons was published was primarily known as the publisher of the Baby Believer Primmer series, which is a series of board books to help train your little ones, teach your little ones the central tenets of the Christian faith using primary concepts.
Like counting or opposites, that sort of thing. But Sacred Seasons has really been a passion project of mine to help families understand and. Follow and disciple their children through the church year. So, and I came to that by discipling my own family through the church year. I'm a mom of three and my husband and I have been married about 12 years.
We live in the Washington DC area and we, like everybody else, are just trying to figure out what it means to be faithful in this time that God has called us to live in. Yeah, totally. Well, I'm not sure all the dads will appreciate this as much as the moms I'm speaking very generally here, but. It is a beautiful book.
Like even if you just used it as decor. Thank you. It's so well, it's so well done. My wife always makes fun of me 'cause I'm like, for some reason I get into that stuff. I really like things that look good, but it just looks really good. But beyond it looking good, you could judge this book by its cover and you would be fine.
But the content is really, really good you, so essentially the book is laid out and I'll put a link in the show notes for our listeners to grab a copy of it, which I think every single person should. It's laid out in the the church calendar year. So it's not, we're not just talking about today, we're gonna talk about Advent, but it's not necessarily an advent book.
It's not a Christmas book, like it's talking about the whole church calendar. The liturgical calendar, which is. Really, really, really cool and I think lost for many of us believers. But today I wanna talk specifically about your chapter that you have on Advent, because we were about to start the advent season.
But before we like jump in specifically the advent, did you want to give any kind of high level perspective on the book and like the church calendar as a whole? Sure. So the church calendar is an ancient spiritual discipline. Some could argue that it dates back to the time of the apostles when they began an annual Easter celebration and much of our traditions in the church year or the liturgical year date, back to traditions built around preparing our hearts for Easter, and then preparing our hearts for Christmas and the baptisms that usually happened around Easter and Christmas time.
So it's just a really cool way to place yourself in the, in the story of the life of Christ. The year roughly tracks the life of Christ from creation all the way to second coming. And it's a beautiful way to teach your children the big story of what God has been doing in his people from Adam and Eve all the way up through Jesus in the time of the apostle apostles, to what God is doing in the church today, and how the spirit is at work in us and our families, and our communities today.
So I just love it as a discipline. I think it's just so helpful in teaching my kids. The broad story of scripture, as well as specific little stories and talking a lot about how God works through imperfect people to bring about his, his perfect work. Yeah, and it's cool that to teach our kids that they're part of a bigger story, we could attribute a million different reasons as to why we've kind of got away from like these sacred, older traditions, not just culturally speaking, but also specifically as Christians.
We've got away from a. A lot of these traditions and it's become so like, reflect like the stories about me and hyper individualized. And just to point back to like, man, there's been a story going on from the creation of the world. And like you said, God's been using all kinds of people mainly just like broken and messed up people to see his redemption of this whole thing.
I love the idea of pointing our kids' eyes and minds and hearts back to that bigger story. That being said, advent is coming up. So we will release this episode the week after Thanksgiving, which is about almost a week before Advent starts. But maybe just tell us like. When does Advent start? And then can you give us some history for the, the believer who, or the person who might not be familiar, like what really I've heard of the word, but like what is the advent season?
Sure. So I think Advent is super cool because it's both the beginning and the end of the church year. So it starts us off at the time which God's people are waiting for their promised Messiah to come. Kind of contains all of the Old Testament history from creation up through the book of Malachi, and it helps us to understand how very long God's people waited for his coming.
But in a lot of ways, it reminds us that we are also inhabiting a second advent. We are still in many ways before Christ, we are waiting for his coming, and advent means coming. So. Advent is a time in which we are preparing and awaiting for Christ to arrive. And the history of advent, like a lot of things in the early church can be a little bit murky.
I'll remind everybody there was no internet back when the early church was forming. There was no central listserv by which different denominations are not denominations, but different churches. I. Could like communicate what they were doing. So in the East and in the West, there were two different emphases during this time of the year.
One was on the Feast of the Epiphany, which was related to Jesus' baptism, and that was celebrated January 6th, and one was on Jesus' birth, the Feast of the Nativity, December 25th. And there was a preparatory season for both of these dates because there are big dates. Depending on which church you were in to baptize converts to the faith.
So Advent became a time in which converts to the faith, could prepare for baptism, could learn the Lord's prayer and the Apostles creed, and get ready to be baptized and be welcomed into Christ's family through that sacrament. In some cases, this was a three week period. In some cases, this was a six week period, but eventually it was set by, uh, Pope Gregory the Great, I believe.
That it would be four weeks, one week for each thousand years that humans had been on the earth. I'm not making any statements here about Young Earth, old Earth. I'm merely telling you what the rationale was at the time. So it was set at four weeks, 4,000 years to contain the whole history of humanity from creation all the way up until Christ's birth.
So that's kind of how Advent got started. And then traditions of course developed over time. But that's kind of the basics. As a side note, what's your background? How do you know you're like an encyclopedia of history, the way you just spouted out all that history was very impressive. I did a lot of research for this book, so I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy or humanities with a philosophy emphasis.
I really attribute most of my church history nerdiness to the Tory Honors Program at Biola University, which is a great book's general education program. So I had to read a lot of the church fathers. I read up through the reformers, I've read the moderns, and it just gave me a real love for understanding like how do these things fit together?
How have these voices been in conversation with one another over the centuries? And a real understanding that the church didn't just pop out of nowhere in the 1960s, which to be fair is kind of how I conceived it as a high schooler was like, oh yes, the evangelical church, I grew up non-denominational.
This is just a movement outta the 1960s. And I never really considered like what happened before that, you know? Yeah. My college education really helped pull those pieces together for me and give me a real love for understanding where did we come from and why does that matter? Well, I'm impressed by your memory.
You were just like, for those who are just listening to this, like you didn't have any notes that you were just spouting all, all those dates. And this is total side note, like the guys who listen to this podcast know I have a DD and I go on terrible tangents, but I was telling my brother-in-law who was visiting this week, I can watch a movie like every six months and it's like I'm watching it for the first time.
I have the worst memory. That's kind of nice. So I I that for movies, it's nice. For other things. It's terrible. Like I'll do a, I'll prep for a sermon. For however long, and then I'll go back and listen to it two years later. I'm like, that's so good. Not because I think it's good, but because I didn't remember, like, I'm like, oh wow, that happened.
Um, so anyway, the, well, one thing you said in the book Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say, full disclosure, I feel like that reading parts of my book sometimes like, oh, I wrote that. Totally, totally. No. Well, it's very good. You should read it often. But one thing you. I wanted to pull like this little quote that you said there that, and as far as like history and thinking through Advent and the context of God's grand story of redemption, you said The season of Advent represents thousands of years of God's working among his people, holding the entire weight of the Old Testament in its gentle four week span.
Advent invites us to remember how very long humanity waited for our Messiah. I think that's so beautiful. Like again, going back to teaching our kids. God's been doing this like redemption thing. The world does not revolve around you. The family doesn't revolve around you. The church doesn't like God has been doing this thing for a very long time, and I love that the way you said that.
Like we're summing up the entire Old Testament into this gentle four week span, which is trying to help us get a glimpse of man like. People waited a long time for the Messiah to come. I think the other thing that stuck out to me too, specifically on this advent chapter is it's really in full disclosure, I already put my Christmas lights up and I have my Christmas tree up.
Like I got way too excited. No judgment. No judgment. Okay. Appreciate. But I got really excited. But, and just reading the history that you wrote about in Advent, it's really, it's almost a somber feeling. Mm-hmm. Like. Once Christmas hits, and we'll talk about this more in a second as we get deeper into it, but when Christmas hits, we're in full celebration mode.
But pre-Christmas Eve, like Christmas day, the tradition really is almost a kind of a somber feeling, right? Like we're trying to remember what it would've been like to wait patiently for the Messiah to come. And I think the best way to relate that now, like if you have a hard time as a listener, re feeling those feelings, it's also trying to represent the longing that we currently feel.
For our Messiah to return, for Jesus to come back into his full glory again. And so even in 2023, as we're recording this, my heart like longed. Mm-hmm. For Jesus to come back because this place is a mess. Yep. And that's what people would've been feeling pre Jesus, showing up in flesh. Again, you're pointing back to God's coming, but also in anticipation of God coming again.
But again, it's like this almost a somber. Feeling. Am I right? It is. It's a season of, yeah. Quiet reflection and penitence and patience. And one thing I love about the traditions of advent, like the Jesse tree or an advent wreath, is that you're kinda slowly. Building onto pieces of the story. In the case of the advent wreath, you're adding a little bit more light to your home each week, remembering that the light of the world is coming in the Jesse tree.
You are reading the small bits of God's story from creation all the way up through the end of the time of the kings and the exile, and it's just a lovely way to. Help yourself. Remember the quiet faithfulness of God's people and the ways that God was slowly but very surely at work. I think it's a time to take courage as Christians because it feels like this time here on earth sometimes is a little interminable.
It's just hard. There can be definitely days that are wonderful and there are days that feel like a slog, and it's good to know that like we're not alone in this feeling. God's people had to wait in this kind of advent season for quite a while before Jesus came. Christmas is the reminder that God keeps his promises.
It's wonderful to have this bounded season of Advent that we can wait with actual real hope to know that God will come again. Yeah. I don't think we've said it explicitly, but when does Advent start officially? Oh yeah. So it starts four Sundays before Christmas, which means that some years it starts as early as, uh, November 27th, and some years as late as December 3rd.
And this is one of those weird years where it starts on December 3rd because the fourth Sunday of Advent is actually Christmas Eve. Yeah. Okay. So it's coming up quick. So if you're listening to this and you're like, all right, we've never really celebrated an advent traditionally, and I You want to take it, it would be December 3rd this year?
Yes. But it's always the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Correct. Just to give people context. Okay. So there's some people who are gonna listen to this who are like, dude, uh, that sounds awesome, but you're giving me like a whole nother thing to think about and the, the busyness of the holiday season. And so I guess, what would you say to somebody who's just thinking through like.
From a discipline, a spiritual discipline perspective, like what would you say to the person who might feel kind of overwhelmed about adding another thing to their plate right now? So I actually think Advent takes a lot of pressure off of parents. So often this season we're so busy, right? There are like.
All kinds of Christmas related things to do. But I push off all the things like Christmas baking and Christmas cards, and finishing decorating my Christmas tree until Christmas because we have 12 full days of Christmas to celebrate, and there's no need to jam all the Christmas celebration into Advent, and that's made the Christmas season really both restful and celebratory for my family.
So I would say take some of the pressure of Christmas and making Christmas special before Christmas. Out of Advent, push it to the 12 days of Christmas, which is where it's properly placed in the church calendar and just make your home. I think I say it in in my book, A Haven from the Holiday Hysteria. I mean, we all know what it feels like to just feel the pressure and the churn of the world around us during advent, or I don't even wanna properly call it Advent for the world.
It's like a pre-Christmas, Christmas for them. Like Santa's on every street corner, there's Christmas carols blaring in the store. You can't get away from that stuff, but in your own home, you don't have to full out and decorate. If you're not ready for that, you can leave your tree bear for a couple of weeks if that's what you wanna do.
Slowly decorate here and there and don't make it so intense for yourself and for your family to do all the Christmas things during the season of Advent. Yeah, you've shared some of the like practical stuff that we can do, and I want to get into all those. A second, but before, one of the biggest spiritual disciplines that I think we should be cultivating that you recommend in the book is silence.
Like we're really. We're quietly waiting. Mm-hmm. For the Messiah, that's the heart posture that we're trying to take. We're trying to relate back to the people who have been waiting for the Messiah. And then we're also posturing our hearts. Are we ready for the Messiah to return? And so we're quietly preparing our hearts in that way.
So the spiritual discipline there is silence, but silence feels. Really hard. Yes. To accomplish, just as a human feels really hard, but it also feels quite impossible. Like some parents are listening to this, like, I don't remember the last time I experienced silence. So what, like what tips would you give us for young families who want to cultivate this spiritual discipline of silence in a chaotic young family?
Well, first is to set reasonable expectations. You know, your kids aren't gonna sit down and be quiet for 30 minutes. That's just. Never ever going to happen. But if you, how old are your kids? How, how old are your kids? They are nine, seven, and four. Yeah. Okay. So you totally get it. Yes. And they're very loud all the time.
My house is just so, it's, it's a lot. They're so loud. Yes, they're so loud. So I would say prep them beforehand for what you're doing. Talk to 'em about why silence is important. In the book, I talk about the story of Elijah coming before God on the mountain and the story of how God. Spoke to him in the still small voice.
And this is, I think, the story to help prep our kids for we need to listen to God. Prayer isn't a one way conversation. It's not just us talking to God, but God speaking back to us and being present with us in our moments of prayer. And then set a timer so they can clearly see it. And I would say set it for 30 seconds.
The first time you do it, we're just gonna be quiet for 30 seconds. You might wanna light a candle and say, look at the flame and remind them that flames are traditionally associated with Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost. And you could give them a prayer to pray over and over again. Speak Lord, your servant is listening.
Something like that. Hopefully silently in their heads. But if they need to pray it out loud, be flexible with your family. But I would say, yeah, don't come at it with high expectations because that's always a recipe for disaster with young kids. Do the best you can. So one book that really. Revolutionized my thinking on this was Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton, and I would highly recommend that for any grownups who are interested in learning how to cultivate a discipline of silence in their life.
But she just makes the point about prayer working both ways and learning how to be present and be quiet with the Lord so that you might hear his still small voice. Of course, God speaks to us through scriptures, but I think that there's something really profound about just learning to be present and feel the love of the Lord in the quiet.
Hmm. Yeah. I love that. Uh, okay, so I'm gonna spend the rest of our time trying to get as practical as possible. Okay. 'cause dudes love that. Like, just tell me exactly what's Okay. A, B, C, D. Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this episode so far. Stick around 'cause we're gonna continue with some really practical stuff as we move forward here.
But just wanted to take a minute to remind you, we are trying to raise our funds for the next year. But honestly, before I ask you to, you know, go to dad tired and make any kind of donation, I'm actually wanna spend this time for just 20 seconds and ask you to join me in prayer. I'm asking you to be generous and to just see where God would lead you as far as partnering with us.
But personally, I've been asking, God, Lord, where do you want us to be more generous as a ministry? And how can we serve dads and families better and more generously? How can we be a bigger blessing to the families? And so that's something I'm praying about. I have a ideas, but I want real clarity from the Lord.
I'm thinking about fatherless kids. There are a ton of kids who have either completely absent dads or know, or the dads around, but he's just not involved. And so what would it look like for us as a community? You know, we've got a lot of dads who are part of dad tired. What would it look like for us to really pour into kids who don't have an engaged dad in their lives?
So that's something I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about moms and single moms. I was raised by a single mom, so that's. Real near and dear to my heart, how can we support single moms and come alongside of their kids to support them? Thinking about dads who are either single dads or in marriages that are potentially failing, going through a divorce or separated dads who are trying to lead their family well, but just feel like the world is stacked up against them right now.
And so anyway, these are all ideas that are kind of swirling in my head, but I just wanna get clarity from the Lord about what it would look like for us as a ministry to really be more generous. To be a blessing to people who are in need, not just financially in need, which I'm, I want to serve them too, but to think through like the all the spiritual needs where people feel spiritually and emotionally and relationally bankrupt, and how can we come alongside of them and really love on them?
So. My ask from you this week is, would you just join me in prayer and would we seek the spirit together as a community of men and ask that the Holy Spirit would give us clarity on where he wants to lead us in the coming months and years as a ministry. So that's my ask from you this week. Anyway, I hope that this episode is helpful.
Let's jump back into it. Okay. So this time of like preparing our children's hearts to practice silence, you would say do that this week before we. Start advent, like start to prepare them. Like, Hey, we're about to enter into Advent. Here's kinda the big idea. And one thing that we're gonna be practicing during Advent over the next four weeks for Sundays is silence.
Is that what you're saying? And then that would be a good time to read the Joshua story from First Kings 19. Yes. Did I hear you right on that? Yes. Uh, Elijah's story, but yes, you gotta talk. Yeah. Eli, what did I say? Joshua? Joshua. Yeah. Elijah's story. Sorry. Elijah's story from first week. Yes. Yeah. You gotta talk to us like we're, yeah.
Start having the preparatory conversations now. And if it's, if you're not gonna be decorating this year the way that you normally do, tell your kids that now say, Hey, we're gonna put our tree up the first week of December, but we're not gonna light it till the second week. And we'll pull out the ornaments the third week and we won't put the tree on till the fourth week and the presents will show up on Christmas.
You know, if you're used to like full on decorating everything the day after Thanksgiving and like getting the gifts out right away and all of that, then your kids might be like, why do we have a bear tree in our house? Like, explain to them that you're kind of developing the themes of Advent. Yeah. What would you say that, yeah.
'cause your kids are gonna say that, especially if you've always gone big on Christmas and then now you're slowly working up toward it and your kids are gonna be like, why? What do you specifically say to the kids when they say why? Well, we talk about practicing patience. We talk about waiting with God's people for the lord's coming, and that good things come to those who wait.
We're anticipating the greatest gift of Jesus to arrive on Christmas day, and that's when our gifts will arrive under the tree because all gifts point us to Jesus. So, yeah, I would say as much as you can, link it back to the themes of the season, to the waiting, to the reflection, to the anticipation to help your kids remember, like what you're really waiting for is something super special on Christmas.
You know, like we can no more skip from Thanksgiving to Christmas than Eve could skip from the fall to Christ's birth. We have to wait for God to show up and he shows up when he shows up. No matter how much decorating we do, we're not gonna make it happen any sooner. So we're helping our kids develop those muscles of patience and waiting on the Lord.
Dang. That was so good. That was so well said. Really, really well said. Because that's the point right there. It's like. It's hard to wait, isn't it? That's what I would tell my kids. It's hard to wait, isn't it? And think about how long people waited for Jesus to show up and now look at us. Look how long we've been waiting for Jesus to come back to make all things new.
And that, I think that would be a key phrase for me as a dad, that I'm probably gonna say a lot over the advent. It's hard to wait. Yep. It's hard to wait. And so we quiet our heart, we steady our, our silence, our hearts, and we're, we're preparing our hearts and remembering how hard it is to wait for Jesus to return, you said.
Before Advent begins, get all the Christmas shopping done. So I know that's not super realistic, but it is a drum that I keep beating. I feel like it's such a gift to myself to not have to think about Christmas shopping in the advent season. So I try to get it all done in the month of November. Full confession.
I'm really behind this year. So I don't know that it's going to happen, but for me it's a way to take some of the, like consumerist parts of the pre-Christmas season and just get them out of the way. I know it's done. I can have peace about that. So if you can get your shopping done, do it. I have to say my husband is a go to the mall on Christmas Eve kind of guy, so if, if that's you power to you, but that sounds awful to me.
That does sound stressful. I'm more of like an Amazon week ahead of time. Okay. Yeah. And then a bunch of boxes are gonna show up. Okay. So if you can though, try to, and, and the heart there is like, just don't get yourself in the frenzy. Like that kind of goes against the whole point of advent is to feel like you're in a, a frenzy.
Right. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So and then the Sundays during Advent. Talk to us about like what would we be doing on the specific Sundays during the advent season? My family does an advent wreath, which is a fairly old tradition where you light one candle per Sunday in Advent and you just add a little bit more light to your home each week.
With the wreath, we turn off all the lights in the house. So the first week we light the wind candle and it's kind of dark, but then the next week we light two and it's a little lighter this third week three, the fourth week four. And so we see how much brighter it gets each week as a reminder that the light of Christ is coming into our lives at Christmas.
There are specific readings that you can do, depending on the tradition. You can find one that's like, this is a shepherd candle and this is an angel candle. This is a prophet candle. But I tend to opt for slightly more simple, like the candles of peace, hope, joy, and love. And there are some readings that go along with those liturgy.
Wood is a wonderful resource for that. If you're looking for, um, a set of readings and a prayer to go along with your Advent candles. Each week they sell Waiting Candles. Cards. I think that's what they're called. And they're really nice. Liturgy. Wood, liturgy, wood. Like yes. They usually make wood in advent wreaths too, but they're not doing that this year, unfortunately.
But they do have their candle cards. A second thing that we do is we slowly release the pieces of our nativity set. So the first Sunday we just put up, you know, the stable, and then the next Sunday we'll put the sheep and the shepherds out, and then the next Sunday we'll put out Mary and Joseph. And then the final Sunday we'll put the manger out and then Jesus arrives on Christmas.
And the wise men don't arrive until the Feast of Epiphany, which is the final day of Christmas, the 12th day of Christmas in January. And then we keep our nativity up all the way till February 2nd, which is called the Feast of Candle Mess. And it's considered like the official end of the Christmas narrative and it celebrates when Jesus was brought to the temple six weeks after his birth and.
Officially named and blessed in the temple, and it's a story of Simeon and Anna in the in the Bible if you're looking for a reading there. But we try to do that slowly to help our kids remember that this story took place over time. It's not just a one and done celebration, but God continued to work through his people even after Christ was born.
So it's a really lovely way to enjoy your. Christmas decorations as well. I think if you release them a little bit more slowly, because I've decorated the day after Thanksgiving before and by the day after Christmas, I'm like, yeah, I want these outta my house. Yeah, that's normally me too. Yeah. I, I just love the visuals.
Like I think, uh, it's helpful for us. It's really helpful for our kids, like to just be able to see like, why aren't we putting it up yet? And it's just a constant reminder for them. And it goes back to, I accidentally enter are swapped. Joshua and Elijah. But going back to the story of Joshua, where they, where they stack the stones, then the scripture says, why would you stack the stones?
It's because it acts as a memorial for your kids. Yes. When your kids walk by these stones, they will ask, what are these stones for? Yes. And you can point back to God's faithfulness, and it has the same kind of feel to it as you're slow, you're putting the candles, you're slowly lighting the candles, you're slowly decorating the tree.
You're slowly putting the nativity up, and your kids ask why. It's man. It's hard to wait, isn't it? Yes. Think about how long people waited for the Messiah to come, and our hearts are waiting for Jesus to come again. These are simple tools that allow us to point back to the grand story of God's redemption over and over and over again, which I'm a big fan of.
You have fasting too, as a one of the, the disciplines. Talk to us about that. Right next to your bread recipe, which is. Cruel. Well, fasting is definitely not a requirement. I mean, no spiritual disciplines are a requirement, right? There are optional enhancements to our spiritual life, and there are seasons in which they will be helpful and seasons in which you're like, Nope, I'm not doing that.
Because yeah, there's just no spiritual edification for me in that right now, but fasting. Again, as a way to stir up longing in yourself for something that you can't have as humans, I think we are creatures who naturally want the things we can't have. So if we say, oh, we're not gonna have sweets, we're gonna wait.
You know, during the season of Advent, not have any sweetss except on Sundays. For the record, Sundays are never a fasting day because they're always a feast day. It's the day that we gather at church and we take communion and we partake of the feast of the Lord in community together. So, but if you fast on the, you know, Monday through Saturday, then it makes what you're fasting from all that much better on the day that you do have it.
Um, and then finally on the big feast day on Christmas, go crazy with your cookies or your bread or whatever it is that you're fasting from. But fasting is, is essentially a way to. Stir up longing, and in that longing be remembered to pray and ask God to sustain you in that. Yeah. I meant to say this at the beginning, but my wife, her dad passed away recently.
Sorry. And um, he was, yeah, it's been so, so hard. But he was really the one who set many of the foundations of traditions for us as a family. So since the entire time we've been married and her entire life. She's done the same Christmas traditions mm-hmm. Every year. And this is the first time in her entire life that those will be broken.
So if she were sitting right here, she would probably start bawling just hearing those words. 'cause it's just like. It just means so much, you know, and it's gonna be, this will be a hard year, but this is also, we're seeing it as an opportunity to start setting some of our own traditions as our own little family.
But that's also why I've gravitated towards your book and why I love, you've given such, you've given high level I. Perspective on what these things mean, but also very, very practical stuff, which is really helpful for families who are looking for these new traditions as well. And I love the idea of like, on Christmas day, the feast just feels different.
The day feels different. Mm-hmm. Because you've been waiting. Yes. And to teach your kids like for four weeks they've been waiting, which four weeks is just such a little micro, you know? It's an eternity for kids. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's an eternity for kids and that, and it starts to get their hearts like in.
Just better align to what the scriptures teach us and what the church history teaches us. And so the feast, the dinner at Christmas feels bigger. The, the gifts feel bigger. All of it feels bigger because there has been that time of waiting. Uh, I wanna talk to you a little bit about I. Some of the saints.
Okay. And then traditionally how saints have been acknowledged. You have St. Lucy's Day St. How to Celebrate St. Lucy, St. Nicholas. For a lot of us who didn't grow up in a faith tradition where that was like talking about saints, this, this is totally new to us. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Also in context for, I know people are gonna be asking, kinda the elephant in the room here is what do you do with Santa? Yeah. Like, you know, so people, there are families who will have Santa as part of their Christmas traditions and others who feel like, oh my gosh, you're gonna go to hell if you talk about Santa.
So yes, it's quite controversial. Second only to Halloween, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So no pressure here, but try to answer those questions for us. Sure. So first I wanna caveat. My discussion of Saints by saying that I am not advocating that we pray to them, that we worship them, we venerate them. I think that Saints are wonderful to look to as a reminder of how God raises up faithful people in all generations to be inspired by their witness to.
Teach our children about the faithful who have come before us. Like these are the great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews 12 talks about. And so that's the approach that I take to saints. Oh, and I'll also note Saint is the noun form of the verb consecrated. So it's a way of talking about being set apart for God.
And we know we talk about our kids, to our kids about. Being saints themselves. You know, last night even my daughter was like, am I a saint? I was like, yeah, you've been baptized, you've received the Holy Spirit. You believe that Jesus is your savior. You know, you are set apart for the Lord. You can live to his glory.
You are a saint. So we're not specific about saints, so we don't, so I just wanna caveat that conversation with that. That's good. That's really, really good. Yeah. Thank you for that. So when it comes to St. Lucie and St. Nicholas, these two are included because they're feast stays. Are especially culturally impactful, and they have been for several centuries.
I'll talk about St. Nicholas in particular since that is the Santa Claus precursor there. So personally, I love the St, uh, the the Feast of St. Nicholas because I. It's a great way for us to talk about Santa with our kids without making Santa Front and center of Christmas. The Feast of St. Nicholas is on December 6th, which is also my youngest birthday, so that's kind of fun.
Oh, cool. Yeah, that is cool. And it's a great way to talk about the man Nicholas, who's got a really incredible story. He rose at a young age to become a bishop in Turkey. He was known to be incredibly generous. Um, to include hearing about a poor family who couldn't afford their daughter's dowries. He threw gold coins down their chimney.
It landed in their stockings, but he wanted to give anonymously because that's what Jesus tells you to do. And, um, and Matthew, so you can see kinda the contours here of like stockings and Santa coming down the chimney and all that kind of stuff. And so Nicholas just became such a beloved figure because of his generosity, and he always gave in a way that acknowledged that.
God was the giver of all good things. And so I think that's what we can take out of the story of St. Nicholas and so on St. Nicholas Day, um, my kids put out their shoes the night before. And they leave out a carrot for Nicholas's donkey. And the next morning there are chocolate gold foiled wrapped coins in their shoes.
And usually a candy cane that looks like a A shepherd's staff or a bishop's crook. 'cause Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey. I. Some oranges, like those are kind of the traditional things to put in the kids' shoes, but it's a reminder of the story of Nicholas giving to the poor people. So anyway, you can see there the, the reindeer myth kind of originates there with the donkey and the carrots and Santa coming.
But it's a way to be like, Hey, we're gonna celebrate, say Nicholas and Santa and then we're done and we don't have to, you know, have Santa come on Christmas. Yeah, and again, that's not prescriptive. Like we're not telling anybody that this is how you should approach the Santa conversation, but just personally like just friend to friend, I think that's awesome.
I think it's such a cool way to honor somebody who was faithful to try to be the, a follower of Jesus and and to love people well. But also he is not the center of the whole story. Right. Of Christmas. And I, I love how you did, like what you just described there. Uh, I'm probably gonna steal all of that because that's really, that's really, really it.
Honors tradition honors the people who have gone before us to try to be faithful to God's calling, but also Jesus' who we're celebrating here. Yep. Not prescriptive, but super, super helpful. Okay. I ran outta time, unfortunately. Uh, 'cause I, I want to talk about so much more, but to end advent, specifically Christmas Eve, what do you do on that day?
So, normally we go to church. Most major Christian feasts start the night before, which is the Jewish tradition. The idea that a day begins when three stars appear in the sky. And so the sort of evening vigils, the night before the Easter vigil, or all Halls Eve or. Christmas Eve. These are all the beginning of the celebration.
So usually we go to church, we hear the big story of scripture read. We celebrate as a family. We like candles, we sing and we pray and we rejoice. My kids usually get to open one gift on Christmas Eve because why not? They've been waiting all this time and then we do like the, the big thing the next day.
But really, Christmas Eve is the start of the Feast of Christmas. Which you have a whole chapter just on like Christmas as it's whole. Yes. It's not just like, you know, 20 minutes in the morning where the kids rip, open all the gifts and then it's over and you take all the Christmas decorations down. You have a whole.
It's like a 12 days. It's 12 days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super fun. Uh, I don't have time to get onto that, but that's a good reminder. Everybody should get your book because those are just two of the chapters of many chapters in this book where you're talking about the many ways that followers of Jesus can all year long be connecting back to church history and how people have celebrated the story of Jesus.
This was so fun. I feel like I need to have you back on a lot more holidays and fun things in the, in the church calendar. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for having me. This was great. Alright. If you guys, as you've been listening to, if you feel like, uh, you didn't take enough notes or that felt really overwhelming, like you're drinking out a fire hose, seriously grab a copy of this book.
Sacred Seasons, A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Again, it is, it looks awesome, but even bigger than it looks. Its content is amazing. So go grab a copy of that right before Advent is about to start. That's the nice thing about a Amazon. Yes. Uh, as it could be.
If they're listening to this on a Monday, it can be to their house probably tomorrow. Thank you again. This was so, so fun. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Hey guys, hope you enjoyed that episode. It was helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same. Just as a reminder, two kind of takeaways for you today. Number one, jump into this advent season, man, with a ton of intentionality. Whether you've done it for a long time or you've never done it, just use this time to be intentional and it's an easy way.
Uh, it's kind of a softball for you to. Practically lead your family closer to Jesus to point their eyes and their hearts and their minds back to their creator. And so be intentional about that. Set some things in the calendar. I've literally put things in my calendar this week, like this week I've put things down for the next four weeks.
Like, have dinner on this day to ask these questions. Uh, and so just pull out your calendar and make some huge intentional steps towards pointing your family closer to Jesus. I'm also, I wanna remind you to, if you would. Join me in prayer and just ask him what would it look like for us as a, as a large community of men, place strategically all around the world for us to unite together and think about how can we bless people in the dad space?
So whether that's kids who don't have dads, whether that's dads whose marriages are. Failing, which I know many of you who are listening, you're in serious marital crisis right now and or you know somebody who is, or it's a single mom who's near you, or a widow who's near you that we could come alongside of and help.
I really feel this deep sense for 2024 that God is gonna use us to really be a big blessing to a lot of people. And so I want to think through that as a community and. Ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and clarity on that. So that's the two kind of takeaways from today. Lead Your Family Well personally when it comes to Advent, and then together as a community, let's join together to bless some people and to love on people and to be salt and light in this world.
All right guys. I love you. We'll see you next week.