Grow to be men of God - Intro

Welcome to The Student Podcast. This is where two guys get together and we discuss and learn how to be students of Jesus Christ. So good to have you today. Arkent Hughes' book, Disciplines of a Godly Man, I was a member at Calvary Reform Presbyterian Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Hampton, Virginia. And the men's group was, we had bagels from a place I'd never heard of before at that time, Panera Bread. And they had bagels and juice and disciplines of a godly man.
And this book was foundational in a lot of ways and transformational in my life. So I'm really excited to go through it with you. I think that you're much further along in your Christian walk than I was. I was only a Christian for a year when I got my hands on this book. But yeah, what are your hopes that as you see us going through this book, what are your hopes that we'll accomplish? I don't know.
I think the more I merge into adulthood, the more I just feel like, Oh my goodness, what am I doing? How do I be an adult? How do I be a husband? How do I work for the home? How do I interact with other married adult people? Uh, how do I invest in the church?
Not as just a young person, but as like actual adult member. What's my example like for the generation now under me who is calling me Mr. Simon. Sounds so strange. It's like, well, what changed? Yeah. Do you know Becca Plano? Well, you know Becca. Yeah. Uh, so Becca was the first person who ever made me feel old. Oh yeah. Yeah.
So we were at Eastville and uh, so we were members of the same church out in Pennsylvania and she was in high school and I was, I don't know, maybe in grad school or something like that. And she ran up to me after church, and she said, Mr. Schneider, Mr. Schneider. I was like, Mr. Schneider? Why did the high schooler call me Mr. Schneider?
And Mike Ramsey, our pastor out there, he was like, dude, you have three kids. Of course a high schooler is going to think, that dude's old. Yeah, right, yeah. So Becca Planoff is the first person who ever made me feel old. But I know what you mean. As you're thinking about the kids in the congregation now, and Mr. Simon, Mr. Simon, how do you How do you set that example for them as a Christian man? As a married man, I think this will be helpful to you as well, with you and Natalie being newly married.
How do you organize your time and your life around Gothic principles? Because there's a lot of things that pull for your time. So, how many hours a week do you think you do for school? Um, so I go in every day at 7.45. Um, so I'm on campus from there and I usually get home by 4.30 most days.
Okay. Um, and then, so what is that? I don't even know. 8.00 to 4.00 because there's transport time on either end of that. Okay. That's what, eight hours? Right. And so, do that most days of the week, and then some nights of the week I have to study for about an hour, and then some Saturdays I have to study for probably two hours. Okay. So I guess nine hours a day, five days a week, probably 50 hours. All right, yeah, so that's a full-time job plus 10 hours of overtime.
Yeah. Good, good. And then, and then how's How does your schedule match with Natalie's? Yeah, we're super blessed with the job she got. She should not have gotten the job. the only new grad that's working there right now. Really? Like, yeah. Everyone there is like in their sixties and like been there forever.
And like, yeah, I don't know how she got that job, but I mean, I know how she got the job. The Lord is good and answers prayer. And we were praying for a job where she wouldn't have to work Lord's days and a job where she wouldn't have to work nights or cause it's like the, uh, Gary and, um, Oh my goodness. What's his wife's name? Cynthia. Oh my goodness. Oh, you're talking about the Mac. Yeah.
Gary and Cynthia McNamee did our marriage counseling and they're like, yeah, first year of marriage is hard. First year of marriage for you guys is going to be really hard because you're going to be like two ships passing in the night if you don't watch out what's going on. And so that was something that we really were concerned about and really prayed about and God provide this job.
She goes in, So this morning she went in at 6. Some mornings she has to go in as early as 6 or 5.30. But she works 8 hours and she's done. Monday through Friday, no weekends, no holidays ever. And so it's like, she's done at the latest. If she goes in later, sometimes she has to go in at like 11. She's done by 7. So, I mean, I can make dinner. We can have dinner together.
We have a normal evening, no matter on either end of it. So that's a huge blessing. And, um, if we didn't have that, I don't think we would be doing as well as we are in a marriage by any stretch of the imagination. So we're grateful for that. Saturdays, just, we both just try your Saturdays. We can sleep until 10 together and we can do, well, we don't do nothing all day, but we, We do chores all day is what we do. But now I know you don't have children. I could sleep in as long as I want. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I'll be like, oh yeah, we'll stay up and we'll watch a movie with the kids until midnight or something, and they'll sleep in the next day. And then it's like 5.30 in the morning. Dad! Dad! So yeah, I'm just sleeping in is retirement. Well, see, in my house growing up, it was always the opposite. Dad was the one who got up early and woke us kids up, Monday through Sunday. Really? Every day of the week.
No, I'm normally the one who's awake early, but the kids have picked up on that. And so I'll purposely turn on some bathroom fans in the house just to create some white noise to try to keep them asleep. But inevitably, I'm normally in my office somewhere between 4.30 and 5.30. And it's pretty normal that somewhere between 5.30 and 6.15 a kid's in here with me, or I'm trying to keep them quiet so they don't wake up Olivia. She wakes up between 5.30 and 6.15 to get her devotions done and stuff. So I'm trying to, you know, stay away from your mom, you know, let her read her Bible.
Yeah, so the book is really helpful in kind of breaking down compartments, you might say, of life where, you know, relationships, soul, character, and ministry, and so disciplines with our soul, you know, how do we discipline our minds, how do we discipline our hearts, how do we discipline Our life to be structured around God's Word Relationships are disciplined with relationships with others.
And so as we think about how do we respond to our spouses? How do we respond to our children? How do we respond to? different just different relationships friendships and and How do we build godly friendships with others? How do we as a man of God respond to people who are non-christian?
And then there's character, integrity, tongue, perseverance, ministry, and so how do you live I think this was a really formational section of the book in my life with the discipline of ministry. As a young man, I was not married when I first read this. What is my role in the church? What does God expect of me within the you know, here he says, church, leadership, giving, witness, and ministry. How does my life fit God's commands for all these things?
And he kind of ends the book with reminding us that, he does this in the introduction, but then he reminds us in the conclusion of these are disciplines of grace, not disciplines to somehow earn our righteousness before God. But these are disciplines that the Holy Spirit instills in our hearts, and as we read His Word, and as we submit ourselves to His Word, how does that affect and shape our lives, too? like to often say, people like to talk about sanctification, and sanctification is nothing more than being conformed to the likeness and image of Christ. How are we transformed more and more like Christ? So, I know that's not a Westminster Shorter catechism definition of what is sanctification, but that's another topic for another time.
So, I think it will be helpful you know, as you're exploring this new area of your life, and as I reflect on my life, if I'm out of, I'm sure I am out of line with a lot of this stuff. How do we, you know, let God's word teach us, correct us, rebuke us, and train us that we might be thoroughly equipped, complete, ready for every good work.
I think it's going to be a blast. I think we're going to, I think you're going to enjoy the book. Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll kind of figure out as we go how open we want to be. I mean, I want to be completely open and honest with you, but we might take some things off air and make sure that it's not just broadcast into the world. We don't need everybody to know all of our dirty laundry.
Although today, Today, Daniel did that on coffee and devotions. Whenever he's gotten this way, if I'm doing coffee and devotions in here, he'll just knock on the door, run in, he'll be, you're doing coffee and devotions? It's like, oh yeah, come on, yeah. And so today, one of the things was talking about anger in the Proverbs, and Daniel was saying, yeah, it was kind of like when mommy got so mad at you, and he went off on telling how mom got so mad. And Olivia's not an angry person, but he just remembered this one time that Olivia was really, Upset and distraught and I mean she was mad at a situation it wasn't even like a person or it was just something going on in our lives and our family and I mean, Daniel just threw her right under the bus, no discreteness whatsoever.
Yeah. Like, okay, okay. No, no more airing or dirty laundry. So, so hopefully we'll be able to be honest with each other and, and challenge each other, even though it might not be on the recording part. Okay. But you and I can, I mean, I'm an open book. So I'm going to commit to you that I'm not going to waste your time. Okay. All right. I don't want to give generic examples of stuff.
Like I'll talk about my own heart, my own life, where I failed with stuff, and hopefully we can grow together. One of the things, this is going to sound a little harsh, but just receive it a little bit and think about it. One of the things that hurts me the most is when people come into the office and they'll just kind of play Christian. I can tell there's something else going on, something underneath the surface, but they just put on plastic faces and we don't actually see real growth because I can tell they're holding something back, hiding something. They might be worried about, you know, oh, am I going to lose reputation or is he going to think less of me or If I say this, is it going to expose all these other areas of my life?
And I'm sitting there going, the word of God's already laying your heart bare here. And I can tell something else is going on. And so I'm going to let you know when the Lord's done that to me as we read through this book. And I just hope that you'll be able to be honest as well.
Yeah, no, that's something that I'm really longing for and really want and hope that, yeah, recording isn't a barrier to that. Yeah. I don't want, I want to preserve my family and Natalie's integrity as much as I can. Yeah. Like I said, for people listening online, we might put a pause button and they might get to the sensitized, sanitized version of it where we Yeah, exactly. You know, but, but, but be honest. And that's what I'm saying. Not airing dirty laundry. We need to keep the ninth commandment, you know, not preserving our neighbor's good name. The fifth commandment honoring our father and our mother doesn't look like dragging them through the mud.
Um, but yet being able to be honest with each other as well. Um, and in the first half of our conversation, being able to kind of talk in generalities, but then maybe after that kind of, is there something we need to talk about more sensitive beyond that? We'll just let our friends online see the back door and bye-bye. We'll keep hanging out.
Sound good? Yeah, that sounds great. All right, cool, man. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Student Podcast. Feel free to go over to the website, sharonharpc.org backslash student and find more information and other shows. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate it. Have a great day.