Larry Fowler & Tim Kimmel: Leaving a Legacy that Matters

Okay what would you say is the greatest thing about being a grandparent everything. It's amazing. There's also something about it like you with a parent, you feel like you're continually thinking through how what I'm I trying to do here. I want to protect them. I felt a little more fear-based and I was a little more exhausted and there was so much going on but I feel a little bit more of a freedom just to love extravagantly with our grandkids. And I guess that you are the greatest grandmother you are incredibly really think I am a loser. Just said watching you come alive. It is a joy with our six trinkets is awesome.

Family life to day where we help you pursue the relationships that matter most in Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find his family life to the.com or on the family life is family life today grandparent of today we get Dr. Tim Cammalleri Fowler in the family life today studio to talk about being grandparents welcome guys here.how do you two guys connect to one another in terms of what you're doing. Jim wrote a book about grandparenting in about 2007 something like up.

I leave the ministry called the legacy coalition and Jim has been a close friend of our ministry cheerleader and encourage her in a speaker at our conferences, so he's been right there with us on this journey of trying to equip Christian renters to be more intentional in passing on the faith of the greatest what I was doing a conference for children's workers down in Chattanooga and this guy came up to me and said he could have lunch sure and he said that he just really have a burning his wife just got been talking on the heart and he said you is the only tool it is out there.

Then one to see if you'd be willing to get together. Me and some other people just talk about. Maybe there's something more substantive to be done at the church because the observation my wife and I had is that basically the church was weighing in on this. That's not a put down, or what you know what's wrong with everybody at this just what was but I think the demand on grandparent's gone way up the need for sages and matriarchs and patriarchs, the wisdom hunters of life that are now you know coming into the fourth quarter of their life and accepts the offer and yet 10. I feel like Larry you know this, you were not tapping in the church because his people as we get older we think now I guess I've raised my kids have done my thing. Now you're saying there's a lot more and you're saying grandparents are starting to engage more than ever will.

I remember that loves to affect. I've always looked up to him and respected him and Leon was just an idea that was forming in my mind. I didn't know even at the time that God was really putting a new calling on my life. Hello, my wife's life I wanted to find somebody that I could talk to about this issue are grandparenting and frankly there wasn't hardly anybody else that I could find in ministry and church.

Big city will learn how to focus on it, but Tim was a guy and he was very encouraging where to start rambling restlessness about grandparenting well.

It was first very personal ministry passion came a lot later, and it started for me.

Of course, with the birth of my first grandson. So my first grandson was born on my birthday that's coming and you have to kids and grandkids. Well my daughter who has for her marriage failed after a few years Matt first grandson and two siblings.

At that time came to live with us and I had a son-in-law that had made some awful decisions for my daughter. It had all she could take.

I've had all I could take and so they came and lived with us and I one began to step it up in my role as a grandfather because I knew those little boys knew the godly mole male role model and I didn't want them to follow in the sins of their father and so that was the beginning of me beginning to be more intentional as a grandfather but I couldn't help with that language to it.

At that time and then in 2012 I did a study was working with. You want to ministry and I did a study of the Scripture passages that talk about generation to generation and nothing happened with the study except God used in my own heart and one particular verse doesn't say generation to generation, but it just absolutely turned my world upside down was Deuteronomy 49. The last phrase about the says teacher children and your children's children in the and got me because I never saw that from a biblical perspective.

I headed to generation responsibility not just as a pair. I knew that I had a responsibility as a parent, but I saw with new eyes that I had a biblical responsibility as a grandparent so that for me was a real turning point.

As God revealed that to you.

Darcy like to say that one reason why you would like being grandparents is we observe this and we found out why it grandparenting to get along so much better with her grandkids. Then those kids get along with her actual parents and and if we became grandparents.

We realize why because grandparents and grandchildren will surely common source of annoyance and she likes to say grandkids are God's gift for us.

Not so your kids on Craigslist business.

What you get but you talk about how much you adore it in the stresses off with the stresses off you not know this qualify.

There's there's a couple million grandparents after actually like you don't raising their grandchildren.

But for the most of them the tens of millions in art.

We don't carry the day to day stress plus I like to look a grandparenting for the golfers out there. The target is like playing a Mulligan. You know what say you hit one out abounds in a guy say to you, but I will count that one will that's what we do with a lot of our kids. We know we're doing not want to woodsy in the lake because you become a grandparent. I can actually get this one down the middle and ended suggest a great chance to have a second chance, can you guys have for kids even 50 years. How many grandkids 10 grandkids and drinking and growing right now don't work on ES will will will probably get one or two more before it's over but the youngest is three months yields a 20 years old and I so to see them now is take on life and to watch our kids raise them and trying be that lighthouse for those grandkids is just been a fun journey by way missed him without his heartache setbacks but it's inching Larry when you said earlier. Deuteronomy 49 for your children and their children. I don't know if you guys remember the song.

This was not planned and carried out plan of our favorites on the first of artists, which became a big Guarantee Not Know the Lord Bless You and Keep You in a Song and Think It's That's Number Six I Think Are the Sure Exactly What the Book but It's It's a Blessing, but Then When Carriage of Loosing It Went to the Bridge. I Teared up This Line, You Know It's Anything You Can Arrange the Menu That You, Your Family, Your Children, I like Stiff Nice and Then Their Children in Their July Teared up This Legacy It's You Know I Got a Chance to Change the Legacy of Two Alcoholic Parents and Adultery and Just Divorce and You Know Legacy for Me Was like I Get a Chance with God's Power to Change the Wilson Future. So, I Heard That Line You Know You You Envision Grandkids Is Not Just That Song. I Agree with You I Just I Couldn't Talk for A While after the First Time I Heard That so but It's Also What Scripture Says in Psalm 78 and There Are Several Other Places to for Therefore Generations That Are Mentioned in Psalm 78. It's about Passing on the Stories of God at Work and I Believe That's the Vision That Grandparents Are Going to Have You Know We Are to Not Just Care about Our Grandchildren Were Care about Our Grandchildren's Grandchildren and so You Know That's Something That I Think about A Lot As a Grandfather. What Am I Going to Do, so That My Grandkids Will Be the Same Kind Grandparents When They Get to This Age, the Impact All the Way out for Generations Is a Way That We Have in Psalm 71. There's This to Verses That We've Considered This Kind of the Best Thing Versus We've Ever Read on Grandparenting before Reeded Context Is Good. What's Interesting Is Psalm 71 Is Not I Deed As to Who Wrote but You'll Find That There Are Segments of Several of David's Psalms in Psalm 71 so the Assumption Is, Is This Is an Edited Version of Several of His Songs Put Together to Make One Extended Psalms of David Is Most Likely the Author of This and He's Writing This in His Twilight Years, a Man Who Look Back and Made since Several Mistakes along the Way and with His Family.

Here's What He Said since My Youth of God.

You Taught Me, and to This Day I Declare Your Marvelous Deeds and Even When I'm Old and Gray. Do Not Forsake Me, Oh God, till I Declare Your Power to the Next Generation Here Might to All Who Are to Come.

When I Think of That in and I Realize That to Do That I Cannot Take on the Title, Grandparent, and Not Take on the Role You Could Be a Grandparent Just by Simply All You Have To Do Is Have You Kids Have Kids and You Get the Title That Business I Make You a Grandparent yet Be Delivered about That in the Deliberateness Isn't Necessarily a Ton of Work. There's a Ton of Joy Attached to, but It's but It's Also Really Driven by Purpose. Let's Talk about That Meaning. How Can We Be Deliberate and Do This Thing Purposefully. We Use the Phrase All the Time Intensive Christian Grandparents and It's the Same Thing.

It Doesn't Mean Perfect. Anybody Can Be Intentional or Purposeful in Their Grandparenting, but It Really Comes down to Very Very Practical Things like If Your Grandkids Live at a Distance. What Are You Going to Do to Connect with Them Stay Connected. If They Come over to See You Every Day. Are You Just Going to Play with Them or Are You Going to Be Thinking What Can I Do Today What Can I Say Today to Blessed to Teach Them to Remind Them about Who God Is and That's What Changed so Much for My Wife and I Was That Now We Watch Young Grandkids Every Week Day for A Few Hours and Use Your Intention yet.

So When They're Coming over Were Thinking What Might We Do Today What Might We Say Today, and That's the Transformation That Grandparents Will Grow As They Begin to Realize That They Have a Responsibility before God to Be More Than Just the Fun Grandparent Spoils and Goes to Their Activities and Helps Take Care Of Them but There's but There's More to Grandparenting from a Biblical Perspective. You and Darcy Night We Were Observing This for Long Time, like Us, That We Didn't Feel like We Could Say Anything until We Were Grandparents Herself, but That's What We Wrote the Book Extreme Grandparenting When Things We Did in There As We Unpack for Very Clearly Articulated Biblical Roles. The Grandparents Have an Larry Was Alluding to Them First Wanted Giving a Blessing Being Blessing Givers and I Think One of the Ways You Do That Is You.

Keep in Mind That Every One of Your Grandchildren Have Three Driving in Her Needs to Be Met, Either in a Legitimate or Militant Way Needs Another Secure Another Significant, Another Stronger Sufficient for the Moment, and so We Can Meet Those Two Got the Power of God's Grace Given Them a Secure Love a Significant Purpose.

A Strong Hope Voicing Those. I Think Another Key Role Is Setting a Standard When We First Got a GPS When It Was a Rental Car and We Darcy Cranked up and Ready Attraction. Work the GPS Thing to Figure out Where We Were. Why Do Some Research on It and It Takes At Least Two Satellites, but the More Accurate Is a Three or Four Comportment Where You Are with Satellite Is up Where They Can See Where You're Going from Where They Are so We Can Be Satellite for Them Then and 1/3 Thing Is Bearing a Torch. Eat a Good Example Would Be like the Olympic Torch Starts on Mount Olympus.

But It's Transferred All across the Continents When Someone Handle Another. They're Just Handing It down in That's like the Generations Are Handing down This Porch, but I've Never Carried a Torch for One Thing, If I Ever Had the Honor. The One Thing Everything All at Whatever You Do and Try Not Draw from Listing. Don't Let This Thing Go out and We Can Tear Torch of the Gospel Fork in the Fourth Role Once Again, Larry Is Talk to His Leaving a Legacy and See Once Again It's Not If You're Going to Leave a Legacy. That's a Foregone Conclusion Is What Kind and I like to Think We Have a Chance As Christian Grandparents to Leave a Legacy That Never Dies. It Says in Exodus, You Know, in the 10 Commands That You Send the Thought Return the Third and Fourth Generation of Those Who Hate Me, but Then It Goes He He Read This Chapter 7 and He Talks about the Sins If I Return the Third Generation, but My Righteousness Returns to Thousands of Generations of Those Who Love Me and Keep My Commandments. So There's a Shelf Life of Our Folly with There's a Half-Life of Righteousness for God That Just Never Ends. I Think Those Who Are Resonating with the Spiritual Dialogue We Have Going on Here. You May Think That You Can't Your First Generation Christian Habitually That We Find out You're Not There Was Some Grandparent Great-Grandparents on but Maybe Than 100, 200 Years Ago God's Honoring His Commitment to Keep That Light Going through You and Add to 10.

I Talked to so Many Grandparents That Feel like They Have Failed As Parents They Feel like a Thermostat, and so They Feel like They're Not Qualified to Be in Good Grandparent Usually Take Isn't so Good That God Gives a Second Chance Is We Can Still Be Great-Grandparents Because We've Learned A Lot through Our Mistakes and It Isn't so Sweet of Jesus to Say I Can Redeem I Can Change and You Can I Can Use You to Help Transform Those Grandkids My and I Wonder You Know Larry, You Mentioned the Term and I've Seen It All through Your Material Intentional Christian Grandparenting.

So Many of Us Even Christian Grandparents Are Intentional or Just Babysitting. We Love Our Time with Iran. Kids Were Excited to Have Him We Will Be There for Them but Is Not Intentional. For A Lot Of Us Is Just I'm Just Loving Them Stay at My House, but the Intentionality of Passing on Our Face to the Next Generation Generation after Generation. How Does a Christian Grandparent Get to That Intentionality Will I Think It's Beginning to Really Understand What Scripture Has To Say about the Role Mean, That's a Good Place to Start. Let Me Go down a Different Path for Just a Second. No, Come Back to That. We Did Some Research at the Beginning about How Many Grandparents Have Ever Heard a Sermon or Attended the Class or Read a Book on Grandparenting Even Though Timms Had a Book out There Very Good Book for Quite a Long Time. We Found That Only 1% of Christian Grandparents Had Ever Done Any One of Those Three. So What That Means Is That the Only Voices That Are Speaking into the Ears of Grandparents Are the Cultural Voices. The Culture Voice Is Your Good Grandparent If You Do the Things That You Just Mentioned Dave Grandparents Think They're Being a Good Grandparent and They Need to Understand That God Has a Higher Bar in the Higher Bar Is to Be Intentional and Again It Doesn't Mean Being Perfect. There Are No Perfect Whatsoever so We Need to Just Help Grandparents to Get a Vision for God Still Has This Really Important Plan for Your Life. You the Last Years the Last Decades of Your Life Can Be Filled with the Greatest Purpose That You've Ever Had in Your Life but It's Got to Be Focused on Family and on Future Generations in Your Family. Passing on Faith to Them and so It Starts with Just Getting That Vision. Then Comes Equipping Afterwards but You Know Something I Think We Had a Throw in Here to to Keep Reality and Check in Center Stage on This Thing Is It One of the Greatest Joys You Can Have Is Becoming a Grandparent, but Also You've Put Yourself in a Position Where Your Heart Can Be Crushed like Never before and during Trauma and Dynamics That Often Times Find Himself Centerstage When I Appreciate about What Legacy Coalitions Done As They're Addressing These Kind of Things in the Book We Wrote an Extreme Grandparent. We Spent a Whole Half of the Book Talk about Things I Can with Your Kids Go through a Divorce with Your Grandkids Have To Come up with You.

What If Your Children Don't Want You Talking about Jesus to Their Care Has What about Long Distance Grandparenting. What about Spoiling with. There's a Right Way to Do This. There's a Toxic Way to Do This Honey. Bama Set up How You Handle the Whole Money Thing. The Downside of Love Is That You Make a Commitment to Love Somebody Get Crushed but Legacy Coalitions Done a Great Job in a Bring in People to Address Leasing to Equip Us to Say Okay What If Your Kids Want to Divorce Just Who's Playing the Biggest Price and That One Is Is Grandkids Would Make Such a Big Difference Is If Your Grandparents Are Involved in Their Grandchildren's Life and Are Not down There Staying Hopeful and Will and in and They Say Look at Your Immediate World. Looks like It's Coming Apart, but Your Greater World Still Much and Very Much Intact for Part of That You Will Get beyond This Thing That There's so Many Things like That That You Can't Do by Accident. Timmy Mentioned Legacy Coalition. I Don't Think We've Even Tell Our Listeners What Is That Help Us Understand What That Is. Well We Started This Ministry Six Years Ago and We Wanted to Have a National Focus on the Role of Christian Grantor to Encourage Them As We Already Said to Be Intentional and so We Started This Ministry and God Has Just Been Growing It and Exploding It.

We Started in Sixth 2016 and the Very First Year We Wanted to Get Create Some Resources for Grandparents. So We Created for and with Forget This with Four Resources. We Were the Largest Source Grandparenting Resources on the Internet and We Been Working at Creating Resources. We Do a Conference on Christian Grandparenting That Timms Could Be at in October and We Have Podcasts and Webinars and Is a Growing Staff and Were Just Real Thankful for God's Blessing on This Trip. I Sure Am Glad Because You Know When You Think That If You're the Biggest Voice and You Have Four Resources It Just Shows How Any New House. You Just Need to Their Filling That Gap and I Do Think Parents Today Are Carrying Some Very Sophisticated Issues and Struggles and Can Share about Your Ministry to You and Darcy Started Because These Two Ministries with Family Life to. We All Have Same Goal. If We Want Families.

We Went to Equip Family Want to Point Them to Jesus. We Are in It Together.

Now We the Primary Focus of Our Ministry, Which Is Called Grace Base Families and We Want to See Families Equipped with God's Grace in Such a Way That Makes Them Instruments of Restoration and Reformation in Their Lives and the People around Him. That's What We Been Spending Our Time by Showing You How to Become Families, Parents, Grandparents, Husband, Wife, That Are Guided by God's Truth. All the Well Tempered by His Grace When You Take That with Family Life and the Link into Remembers and and and Legacy Coalition Were All Trying to Do the Same Thing Is Help People Turn Jesus Heart in the Way They Deal with Each Other.

One Thing That Happens Is That You Want Our Kids Get Married They Bring Somebody Else and That the Situation It Could Be a Great Asset or Unbelievable Liability. Well, If You Don't Have Grace Walking into That Situation, It Can Turn on Your Fashion You Want to Waste It If We Don't Handle Our Roles. Grandparent Right. That's Why Wheezing Punishes Using Block You Know I Will Have Links to All These Men and the Legacy Conference As Well Sent like to Be Continued and As Larry and I Were Talking before We Started Our Interview He Was Just Staring Nonchalantly, Something He Does with This Number Seven Is Perfect.

He Prays Larry Share What You Do with Each of You to Attain Prey to Those Grandkids.

You're Listening to David and Wilson with Larry Fowler and Tim Kimmell on Family Life to Will Hear How Larry Prays for His Grandkids and What We Can Learn from His Example in Just a Minute. The First, Be Sure to Find out More about the Legacy Grandparenting Summit That's Coming up October 21 and 22nd in Jacksonville, Florida.

He Got a Family like Today.com to Learn More and If Jacksonville Is Too Far for You. You Can Find One of the More Than 100 Locations Will Be Live Streaming the Event Again, Go to Family like Today.com for All the Details.

And While You're There, You Can Also Get Larry Fowler's E-Book Called Overcoming Grandparent Barriers, Not Today's Conversation about Godly Grandparenting Is All about Legacy.

What Kind of Legacy Are You Leaving Family Life Where Passionate about Helping Families Leave a Godly Legacy through the Power of the Gospel.

So When You Partner Financially with Family Life There Helping Not Just Families Today Families Generations from Now If That's Exciting to You. I Would Ask You Partner Financially with Us and As Our Thanks When You Give Today Will Send You a Copy of Michael and Melissa Kruger's Book 5 Things to Pray for Your Spouse and Get Your Copy When You Give It Family Life to a.com or by Calling 800-358-6329 to 2000 F As in Family Al As in Life and in the Word Today. Right Now, Here's Larry Fowler and How He Prays for Each of His Grandkids. It's One Way That We Practice Intentionality Because We Have Seven Grandkids Each One of Them Has a Day of the Week and We Pray Specifically for One Grandchild on Each Day of the Week and so We Don't Have Monday We Have Natalia Dave, We Don't Have Tuesday We Have Tyler Day, but We Not Only Remember to Pray for Them That Day. They Know What Their Day Is and We Asked Him for Prayer Requests and Then We Try to Communicate to Them What Were Praying so That Is Not Just an Activity of Praying for Them, but It's Engaging Them As Much As Possible in the Process. We Have Some Good Friends That Have Because They Also Have Seven Grandkids Have Gotten Seven Coffee Mugs with the Pictures of Their Grandkids on the Coffee Mugs so They Have a Visual Reminder to Pray for Them As Well and Training Thing That We Do to Be Intentional. Now We Get Sick so No Word on Whether and When You Pray for the Parents on the Tomorrow Evening. Wilson Will Be Joined Again by Larry Fowler and Tim Kimmell to Talk about How to Have the Biggest Impact in Your Grandchildren's Lives, Leaving a Good Legacy That's Tomorrow On Behalf Of David and Wilson. I'm Shall Be Avid Will See You Back Next Time for Another Edition of Family Life, Family Life, to a Is a Production of Family Life Accrue Ministry Helping You Pursue the Relationships That Matter Most