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Welcome back to another episode of the y ‘all are crazy ranch podcast today. We’re gonna be talking about making Sundays great again, and we love Sundays Sundays with church and family time Are just some of the best days I think if you ask our kids and we have like what is your favorite day of the week almost always it’s Sundays We love Sundays at our house yeah, and we felt like this was gonna be like an important topic to talk about because I feel like we’ve Lost that as like an American tradition
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I feel like 50, 60 years ago it was kind of a tradition in America to get together as a family, cook a big meal or whatever, eat together, spend time together, and I feel like in today’s busy society we don’t do that anymore.
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Yeah it seems like Sundays are just kind of another day to get things done or to go out of town to go to tournaments or it’s just another day it seems like and it’s like we’ve lost the sanctity of Sundays and so us as a family are trying to really bring that back and encourage others to do the same.
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Yes I think it’s very very important for us our Sundays are
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For sure start off with Sunday school in church. We love Sunday school Sunday school is the is the is the bomb Yeah, we didn’t go to Sunday school for like a long time Well, we went to a church for a long time. They didn’t have a Sunday school, right? So that wasn’t even an option Then we moved back to Chandler and they had Sunday school is like, you know what? I think we should probably we should probably do that. Well, I had to push you you digs I didn’t want to go you didn’t you don’t like sitting around talking about Feelings, you know, that’s like my Sunday school experience had always been you sit in the circle and they you know Somebody picks something random to read out of the Bible And then you all either give your opinion and then talk about your feelings and how you feel about it And I just I hate that
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So now we’re in a Sunday school class that you don’t do that at all. You actually learn every week We’re doing a Christian apologetics Sunday school class Which I have a huge passion for and I think you’ve started having a passion for yes And we really talk about like creation why we believe what we believe Just why you have your faith and how to defend it So we’ve learned so much and Sunday school has been so great for our kids It just gives them extra learning gives all of us extra learning So start so we start Sunday with Sunday school and I think like Sunday school Topics are important and I think apologetics should be taught in Sunday school a whole lot more You know, we’re almost 40 years old and I’ve never even had an apologize class in the church setting before right and it’s like man We’ve been doing it now for what a year.
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I don’t know.
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Maybe yeah I started taking Christian apologetics through Liberty University a couple years ago and just really fell in love with it
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And then when the Sunday school class came up, it was kind of funny because at church, we were like, what Sunday school options are available? And they’re like, oh, we’ve got this group and this group and this is like an apologetics, y ‘all probably wouldn’t like it. And I was like, wait, what? We have an apologetics class here? Oh my goodness, I didn’t even know. And it was almost like it was pushed in the back corner. And now that we love it, we’ve been telling our friends and the class is growing and that’s what we need. So apologetics, if you don’t know, means to defend. So it’s teaching you how to defend your faith.
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Yes, not to apologize for your faith.
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And I just finished the mama bear apologetics 12 week instructor course. It actually wraps up today. So I am certified to now teach mama bear apologetics.
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You got the certification.
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I will have today.
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That’s good.
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That’s good. But yeah, an apologetic Sunday school class our instructors great. He’s always got good material You know, we might do a four -week series a six -week series on certain topics And I just tell you I tell you man.
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It’s opened our eyes to a lot and it’s amazing how how true the Bible is and If you just read it you know, you’ll learn a lot and It’s also sad how the world tries to You know teach things that are false like I go against scriptures and it’s like the scripture is the truth and then the scientists do everything in their power to try to You know find a different way other than what the scriptures say and it always comes back to the Bible being the truth And it’s very neat to learn about that kind of stuff
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Yes, so after Sunday school we go straight into church, of course, and that’s honestly a non -negotiable for us There’s only a few times a year. We miss church and That it’s a non -negotiable for our family.
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So we make church a huge priority Yeah, and it’s like What is I was thinking about this zig -ziggler saying when cuz zig -ziggler was like a big Motivational guy and some people would give him a hard time Because he might not give you steps to take for like detailed Tactics in Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business or in life or what have you know, they’re like motivation doesn’t last very long or whatever.
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You remember that? He said neither does bathing. That’s why we do it daily.
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That’s right I know it’s like oh good job zig and so I think church is a lot of the same way it’s it’s that routine and that consistency of once a week you’re going and you’re getting poured into and it’s a time where you don’t have distractions and you’re focused on on the word and learning and
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If you go several weeks without that, you’ll start drifting away very easily. And so you have to be intentional with that kind of stuff. So we love that on Sundays. And then we try to make sure that the afternoon after church, we eat as a family a good lunch. Most of the time that’s at home. Sometimes we go out on Sundays for lunch. And then now with the good weather and the spring and stuff, we’re starting to spend a lot of time together outside.
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Which is my absolute favorite. If we could live outside except to sleep, that’s what I would do.
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Yeah. I mean, a while back, earlier in the year, we would even during the winter, if it wasn’t like freezing, even sometimes when it was freezing, we’d do it, but we would walk from our cabin to the…
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The house pad as we call it where our house is getting built and walk there and back with all the kids Which is about three miles and that would take us three miles Because by the time we got there kind of hung out a little bit and walked back.
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It was like a two -hour thing But that was so fun and we looked forward to it and the kids could just run around and play and we all got Exercise and it was great.
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Yeah, and then now we’re starting to spend some time Like our animals are all having babies right now.
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So which is the best?
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It’s awesome So on the ranch we time our calving season lambing season kid season Kid as we don’t know go babies. Okay, not our kids the sheep have lambs.
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Maybe we should Maybe we should have a kidding season Just have all their birthdays at one time.
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That’s right Yeah, and our cows have calves in there and every we time it to where they’re all born about April 1st We start having babies
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and so this last weekend we had a family friends of ours come over and they brought their parents and it was it was just it was a lot of fun and so one of the things we did was we got all of our four -wheelers together and are side by side and we had four four -wheelers a side by side and then he drove his truck with his parents and we just kind of did a ranch tour we started at the cabin and then rode across the ranch and and I think their kids hadn’t hadn’t ridden four -wheelers before or hadn’t driven them and man they had a they had a blast we just kind of created a convoy a line and drove through the pastures and you know across little creeks and
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and then we made it to the animals and started off with the sheep and the goats. And I don’t know how many sheep and goats we have now.
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Oh gosh, the sheep are plentiful and they multiply very quickly. We saw one over the weekend when we were driving around that just had triplets. And you could tell that she just had triplets. So they multiply very quickly.
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Oh my gosh, yes. I mean, we might have, we’ve got over 200 sheep and goats right now with all the lambs and stuff. And we just drove the four -wheelers and stuff like through them. And because we do like a regenerative ranching model, we’re always out there with our animals, walking amongst them, moving a hot wire. They’re used to us. And so they don’t just get skittish and take off running. And so we’re able to like drive through them and they’re kind of just hanging out and where the kids are getting to watch them and see the little babies. And some of the babies were like probably born that morning, you know, and they’re trying to like hop around and.
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You could just see the joy on the kids faces and stuff that they don’t get to see every day, you know living in a We often tell our kids like we take it for granted sometimes and our kids take it for granted That we get to do this every day.
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We get to do the experiences every weekend We get to live on a ranch and so to our kids now It’s just normal to drive around and look at all these new babies being born and go fishing for an afternoon But when we have families over specifically who don’t live in the country It’s just like you said it’s an experience. Yeah, and something that they maybe have never done before so we have to remind our kids This is special and you guys are just used to it now, but it’s such a cool experience that we get to do regularly It’s such a great experience.
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And so we spent I don’t know, you know 30 minutes probably driving four wheelers from the cabin you know and
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then going through the animals and stuff like that and then we drive down to the ponds and you know our kids are opening gates you know at fence lines and letting everybody through closing the gates you know and and then we go down to the pond and you know set up a you know a canopy deal like a shade canopy deal line up some lawn chairs kind of get some lawn chairs in a circle and set up all the fishing poles for the kids let the kids some of the dads go catch fish and then you you and the and usually the women kind of sit down and talk and take care of everything care babies and stuff like the littles and then just spend several hours out there just in the sun and nature no phones no devices no agenda just a great time to just unplug enjoy God’s country and enjoy fellowship I think that’s another thing that we don’t do a lot anymore is just
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sit around with people we enjoy being around and just having conversation. That’s right, and that’s weird to say, isn’t it? So for our kids, last two, yeah, two birthdays, we had one in February and one in April, our boys were like, I just wanna invite my friends over and have a campfire.
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Okay, we’re good with that. So we let them invite friends over, and Bowen’s like, mom, I just wanna invite five friends. Well, Bowen is extremely social, kinda like mom. Well, it ended up being about 25 kids, but it was great because literally we had a campfire, the kids played football and kickball, they roasted hot dogs and s’mores, and I made a homemade dirt cake. That was it.
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But a lot of the parents came with the kids and we all sat around and talked and it was funny because the parents were Looking around and they’re like kids don’t get to do this Right like this is not normal and we’re just thinking like it is normal for us We that’s what we do. We our kids play in the backyard all the time Our kids we have fires that is normal. Why isn’t this normal?
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It’s true and those boys were just eating it up. I mean they none of them wanted to leave They were dragging branches throwing them on the fire making the fire bigger Getting in the dirt climbing trees Like you said playing tag playing kickball and it’s like you could tell the parents because I think a lot of birthday parties now for kids is always at some place like a
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when they’re little, like a Chuck E. Cheese or like an arcade deal or maybe a bounce house.
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And that’s fine, because we’ve done all that too.
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Yeah, those are all good. We’ve done all that. But it’s like to get them out in nature and just let them find and create their own fun and be a kid. I mean, that’s what we did a lot when we were growing up is creating our own fun outside and watch their minds work, their creative minds work. And I think the parents were like, they were loving it. They were like, this is awesome. And it’s very simple.
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Very simple. So when our kids asked for that, we’re like, love it. Yeah, let’s do that. This is great. And like we said, it’s just cool. It’s cool to see kids be kids, be outside and just use their minds, use their hands and just have fun. It’s just simple and it’s beautiful.
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Yeah, you know, in today’s world, it’s like so fast paced and.
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I mean we get it. We have we have several Oklahoma Grassfed Beef businesses. We’ve got lots of employees. We’ve got lots of kids and so our calendars are pretty full and stacked and You know you from the moment you wake up to the moment your head hits the pillow It’s go go go go go go, you know, and I think Sundays are a good time to just say hey Not today, right?
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And you’re gonna have to fight against that that’s that can be the challenging part because So much of the world just wants to be like Oklahoma Grassfed Beef Sunday’s another day, right? So you are gonna have to fight against if you want to keep Sunday’s sacred that you’re gonna have to say no to things Now I’m not saying say no to going to a friend’s house to hang out or Hosting people at your house. That’s important. You know, it makes me sad when we invite people over
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and they’re like, too busy, can’t come hang out. You know, they’re still doing all the stuff they do throughout the week. It’s like, no, you need to, why does no one host anymore, okay?
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This is a rant I’m gonna get on.
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We have always been a hosting family since we got married. We’ve always hosted people over and cooked meals and talked and we’ve always been the hosting house. Now, since we’ve been in our smaller homes, sadly, we haven’t been able to and it’s been sad because we love it so much. Now that we’re building our new house, we’re gonna get back into hosting regularly. We love having people over, but let me tell you, we don’t get invited over very often.
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Maybe people don’t like us.
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Well, maybe that’s it too. It could be it. But I don’t think people host. I don’t think it’s a thing. Now.
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Sometimes we’ll have a friend who has a party or something like that bigger gathering, but very rarely do people say hey Do y ‘all want to come over and have supper on Sunday? Yeah, I mean wow, but that’s a regular for us And we think it’s so important like as the Bible says break bread together.
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Yeah, that’s just that’s just important We need that and we need it for like for no reason other than that So not we’re not talking about just a birthday party or a anniversary party or whatever it might be I’m talking about just just because is what you’re talking about you know just spending time together and fellowship and talking and you know it was neat because You know me and Luke on one side of the pond fishing we had taken a few kids over there to fish and and I could look back over and then see all you guys kind of sitting down and talking and
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It was just neat to see you had like, I don’t know six of y ‘all sitting in lawn chairs, you know what I mean and Relaxed not a care in the world just talking laughing, you know, and it’s like I just hit me It was like you don’t see that anymore.
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We’re so fast -paced in our society that nobody does that and when they do have some downtime They it’s usually taken up by screen time Whether that’s looking at their phone or watching a show or you know doing a whole lot of nothing, you know And then your kids are somewhere playing video games or whatever and so you’re all still separated But you’re just chilling out, but you’re not spending any time together and it’s like man. I think our You know forefathers and stuff like that. They they had it they had it figured out, you know
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Sundays you go to church, you know, then afternoons you eat together, fellowship together, spend the day together.
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Go for a walk. Yeah. Be outside.
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Man, that stuff’s so good.
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Something else we’ve enjoyed doing lately with our kids is playing games like card games and they have been really loving it and it’s been fun. It’s been something fun to do together that makes you laugh and build memories and use your mind and so card games are fun.
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Yeah, we’ve been playing spades and we’re trying to teach Benaiah how to play spades and boy the look on his Oklahoma Grassfed Beef face and the excitement he gets when he gets to lay down like he got the ace of spades for the first time.
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I don’t know how he’d never gotten it but he hasn’t.
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And he just was smiling and he’s like ha ha ha.
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He doesn’t have a great poker face.
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You know, he gets so excited he gets to win the round and it’s stuff like that moments like that that are a lot of Oklahoma Grassfed Beef fun.
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That we miss as a society because we’re too busy and I would tell you this you talked about how you have to fight For it. You do have to fight for it if you want it. Okay, you might not want it But we’re talking today about how important it is and we think you should and more family should but you will have people try to steal your Sundays or Any other day of the week for that matter and make it to where you’re just so busy You can’t even do anything as a family that you want to do Don’t be scared to say no, you know, I had to fight again for one of our boys this last week And there’s nothing malicious, but it’s just that’s our conviction, but you know a coach that asks Hey, what if we move practice to Sundays, you know, would you guys be there? And I was like probably not Absolutely not and he’s like, okay, you know and I’m like, hey, that’s the Lord’s Day for us You know, we go to church and spend time together as a family. So
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We ain’t gonna be doing practices. You know, we don’t practice Monday, Tuesday. We don’t practice on Wednesdays either. We can practice Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But Sunday, Wednesday, we’re out, you know?
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And you have to fight against that because culture’s gonna try to pull you in. You know, but like I said too, you know, to that coach and my son was there. So this was kind of more to my son than the coach. But I was like, you know, if you keep the Lord first in your life, the rest of your life goes pretty great. You know, and I was like, ain’t that right, Barlow? You know, and it was just, I wanted to teach him in that moment, hey, you gotta fight for these things if they’re important for your family.
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I want them to see that, not just talk about it, but you gotta face the hard conversations when they come about too.
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That’s right. And we’re not perfect. And I just wanna let you guys know, so this weekend we have a local baseball tournament. Our teams, three of our boys teams signed up for this local tournament. And it was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday tournament. And we looked at our schedule this week and we’re like, oh man, there’s a really good chance we’re gonna be playing on Sunday. Do we like that? No. But our boys are committed and we don’t wanna let their team down. And this is our only tournament of the whole year. And so we’re like, you know, we’re probably gonna have to miss church on Sunday.
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but that’s not a normal, okay? We didn’t sign up for a tournament team that plays every Sunday so that we are, we know we’re gonna miss Sundays for months on end. That’s not the case. There are going to be things that are going to happen. I’ve had a couple of half -marathons this year that start on Sunday mornings. Okay, I might have to miss because I signed up for this, I committed to it, it’s important to me, but that’s not a normal, that’s an exception. So just making your life, committing your life to what matters. I also wanted to say we have started doing a small group with some of our friends from church. We do it once a month on Sunday evenings.
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and it’s a group of like six families and we come together, we eat together, we talk, the kids play, and that has been so much fun and I think why are we not doing that more often? We take turns hosting, we go to different places, and our kids are like, when are we doing small group again? That was so fun, but it’s just coming together, it’s just fellowshipping, it’s just enjoying each other, and like you said, no agenda.
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No agenda, and look, you know, we’ve got another boy that’s on another team and they still practice every Sunday and we, yeah, we don’t go, you know, now we’re not going to try to convince them to not have practices on that day.
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They that’s what they want to do and that’s their availability that hey, whatever, you know But for us, you know as it says it’s for me in my house We will not and that’s that’s fine and I don’t have any animosity towards them. I don’t know if they have any towards me I don’t think so, but I don’t know but it’s like hey, that’s just is what it is I’m not gonna try to convince you otherwise But we’re just standing up for what we want to do in our life and living it our way And that’s a very powerful lesson in a lot of areas of your life Is to be intentional we talked about being intentional on the Oklahoma Grassfed Beef podcast a lot and You know, sometimes you have to go against the grain and be okay with that Well, the Bible says that if you follow Jesus people are not going to understand you that’s just a guarantee Not everyone’s gonna like you if you try to follow the Lord The devil is always gonna fight against that So when I feel like gosh, I don’t think they like me or they’re upset with me But I know that we are doing the right
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I just remember like if they hated you Jesus said they hated me first and God doesn’t call us to be liked He calls us to be lights and the way we can be lights is by being different It’s by standing out one of my favorite quotes says Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out? And so for our family we’re just try really hard to be lights to be different not be afraid to be different And that’s what we try to teach our kids Well, I think about this the average parent has a kid under their guidance for 18 years, right as a general rule of thumb And you really got I don’t know Ten twelve years to mold them really well
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Then the game kind of changes when they become teenagers.
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We have a 13 year old and the games change.
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We are trust us We are molding it change.
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We’re molding more now.
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However, it is different It’s different if you have a teenager, you know, you speak a different language Yeah If you try to like live one way and then all of a sudden they become a teenager you try to just go A different way like a hard turn that’s gonna be tough.
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Well, we just told Briley like two days ago We were on a walk She was with us and we talked to her about the importance of you can walk the walk Sorry, you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk and she said mom that was good I don’t know if she’d never heard that quote before it’s pretty we you know, that’s pretty common, but she had never heard it She’s like that is gold. I’m like, yeah, so whatever you it’s easy to talk, but can you walk it? Yeah, are you walking out what you’re saying? Are you living what you’re preaching, right?
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And I think about now like, you know
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don’t remember how many practices I had as a kid on a Sunday or whatever the case may be like our t -ball age kids and little baseball players like do you think when they’re in their 30s and they got a family that they’re gonna be thinking back on man I didn’t get to go to practices on a Sunday or like no like you’re not even gonna remember that all those things aren’t even gonna matter at all but it what is gonna matter is you know their faith in Christ, their character, eternity in mind, eternity in mind all that stuff is lifelong well if you don’t teach them why you got them when you’re young I mean you know how in the world you gonna do it when they when they leave your house. Another thing we tell our kids is basically be so good they can’t ignore you and so okay we’re not going to Sunday practices but
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you can be so good at your sport that you can’t be ignored.
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Yeah, we hear that a lot, like, oh, if you don’t join this team and you don’t practice four days a week and tournament every weekend, your kid’s just not gonna be able to keep up. Your kid’s just not gonna be good. And I think that is a load of crap. I mean, our kids do just fine in their sports and don’t participate in any of that. And what we see is actually an opposite is those kids usually get burnt out by the time they’re a teenager and they don’t even wanna pursue the sport anymore anyway. They don’t even have fun with it anymore. And we’ve had other families say the same. We had a pastor one time tell us that his son wasn’t gonna, they weren’t gonna play tournament ball on Sundays and that coach was one of the top coaches, I guess, in the state and said, well, your kid will never play at a university or whatever. And that kid ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma.
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You know, playing D1 scholarship.
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And I remember the pastor basically saying in your face, you know, it’s like.
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You don’t gotta let them tell you things and push you, because again, what are you even doing that for? You know, is it worth the trade off of your family? Shoot, not for me.
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So we want to encourage you to make Sundays simple again, to bring back the sanctity of Sundays, to do things on Sunday that bring you closer to the Lord and bring you closer to your family. And you’re gonna have to say no to things, you’re going to have to make decisions that maybe aren’t fun or easy, but in the long run, it’s gonna pay off. And hey, I want to challenge you, host somebody to your house. Do something outside your comfort zone to bring people together. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it can be a campfire and hot dogs, but.
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Do it. You will enjoy it and it will be worth it. Yeah, let’s make Sundays great again for your faith and family and Fellowship if you do that post a picture and tag us in it because we would like to see it and that may be a New hashtag for us hashtag make Sundays great again.
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Yes, I promise you you will love it and you’d be like man I should have done this a long time ago Yeah, we’ll talk to you guys next week and we’ll have more for you.
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I hope you enjoyed this week