Andy Stanley with Levi Lusko | Hey It's the Luskos

andy stanley thank you so much for coming on to hey it's celeste goes yeah it's great to see you it's been a while last time i saw you we're having mexican food and uh alpharetta you think's last time so good chips and guacamole too bad we don't have any uh to share today yeah apparently you i need some warm food today i do yeah it is we were just talking about before we start recording it's nine degrees in montana and it's probably what 70 in atlanta yeah we just hadn't we just had an outdoor service yesterday and we had one this morning for our staff so a little bit different that was so creative how you did it with all those circles on the grass you were the first person i saw really do that you had the outdoor stage and so were you doing once a month or so yeah we're trying to do stuff once a month at all of our campuses outdoors and we're we're you know we're moving kids in slowly we're making the transition but we've uh you know and you know this whole pandemic thing it's not a one size fits all and i've been i've been trying to be careful not to make it sound that way but for our communities being in atlanta um we needed to we needed to stay out of the building a little bit longer than some folks so oh of course your case you know that wasn't an option so no yeah come winter it's like the outdoor service does not look good that's people just be like jack frost out there with hypothermia so not exactly great yeah you've led you've led so well through this pandemic and i know i've texted you how grateful um i have been for your leadership and example obviously not in a way to try and imitate but just to learn how to think like you think i mean in how you articulated things i had our entire staff listen to uh your teaching you did explaining you know your implementation of the not in it to win it messages yeah just phenomenal and just the mentality of uh of i just i appreciate the way you think and the way you've led you've given many pastors from across the country and world strong leadership through this whole time thanks levi yeah well i thought we'd start uh this conversation just with some fun light-hearted things i love just learning from examples of people and maybe obviously uh for those who have read your book but maybe haven't seen more behind the scenes in your life a little bit i thought i'd just start with some questions about like morning routine what is andy stanley's ideal morning when you've had one of those victory days what does it look like well to put it in context we're empty nesters so it is way different now than it was when we had uh kids living at home we have three kids they're all our twenties two are married one's got a serious girlfriend so we're in a very different one's a stand-up comedian so yeah yes my one single child is a stand-up comedian he actually did stand up for us yesterday yesterday was our 25th anniversary as an organization or as a church oh congratulations some fun stuff yeah yeah so we're celebrating our 25th birthday or anniversary but yeah my my morning routine is i am an early riser and i like to go to bed early and again during those early days with kids that you know you don't get to choose you just play by their rules a little bit um but uh i get up early sandra and i exercise consistently we have for years okay let's define our terms though when you say early i want a number okay yeah yeah 5 30 you know that not 4 30. 5 30 6. um and what time is bed what time is in bed to be up at 5 30. you're getting kind of personal uh we're you know 10 o'clock that's kind of late you know these days um again when you're putting kids to bed early earlier and you've got you know your only time together is after their the kids are to bed it was a little bit different but you know we've got a lot of flexibility now so we go to bed pretty early which of course makes it easier to get up early we're both morning quiet time people so we both get up you go to our little different parts of the house and do our quiet times and we exercise two or three four days a week and off to work we go okay so no reading in the morning that kind of thing it's more um no you know what my and you everybody has their own routine i love audible i've gotten to where i listen to a book first then i buy it either on kindle or it's oftentimes on google books because the way i study um so i'm constantly listening to books and then i you know if i really really like a book i'll eventually buy it usually just because i want to go back to it and then at night the other habit we have we both love historical fiction so we read you know i read for learning during the day or listen during the day and then i just read for fun at night so we're both constantly reading historical fiction okay so i i did not know we shared a love of historical fiction so we'll have to get to that in a second but um audible how do you uh what speed do you generally listen to when you're on audible these are the nerdy these are the nerdy questions that i that this is to me fascinating this is this is way more fun to talk about it depends on the author right i mean some authors that just are whoever the reader is they're just read too slow so you know i'm a one and a half you know and then you know certain books you know just the normal speed because they're just kind of heavy and i'm trying to take it in if you need if it's dense you know and you need it yeah light yearbook i listen i have to slow yours down they require so much thought so you're like on a half speed oh stop it there's no way yeah it's like it's just and sanders says is levi slurring his words i'm like no i just have it really really slow that's really funny yeah but like if i'm listening to like uh david ambrose uh or stephen ambrose or some something that's more dense history you you've got to kind of slow it down just to get but then you're like overwhelmed because it's like it's gonna be 15 hours i'm in this thing right and that's the problem with audio audio books right you look and see how many hours are left yes always and what what about uh inventory because you know you're listening to stuff you want to pull something out for use in a sermon or a book that is a challenge with audible what do you do for that well you used to be able to take a clip and send it to yourself and now i last i don't know six months eight months nine months i've books i've purchased they don't let you do that anymore so if diane my assistant was in here every single day she was getting emails with clips from books and i would say um transcribe this transcript so then i'm getting email back from her with the book that's why i quit doing that and i finally thought okay if i'm going to do that you know if you buy a book on google books or most in most kindle books you're able to do word searches and cut and paste so if i think i'm going to go back to a book and pull out a section or look for a quote i'll just go ahead and buy it a second time which is not financially efficient but i just don't have time i'm like you you're busy as a pastor i don't have time to read everything i want to read but the audio you can do that while you drive and and you know pretty quickly if this is a book you really want to finish or a book you're going to want to go back to i get torn because i love a physical book like i'm holding here in my hands the next generation leader my first original version this is the original version 2003. andy i was which by the way that photograph look at that man come on look at that it's worth trying to find that in an archive somewhere to those of you on the audio podcast you can't see this but it's just an absolute amazing photo but 2003 i'm a youth pastor i i someone puts this into my hands i had never heard of you i devoured it i read it i made it my goal to read this every single year uh for a number of years and i actually you know this is very rare for me actually in at the end of every chapter there was questions and you would have to um you would you would present these and i actually in this copy uh have my my handwritten answers to all my questions here and i would go through it i did the 360 review this shaped me as a young communicator as a young leader and i still recommend it to people regularly although now i have the updated yellow version that i give out to it's been through it's still a hardback i'm surprised the next generation leader is really kind of the only leadership book i've written and it's interesting because publishers you know they're like you need a leadership book you need another one i'm like i that's kind of what you know it's leadership isn't complicated it's hard but it's not complicated so i do want to write another leadership book one day but when i go back to that book the next generation leader i still believe all that stuff i still that's still core to how i lead so i'm just honored that you picked it up early so oh so good um but what i was trying to say was you know when i read a hard book then the dilemma is how do i uh make an inventory of the things i like out of it so i end up in evernote scanning because with your phone you can scan it and then you can ocr and look for the words and with kindle it's tougher because you can underline it but then if you make a notebook later every time you copy and paste it you end up with the biblio the citation information at the bottom of your uh there's none of these books google books is kind of the same way but i've just developed my library in google books and i just know what's in there and but again you end up buying the book twice so not everybody wants to do that and i get that i went hard on kindle so i'm stick i'm kind of dedicated there but it is an interesting thing and then you ever hit i don't know if google has the limit but there's a limitation of the percentage of a book you can underline and copy yeah well the the percentage that you can copy and yeah i i will tell the story it's embarrassing but yeah i i bump into that sometimes so is if anyone from the publishing industry is out there you're making it hard for your most rabid consumers of your products to do what they need to do with your books so well i and i can understand why they would want to put some limit on it but with the way software is catching plagiarism is has never been easier so i don't i don't know exactly what the concern is but yeah exactly are we watching jim and you mentioned exercise what is uh andy stanley's go-to uh workout how do you stay in shape well i used to run a lot i had a back surgery minor back surgery then i had another back surgery on the same disc minor back surgery my doctor said if i see you again it's going to be major you don't want to be you don't want me to see you again so i gave up running that was years ago and then um sanders started working with a trainer in her basement this woman's basement who's not doesn't live too far from us and she kept coming back talking about these great workouts and like yeah yeah whatever so i went with her and um couldn't move for a couple days and i'm like okay we can do this and it's lightweight it's trx it's um you know kettlebells it's all the kind of normal stuff but it's consistent and we both love doing it together so we kind of mimicked her gym in our basement we have a rogue rack and a rogue box and you know all the stuff but it's again it's not it's not machines it's not cables it's you know push-ups sit-ups all kind of pull-ups and so and again it's like anything else the consistency is what makes the difference and it's something we actually enjoy doing together and my wife do this too yeah that's fun um how about go to date night speaking of you and your wife what do you guys i mean obviously it's different in 2020 as everything's involved in mass yeah we saw we were at the airport yesterday we saw this couple they had gotten married yes the day before two days ago the 24th when we were recording this and they both had masks that said their names and said the date of their of their wedding it was just so i was like that's it here here we are here's the bride and groom now with their custom masks on their honeymoon yeah well my daughter got married in march and her big wedding i see if i can stay in the screen you know her big wedding as as the state of georgia started getting shut down a little bit by a little bit the wedding got smaller and smaller and the fourth iteration um and you can appreciate this as a dad but she called me she called me on a sunday afternoon she said dad because her date we knew that the state of georgia would be completely shut down before we got to her wedding date but she wanted to get married um as andrew my comedian son says he says you know during covet a lot of couples decided to wait to get married but all the christian couples were like we're tired of waiting we're getting married yes exactly so anyway they decided to go ahead and get married so it went from about 400 people to about 20 people at our house um which you know it was beautiful and they're happy and it was a lot cheaper i was gonna say that most of our got most of our deposits back so um so yeah that you know it's i forgot what your question was but oh date night but date night yeah date night in the pandemic yeah so um we always encourage couples to have a date night but honestly in our marriage even when we had kids in the home or now that we have kids not at home we've never had a consistent date night we've had a consistent routine but not a hey every thursday night we get a babysitter and we go out and i think that's actually a great idea um it just wasn't something that we were all that inclined to do so our our version of that was we would when the kids were old enough to stay by themselves i would come home she would get in the car and we would just drop off and we would just drive around and get coffee and then you know eventually come back but we would do a three-night trip every year no matter how even when they were super young we just got out of town so you know every couple has to figure that out but you need a rhythm and you need a break or you know things begin to break down so yeah for sure those getaways are game changing especially little kids they always cry every time but it's worth it every single time yep and it and it's complicated to leave little kids for two or three nights with somebody even if it's family member all the stuff and all the routine and don't forget this and anyway but it is worth it yeah and inevitably something goes wrong a couple months ago my wife and i we got into big into electric bikes i don't know if you've and sandra have tried that at all riding electric bikes oh my gosh we got a couple of them because you get all the the the joy of a bike ride without being sweaty and then you go to dinner and you you arrive not sweaty and it's really fun so we go out on those we finally got out babysitter got you know there were the kids and we were three miles from the house my phone rang and it was like oh lennox eight cashews which he's allergic to so he's breaking out high so it's like immediately turn around so just it's always something but worth the work for sure yeah be careful yeah no doubt how about a favorite app on your phone and you can't say the bible [Laughter] with apologies to craig groschel uh yeah yeah uh favorite app other than i mean you know i you know i check in with news on twitter everything you're not a big candy crush guy no no and you know what the whole social media thing i it's so important you can't live without it i put a a timer a time limit on my phone you know that it's built into the os system um and when i hit it i'm consistent i don't go past it unless it's something extreme you know so i'm i have i have to watch that like everybody else because you know we're all addicted to phone but the thing is i'm like you i'm addicted to information it's not it's not just pictures and you know curiosity i love the news and i i love articles and there's so many you know it's so easy to find things i would never run across other than on twitter specifically so i'm that's probably my still kind of my go-to thing so twitter okay gotcha um how about uh you mentioned historical fiction i kind of got you you spoke to a real love of my heart who are some of your favorite authors uh some recent books you've read that you loved if you saw it it's in i say it's embarrassing it's not embarrassing because you understand this because in historical fiction for those of you who don't know it's not a book is it it's a series of books oftentimes with good historical fiction so i fell in love with historical fiction reading historical fiction around um one to 400 bc through 200 a.d i mean i read everything and everybody i can give you names if you want and then i kind of fell in love with 100 year war historical fiction between england and france and just all the history that's a big part of that and i have and then a little bit of medieval history um but honestly it is a great way to understand the culture of a period in fact it may be the best way because a great historical fiction writer they get that stuff right and then at the end as you know they give you their notes and to say this didn't really happen this was true these you know so i feel like living using historical fiction and staying in a period over a prolonged period of time especially um roman history there is so much to learn about culture without having to read a book about the culture of a particular period so um let me pull up my kindle app i mean i be as specific as you want so i mean who what is there a period that you like to read or are you just like oliver well i've i've loved all of the um bill o'reilly i'm reading killing crazy horse right now which is a little bit less of the fiction side because it's he's he's more trying to create history around it but you're definitely still feeling it i've loved recently um all of um eric larson's books he's got the uh i don't know if you read that the you know uh death in the white city um uh that serial killer during the chicago world fair and then uh the the um in the in the village of the beasts which was the last american ambassador to berlin uh before everyone discovered that hitler was nefarious so just we still had an embassy there but he was like everything was kind of like oh it's getting a little creepy here but also i'm a huge david mccullough fan yeah i love all of his books and that's that's nothing i think i've read every i think i've read all of his books i've also read i think olive co and i don't know how to say his last name very well connor gould golden you familiar with him it's mostly more ancient history he's he might he's probably my favorite historical fiction writer um i mean my it's it's just embarrassing hundreds i have hundreds hundreds hundreds of books yeah it's amazing and is it more like a you see on the amazon page people who like this got this and that's how you find out about new orleans and i'm kind of picky now you know i'll start one go oh this this is terribly written there i'm trying to find it there is a two-volume um historical fiction history around the destruction of jerusalem which titus and all that yeah and it's the first volume is i don't want to knock the author it's not very well written but it's historically pretty accurate but again it's a it's an opportunity to dive into a piece of history especially for christians that 70 a.d may be the most important date in our faith and so here is a historic you know he drew a lot from josephus and then you know dove in deep um the the one of the best it's hard to find it's called my glorious brothers have you heard of this no my glorious brothers it was written in 1947 it's historical fiction about the maccabees the maccabean the brothers judah maccabee simon um there's four of them and it's that period of history a lot of christians we don't know about between the old and new testament um when greeks ruled jerusalem and what we would call the holy land and this group of this family created a rebellion against the the greeks and it's that period of time when this the temple was desecrated and the the uh leaders sacrificed pigs on the altar in jerusalem but it's called my glorious brothers it's a unique style of writing but a guy in our church told me about it and sandra read it as well and it's just fabulous and again it's a look into a piece of history that connects old the new testament but it's written as a story um and then there's actually other historical fiction around the maccabees as well so that kind of stuff to me as a christian draws me in because it you know it's connected to what we believe but it's fun to read because you know when you find a good historical fiction writer i mean you you can't put it down so that'll bring the book of daniel to life like you said oh yeah this course all that stuff yeah just jewish history and jewish culture between you know between the testaments so what was your favorite uh david mccullough book so far uh um it's a 1776 oh that one's a great one 1776. yeah yeah that's yeah just leave just that little tiny slice of history with all that detail yes yeah i i the the the great bridge the brooklyn bridge one for me was just unbelievable yeah i need that i need to get past yeah um i say get past i just tend to go old rather than you know see me you know that feel curve it's funny that's i guess all things are relative brooklyn bridges is not new but you're right in the grand scheme of 70 a.d right it's not the second century it's not the 100-year war it's not napoleon you know that's not that's so it's not the source you know where it starts at like evolution and goes into the tells and yeah incredible all right well um moving on from there uh how about when you're um when you're writing your sermons and you're writing your your books do you put music on or do you like silence do i do what silence or music when you're studying when you're working when you're that these are such great questions because we live in the same world it starts off silent and then as the day gets a little bit going i need some distraction and i turn on the music so and is it is it a specific genre are you in worship classical something that's annoying i can't i can't use it can't be music with lyrics because that's that distracts me um i mean it's anything from jazz to oftentimes it's just uh acoustic guitar music or acoustic piano music just i just need something that keeps me seated in my zone so i don't you know walk and get up walk around too much do you study at home or at the office first i do both mostly it's a church now we did a new building area so for years i had an office at home and would study there then i now what used to be my home office is my home gym so similarly and ironically we finished that up just before kovitz so it was perfect timing because obviously the gyms were all closed yeah um but yeah now i'm at church in similarly a lot of cl silence at first and then classical jazz i've gotten into blues and even some bluegrass just something different like i'll put on new orleans jazz sometimes some brass some even some of the 40s stuff it's it's kind of just anything to mix it up my wife's always like what are we going to be hearing today but yeah just something to mix it up a little bit yeah how about um uh as you think back of over your you know prolific catalog of sermons are there a few sermon series or messages that to you or like some of your personal favorites um my personal favorite not because it was done so well but in terms of the topic is a series i did about two years ago um about the bible um the bible is called the bible for grown-ups is the title of the series the bible for grown-ups i am so and you know this we've talked about this i'm so burdened by how easy it is for this generation to walk away from faith because of something in the bible or something about the bible and i understand i totally get it because i was raised with that same view of christianity not the same view of the bible the same view of christianity as most christians you know here's the bible it's all true it's very presuppositional before you even look at it decide it's perfect and it's god's word read it which is great if you're raised with it but in a generation where people have access and this is this is such old news um once upon a time you had to actually pick up a bible to know what was in it now you never you don't have to pick it up to know everything that's in it all those parts people like you and i never preach about right so uh i did the bible for grown-ups it's a four-part series for our congregation to say you can't appreciate the stories in the bible if you don't know the story of the bible and if you don't know the story of the bible you don't have the proper context for the stories in the bible so i just think in this generation in particular because they're they're well they have access to all the information and misinformation in a moment we didn't you know it's not the way i grew up so we have to change the way we talk about the bible not to change the bible or to even change a person's view of the bible so that series to me is so foundational because i think it just it goes to the heart of what is my biggest burden for our culture right now because it's ju we've made our v or the way we've talked about the bible has made it too easy for people to dismiss the bible and then walk away from christianity because they think they're one and the same and they're not because as i say every chance i get there were tens of thousands of christians for 380 years before anyone said the bible i mean even longer than that because until the printing press nobody even had a copy a personal copy of scripture so how in the world did christianity thrive in fact those in that first 300 years you know this the christians got more done in those first 300 years than the 300 years following you know the assembly of the bible so what did they know that we don't know and it's you know i just feel like it's more important than ever so sorry to go off on those are some seminal ideas and i actually came across on youtube it's out there um you at dts articulating some of that you know when you they let me talk about it at dts which is where you graduated from but you were in unpacking it and i think that's one of my favorite things about you is your concern for the next generation you're concerned for the our kids and our kids kids who are going to be yeah you know it's my kids your kids yeah yeah the really really good stuff all right we'll shift gears in a moment but last question um you know if you'd asked me a week before easter i i'd thought we're we're not far from this thing being over we're gonna be back and it'll we'll hardly remember 2020 we'll hardly remember the pandemic but now as as long as this is dragged on do you think in our lifetime we will see church looking and feeling uh like it did prior to the pandemic or are we marked for our lifetime um levi i don't know i have an opinion like you do but i so what i'm about to say is just my opinion um i think that the good churches and i hate saying good churches i think churches who are genuinely concerned about their communities and people far from god and who are aggressively appropriately evangelistic hopefully evangelical but evangelistic we are going to be better because of this and i'm not discounting the pain we've had we've lost lives and in churches as large as ours we've had every kind of experience imaginable with our staff um so while there's been so much pain um we've learned some things that we're going to carry forward some things we're going to leave behind so you know the goal in every crisis is to be better for it personally and to be better for organizationally our organization is definitely going to be better for it and one of the big takeaways that i think should make the church stronger is as you know there are churches who have been very anti um streaming their services and very anti online and they were forced to do it they figured out how to do it they realize it doesn't hurt it helps it keeps people in the cycle of what they're talking about as a church and they're going to carry forward with their online services so that's certainly a win i'm popping open a laptop in a small group because everybody knows how to work zoom and other you know software that's going to be a win for our small groups for kids middle school high school and our adult group so i think the church the church should be better for this and last thing our communities if we got this right our communities should be better off because of the pandemic because of what the church did in the community during the pandemic so last week north point community church we just delivered a a box truck full of books to full we just delivered over 16 000 books to fulton county schools because they needed books for parents who were homeschooling can't buy books um they needed books we're like we'll bring you some books overseas they were tweeting and instagramming about north point community church all day long when we backed up this truck full of books so when the need is greater than ever the church should step up greater than ever and the churches that have they have they have broadened their ministry and they've increased their good reputation in the community so hopefully there's going to be some great things that come from this that's really churches the churches that kind of freaked out don't have anybody in mind and became very internal and we got to get in faster than ever and they put all their resources and energy into just getting back into the auditorium i'm like hey nobody's built more auditoriums and maroons and churches i know than me and you know a few others around the country i'm all for gathering people but this was the opportunity of a lifetime to do something in the community when everybody think about it when everybody in the community is thinking about the same thing all over the world so i i think some great things will come from this i hope i certainly hope so but honestly um my father-in-law and mother-in-law's best friends best friends the the wife they're taking her off of ventilator today today and she will pass away from covid related symptoms you know she was in her late 70s but she wasn't sick but she was just one of those unfortunate people that it just took her down hard so you know we we have all of that too but in terms of to the point of your question the church should be better for it and the communities around us should be better for it because we were so engaged through it yeah wow well great um what was the most difficult pivot or i mean not not small groups zoom's easy you know family life assimilation membership like what what was the most challenging scrat head scratcher for you in the pivoting well personally you know preaching to an empty room which i've done before but i haven't done it before forever however however many months this has been so just you know preacher to preacher for a minute i don't know if anybody else in your audience cares about this but you know for two or three weeks you know i preach the way i always preach but to an empty room it was terrible it's just the worst thing then i realized okay andy come on you can't do what you've been doing in an environment that's different than it used to be so i began manuscripting all my sermons and reading them so since the sunday after easter i have read all of my sermons straight to the camera wow yeah so it's not even a prompter it's just a big screen under the the cameras and i practiced and i've watched it like i always do and i i feel like i've gotten better and better pretty quick um and i'm still super passionate about the content but it helps me stay locked in because 100 of the people are on the other end of that piece of glass there's no there's nobody else in the room so there's no point pretending they're there but it was just hard for me to stay locked in to the audience you know trying to think and preach at the same time so i just we just i just went a whole different direction and hopefully you know so that i watched a lot jen and i've been watching obviously we're watching your parenting series right now and taking all the notes we can should text me dang it levi we need to listen to this one we're all we need to rethink everything annie's newest message but the um she preaches off prompter i've i've kind of gone the opposite direction i've been doing trying to memorize more and just have a cheat sheet but just yeah it is that's how i use things yeah it helped helped for me to get off the stage not being on our stage we set up a different environment room that helped me just to develop a new gear not being in the old environment i've seen a lot of guys doing that men and women doing that and again that's one of those things that when we kind of go back to whatever normal looks like if you've developed a skill in a different environment because you were forced to of course you're going to figure out ways to hey this sunday we're not doing it you're going to find me back in the living room or whatever that environment was yeah why not take advantage of that that's super cool all right well last week you released uh your as far as we could tell 23rd book hello that's no big deal just just go ahead and write 23 books real quick um better decisions fewer regrets five questions to help you determine your next move so congratulations on 25 years 23 books uh 32 years of marriage is that right yeah 32. wow okay so tell me uh yeah about this book uh you talk about in it how our lives are shaped i happen to have one right here viewer regrets yes i'm a tear i am a terrible uh i'm a terrible author in terms of promoting books i i just i'm weird about it but i am so excited about this book i decided you know what i'm just gonna put on my best marketing face and go for it because um parents need this book because their kids need these questions grandparents so yeah i'm super standard and i'm both super excited about that that is a great book and i will say you and sanders video uh promo uh well let's just talk about you and sanders videos period we need to end there anytime you two are on a camera it's just the best you're like right you know and her interrupting you it's it's it's gold it's comedic gold well thanks we've we've had some fun so who is the mastermind behind those videos um i'll come up with hey we need to talk about this and the thing is we're not serious people we're just not we laugh all the time unfortunately about just about everything there's just it's just kind of how we're wired so we don't take ourselves seriously um so we start these conversations and the script kind of develops itself and then i'll write down a few things but but you know behind the scenes we do about 50 takes okay so the ones you find it's like anything else the one you get is like okay we got it but yeah there's it takes i think you two need to bring the show to tick tock that's what i think i think you have your drafts folder there i think all the same content on tick tock it would it would it would slay well thank you something to file away for a rainy day for the next pandemic perhaps yeah all right so the thesis of this book is that our lives are shaped by our decisions and the decisions that we make which kind of catches you off guard at first because it's so obvious but then you kind of really peel down to it to tell me more about that what yeah so the the sort of the overarching idea is that the the questions we ask inform the decisions we make and the better questions you ask the better decisions you make and we all know this because we've all made a bad decision and looked back and said i should have asked more questions i should have gotten more information and we all have a subconscious seri a list of questions we ask anyone when we make a decision am i going to get caught is anybody going to find out these aren't good questions but they're questions is this healthy when's the last time i did that what if you know should i ask somebody so in better decisions fewer regrets i'm saying i want to add five questions to your decision making arsenal to your decision making grid and we all have a decision-making grid because the better questions you ask the better decisions that you make so this relationship between questions and decisions is so important and bringing just a little bit of intentionality to it makes a big big difference so you're saying in our decisions that are good or bad we already have especially with the bad ones all the questions we just ask them too late we just do them during the post-mortem or they're just not good questions i mean will anybody find out what what kind of question is that but you know we've all you know asked that so yeah so some better questions will lead to better decisions okay and you bring five so what are those five questions that we should be asking yeah so the um there's i have a word i've associated with each of these questions so the the um first question is i call it the integrity question and the integrity question is am i being honest with myself really you have to pause am i being honest with myself really we have a little sales person that lives inside of us that sells us on bad ideas all the time and the reason the little salesperson on the inside of us can sell us on bad ideas is we're not honest with ourself we start selling our ideas to other people and then we start believing these justifications that you know that we've come up with so am i being honest with myself really as you know we've talked about this the most difficult person in the world to lead is the person in the mirror and the reason the person in the mirror is so difficult to leave is the person in the mirror lies to us they we just make up stuff and believe it in fact one of the um interesting exercises i take readers through the book as i say imagine going into a retail outlet and the person in the store saying to you out loud the kinds of things you say to yourself in your head imagine somebody in a retail outlet saying hey if you get home and don't like it you can just donate it well you would walk out of the store or hey i see that you already have one of these but this one's newer well what you know again it's just irrational and when you when you you know put it out there in the real world the the arguments we use to sell ourselves on bad ideas are actually offensive and i say this i say you know when you find yourself selling yourself that's when you hit the brakes because you rarely have to sell yourself on a good idea it's always the bad ideas we spend so much energy selling ourselves on so that's the first question the second question is the legacy question the legacy question is what story do i want to tell what story do i want i want to tell and this is the one that i this one and one other is the one i really tried to equip my children with in life because every incident every season every decision-making environment is eventually going to be in the past and it's just going to be a story that we tell whether it's something good or bad something as big and as bad as a divorce a job change a job transition these are just stories that we tell think about it you and i have we have reduced high school to one sentence two sentences somebody says levi tell me about high school two sentences later you took four years then it's poop you know so the question is when you're telling when you're telling this part of your story about getting married going through a marriage difficulty going through a temptation what story do you want to tell an event and i call it the legacy question because it pulls us out of our immediate context and it's like oh yeah when this is nothing more than a story i tell what story do i want to tell and in this chapter of the book i say never do anything that makes you a liar for life in other words when you're telling this part of your story in the future you're going to be tempted to lie about this part of your story so don't do anything that makes you a liar for life that's why teaching our kids this this particular question is so important the third question third question i call it the conscience question the conscience question is is there a tension that deserves my attention is there a tension that deserves my attention here's what i mean by that oftentimes we're making a decision and everything in the left-hand column adds up on paper this is this is an industry standard this is how everybody does this this is what everybody's doing it's not going to hurt me it's you know but right before we pull the trigger or as we get closer to making the decision or signing the contract there's just something on the inside that makes this uneasy so in the book i say you got to pay attention to that tension don't brush by it and don't rush by it because in time if you wait oftentimes new information surfaces or something else surfaces and you'll be glad you waited so is there a tension that deserves my tension fourth question is one i've written about before what is the wise thing to do this is the maturity question in a lot of my past experience my current circumstances my future hopes and dreams what is the wise thing for me to do not necessarily everybody else what's the wise thing for me to do and the last question is the relationship question and um of the five questions this is the one that has does not necessarily have a return on investment the other four questions you ask those questions you're gonna make better decisions you're gonna your life's gonna be better this one might cost you because the relationship question is what does love require of me what does love require of me i know what she said i know what he said i know what they promised okay but as a christian as a jesus follower what does love require of me but that's actually the question that changed the world and that's the question that changes marriages and relationships if we have the courage to ask it so five questions they're they are terrifying because they are so clarifying we almost always know immediately what the wise thing to do is we almost always know immediately if we're lying to ourself but again that's why i say better decisions fewer regrets brilliant um and i love that this book is 99 pages it is not intimidating is not overwhelming but man andy does it punch out of its weight class i mean well thanks to no i'm serious i mean you think about you mean so many books uh that i've read 200 300 pages usually they come around around that you know 55 000 word mark and this guy literally i read it in two and a half hours just sitting there but i couldn't copied and paste to my evernote enough um you start out saying just basically showing how our lives are shaped by our decision-making and you say no one plans to complicate their life with a bad decision the problem is and what moved me to write this book is too many people don't plan not to yeah that's heartbreaking yeah we have a plan uh we have a plan for everything but we don't plan not to uh destroy our lives with bad decisions so was there a specific thing in your mind that kind of got you to sit down when they go okay this is the book i'm gonna write was there someone you were writing to in your mind or what was there what was the thinking here well i dedicated this this book to my kids um because again these were the kinds of things that we just came back to over and over in our conversations and again they're all in their 20s two are married um so we're on the backside of that you know hold my hand parenting we're in the coaching role you know we're not you know you're always parenting so we're we're coaching and um i just thought i would like i would just like to take these these sort of five ideas that i've talked about in different contexts bring them together and just give people a quick list and again i wrote this book so people could read it in a couple of hours and hopefully take the five questions and put them somewhere where again they become the decision-making filter now one of the pushbacks is well andy now that we know the five questions do we need the book well i'll let you decide that but one of the things i talk about is there is a big difference between knowing something and doing something and as a pastor we we see this all the time you know we'll say something to people they'll like be like you're right i know but there's no correlation between being right and knowing and actually doing anything so the hopefully as people read the book and are kind of drawn into the grit of some of these questions it'll take hold and again become a habit in terms of how they make decisions well i think everyone should get this book i think people should give this as gifts i want my kids to read it i know that um there's a lot more than just reading those five as you were going through them they hit hard but as you unpack them as you show what joseph looked like doing it and what jehoiakim looked like flubbing it with snatch rib and with jeremiah's advice and just how different it would have been if he sat down and i just imagine if someone literally sits down and asks himself the question before a purchase before a move before a new relationship i think about even just the tone at times as a leader you can set if you come in on a bad day and it's just like what story do i want to tell on the back end of this i i lead a small group in this morning i i was talking to the guys about it because someone brought up pornography and just what what things work when you're being tempted by porn and it's like even just thinking that right there what story do i want to be able to tell yeah to my kids and to my wife one day uh powerful powerful powerful um now when you bring up the idea and you you mentioned it real quickly the most difficult person you lead is yourself uh how do you see these questions uh aiding someone in taking responsibility of their own personal leadership well again all five of these questions are internal in fact in the book with every question i say this and i say even if you don't plan to act or to follow through on your answer to this question at least ask yourself the question even if you are not going to make the wisest decision at least answer the question okay if i was going to do the wise thing in light of my past in light of my current circumstances in light of my future hopes and dreams if i was gonna do the wise thing what would it be if i were to tell myself the truth what would i say to myself if i really if i really want to write a better story than the one i'm about to tell right that i'm gonna eventually have to tell or hope nobody asked me about what would i do what would i do if i was really trying to write the best story of my life in this particular season so if nothing else being honest with ourselves and even the relationship question what does love require me okay you don't have to go in there and apologize you don't have to go in there and own your slice of the relationship pie but at least answer yourself honestly what in this circumstance does love not what does he deserve or what does she deserve what does love require for me at least ask the question answer it honestly and then decide if you want to do anything with it but it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt to know but it may hurt a lot if you don't know so all of this really comes back to self-leadership because we determine the direction and quality of our lives by the decisions we make and for folks like you and i and for many of your listeners and people who are watching it's not just our lives right i mean when you know the story of levi lusko's life is going to influence everybody in your family this isn't just about you it's not just about me when you make an unwise decision when i make an unwise decision you know there's shrapnel there's trickle down into the you know the lives of the people who trust us and are looking to us for leadership so it's way bigger than us personally but it begins on the inside with that you know that brutal honesty that is so easy for us to avoid you write that great leaders last because they lead themselves first and i think that that one sentence uh is a perfect example of the economy of words with which you write this that it is a truly easy read and then it's 99 pages and yet that sentence right there you could let it sit there it speaks volumes and i think there are gems like that literally on every page i mean you are a walking tweet waiting to happen you know the way you write it's like oh my gosh great leaders last because they leave themselves first and just to think about the way it's going to change your organization your family people listening who you know maybe you coach a soccer team maybe you run a chick-fil-a maybe you you know you you lead a youth group but to think about you we think about leading our organizations and our teams we forget about how important it is just to lead ourselves yep that's where it starts now you talk about and i we i wish we could spend more time on all these questions of course people will be able to get the book but uh the tension question i think that one is really really important because it's indefinable the way you articulate it is is there tension that deserves my attention but it may not be uh attention you could put your finger on you talk about it being more you just may have a feeling and if you actually listen there's there's something there yeah and that's why that tension is so easy to ignore because it very rarely has any reason behind it and also in the book i talk about this this uh circumstance we've all had where i'm feeling good about a decision and then somebody comes along and they ask a question i haven't considered and then they just walk off and it kind of creates attention and in those moments i my temptation of course is to discount the you know the source of the question and say well they've never pastored a church they've never raised kids i met look at their kids they you know why should i take that comment seriously which is always a mistake it is always it's the genetic fallacy it's like hey the source you know somehow pollutes the information but oftentimes somebody just asks that question and they walk away and then now i've got this tension that i didn't have before and i try to you know squelch it and i try to ignore it but in the book i say that's almost always a mistake just let it sit there let it bother you until it doesn't bother you anymore or let it bother you until you discover why it's bothering you but that isn't you tell the story of of your mom calling when you're about to close on a real estate transaction right yep yep yeah i would yeah we were going to sell a piece of property and she's i mean my mom's like what and but we didn't sell it and i'm telling you it's where we live today if we had sold that i mean we were listing it we were like we bought it was way out from where we lived and sander didn't want to live out there and it was too far and i'm like that was a huge mistake let's sell the property and my mom of all people said you'll you'll she said you'll regret selling that for the rest of your life i'm like what do you know about real estate you don't even know exactly where it is you're not going to live there i mean and i was i was so irritated with her she was 100 right and that would have been a disaster to have sold that lot that we have lived on for 20 years so but it was enough to create some tension and you took the time to listen to it and that's what you're saying is if we just are not in such a hurry and that's really the the key thing about these questions is to ask them is by nature gonna slow down you're going to you're not going to blaze through it and i think we get the adrenaline rush of a purchase or we get the dopamine hit of you know whatever in the moment and we just want to blaze through it especially when it comes to dating which i don't think there's a better communicator on the subject of sex and dating and relationship than you you know um new rules for love sex and dating no no no no yeah well you're right in new rules for love sex and dating and you've had that series in many different forms and many different iterations and i it has been to me seminal your work on it has helped me um craft my own world view and communication anything that that i've done is definitely i mean literally in my book andy swipe right i at the very end say look i would never have been able to write any of these things had i not first excused the expression gotten pregnant with the ideas that i you know first it was exposed to through andy stanley so i appreciated that very much but there was there was some there is so much great stuff in that book i would never begin to take credit but i'm glad it at least sparked some ideas so and the title of course was brilliant oh come on yeah yeah but the ideas of you know try and become who who the person you're looking for is looking for and and you do also quote it here um which i think uh is is so important for someone who's just gone through a divorce or a bad breakup um and i'm gonna quote it here you you and this is under you know love and regret so you say my general counsel for years has been to tell people to pull up their calendars and mark the day one year from the day their divorce was legal not the day they split the day the divorce was legal most men roll their eyes women are often quick to assure me the last thing they want in their lives is another man in both instances i insist they pull up their phones mark the day and it's no dating for that year why is that so important well because well because we are human beings and we can't stand to be alone you know we can't wait to be apart from somebody next thing you know we just we just don't want to be alone we were made for community so it's it's perfectly natural to want to find another relationship but as you know the quicker to the point of these questions the quicker we make those decisions oftentimes those are just not really good decisions so though you know the wait and don't date for a year i get email direct messages mentions constantly constantly from people who say andy i just got to the end of my year i just got to the end of my year and then they talk about i'm so grateful i'm so glad or i will meet people who walk up and say andy you don't know us we've been married for three months i met her for about about a couple of months right after i finished my year off dating thank you for that advice we would have never met otherwise so it's and again i you know tongue-in-cheek people say well why one year and i say because i don't think i can get you to wait two you know so hilarious yeah because we all just need a little healing and patching up especially after big relationship um breakups or just a reset it's a hard reset for the soul and you renew our minds because again going back to something we talk i talk about the book you know people ask why why don't we learn from our own mistakes well we don't learn from our own mistakes because we're pretty sure it was somebody else's fault and as long as i'm not around that somebody else i probably won't repeat my mistake which is completely wrong so because so many people come out of relationships especially marriages pointing their fingers their assumption is well now that he or she's gone i'm you know i'm ready to go i'm gonna make a better decision this time nope you need time and you need to renew your mind so you know time is your friend and you always warn people that the moment they do that they're going to meet that person would they do exactly they're going to think they just met that person and you know what i have also met couples who that's what happened to and one of them said to the other you know what i'm not dating i took a year off you know call me or in june they'll set the date out there and sure enough they'll reconnect later and it works out but they're just in a better place so brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant um before we before we end this i'm going to be respectful of your time uh i need to know more about wally the alligator you in the chapter about uh viewing our life as a story to be told you just rushed past that like it was no big deal like oh yeah my pet alligator my mom would hang a towel on the door if he got out and i'm like wait a minute and then you just move on telling a story about your grandfather the preacher who you know just and then i'm like wait a minute i need what how long was this alligator okay this was my mom's dab um and he he was a he well he was married four times that's unusual now it was really unusual back then so he was a character he was so much fun he kept money in jars in his freezer he sewed diamonds into the hymns of his curtains we have no idea what he was up to or into but he was so much fun so i went to stay with him one summer as a kid and on the way home he said would you like to have an alligator and you know what does a boy say when their grandfather says to you would you like to have who would say no so we pulled over and this guy was selling alligators out of a barrel on the side of the road and he bought me an alligator and again this is many many years ago it wasn't illegal and uh so i got home we lived in miami tiger yeah this was before a lot of things and um so i came home with an alligator and kept it in the aquarium and again every once in a while it would get out and um i would like i said i would come home my mom had put a towel under the door so we at least knew wally was somewhere in my room so i said you go find that reptile so i don't have to exactly how big did this blizzard get well alligators will only get as big as what you keep them in whoa so i that's what i was told and he just he grew just a very little bit and i kept him in an aquarium and then later somebody i heard that later i didn't know that as a kid but oh yeah whatever their environment is will determine to some degree how large that'll preach right yeah yeah it will now that you mentioned it the spin-off i'm waiting for the spin off sir man how big is your alligator yeah yeah yeah there's your environment your leadership alligator this next podcast very good well um this book's phenomenal i can't uh thank you enough for for writing it i'm gonna incorporate these questions into my self-leadership um i hope everybody out there will listen to it um i'm i also want to start incorporating um please show me your will for my life into my prayer life you talk about uh having that be a part of your prayer every evening is that still something you're doing yeah oh well yeah every season and again at the end of the book i talk about my dad teaching me to pray that as a kid and teaching my kids and again you know it's just learning to live with our hands wide open god what do you have for me in this season what do you want me to do i know what i'm doing i know what i'm good at you know what what do you have for me i want i just want to live my life to the very end with that posture so that's that prayer just kind of keeps my hands open you write that seeking god's will for our life will lead us into deeper peace i mean that is just so powerful yeah i i told my staff today we had our 25th out on the lawn celebration and part of my little spiel to them i said there's no better place to be there is no better place to be than in the center of god's will and to wake up every day and say god um i know what i can do i know what i can't control so i'm going to do my part but you know my life is in your hands so that's where i want to live my life man well great example that you are to uh cis leaders and as a dad um i'm gonna not soon forget that the card you handed your daughter with the word or foster daughter with the word honor on it and there's so much for parents and leaders i won't spoil that because i want people to read it but it is this will this will challenge parents and leaders and and every sort of person so thank you for writing it well levi it's great to see you and it's great to chat with you and thanks for allowing me to leverage your um important platform to talk about something that's important to me i really appreciate it

Channel: Levi and Jennie Lusko

Views: 845

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 94n6yJ6mzUg

Length: 58min 41sec (3521 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021