Dave Stuart, Jr. (High School Teacher)

Foreign.

Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as video game designers, security guards and program directors? That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Dave Stewart Jr. He's a high school teacher in Michigan and a super popular blogger whose content about about teaching is read by teachers all around the world. David, I sat down and had one of my favorite conversations we've had on this podcast in a while. We talked about how to calculate your compensation beyond what you're getting paid. We talked about how life giving it could be to simply stop being surprised that work is hard and difficult. And we talked about why you and I need more Himalaya boundaries in our calendar to protect our family, our rest, and most importantly, our time with the Lord. Do not miss this episode with my new friend, Dave Stewart Jr. Hey, Dave. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Jordan, good to see you. Thanks for having me.

I love that you're actually in the classroom. So on brand. There's fluorescent lights above your head. I see a giant map on the wall. What do you teach, by the way? I can't my. My team briefly. Everything about you. I don't know what you teach.

I teach world history exclusively for the past couple of years, but I've also taught English a number of years high school.

How long have you been teaching high school?

18 years. Yeah.

What's your favorite lesson to teach in world history?

Oh, dude, that is. We're starting right out of the gate. Come on. I just love any lesson where I can kind of like take a preconception and just sort of disrupt it.

Disrupt something for me right now. We got time. This is fun. Come on.

I mean, we're studying World War II right now. Classic, like, bad versus evil story. And it's just interesting to look at, you know, the types of things that happened all over the place during World War II and how the violence sort of steadily ramped up. And we like to, you know, students will say it's kind of like, you know, when you're with a sibling and you're arguing and like all of a sudden it kind of escalates. And you know, it's very similar dynamic in World War II. So it ends up being this horrible, you know, just instance of bloodshed, the worst in human history. I mean, kind of everyone leaves with blood on their hands. So it's not a super inspiring topic.

Super Fun topic.

But you know, what I like to tell students is that history does invite us to examine evil, to examine things that are hard and difficult, and of course, to examine good, which is really important stuff. And I think timeless stuff that engages students.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I love it. Hey, so in addition to teaching high school, you're also a pretty prolific blogger. Tell us a little bit about what you write and blog about.

I write about the work of teaching, the inner work of teaching, boiling teaching down into its fundamental pieces. I was the classic teacher in the start of my career that wanted to be like the people in the movies, wanted to be the guy, the one teacher in the movie that cares about the kids.

You're gonna be Mr. Holland.

Yeah, right, right. Mr. Holland. Aaron Gruel in the movie Freedom Riders. And it actually burnt me out, took me away from teaching and I quit for a year. My wife and I lived in New York City, thankfully went to Tim Keller's church, Redeemer Presbyterian. And it was enough to kind of like this faith work theme that you write and touch on in your work. It kind of is what drew me back. But I knew when I came back that I couldn't do it in that, like, workaholic, 90 hours a week way. And so one of the ways that I taught myself to simplify my practice and make it a more humane experience for me was, and I've found a much more humane experience for my students is to write about it. Writing just has this magical byproduct of clarity. It will produce clarity. It's not easily won, as you know, it's difficult. It's very humiliating at times because you're just faced with the lack of what you know and understand. But, you know, it's a reliable means to gain clarity and to simplify things. So I've been writing for teachers for, well, since 2012, so about 13 years. I've written a couple books and things like that. And that kind of gives me good balance in my work, Jordan, because I get to be with high schoolers, working with them on a day to day, but then I also get to be with colleagues and educators just all over the place periodically. And it just helps me to root myself in sort of the. You know, there's like a. There's a lot that we have in common in all these different places where we live and work that nourishes my soul, routinely going and speaking to other teachers.

That's good writing. Seen as an avocation for most people. I think it should be a core of Most people's vocation who want to get great at what they do. Right. Like, because it forces you to, as you said, get clarity and get clear on how you do the thing that God has called you to do.

Yeah. It's a phenomenal gift that God gave us the capability of using. And of course, it requires an education to use it. So it's one of the privileges that education provides us with, and especially in a world that's so unreal. I think a lot of times there's such this ephemeral nature to the world that we live in, and it's just all these little things flashing in front of our screens, like to get out a piece of paper and even keep a prayer journal. That's not something that I've done until the last six months, but gosh, it is a good feeling to just hold this physical object in my hands on a daily basis and just look and say, oh, yeah, you know, I am conversing with the Lord and we're working things out as we go. And, you know, I start to understand the psalmist's messy psalms a lot more when I write out my prayers, because they're very messy a lot of times.

Yeah, If David had chatgpt, we wouldn't have nearly the raw prayers that we have. Thank God he didn't.

Right, right. I agree. And I think that, you know, this is something that my work will continue to lean hard into. And even this year with my students, I'm having to really speak into and teach into and give them experiences with writing that prove to them that, like, the thing that writing gives you is not the final product. Primarily. Primarily what it gives you is the transformation that will reliably occur in the human mind through doing the writing.

That's good, man.

So, you know, imagine a ninth grader in small town Michigan who wants to be a welder. Then the teacher is saying for the 60th day in a row, like, okay, we're gonna begin class with 10 minutes of writing. Here are some prompts. You know, some days he's like, no, absolutely not. Give me your best shot, Mr. Stewart. Not going to happen. But then, you know, you do these other things that teachers can do to just cultivate the will to work and eventually the student realizes what you feel like. Given 10 minutes, you can produce 200 words, whereas before you were stuck at 10. So it's an incredible and very accessible tool, provided though, that we properly value it. A lot of my work is about helping people to students to value what we do in education. Because it's hard to do. It's hard for them to do for sure.

May I tell you what the little I read on your blog, I could tell how much you love teaching. I don't think I've heard anyone speak more beautifully about this craft. In our pre interview, actually, this video you submitted, you said that, quote, teaching is about making students citizens of different disciplines, helping them see layers of God's creation they couldn't see before. End quote. That's not bad, Dave Stewart. That's not bad at all. Tell us more. Riff on this for a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that.

By the end of Genesis 2, every discipline that we teach in school exists. Like math is there, all of it, including much that we have no idea about right now.

Branding is there.

Everything's there. Everything's there, right? So the human story is, yes, this relationship with God, this walking with God, but it's also this unpacking of this massive present that is as big as a quintillion, plus stars, billions of galaxies. So to bring that down to the classroom level, what you're doing is a history teacher, math teacher, English teacher, music teacher, modern business teachers, you're inviting them into these different cosmos, these different universes, these ways of experiencing reality that apart from learning math like, you just can't, you can't experience being alive in this certain way, this math way, in any other way except math. Like, and no one can, no one can, like, give it to you. You can listen to the best mathematician ever on YouTube talk and it'll be fun, it'll be entertaining. But like, what that person is speaking to is a reality that they've known, that they've seen. So what I'm describing though is like, it's kind of this base layer understanding of what school is for. And it's probably like, maybe the one thing I contribute more than anything in my life's work is gonna be to help people to understand that schools are basically these institutions that promote the long term flourishing of young people, promote the long term flourishing of young people, or in Christian language, the shalom of young people by doing this specific thing, guiding them towards mastery of the disciplines and arts that we teach. And when you use that language with any audience, okay, secular, religious, it's very, very, very something that we all, deep in our hearts, you know, we understand, we long for this for our young people. We want them to experience flourishing. And we kind of know instinctively that there is just a good feeling that comes from learning more science Being successful in science, there's a good feeling that comes from understanding the history of the world a bit more. And so these are the types of experiences that regular teachers all around the world provide every day. But so much of my work with teachers is helping them to basically have faith in that. Faith in, like, that is the thing that you're doing, the unseen thing that you're doing, as you just get really good at teaching your subject and helping young people learn your subject. Yeah, probably enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life right.

There and then some helping them. Right. Because it gets lost in the mundane. How do you keep that perspective? Right? Like, how do you. You've been at this for years and years. How do you maintain that perspective on your craft and this work God's called you to do without getting jaded, without being jaded by the politics, by the everything else that comes with the thorns of thistles pushing back against the work?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things that are very helpful. One is the Genesis 3 takeaway is it's going to be hard. And I do. And this year I have experienced pain and, and misery and torment from that. But like, surprise I can, I can actually get rid of over time. I. I don't need to be surprised when work is difficult and frustrating.

That. That right there, just that we could do a whole episode on like, stop being shocked that the work sucks some days. ReGenesis 3. It's going to suck some days until Isaiah 65 when we'll long enjoy the work. We're.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and I mean, even if we just look at the work of Jesus, right. Like he's encountering the same thorns and thistles in his teaching practice and his discipling of the small group, surely he got splinters and blisters as a carpenter. So, like, these are not surprising things. The other thing, though, I think that, you know, the kind of flip side of this to keep it from being really somber is we can be super confident that the work that we're doing, even when it appears pointless, is producing good that. I mean, as Christians, I think it's very logical to suspect that you'll probably do something today that you'll be recollecting with someone in a billion years. To me, that's a straightforward reading of the scriptures and the things that the writers are describing. So kind of good news when you have a bunch of classes one day where it's like everything is going not how you want it to go, and certain behaviors are all forming into this alignment of just maladies in your class. So just realize that, well, if you just continue to attend to what you control, the work learning experience you're trying to create and attend to the reality that brief interactions can produce outcomes that last eternity, you can go home on a hard day and rest well and understand that. I see no fruit today, but it means very little about whether there'll be fruit in the future. This is something, by the way, Jordan, that teachers, we get really, really good glimpses of because it's classic to run into the student five years, ten years after you taught them. And they say, I still remember this. Right? That's one thing that teachers get to experience more than the average person, I think, and I share that because I do think that the average person, like, whatever their work, if it involves interacting, producing something, some good for someone, there's this very matter of fact eternal significance to these things that we do that look super normal. And this is part of the, I think, wildly audacious uniqueness of Christianity in particular, that these kind of small, seemingly mundane acts that draw no special attention are significant forever.

That's right. Because of the one who's weaving them into significance. Right. The fact that it's the Holy Spirit who's working through us to do those things, and somehow God is weaving all these traits. I, I once heard you mentioned Keller. I once heard Keller. I think this was at a, a sermon at Redeemer that I was reading. He was talking about Watergate and he was able to draw a line from Watergate to the reason why he was at Redeemer with like these dozens of like, micro interactions and the intricacies of everything. He's like, so the next time you thank God for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, thank God for Watergate, and look at how God has woven all these things together. But all those big things, small things, whatever it is, yeah, God's working them for good even when you can't. Even when you can't see it. By the way, speaking of things you can't see, I mean, you, Dave, like the vast majority of our listeners are working in the quote, unquote, secular world. I would argue it's not secular because you, as a follower of Jesus are there and you've read my book the Sacredness Secular Work. So you know that I believe your work has intrinsic value to God. But you told me before that you also see instrumental value in your work and that your work can be a vehicle for pre evangelism. Tell us what you mean by that because I love this idea.

I mean it's from Schaeffer, right? I haven't read much, but this term really stood out to me and I probably encountered it first at Redeemer. But I've been reading some Frank Lawbach lately and he says the simple program of Christ for winning the whole world is to make each person he touches magnetic enough with love to draw others. And I think it's kind of related to this idea of pre evangelism. So this whole thing that as you apprentice yourself to Jesus, you become a kind of person who is not totally of this world because you're tapped into a different, bigger, more fundamental layer of reality than just what we see just being that kind of person in sweeping a floor or doing the dishes or passing someone by on the street. I think we can great credibility say that that by itself is a significant instrumental thing. Again, not in ways that we see because of what you just described a minute ago, right? Like if Watergate can be twisted in God's economy or shaped in God's economy to produce a good on the magnitude of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, then like, you know, it's kind of all bets are off if we think that we know what's going on. And I think Jesus is, you know, work again is just a magnificent for us to think about. I'm a human being constrained by time and space like human beings are. And my goal is to bring, bring this all together like, like as Lewis says, like dive to the bottom of the pond and pull the treasure up right up through the muck. And he does it by, you know, in a fairly backwater place, politically insignificant compared to the Roman Empire, really doing nothing with politics at all, doing not much at all with the elite people who matter, the people who are famous and respectable. He picks a super small group, ragtag is a charitable way to describe them, and he invests in them for about three years, right. And then of course, you know, Holy Spirit comes and Pentecost and all these things happen, right? But like very practically that, I mean I think that that's, that was Jesus. Like this was the plan because it was a very, very perfect way to bring about what we are seeing, has been brought about, which is this movement that continues to today. And it started with a very, very small group, a group of people that could fit in this room that I'm in. And the world still reverberates with the difference that that made.

We don't have to worry about connecting the dots in every conversation. We can worry about being Those magnets of love. What was that exact phrase again?

Yeah, Frank Laubach. The simple program of Christ for winning the whole world is to make each person he touches magnetic enough with love to draw others.

That's good, that's good. We don't have to be terribly direct about that.

No, no. Sealing the deal. That is so like an obsession of our time.

It really is.

That is a belief.

You want to microwave people into belief in Jesus Christ because if that's what.

You'Re supposed to do, the Sermon on the Mount is incredibly irresponsible, silly. Where's the follow up, man? Where's the, like, where's all the machinery to make sure? How are we measuring? Right? I mean, you can picture us, you know, watching and saying, well, Jesus, let's get you. Hey, let me consult.

Let me introduce you to this. Consulting for mine.

Yeah, right.

I mean, up that conversion rate by at least 20%.

Yeah, yeah, right. It's a conversion rate. Exactly.

I was talking to somebody the other day, talked in terms of X dollars per soul, that a non profit was winning. I was like, oh boy, what are we talking about? We're not speaking the language of Jesus. We are not speaking about being magnetic enough to draw people in with our love. It's wild. Hey, I want to talk about your blogging a little bit because I know you started blogging. What year was this? 2012. And from what I could tell, things started to really take off really quickly. I know you had a lot of financial opportunities come your way as a result of that. You eventually turned down. What's the story there?

Yeah, I mean, a common trajectory for someone that does the writing for teachers. Thing is you do it long enough to be able to just do that work full time. So you go and you travel to schools, you do trainings and you know, there's much more income that could be made that way.

You're telling me there are jobs that pay better than high school teaching?

Yeah, there are. Okay, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although for people listening, I would argue that the pay is not as bad as.

It's not as bad as the press.

Right, okay. Right, right, right. So people would start to ask me, well, you going to do this full time? Like, how much longer are you going to teach? And a couple of things, I mean, one just, you know, my impression from the Lord was like, you're still in that classroom. My experience of the classroom. Right. My affinity for it still has yet to wane. Again, it's difficult, but like there's just so many things that keep Me in the classroom. There's a very practical reason to stay in the classroom. Everything that I talk to teachers about, that I write about is rooted in daily practice. So I can. I mean, I can gain credibility with a group incredibly easily just by describing something that happened in school last week. And it's not inauthentic to do so. It's just. This is what I'm thinking about. I have this sort of place that roots me in the world. I live five minutes from here. So there's like this local work that I get to do that I really don't want to be done doing in the foreseeable future. But then the writing thing is just such a beautiful thing too, to get to once in a while, get to travel to a school and just meet teachers that are doing things way cooler than I've ever thought of doing, and I'll bring that back. Or sometimes I'll get to go to a Christian school and get to speak about student motivation from the standpoint of the Christian faith, which is deeply nourishing to me. So, yeah, I'm a bi vocational dude when it comes to kind of the ways that I'll spend my working hours. And of course, it can be difficult and stressful, as we were talking before the show started, of just like balancing the things. But I think that that's good. All types of work can be great spiritual disciplines, ways to develop in our apprenticeship to Jesus. So his curriculum for me right now involves this.

What I hear you saying is money isn't in the driver's seat of your vocational choices. It's in the car. It has to be in the car.

Yeah, right.

But it's not actually driving your decisions about where you're spending your professional time.

Yeah, yeah. And part of it is this. This idea of, you know, do I have enough? Right? I mean, my phone. For the longest time, the hot spot was the verse from Timothy, first Timothy six, six. It's right here on my hospital right now, which is godliness with contentment is great gain. So I need, I think, that reminder that there is such a thing as enough daily bread is a reality of the kingdom that we can rely on. And two, there's just a lot of ways to be compensated. And there's a lot of ways that we need daily bread. And it can be like this. Daily bread of kind of purpose and the daily bread of humility. Teenagers are very good joke with people. Like, I don't need people to tell me I'm not cool. Right? Like, I'm not one of Those online influencer guys who, like, has, like, their head gets so big they can't fit through a door because, like, all they have to do is try to crack a joke in second hour. And I'm not that smart, I'm not that funny. And Mr. Stewart, can you please just not so. So. There's just so many ways that this arrangement that I'm in right now compensates me.

Yeah. I love that multifaceted way that you think about compensation. That's beautiful. It's not just what's in the bank accounts, what's in the soul, what's profitable for my soul, what's conforming me to the image of Christ, what's keeping me humble.

Yeah. Dallas Willard likes to say that the only thing that you get out of your life is who you become. That's what you're taking into the next phase of things. And I like that because it's more accurate than. You can't take any of it.

That's right. That's right.

Actually, will take us with us, and it's, I think, going to be really helpful to take us into the presence of the Lord. Right. Because a lot of the annoying stuff about us will, I think, cease to be a problem when we're with Him. But certainly it will be nice to arrive there as. As far along in the way as we can go. It will be nice, not just then, but certainly today to advance in the way of Jesus, for sure.

That's really good. Hey, we were talking before we started recording. I mentioned how much I love the first line of your bio. It says this quote, husband and father who refuses to sacrifice family on the altar of professional success. End quote. Man. Tell me more. And specifically, like, what do you mean by that? But also, like, what practical decisions have you had to make to ensure that you're not gaining the world through your work, but losing your family?

Yeah, that's kind of the best way to approach it, I think, is very practically, what does it look like? Because we can. You know, everyone would espouse to what I just wrote. Right. The proof is in the pudding. So, like a set be home time every weeknight is very important. Not taking work home, it has been a critical discipline for me. I need that kind of. I wrote a blog article once about sand castle boundaries versus Himalaya boundaries. You know, the Himalayas have been a boundary substantial enough to change the shape of world history. So when you build those into your life, you can be confident that they'll change the shape of your history. All right, so. So, like, you know, not having your work email on your phone is like a thing that you can do that will help to prevent work from spreading into areas of life where you don't want it to spread. You know, lately I've been thinking about the dad, will you play with me test. And that's a good, that's been a convicting line of thinking. You know, am I bringing work home when dad, will you play with me? I'm just sort of instinctively answering, ah, no, I'm too tired, you know, I. I can't right there again, I need to look at the balance. Where am I biting off too much in work? Because I do think that Jordan, especially in our time, there's just this. It's like efficiency kind of promises in all of our different ways of life that's going to make us have to work less, but it just means we try to tackle more. And so teaching is one of those professions that will just take as much as you'll give it. Writing, creating, online, as human, everything will.

Take as much as we can give it.

It will. I think everything is like that. Everything is like that. You know, youth sports will take as much as you'll give it. Like there are just these ravenous things in life. So simple rules. Many years ago I read a book, Simple Rules. I don't even know remember who wrote it, but that one really stuck with me. Like, be home at 5 o' clock every night is the thing that you can do. And in times of my life where I stick well to that it goes. Better to not sacrifice my life on the altar of success. Don't travel on the kids birthdays is another real basic one that I had to learn the hard way.

Oh, I learned that one the hard way too. Look at that.

Yeah, you just, I mean, you're done and you're just like, what did I just do? That needs to not be a thing I did.

I did it once and I justified it. This is the worst part. I justified it because I was like, well, she's only turning to me too. As. As if I wouldn't want to be there for a second birthday. And my wife was like, yeah, not cool. And so now I have recurring blocks on my calendar of their birthday. Not that I'm gonna forget their birthdays, but so that my assistant and team knows that I don't travel on those days. Here's the deal, Dave. Like, by God's grace, I'm pretty good at the legalistic outward boundaries. Be done at 5 o'. Clock. I can't remember the last time I was not done working at 5 o'.

Clock.

No email on my phone ever. It hasn't been there forever. I'm good at that stuff. It's harder for me. The daddy, can you play with me test, that's tough, like, of having enough energy at the end of the day to be not just there, but there, there. It sounds like you're still working through that.

Yeah. And I do find, Jordan, that it typically, it starts with the projects I say yes to a month ago. Right. Like, that's what leads me to the exhaustion I feel today. It starts with, I really planned on that course that I released to do this and it did that. And so now I'm like adjusting. It kind of starts with goals and aspirations. It starts basically with a, you know, in a man's heart, he plans the way the Lord determines his steps. Like paradox. When I'm too heavy leaning on Dave's planning his way and not receptive enough to the Lord guiding his steps. When I'm too heavy on what can I do today to be productive, to be useful to this world versus daily bread? Father, your name be hallowed, not Dave Stewart's. It's inner work is dispositional stuff. And it's stuff I think that in his wisdom he designed disciplines like Sabbath to disrupt. Incredibly unique also amongst the different faiths and incredibly smart.

It's still almost like it's God's wisdom.

Yeah, yeah. Almost like he's like, y' all are going to struggle with this, so take a day.

That's exactly right. I think God knew we'd struggle with it because he created the work to be good. Right. It's creationally good. He's like, guys, it's going to be so good. This work's going to be so good. You're going to love it so much that I'm going to have to force you to stop it. Because if you don't, you're going to forget. But who's making this world spin in the first place? And you're going to burn yourself out. Right?

Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. The rightly ordered heart, I think is Augustine's big thing. The disordered loves. That is often why I fail. The dad, can you play with me? Test is disordered loves.

All right, this has been really good, Dave. We've talked a lot about how your faith is shape and what you do, how you do it. I'm going to ask one more broad question. I'm interested to see where you take it beyond what we've already discussed. How's the gospel, shaping how you're doing the work in that classroom behind you Monday through Friday.

I've been super thankful for a number of years now for just this simple thing that came to me one day when reading through Jesus, going into the new and old wineskins thing. And it just suddenly occurred to me, like, he's always doing this. He does this in all three synoptics, the new and old wineskins. But he's always doing it in response to people like critiquing the use of fasting amongst his disciples. Like, why aren't you guys fasting? And I don't know. It struck me that part of what Jesus is saying there is you have to do things that make sense. You should be doing things in a way that makes sense to do them, like bring common sense to fasting. Fasting, arguably the chief quality of fasting, the chief thing that discipline does is it teaches me to rely upon the Father. It teaches me that there is a substance even more important than food that my soul needs, and it can only be gotten from God. So my disciples aren't fasting because they're eating every day.

That's right. They're feasting.

There's no sense to practice it right now. They will, though. So, I mean, the reason I bring that up, it sounds sort of like not an answer. But I think with teaching there really is. There's a lot of dogmatic approaches to teaching, just like there were dogmatic approaches to practicing the Jewish faith in Jesus time. Just sort of traditions handed down from, you know, this school of education to their disciples. There's a lot of stuff that's just done because we do it, because we've always done it in teaching. And then there's also like this whole counter movement of like, let's not do anything like we've ever done it. Let's throw it all away. And so I think what the Gospel really helps me to do is just say there are very reliable means through which human beings grow and transform, through which they can go from being at an A level to a C level and advancing along through the Alphabet in whatever you're teaching. So, you know, Jesus, matter of fact approach, I think, very intelligent, common sense, deep wisdom approach, reliant on the Father approach to doing his work in his full humanity aspect of himself. Like that really informed how I try to approach teaching. Another one would be let the children come. It's so easy in this job because we're all typically tasked with serving more students than it kind of feels like we can. There's just so many. And there's so many needs within those students. I mean, these students are. There's one instance of each of my students that will ever happen in eternity. Like, there's never been a kid like that before. There never will be again. They won't even be like they are right now again. So there's this, like, infinite complexity that can become really overwhelming. And I think Jesus was probably like, take my awareness of that complexity and multiply it by infinity. And that was his. So I suspect, you know, I'm confident he was often tempted with exhaustion and overwhelm. He says, no, let the children come. Like, the disciples are even aware. They're saying, no, no, get them away. He says, no, no, no. This. This is important. Let him come. And as a teacher, you can lean on the fact that Jesus doesn't solve every problem that comes to him in all the masses, right? But he does what he can do, does what he can do, does what he can do. And he just trusts Father to take care of a whole lot of the rest. And Father does. That's what he's been doing. That's what he'll continue to do.

That's really good. That's really good, man. Dave, I end every single episode of this podcast the same way. I got four quick questions for you. Number one, look ahead to the new Earth. What job would you love for God to give you free from the curse of sin?

I think, teacher. Yeah, I. I think I hear that.

From most writers and teachers. Like, yeah, I keep. I. I want to keep doing the thing.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

I want to keep working.

I mean, yeah, we're. We're never going to be infinite creatures. We're going to last an infinite length of time, but we're not going to be infinite. So there's going to be.

We're not going to know everything. No, no, I want to go to a Dave Stewart class. That's.

That's cool, man. Right, likewise.

That sounds fun. That sounds really fun. Hey, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you gifting most frequently to others lately?

There's a Dallas Willard book that came out posthumously. Scandal of the Kingdom.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a big Willard student, trying to immerse myself in him for a number of years now. So Scandal of the Kingdom is short, accessible compared to Divine Conspiracy. And then Lewis Screwtape Letters. I did a reread last summer and just started telling. Interestingly, I have a lot of teenagers now that are coming to me and asking these deep questions about faith like after school and before and some like given these hungry minds some of these books because, you know, they're asking me.

Screw tape holds up.

Screw tape holds up, dude. Screw tape is that might as well have been written last year.

It is.

It's wild.

Remarkably timeless.

It is.

It is remarkably timeless. It's so freaking good. Dave, who do you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel shaping the work they do in the world?

The first guy to this happened, me, Trent Gladstone. He's a real estate agent, Baltimore, and dude taught me a ton, so doesn't have any books to his name. But Trent Gladstone is a. He is a realtor and so much more, man.

Connect me with Trent. I'd love to talk to him. All right, we'll do almost 300 episodes deep into this thing. We've never had a realtor. How have we.

I looked, man. I know we missed that because I was thinking about this question. I'm like, okay, you know, there's a lot of people been on here, but.

No, that's a great answer.

I think it'd be fascinating.

That's a great answer. All right. Especially since we're going to be building houses and dwelling in them. See Isaiah 65 on the New Earth. That'll be interesting to talk about. All right, Dave, we talked about a lot of different things on this episode. What's one thing you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

I think, like, we're all teachers, great commission, make disciples, baptizing them in the trinitarian reality and teach them how to obey the things that you've said. So we all, to a degree, are in this work, this work of teaching and does not need to be fancy or amazing. I mean, I think about the prayer Jordan that you prayed over us before we went live. Feeble and instructive efforts undertaken with a heart of faith can produce things that last a lot longer than our lifetimes on this side of glory, man.

Dave, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you're doing, brother, the glory of God and the good of others and the good of those students that you're serving, man. Thank you, man. Thank you just for the beautiful language you put to this work that God has called us to and for the wonderful ways in which you're serving those young men and women in your classroom. And man, I am so excited to keep up with you and follow your work. Hey, is Dave Stewart Jr.com the best place for our listeners to do that.

Yep. Yep. That'd be the best place. Get an idea of the things I think about.

I love it, man. I love your mind. I look forward to reading more of it. Thanks for spending time with us today.

Thank you, Jordan. Appreciate you.

Hey, if you love that episode as much as I did, do me a huge favor and go leave a review of this podcast wherever you're listening. Apple, Spotify, leave us a five star review. Tell us what specifically you're loving about the podcast so we can double down on on it. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.