The Benham Family a Generational Legacy

How does a man build a legacy that outlives him? It’s not through image or comfort, but through Scripture, prayer, and the kind of courage that shows up when it costs something. This week we sit down with three generations of the Benham family to talk about Father’s Day, legacy that actually lasts, and why kids follow what we embody more than what we say. 
 
Bailey shares what it’s like to grow up with a “spiritual inheritance” and why more young men are suddenly rethinking marriage, family, and generational impact. Flip takes us through his story of redemption, from being raised in the saloon business to meeting Christ and becoming a bold voice in pro-life advocacy. We unpack why the pro-life worldview is not merely political but biblical, including the conviction that life begins at conception. We discuss the real-world cost of public faith: arrests, harassment, prayer vigils, and how watching a father stand firm can ignite courage in the next generation.
 
If you want practical motivation to lead your home with a biblical worldview, build spiritual habits that last, and model faith your children can “catch,” this conversation is for you. Subscribe for more, share this with a dad who needs it, and leave a review with one lesson you want to pass down.

Transcript

Faith That Becomes Visible

David 0:03

The word of God needs to be flesh in your own life. And when you do that, when you actually embody it, and where you're on your knees before the Lord, when you begin to pray, God answers your prayer. And your kids, your children, and your children's children will see that.

Father’s Day And The Legacy Question

Victor Nieves 0:24

Thanks for joining us. I'm Victor Nievis, president of Life Issues Institute. A meaningful life is one that touches others, whether through lessons we share, traditions we pass down, or the love that we pour into those around us. What kind of legacy will you leave? Today, as we celebrate Father's Day, we'll speak with the Benham family, who will share about making a lasting generational impact. Flip, David, and Bailey, thank you all so much for joining us today.

David 0:48

Thanks for having us, Victor. What an honor to me.

Growing Up With Spiritual Inheritance

Victor Nieves 1:00

Bailey, I'm curious, you know, for you, coming from such a storied family, your father, such an incredible inspiration to many. Your grandfather, certainly the same thing. What was it like to grow up in your family?

Bailey 1:11

Dude, it's a good question. I think about this a lot because having such like a spiritual inheritance from flip and from dad, I mean, both of them, and I call flip Pop Pop. So if you hear me say Pop Pop, that's what I'm talking about flip. And I'll probably call him Pop Pop from now on because that's usually what I say. But yeah, man, it's an honor because when I'm thinking about it from the day-to-day basis, it puts a different weight on the things that I'm doing from day to day. And for a lot of people, sometimes I get the question all the time, man, what's it like having a grandpa and a dad that are so influential in the nation with spiritual things, you know, pro-life and all these different things. And I'm just like, dude, I think it's an honor. I try not to take that lightly, but it does. I mean, even in Proverbs 13, 22, it says that a good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children, and a fool despises that, and his wealth will be scattered to the righteous. And I also believe heavily in just like generational blessings and generational curses. And so I've seen that play out, and I'm like, hey, if my grandpa broke generational curses, and then my dad did his part in keeping those generational curses broken, I want to do my part in the exact same thing. And to hold this great inheritance that they've given me really close to the chest.

Victor Nieves 2:21

So And you know, Bailey, as we talked today about legacy and some of those blessings that you've mentioned, it seems to me, just observationally, there's been a bit of a shift in our generation.

The Rise Of Analog Family Life

Victor Nieves 2:30

A lot more young men are starting to think about that. They're starting to think about legacy, leaving something to your children and even to your grandchildren. Do you see that as well among young people starting to refocus on the honor of fatherhood and legacy building and the importance of family?

Bailey 2:44

Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about this earlier. I've seen a lot of people my age, a lot of young people. I have a mentor of mine that said this is gonna be the year of analog, meaning it's gonna be shifting away from the digital. And that really resonated with me because I've seen that a lot with young people. Is they're shifting away from like they really want to get off Instagram, they want to get off TikTok, they want to spend more time outside doing everything with friends, like in person, not talking on the phone, not FaceTiming, not talking on Reddit. You know, they want to be in person, they want to have in-person gatherings. It's like it's a shift away from the digital into the analog, and even like it's crazy because there's also a shift towards like the traditional family, which is really cool to see, and people wanting to get married and having kids younger, and this whole shift that's happening, especially among people my age, it's almost a cool thing to do now, right? And which I'm all for. And so to see that shift, it's like this is really cool to see.

Phones And The Dopamine Trap

Victor Nieves 3:44

Bailey, what do you see as some of the unique hurdles uh that young men, our generation, faces today that perhaps you know, your father and grandfather didn't face?

Bailey 3:52

That's a good question. The biggest thing is the thing that I'm holding in my hand right now. It's the phone, the dopamine rushes that you're constantly getting, even not even realizing it. There's a lot of young men that are now very conscious about whether it's scrolling too much, pornography, any of these high dopamine rushes that we're very conscious of. Past generations didn't even have access to that. But I've even thought more than that, just getting constant text messages from friends or calls or seeing different news, all these different things that we don't even think of as dopamine rushes, that just little things that hit us constantly. We're not very disconnected and don't have a ton of time of just quiet, alone time, time to reflect, time to think. And that's something I've been thinking a lot about recently is just like, hey, the less little dopamine rushes we can get, because that's what I feel like men thrive off. They want to conquer, we want to win, and that's what dopamine is, right? When you get that feeling of when you win, when you conquer something, you get little dopamine rushes. But if we're fulfilling it in other needs, in other ways, then we're not getting that. So the phone for us right now, I'd say, is by far the biggest thing.

Victor Nieves 5:01

Yeah, I totally, totally agree.

Flip’s Story From Saloon To Savior

Victor Nieves 5:03

Flip, changing gears to you here, I think it's very safe to say you have lived an exemplary life of pro-life advocacy, of Christian work. You have stood for your convictions. That's kind of an understatement. You've walked the walk. If you don't mind, I would love if we could start off with just hearing your story.

Flip 5:19

Well, if you heard my story, you would know that Jesus saved a wretch like me. And that man in the middle cross is the one that changed everything for me. The reason that David and Jason are here, I have five kids, uh, 16 grandchildren, and uh, and I pray that that just grows evermore. But I didn't used to be that way. I was raised in the saloon business all of my life, and we had traveled on in several places, and we had a lot of money, and we were able to spend it in any way that we wanted to, and I was just a pretty rich, spoiled kid. You know, my dad was giving me beer when I was about three and four years old. Everybody thought that was a really cute thing to do, and everybody smoked cigarettes, and and so that so life for me was just going that way, and I was just surrounded north, south, east, and west by me on in through high school, and I became really popular in high school because my old man owned a saloon. And so when I got out of high school, went through college and into the service, I was drafted right after that in 1970, and I was in the United States Army, tried to fight fly helicopters, and my instructor pilot told me, son, I could teach a monkey how to fly, but I can't teach you. And he was right, because I was such a rebel. I just, I just knew everything and I could fly better than he could, and he just needed to shut up and watch me go. And uh, what he did was made sure that I didn't get to fly any helicopters, and I could just pick up a hull or a M16, and that was about it. If I died, at least I didn't destroy the helicopter. So I was a mess. I got married and had my wife Faye fly to Germany. She was with me there for about a year and a half, and uh then from Germany back home, and my dad gave me a saloon in Kissimmee, Florida called the Mad Hatter. I named it the Mad Hatter because I was just as mad and as nuts. We made a lot of money in that little saloon, and about three years in, I could remember looking out the lattice of the window of the saloon saying, Is this all there is? I mean, I got all the money, I've got everything. I'm a lousy father. I had Tracy and David and Jason were born before I met the Lord, and I wanted them not to be born. That was me. And my wife said she made it very clear that there was no way that she was gonna do that. And she didn't. And I thank God we got David and Jason here, but that was God's providential hand just working in my family. And finally, uh one day in a little Free Methodist church on North Thacker Avenue, I heard this preacher preach. His name is Dave Clarity. He preached with such passion and such conviction, and I knew it was true. And it was like he opened my mail, he knew me, he just exposed me. I was a sinner, lost, and after a few weeks, I gave my heart to Christ. My wife gave her heart to Christ, and I followed about three or four months later. And God saved me out of that saloon. We sold the saloon, then I went on to seminary because I was just so hungry to learn about the word of God. This God that saved me, that so transformed me, he could do that for anybody if he could do it for me. And so he set me free. We went through seminary, we went, but then we went on to Dallas to start a small little Free Methodist church, and we met in the YMCA, and then we got very involved in the pro-life

Why Pro-Life Starts At Conception

Flip 8:33

work. And the reason that we got involved in the pro-life work was because I read Philippians chapter 2, verses 6 through 11, which is the Kenosis passage, the emptying is what it's called. That Jesus, the Lord, emptied himself to come here. And so Bill Gothard, who is uh one of the basic youth institutes guys, he asked a very simple question. He said, at what point in time did the word of God become flesh? At what point in time did God come here on this planet? What time, what place, what time was it when he came? And I realized, my goodness, it was at conception. I mean, he was here before Bethlehem. He came right through his mother Mary's womb, and he experienced everything we did right through the birth canal. It changed everything for me. Now I went through, Victor, I went through three years of seminary, and we studied abortion. It's like a, it was a social issue. We call it a social issues class. It wasn't a social issue, it was a biblical issue that manifested itself in the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, and that we as Christians are called to live out our faith in the streets, to allow the theology of heaven to become biography in the streets. And yes, they are our neighbor. And yes, we need to love our God and lay our life down for him. And with that sort of, and and I believe me, that speaks to a warrior's heart. And I said, I'm gonna lay my life down and we're gonna go, and we did, and I'm gonna stop right there.

Victor Nieves 10:03

You know, Flip, that's one of the things I love about all of you is you all clearly have a warrior's heart. And I think that that's something that we so desperately need, especially now in this day and age with the battles that are before us, we need to have a warrior's heart.

The Cost Of Public Convictions

Victor Nieves 10:17

Flip, that warrior's heart has cost you from time to time. You have found yourself, as I understand it, in a couple of jail cells. You have found yourself in a little bit of trouble. Tell us about some of the cost that you have endured in your advocacy.

Flip 10:30

And endured much cost, to tell you the truth. God has so blessed me. I've been so freely given so much. But I have spent time in jail. Now, that's that's interesting because I spent time in jail before I met Jesus. And I never dreamed that once I was saved, I've spent more days and weeks and months in jail than I ever did before. And so I wondered, you would have made me a good citizen, a better dad. You've done so many things for me. What in the world is going on here? It seems like it's upside down. When they arrest me somewhere out in the street, and they do it for a number of reasons, they always ask in the jail, how many times have you been arrested? I answer just simply, more than 50 and less than a hundred. Yeah, because it's just I've spent a lot of time in jail.

Bailey 11:14

Can I interject real quick? The I had to say one of my favorite things of all time, and I tell this story a lot. Me and you are sitting in jail together. You're to my right, this big old dude, like just like face tattoos, scars on his face. He I he's on our left. He I'm sitting there eating a ham and cheese sandwich. He turns over, he looks, he goes, How many times have you been in here? And you just turn around and you go, I don't know, more than 50, less than 100. And his eyes just lit up. He was like, What the who are you, bro? That's my favorite story.

Victor Nieves 11:48

That's awesome.

Flip 11:49

It was just, I've spent a lot of time in jail. And I did when the boys were seniors at Liberty University. We led a whole bunch of kids at Liberty University out to EC Glass High School, and we holding signs and passing out literature, about three, four hundred of the students came up and showed up. I mean, we got in big trouble there. Pastor Falwell was concerned. I said, Pastor Falwell, you always preach that it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. So he said, but why didn't you tell me? And I said, because I was listening to your sermon when you said it's so I was going to ask you for forgiveness if I got all the kids in trouble. But believe me, the teachers had a fit, everybody did, and I ended up in jail there for three months. But it was, I was sentenced to six months. But that was just the little stuff of what Jesus did. And then I had the wonderful opportunity to lead Norma McCorby, the Jane Rowe of Roe versus Wade, to the Lord. It was it was a wonderful thing. God did so many amazing things. So for me, the cost, it was just the blessing that I have had to live this gospel out. To shout out loud that Jesus is Lord, that there's nobody that died for you, not Gautama Buddha, not Krishna, not anybody died for you, but Jesus, he is the one that you are longing for. And every single person on the face of this planet, they aren't going to be living right if they don't get that piece of the puzzle into them.

Victor Nieves 13:14

Absolutely. And you know, really quick for the listeners' sake, so that everybody knows, we're not interviewing violent, horrible, you know, these aren't a bunch of jailbirds or something. Flip, give an example, just one of the many, of the reasons. What did you do to find yourself in jail?

Flip 13:28

It began originally when I laid down in front of an abortion mill door. We were all out there at 28, 29, Fairmont Street at an abortion mill door in Dallas, Texas. And we just, there were about six or seven hundred of us, and it was October 28th in 1988. 60 of us that laid down in front of that abortion mill door, and what they had to do is just they carted us away. The policeman just picked us up and carted us away. And that was it. Most of the time, we're arrested for that. That would be trespassing. Other times it was because they had all sorts of things. You know what? I can't even remember or think of them right offhand, but I know this.

Bailey 14:07

COVID, not wearing a mask.

Flip 14:09

That was just recently. That was just here. Yeah, that was Dave. Dave was with us there. As a matter of fact, I mean, we had grandpa, father, and and grandson. I mean, we had all three of us, three generations, right in jail together. That was one of the most that was one of the proudest moments of my life. I can remember David was in jail. He was already in the room. They'd carted him away, and then he saw me come in, and then I knew what was coming in behind me because I knew that Bailey was going to do the very same thing. We fall down on the barbed wire, and he just runs right over our back and storming the gates of hell. You just got to stop the generations. And good luck on that devil. You've been trying that ever since the beginning, and you are finished. We're going to crush your head with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

David 15:01

Dad, if I could jump in real quick, Victor, to bring a little clarity. I watched probably 40 of the arrests. Many times it was just prayer. He would lead a prayer vigil. They would get on the bullhorn, the police officers and would say, You cannot pray here. And Dad was standing on a public sidewalk. He would say, I have a constitutional protected right to pray here, and then they would arrest him. Other times they would show up at our house. We're literally having dinner, and they would come in our house and arrest him because of some quote protest that was happening in the city, and they're saying he was leading it when he wasn't. I mean, it it was all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, so when we saw Trump's Mar-Lago house raided, and when we started watching the FBI get weaponized against Christians, especially pro-lifers under the Biden administration, we had experienced that for decades before that, even under the Bush administration, and you know, and so I watched a lot of things where, you know, a couple of times I'm like, Dad, you probably should have just, you know, that was trespass. You were standing on the property in the cops said moving, you didn't. Okay. I get that. But 85% of the time, it's like, that was ridiculous. They're just pursuing him, they're harassing him. And the funny thing is, is when dad mentioned generations, when your boys watch you stand with courage and they know that you're right, and you do have a constitutional protected right to do what you're doing, and yet they still arrest you. The opposite of what Satan tries to do actually happens, is it inspires your boys, it inspires the kids behind you, and they end up doing far more damage to the devil's kingdom than you could have ever done yourself. So I tell all of these pastors that want to play it neutral and want to play it safe, you're supposed to raise the sheep among the wolves, not the sheep among the sheep. And when you raise sheep among wolves, all of a sudden the sheep recognize, wow, there's a lion inside of me that's far more powerful than any wolf that's that could ever surround me. And so I try to encourage spiritual leaders, fathers, moms, stand with courage, teach your kids the word of God. And then when you stand on the word of God and you know you're doing it right according to God's word, then they are going to follow you. It's it's inevitable, it's gonna happen.

Victor Nieves 17:12

And we should also keep in mind, you know, you look throughout the New Testament, the apostles ended up in jail quite a few times. So it's not a, it's this isn't a new idea for Christians, but it is an encouragement to the rest of us to have that faith, to stand boldly and to say, you know what, whatever it may cost me, I'm going to do what's right. I am going to stand for life. And again, one of the things I love about all of you guys is, you know, you have that warrior spirit. And maybe somebody one day will check my theology on this, but I've always said, I would rather get to heaven and have to answer for why I fought too hard and maybe went too far sometimes than get there and have to explain to God why I didn't fight at all. You know, and unfortunately, we have many who aren't fighting at all.

Rejecting The Gospel Of Nice

David 17:54

Right. Can I say something to that very quickly? You know, the Gospel of Nice in the American Church has replaced the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Gospel of Gice says you should pray for Goliath and not slay him. You should invite Goliath and those who have sold themselves to do the works of the enemy, invite them to coffee, nuance your speech, lower the truth down to a common denominator so that you don't offend, and then maybe one day Goliath and the Philistines will come to know the Lord. And that's just ridiculous. But that's the gospel of Nice. And the Gospel of the Kingdom is an entirely different gospel. It is the gospel of the king's dominion and the comprehensive rule of Christ in every area of life, and there is no quote political safe space for the way sex, marriage, gender, life, maximum freedom, limited regulation, the way free markets work, private property rights, stealing, lying, cheating. There is nothing off limits to the comprehensive rule of God. And so, unfortunately, the gospel of Nice in the American church has now said, Well, those are political issues. We don't want to talk politics. Well, what he's really saying is, I'm a coward, I'm afraid because my image, my income, and my my influence depends on people liking me. And so I as a pastor want to be liked, and therefore I'm not going to take a stand. And that right there is over. And that's why Bailey and his generation, Victor, you and your generation, those next gen kids are saying, I don't want any of that. I want authenticity. I want something that's real. It's why the analog culture is really rising amongst the young kids, the Gen Alphas and the Gen Zs. They were so digitally connected that they're relationally more disconnected than any generation in world history. And so they're begging for real. And the only real is Jesus Christ. The only true real is the Bible. Now I know Mom Donny put his hand on the Quran and swore on the Quran, but the Quran teaches Tekiah that you can lie in order to get an upper hand for Sharia. That is wrong. The only real is the Bible. And when we have leaders that put their hand on the Bible to swear to something greater than themselves, that's when the alphas and the Z's are truly going to be protected for future generations. That's really what's resonating in Bailey's heart, and that's what we've watched my dad pop pop live out in front. And I'm just kind of the bridge between those two generations. And I believe it's Bailey's generation, it's your generation. It's these teenage kids, these college-age kids, and these young adults that are going to bring it back to truth. And we're going to see, we're already seeing an awakening and a revival, but that revival has to turn into reformation, which means a return to form.

Bailey 20:33

I was just going to say, real quick, I've seen that a lot where I'm at right now here in Nashville. There's there was a surge of like really cool hip, relevant celebrity pastor type churches in Nashville. But one of the fastest growing churches right now is like just the worship is honestly borderline bad because it's so not hip, but it's so real because pastor is diving into scripture and like just preaching the word of God. And among young people, I can't tell you how many people are going there right now. Every single Sunday, there's 400 more people than there was the last Sunday. I was thinking about it, and it's because a lot of my generation and and our generation, Victor, is longing for something real and the real biblical truth, and not just something fabricated or something that makes us feel good. Because for so long, that's what they've seen. They're like, this can't be it, this can't be everything. And now that this pastor is just diving into the word, every Sunday you leave like so convicted, and it's like you don't feel great, but that's what we're longing for. I think it might be, I don't know of the exact statistics. It's probably one of the fastest growing churches in Franklin, and that's with you know a church every quarter mile. And most of them are super hip, super cool, super trendy, super relevant. And this one is the exact opposite of that, and yet it's one of the fastest growing churches in the area.

Victor Nieves 22:00

Well,

What Fathers Model For Life

Victor Nieves 22:01

you know, as we celebrate Father's Day, I want to ask all three of you in your own respective way, what is one thing that your father taught you or showed you that you'll keep with you for your entire life? Bailey, we'll start with you.

Bailey 22:14

There's a video on that Pop Pop did, and I think it just kind of goes back to that warrior spirit and not backing down and being strong, being courageous. But just like that overall spirit is something that I genuinely think about every single day. And Pop Up says, I'm gonna jump on the barbed wire so you can walk over my dead body into the enemy's camp. And that right there is one of like the most powerful and inspiring things for me because I'm like, if Pop Pop and dad lay down on the barbed wire, there's no way I'm just gonna sit on the beach and just watch them lay there. You know, that thought is sickening to me. And so even having a father and a grandfather who are willing to lay down their lives like that is very inspiring.

Victor Nieves 22:59

David, how about you?

David 23:00

Victor, I'd say two things specifically. My dad, I do not remember a morning I woke up where my dad wasn't sitting on his ugly little green stool in our Pullman kitchen, our little 1,100 square foot house in Texas, uh reading his Bible. He'd always get wide margin Bibles. He'd have his pen out and he'd be marking it up like crazy. And I remember when I was 12 and I truly surrendered my life to the Lord at 12, I remember starting to do the same thing. Like, I'm gonna read through the Bible. But so I started reading through the New Testament. But anyway, at 18 I left for Liberty and I said, I want to get a wide margin Bible, and I want to read it with my pen, just like my dad did. And I'm 50 now, and so I've been through the Bible 32 years, and I keep my Bibles. My dad keeps his Bibles and he's got just stacks and stacks of them so that his kids and his grandchildren will be able to have all of his notes. They're almost impossible to read. But it's a legacy. But then the second thing would be then speaking about it, being willing to open your mouth. Because a lot of times we can be in a consumptive culture, but God created us to produce. So we don't just sit and consume scripture. We need to produce what scripture says in our lives, but also and speak that truth. And so I've watched my dad reading the Bible and then taking what the Bible says and being willing to not only lead our home, but to speak truth to power and not hold back. And those are the two things. Those hand in hand is like a jab, it's like a jab and a haymaker together.

Flip 24:21

Flip, how about you? Well, my dad went in the Navy when he was 16 years old and uh was a tail gunner on a TBF airplane and flew over in the Pacific, was shot down twice. My dad was uh tough on me, and he would always say to me, Flippy, do as I say. Don't do as I do. Because my dad is an alcoholic. My dad drank, he did, but he knew there was something important, something more to life. And I'm gonna tell you that my dad loved me. Now that I knew he would come to my baseball games, he would come and be with me when I was out with any sporting activity at all, and yet we owned a saloon. I was raised in the saloon business. We had people over after they closed the saloon at New York, you close at three o'clock in the morning. And there would be people he'd bring from the saloon over to our house, and they would all have parties downstairs. My dad would take us to church, and my mom would take us to church, but it was a United Methodist Church, the Wick Community Church. So I didn't have that dad that was gonna, you know, teach me in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I had a dad, though, however, who loved me. And you know, I loved him. He taught me how to hit a baseball when I would could, all I did was strike out, and he'd just sit out there and throw tennis balls at me against our house until I could finally hit the baseball. That legacy that dad loved for me was not a scriptural one, not a biblical one. I didn't meet the Lord until long after I was away from my dad. But when I met Jesus, he said, Oh, that'll just be something you get over. And he found out that that wasn't the case. And then he said to me, if you take your mother down to that abortion mill and she gets arrested, I'm not coming to get her out. I mean, he was mad at me because he knew the kind of trouble that I was getting into. But you know, I can remember turning away, feeling bad that he had told me that about my mom, because my mom understood. And so I was walking away and he said, Flippy, and he's up on the upstairs, and they they were staying in a little apartment. He said, Flippy, I want you to know I'm so proud of you. And he teared up. And I see, that's a gift that dad gave me, that the boys have never heard that. And I just want you to know that was a gift because he loved me. And I needed that because, and and the Bible knows that we need fathers. And that's why he went in the last chapter, last verse of the Old Testament, I will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, hearts of the children to their fathers, or I will smite the land with a curse. And by the way, that's anathema, that word, curse, that if you go ahead and don't get the fathers back in, you're gonna lose everything. My people perish for lack of knowledge. It's we have forgotten who we are, we've forgotten whose we are, and we've forgotten where we're going. And that's where we are in this nihilistic, unreal world that we're living in now. We need fathers back home. It's gonna take more than a congressional act or a Supreme Court decision or uh a new president. It's gonna take Jesus, and we are right there, and we are ripe right now to repent and call on his name and say, God, just take over. We can't fix this. And we can't fix it. We can. The answer is to just turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children.

Leading A Pro-Life Home With Prayer

Victor Nieves 27:54

I have one final question for all three of you. It's been a fantastic program today. I'm so grateful for our time. What would you say to our listener as we celebrate Father's Day about the importance of specifically, as a man, as a father, leading your family to be obviously in line with the gospel, but walking it out and being pro-life?

David 28:14

Let me jump in and I'll say it first. The cliche in the statement is that some things are better caught than taught. No, it truly is real. When you embody even in scripture, when Jesus, dad was talking about the Kenosis passage where he emptied himself and became flesh, the word of God became flesh. But quite often we as parents turn it all back into words again. And we're like, well, if they get good teaching, if I put them in a good private Christian school, if I take them to church and they go to Sunday school, yeah, those are all good things. But really, the word of God needs to be flesh in your own life. And when you do that, when you actually embody it, where you're on your knees before the Lord, God, take away my temper, give it, fill me with the fruits of the Spirit. Lord, I pray, control my eyes. Help me to have self-control in areas of my life. Help my attitude to glorify you. Help me to be filled with joy. Give me boldness in the face of unrighteousness when it's publicly manifested. Right? When you begin to pray those things, God answers your prayer. And then your kids, your children, and your children's children will see that. You're seeing that in my dad's life. You're seeing my generation is under him, and then one generation under me is my son, his grandson, and we're soon to have a great grandson in the month of April. But dad broke that curse and that generational curse that Bailey led off the podcast with. But he didn't just break that generational curse. So there's no more drunkenness in our family, there's no more gambling in our family, there's no more of that stuff in our family. But then he embodied the word of God and lived it out. And when you do that, you don't have to worry and like freak out and get all anxious about your kids. They're going to follow you. Bailey, what would you say?

Bailey 29:47

I'd say pop pop hit on the fact that being pro-life and abortion is not a political issue. It's a it's a spiritual issue, it's a biblical issue. And so leading your family pro-life, I don't, I'm not married, I don't have any kids yet, but I will say, based off my example, every single day growing up, we would get into the word together. And dad would lead us all in a little Bible study. We'd pray every single night, and we'd do that pretty much every single day. There's some days, you know, that we didn't do it, but like it was a very consistent pattern in our lives. And then every single time I'm with pop, we have Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, whatever that is. We have pop up that gives us a good hour to an hour and a half sermon before we eat. And we uh we all want to eat, but we're all sitting on just joking, Pop Pop. It's sometimes after we eat, which is way better. But having a father and a grandfather that leads spiritually like that, when you have a biblical worldview and it and you see it, like dad said, played out in the flesh, I feel like being pro-life is just an offshoot of having a good biblical worldview and growing in your in your spiritual walk. Flipper.

Flip 31:00

And for me, Jesus has done, he's been a wonderful father, a heavenly father to me. He has done everything for me, he has saved my family, he has done all of this. And for me to go out there, and when you said, well, what's the cost? And I can tell you, there's no cost, there's no amount of money that I would take in exchange for what he has already done for me. And so anything that comes out of me is gonna go into that next generation because I'm no longer surrounded north, south, east, and west by myself. I've got these new eyes. I'm a new creation. I see things differently than I did before. And you're gonna serve the kingdom you see, and you're gonna become like the God you worship. And I want those guys to see what it's like to live out Jesus. They've lived through the miracles, they've seen the miracles, they've seen the battle, and they're saying, I've got my chin set like flint toward Jerusalem, and I'm going there because that's what I want. That's what I'm talking about. That's the real deal that gets inside of me and turns the whole world right side up in Jesus' name.

Victor Nieves 32:10

Amen. Well, Bailey, David, and Flip, this has been a fantastic program. Thank you all for joining us.

David 32:16

Thank you for having us, Victor. Thank you, Victor.

Closing Charge And Resources

Victor Nieves 32:28

As we celebrate Father's Day, it's been such a blessing to hear from three generations of the Benham family, to see how Flip, or as they call him Pop Pop, showed the path forward for not only his own life, but his sons and now even his grandchildren and future great-grandchildren. It's a tremendous blessing, the legacy that one man can begin that is then carried out through his family. And to see the fighting spirit that they all have, that's something I just have such a tremendous appreciation for. The number of lives that have been impacted and the number of lives that have been saved by their faithful pro-life work, not just from Flip or from David and also from Bailey, the combined generational legacy that these men will leave on this earth is profound, and the impacts will certainly be seen in heaven. I want to encourage you, our listener, to visit our website, lifeissues.org. Equip yourself with the tools and information that you need to start your own generational impact for life and touch those around you. Again, you can find those resources at lifeissues.org. Be sure to tune in next week for another straight talk on life issues.