Scripture In This Episode:

Psalm 1:27 – “Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.”

James 2:18-19 – “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!”

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man. We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children.

Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, everybody, how’s it going?

So we’ve got a very relevant topic, as usual, comes off the heels of an incredible trip to Idaho.

Yeah, we were just invited to an event called Freedom Stand 2020 that took place in the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. Yeah, and it was such an incredible experience. It was fun. You know, I have to tell you guys, I have all my life, I’ve never lived in a conservative state and I’m so excited to move.

Yeah.

So excited. And this was just part of it. Like to literally be sitting there among seven hundred eight hundred other people who are like minded. It was led by it was actually hosted by a local church. Yeah. And so it was everything that was spoken was spoken of from a heart of Christ centredness first. Yeah. And praying for the opposing side if you will. All of it.

I was for Christians to become activated with the roles that God would have them play. And we’re 40 days or so away from an election, the most important election of our lifetime.

I know that said a lot, but it really is of our lifetime, maybe not of the lifetime of the US, but of our lifetime for sure. It’s a strategic time, you guys. It was interesting. I was reading through Ephesians six. Everyone knows that this is the stand firm then in the form of God’s passage of scripture, and it says in theirs to stand firm so that you can you can fight against the devils schemes.

Yeah, right. So the devils schemes, that means he’s a schemer. Yeah, he’s a schemer. And it’s obvious that he has a plan and he tries to do things right. We are aware of that. And it’s important as Christians that we don’t forget that there is an enemy and that he does have minions actually in a sense, and that we need to be praying. Actually, we need to be praying for the salvation of those who are spiritually oppressed. Yeah, we need to be praying for people who are led astray. And we need to be praying for people who are disillusioned, who have maybe believed the lies. Right. That has been fed to them. And this is the thing. So as we’re diving into this particular topic today, we want to encourage you guys to, first of all, take the action of being praying for all people, not just Saints. Oh, yeah, action. That is an action. And I don’t you know, we’re going be talking about getting more activated right now. being willing, as a Christian, to speak up

Here’s a doctrinal stance, is that we actually believe that when you pray, God hears it, OK? He doesn’t always do exactly what we pray, but sometimes he actually takes action because of the Saints prayers.

Right. And so, as a believer, our goal in prayer is obviously first to know God more. Right. To want to communion with him, if you will. But also it’s that we would be praying God’s will not be praying selfishly, but be praying God’s will, because when you know, he will answer every prayer, sometimes it’s you know, sometimes it’s. Yes, right. Yeah. But you’re less likely to get knows and more likely to get yeses if you’re praying within God’s will and people.

So we’re talking about rejecting passivity and being courageous. So funny because you’re courageous, Mom. Right. And I’m resolute, man. Not by choice. Right. And that’s just what we felt like. God was prompting us to put forward to help other people be courageous moms and other men to be resolute men.

Can I just say something to that? Like, I’ll just speak for myself when we chose that, like, you know, that name, it wasn’t because I felt like I was so courageous.

It was because I felt like that’s actually something God wants to grow in me. And so I’m just sharing that with you guys because today’s message is a convicting one for myself. Yeah, I do not in my flesh, in my nature. I do not want to speak out and to be bold, but it’s something that God has been growing more and more in me, a desire to be bold for him and to proclaim truth, all truths. Yeah.

And I would say and I battle with passivity, meaning that I have these thoughts of not doing something. But then it’s like the spirit overwhelms me and says, go do it, and then I go do it. And so it’s not just that we were born resolute man and courageous mom. Now that you are the man and you are the courageous mom and we’re trying to help other people be that in this uncertain times, in these times, we’re willing to stand firm and we need to vote and we need to proclaim things that sometimes we have fear about. So rejecting positivity and being courageous is what this episode is about. It’s not just political, but we will talk about politics a little bit before. We get into it, wow, this last six days has been really incredible and a lot of ways just hearing all that long and sometimes short to care about the same messages towards us, just supporting us that you’re praying for us. I would say maybe over six or seven hundred messages and all the different ways that we’re positive about our last episode and the challenge we’re dealing with.

And can I just add, like, thank you for being in a place where I could be transparent and share a lot of like what we shared was a hard thing to just bring bring into the light. Yeah. Bring out into the light. It’s not something that we’ve by any means tried to hide, but we like there was this part of me that was like just nervous how people would receive it. And those messages mean so much because for you guys to really be able to discern my heart and see that, like, you know, most people are like, I can’t believe this was going on for four or five months. I had no idea you kept doing podcasts and you were like you had joy. Like that was the overwhelming thing that people were like, yeah, I had no idea that was going on that whole time. How did you keep doing those things? And I just have to, like, encourage you guys because it’s the joy of the Lord.

And no matter what the circumstances are, it can’t be stolen from you if it’s really, truly his joy. And I will say, yeah, I’ve experienced a lot of different emotions over four months and just creating that video took us a long time. And reliving some of the emotions was hard. And there were a host of different emotions at different times. And you know what, though?

Like, I stand before God with a clear conscience that we’re walking forward with his leading and his blessing. And so thank you.

Yeah. And already 12 percent of what’s needed for this battle has been raised in six days. So that is really incredible. And we’re just blessed by that. You can go to courageous parenting dot com for the show, notes, resources, free resources, a couple of cool workshops, the parenting mentor program, the home schooling blueprint, but also you can donate there. So just at the mention or CourageousParenting.com Forward donate. And we really, really appreciate that. So let’s dive in.

Yeah. So you guys, we are going to be sharing a little bit. We were inspired, weren’t we? Yes, we were. We were inspired. Charlie Kirk is an amazing leader for a young guy.

He’s twenty six, right? Yeah.

And I was very impressed with him.

Yeah. On a lot of levels. No one’s you know, it’s interesting. I actually I was the first time I think I’ve ever heard him speak. I’m just being honest.

Me too. Yes, I’ve heard his name, but I have not I’m not tuned in. Right.

Right. He’s putting so it was cool to be there and to see kind of what he’s been doing at the college campuses across America. And it’s important thing that for you guys to hear, because he was like really shedding light on the problem of too many people going to college right now.

And in the sense of like going into debt and not using their degrees and what they’re actually being taught and not knowing or even being ever exposed to a different way of viewing government action. It was interesting, his perspectives of what he’s seen as he’s toured around the country.

And he really does a lot. Yeah, from one place to another to another to another.

And then Rob McCoy, his pastor, it was so encouraging to see a pastor that is standing strong even at the expense of, you know, the law. And then that can be debatable. Christians ought to be I think it’s Romans 13 or something like that. And but not submitting to authority, submitting to authority. But you know what? There is tyranny happening against the churches we believe that you may disagree with. And you know what? We can always disagree on some things and still love each other. Isn’t that cool?

Yeah, but it’s not a salvation issue if you agree.

And we believe that tyranny is happening against the churches in America and it’s been far too long enough is enough in this pastor was talking about that and standing firm and being proactive and taking action and getting involved in politics and and activating this church and saying we’re still going to meet.

And yeah, you know, like that to me, I, I, I never thought I’d see it happen in America. But you guys, this is not like new to God. Like he is grieved by what is happening. He’s grieved by sin because it separates us from him. It separates us from one another in relationships. But it’s also been predicted in his good book. Yeah. So none of us should be shocked, but we should definitely be praying. And just because something’s been predicted and it’s happening doesn’t mean that we just sit by and watch it happen, which is what we’re talking about today. Right. Rejecting passivity and being courageous.

So I wanted to define courage or being courageous for a second. Which courage is that is taking action. Despite being at the end of your strength and faith that God will use his and I think that that’s important because you can define courage differently, this isn’t a definition in the dictionary, but this is how I look at courage. But you could define it differently and say it’s like, well, it’s courage to do things even though you’re fearful of them. And there can be bravado around that. And people can people have courage and do the wrong thing. Oh, yeah. They do it all the time. They do it all the time. Right. Or things that are way too risky and too dangerous and all of these kind of things. But I believe when we’re tapped into God, when the Holy Spirit in us and guiding us and were submitted to the spirit of God, it is taking action despite being at the end of your strength in faith that God will use his.

God always wants to like you guys. Part of why we are even here is to bring glory to God, right? Like he wants to be glorified. He wants his name to be known. And that is our purpose as Christians. Right. As a great commission, collective purpose. We have other purposes as well, each individually. And we’re going to talk about that in the sense of like what is happening right now in America and even in the world is like a battlefield. And there’s even division in the church on topics like masks on all kinds of things. Yeah, there is division happening and it grieves the father. It is not something that we should be bickering about or nit picking about or having a critical spirit of other people about that is not God glorifying. It says in everything you do, try to be at peace, try do your best and try to be at peace with everbody.

Well, there’s a challenge. There’s a challenge. Right now, I’m on several church email lists because we visited churches. There have been part of different churches in our past. And I see the messages from pastors talking about handling division in their own church, about current events and current affairs and opinions about things, political things. And it is appears to be really, really challenging, very divisive right now. Not only have most churches not been meeting, so they don’t have the proximity to loving each other and seeing each other in that way. And then they take sides and then there’s there’s social posts with people fighting politically again and fluence of media and family members.

Right. Like there are brothers against fathers and daughters against mothers, which is also in scripture about and times. There is no denying that things are getting worse here right now. And so let’s just call America the battlefield. And the reality or the world is a battlefield in that sense. And the reality is, is that we’re all a member of the body of Christ and we’ve all been given a different job. That’s true. We all have different jobs. So as we’re sharing, you might sense us giving examples that maybe would go for somebody that is more like us. But we’re going to try to give you guys some other examples of ways that you can be activated and be courageous wherever you are on the battlefield, whether you’re the front line or you’re in the back.

I think people are like, oh, I’m so glad you said that, Angie, because, you know, I just need to know what my role is. I know what can I do right now to stand firm.

And I think that part of it, too, like you guys, we’ve said it a million times.

One of the best ways for a mom. I’m just going to say a mom who has kids in her home, you are in the battlefield in the sense and you are doing the great commission as you’re discipling, your kids. And it’s one of the it is the first jurisdiction. It’s one of the most important things that you could possibly be doing right now. So don’t feel tempted to, like, go out and run for office.

If you have little kids in the home. This may not be your season. Our point is, though, that you still do have a voice. If you have social media, you do still have a voice. If you have a relationship with a neighbor or you have a relationship with a family member. And and can I just say that these are important issues. It’s it’s important to know what is going on in the world and to seek God in prayer and in his word for how we should be actually viewing these things and what stance we should be taking on different things. And we need to teach them to our kids. Like, I just think about everything that’s going on right now and what is going to happen. I keep thinking about 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years from now when I’m 50, 60, 70 and 80. Yeah. Who’s going to be the young people that are like our generation now, the in the forties going into different seats of influence. Right. Like and what what is it going to look like? It’s going to impact our freedoms. It’s going to impact even the ability to share the gospel because that’s under attack.

Amen. Amen. So let’s go into what the problem is.

There’s a big problem today and. You guys are going to be kind of I don’t know when I say this, some people might get a little defensive, passive Christianity, passive Christianity.

And what we mean by passive is, you know, there are a lot of verses in churches that will preach one side of the gospel, right? Here’s an example of passive Christianity, a pastor who shares half the gospel, he says, come as you are. Jesus loves you.

And that’s it, not come as you are, now go and sin no more.

Right, right. So there’s a lot more to the gospel, you guys. But my point is, is there’s a lot of churches out there that are teaching half truths. Yeah, they’re teaching half gospels. It’s also known oftentimes as seeker friendly, watered down messages. Now, can you be can you be welcoming to people who are seeking for the gospel while not being passive in teaching the full truth? Of course you can. But the reality is, is that many churches do struggle with this and it is a form of passive Christianity. Yeah, another form of passive Christianity would be the issue that Charlie Kirk actually brought up in the in this last week. And I was like, oh, my goodness, people have to know. What he was talking about was called self centered censorship. So good. He said there’s an epidemic of self censorship. So think about what self censorship is, right?

It’s where you choose not to speak up.

When you see something that is a lie, you choose not to comment, to defend someone or to defend the truth. You choose not to share the gospel because maybe you have families, family members that are not Christian. You choose not to hold on to your boundaries in parenting because you’re scared that you’re going to offend the non Christian neighbors next door.

Yeah, you choose not to share your political conviction like who you’re going to vote for because you’re afraid of what men will think of you.

And if you’re a pastor or you’re an influencer or you have a group of people that you lead or something like that, here’s something I wrote down in preparation, however you build, it determines what you have to do to keep the peace. So however you build it, how was the church built on what kind of messages and sharing everything you believe biblically or only what’s palatable to the new person coming in however you build it is what you have to keep doing to keep the peace. I think about that we when when God prompted us to do courageous parenting and resolute man and courageous mom, we felt it was very important from the beginning to be 100 percent true to who we are, what we believe the Bible says about anything and everything, because otherwise we would have to constantly be hiding part of what we believe to keep you happy. So could that happen in some of the churches is the reason some of the churches and the pastors are not speaking boldly for, say, supporting a President Trump who has been backing things that are biblical policies in major ways, the most pro-life president we’ve had, for example, and all these reasons. We’ll do another episode on the election, OK? You’re going to see us get it more political because we have these next 40 days that are critical.

Well, and OK. Can I just bring that up again? This is us not choosing not to be passive. And again, like Isaac always says, you don’t have to agree with everything that we do, every policy that we have a stance on all those things. However, there are some things that I do believe you can’t possibly be a Christian if you disagree with certain things, like pro-life is one of those. Like, I just can’t I can’t even fathom that.

Now, that’s just one issue of many we can list off probably a dozen reasons why we are voting for Trump. And we can easily, in another episode talk about, well, how do you handle his behavior in some of these?

I’m not voting for Jesus. Trump is not a perfect man. I’m voting for policy.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. She is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to parenting dotcom and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, a courageous parenting dotcom. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement for us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done and creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based.

And just some really great practical applications, this class has just really rocked my world, it has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids physically, like our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is.

Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it.

One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more.

We’re no longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. So we’ll talk more about that in another episode. However, I do want to say something regarding politics just before we move on to politics. This dawned on me last night when we were just communicating, downloading. We are having a great conversation. And it just dawned on me, just as parents, they see their kids and they go, OK, we’ve been teaching this that sin is a symptom of our greater heart problem, OK? Politics and policy is a greater symptom of a spiritual problem. Yeah, it’s the fruit of the spiritual condition of the people who pass the laws, who disregard the laws, who want to, I’ll say it, defund police and allow lawlessness. OK, there is an immediate need for Christians to understand at a deep level that you can’t separate or compartmentalize Jesus out of parts of your life. He wants to be a part of every aspect of what you are, who you are, your family is your legacy and even what you believe politically.

Yeah, and his word actually has a lot to say about everything.

You guys, our founding forefathers, they weren’t perfect men. No, but they did some amazing work in trying to establish the Constitution. The

Constitution is incredible.

The Bill of Rights to actually give freedom to protect freedoms.

Right. And and, you know, Rob McCoy, I’m not sure was the pastor. One of them said liberty isn’t a man’s idea. It’s God’s idea. Mm hmm. But man’s idea would be the opposite, right? It would be oppression. The enemy’s idea actually is bondage. He was out to steal, kill and destroy. And we see a lot of that happening, like what is happening with the looting.

It’s stealing. It’s killing businesses. It’s destroying.

So so why is there self-censorship happening where we censor ourselves? It’s because of a bully mindset of a group of people, of part of the society that a bully mindset of the mainstream media, which is if you believe X, then we are going to destroy you. People are fearing, you know, loss of relationships and even some of their churches, probably pastors are feeling losing some of the flock.

so with all those fears looming over them, what are those people potentially doing now? We get that not all people are doing this because a lot of you guys, you like and appreciate courageous parenting because you do live courageously and love that. Yeah, but the reality is a lot of people get affected by what you were just saying, like the thought of losing a job if they were to post on their personal Facebook or anything regarding. Yeah. Congratulating the new announcement for the Supreme Court justice. Right. Like anything, it doesn’t even have to be about Trump. Trump doesn’t have to be in the title, like if it’s in support of anything he’s done even or like people out there are literally scared to share stuff a lot of people are. And so we need to be praying that people don’t.

And so that as I’ve been in those situations and I have I’m so thankful that God has taken me out of being in situations where I can’t fully proclaim the truth and what I believe because of concern of how I provide for my family. And if that’s you, you may prayerfully consider what God has for you to shift and it might be over the next two or three years. But we’re in uncertain times. I would definitely give that a thought. If you can’t actually stand for truth in the ways you feel called to because of the fear of being bullied or losing your job or losing friendships, then how good are those friendships anyways? How good if you can’t be yourself and stand for truth in your church, how good is that community? For you and your family anyways, and I think it’s so important that we are putting ourselves in situations where we can be bold, where we can be biblical, where we can stand for truth, where we can share who we’re voting for, for president.

Right. I mean, I’ll just say that was one of the really encouraging things just being where we were when we were visiting Idaho to see to see Trump flags on trucks where they weren’t vandalized.

Right. But not only that, you guys, we also saw Biden signs. Yeah. And I and I don’t look at that. And I don’t I don’t go, oh, boo. Like, I’m not voting people. I’m not so full of each other. That’s my point, is that they felt safe enough to still put that sign out, whereas there are portions of this country where no one feels safe to actually have a sign out because they think that their house will get burned down or their windows will get broken. And that’s not OK. And that actually shows you the character behind the different parties does actually at a very deep level because the people represent leadership. What does that and remember, the Times says attitude reflects the leadership. Yeah, I love that.

I love that statement. I do want to share with you guys from Second Timothy one seven, but I’m actually in read six to it says, therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you through laying on of hands. We’re not able to lay our hands on you guys right now, but we are trying to stir you up out of passivity and into action, whether that action is praying for the Saints and encouraging other people who are in the positions that actually can take authority or if it is asking you to be more bold, says for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, I think a sound mind. And I think back to Romans twelve. And how how do we get a renewed mind through the reading of the word? And so we have to be in the word. It’s not about opinions, it’s about God’s truth. And then in psalm 1:27 sorry. It says unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. And I just I think of those scriptures and I go, wow, where is our country?

Like for a lot of the founding fathers, they were believers and they did love God.

And they so much so that they wanted him to be honored in the Constitution. They wanted him to be the under everything, to be under God, right. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And what is the opposite happening? There isn’t liberty and justice happening for all you know, how is censorship hurting you?

Because that is a goal is to to the, you know, big the big social media giants. You guys know that story. Censorship is a big deal against conservative ideas, against Christian principles in these kinds of things. And you have to really think about where are you being censored? And it’s preventing you from doing what you know and feel is right to do right now. I mean, this was said by Charlie Kirk is something along the lines of the left has been they’ve been activated, activated, and they’re activists. And I’m not even saying in a negative way. They’re activists, meaning they’re involved there. People are involved. Right.

They’re the ones holding all the volunteer positions in the schools. They’re coaching the sports. They’re doing all the things they’re getting in. They’re not saying that Christians aren’t doing that to conservatives aren’t doing that, too.

But but overall, he’s making the statement that the conservatives, the faith based people are not activated and in the political sphere. And so what you’re seeing is an overtaking rate of activity.

And I will say there are conservatives, guys, I don’t want you to misunderstand us. We don’t think that all conservatives are Christians, right? Not at all. There are non believing conservatives that are out there, and a lot of them are the ones that are actually activated. Yeah, what we’re saying is that the conservatives that are also Christian are the ones that are more passive and not activated and not standing up.

So I wonder if your doctrine or what’s being preached to you is causing a submission to allowing whatever happens happens in the world. And so just think about that. Is that or are you realizing and feeling more? And so how can I be involved to make a difference? And you know what? Sometimes it might be just saying who you’re voting for and sometimes it might be donating to a specific cause. It might be volunteering for the local school or volunteering in something in the communities.

One hears one. If you live near a city where there has been looting, maybe God wants you to donate to repair that small business owners window. No, right there. Because I’m telling you, the reality is, is a lot of people who are getting attacked. Physically and getting hurt and their businesses are being looted and it’s they are not actually getting the justice right. And the truth is that if we as the if the good people who actually are willing to call it for what it is, which is then aren’t willing to actually stand up and say this is not OK.

This is against what’s right, and we’re not going to just sit by and let it continue happening until people, good people stop being quiet. And I’m just sharing with you guys like I’ve been convicted of this. I have believed a lot of these things for a very long time. But I am convicted that being in Oregon my whole life, I’ve been I’ve been passive. I’ve not been activated other than just turning in my vote. And so and I’m not saying that I’m jumping into politics or anything like that.

I’m just saying that what I what I’m saying this is not to be condemning of anybody. There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but there is conviction by the Holy Spirit.

And we need to stop and we need to really reflect and go, God, why did you put me in this generation and how am I supposed to play a part in somehow protecting the freedoms of people so that we can actually even preach the gospel?

Because that’s what’s happening next. And part of it could be watching political videos with your children, talking about politics. Oftentimes in culture, whether the two things were never supposed to talk about religion or religion and politics, we actually believe those are the two things that should be talked about the most. Right. At least educating your kids and things like that, because the political landscape makes a big difference now in the end. God is what matters and our allegiance is to God. And we shouldn’t make politics an idol or something like that. Right, right. Right.

That’s not the impression, I would say to that. Like, while I’m saying I’ve been convicted that I haven’t spoken out on things, it’s by no means want anyone to misunderstand. Like oh Angie doesn’t have an opinion on those things. No. Do I have a lot of opinions, but I do censor my own opinions. Sometimes the self-censorship has been actually because of fear of what people would think, and I’m ashamed of that. And I’m just admitting it publicly. And at the same time, sometimes it’s discernment and going, you know what? I don’t feel like this is the message that God wants me specifically to share. And for a long time, I have felt like God was primarily calling me just to encourage mothers in their role, their biblical roles. That’s it. Yeah. And now I’m starting to see that there’s like there’s all these things that I’ve been doing for the last 20 years with our kids and raising them to where they would actually be passionate about protecting the unborn, speaking up for freedom and different things like that.

But at the same time, not overarching your freedoms to where your lawless. Right. Like there’s a difference between protecting your freedom, but also the freedom within the limits that are true right. Like when people say, let’s just take freedom of speech, for example, freedom of speech is a wonderful thing and we are one hundred percent for protecting that. But the Constitution, the Bill of Rights actually protects people by saying, but you can’t just go around preaching lies about people on purpose. I’m telling you lies. And so that is something that is like that freedom of speech within the limits that protect people. That is what I stand for, not just for anybody saying whatever they want, even if it’s fake news. Right. And so you have to understand what the actual Bill of Rights say to know clearly what your rights are and what is good and true.

And we did an episode on that. So look back.

It was during Memorial Day weekend.

Yeah. So you can check that out. But let’s talk about the solution. And so we talked about the problem of self-censorship and the bullying and passive passive Christianity and not a full understanding of biblical truth.

And I think the part of passive Christianity, too, is like people speaking and preaching the gospel, but not living it. They’re not actually living what they’re teaching because that’s part of passive Christianity. Right.

Is like you’re not doing because James, two, says exactly what it says is faith without works, is dead and works without faith is dead. Right, essentially. And so clearly we need both. Yeah. Like people are going to probably come to know Jesus more by what we do than what we say.

That Scripture is saying because of your faith, there will be fruit from it of good works. Yes. And if there aren’t good works, then you might be questioning. It’s a symptom, you guys.

Everything that we do or don’t do is a symptom of a greater heart problem. And to be introspective about it is important. And it doesn’t just isn’t something that we do as parents with our kids when we’re like, OK, but where’s your heart when you hate your brother? Right. Like, yeah, it’s something that we have to do to ourselves over and over again to one another. Marriage in biblical friendship. You do that. You have accountability of people speaking into your life.

I think the solution is we have to look where we need to break out of our comfort zones, are you too comfortable? Are you insulating, are you protecting, are you decreasing how much you proclaim biblical truth on the Internet? Are you decreasing what you talk about amongst people? Are you not going to support the president publicly but secretly put in a ballot? You know, these kinds of things? Why does that exist? Are you really living free if you’re allowing that to happen? See, I think in a lot of ways we have a choice on how freely we live in America. It’s your choice now. If you exercise your freedom and you share what’s on your mind in love in some ways, are you going to get some persecution or you get some feedback? Sure. But you know what? I would rather live free and deal with some of that than not. Mhm. Right.

Yeah, it’s true. I just want to read from James to real quick, it says in verse 18, but someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. Verse 19 says you believe that there is one God you do well, even demons believe in Trumbull. But do you not know a foolish man that faith without works is dead? And then it continues on talking about Abraham, our father, being justified anyway.

So this is a really important passage of scripture for understanding the importance of like actually living out what you believe. And this is where parents either pass on their faith or they don’t because they’re hypocrites by saying they believe something and not actually doing it.

Yeah. And then maybe you could reach out in your local area and see what groups are being formed to support conservative ideas during this election cycle or conservative people. Maybe your kids could go fold envelopes at some center that’s sending out things to voters.

Or maybe they write a really cute letter and they send it to a local legislator saying thank you for protecting our homeschooling rights are thank you for not making vaccinations.

You know, something that we all have to do or whatever it is that your your heart is fighting for or praying for, like you need to teach that to your kids and then encourage the people who actually do make the laws and protect the laws.

And we do believe you need to be politically activated. We don’t know what that means for you. That’s for you to decide as citizens, we all need to be politically activated. And so what does that mean for you? Right now? We have about forty days until the election. We got this Supreme Court justice is going to get battled right now. But she’s, you know, seems to be a strong believer in pro-life and very, very positive things and a dedicated mom.

You know, and again, like this is a thing, you guys, we we understand that when we bring up people like Charlie Kirk or Rob McCoy. Right. Like or even Amy. Right.

And we’re like pro them right now. We’re praying for them. We don’t have a personal relationship with them and know how they interact with their family and know, like what the integrity of their lives are.

And but we are praying for them. And you should be praying for them too that. At the least, that’s the action that you should be taking. And because they are up against a wire, they are going to be tempted. The devil is trying to catch them and he’s scheming because that’s what he does. Yeah. And we need to be aware that all the things that are happening right now, lawlessness, cancel culture, blame shifting fake news. It’s all sin, it is all sin and sin is bondage.

And Jesus died to set us free from bondage. And so are we as Christians. Just going to stand by while more bondage is put on God’s people, or are we going to stand up with our voices proclaiming Christ and goodness and loving people? Well, while also saying, hey, my voice matters and I’m going to stand up for truth.

And I realize there’s people from all over the world listening. So just take these same thoughts towards what’s happening in your own countries. And I’m sure you’re dealing with a lot of the same things. And when I say that I love the United States of America, if I lived where you lived, I would probably say I love Australia or something like, yeah, so. But I don’t know. But but I definitely love the United States of America. I love our Constitution and the protections in it. I love the how it was set up to create freedom for all people and how everybody’s equal in God’s eyes, all races, everything. And so and we just really believe that it’s important. And we have an incredible it’s exciting, most exciting time ever to be alive. And we can tell our kids that we should tell our kids they should not be fearful of the world. But sometimes we are fearful of the world when we’re not activated, when we don’t do something about it, even if, you know, you might think, well, what good is it going to do? Maybe none, but. You know what it does to you, you know it does to your family, it makes you hopeful and it tells your kids that we are people that take action towards righteousness and towards good things.

That’s right. I just want to leave you with a thought. It’s about self-censorship because I think this is like the biggest thing, right? Like people if you drive around in Oregon, you’re going to see a lot of biden bumper stickers and you’re not going to see a lot of Trump stuff. Right, because they could get their cars destroyed. And I’m not saying go get a Trump bumper sticker. That’s not what I’m saying. I just want you to evaluate if there are things that you have censored because you don’t actually feel the freedom to be truly, openly who you are, with your friends, with your family in your neighborhood, even at your church, even at your church, especially at your church. And I want to just bring something up that’s very important. We need to understand that humility equals no self censorship. And let me just explain to you what I mean. If you are censoring yourself, it’s because you’re afraid of what other people think and you’re protecting your ego. You’re protecting your reputation, which is not biblical to do that, right? Yes.

When I say censorship, I don’t mean self-control. Like, we should have self-control. We need to raise the bar higher. We need to like the other side is not having self-control over what they’re saying.

They’re printing things that are fake all the time, not doing do-diligence. Right. And they have an agenda. So we get to shine the light by being slow to speak about things. How long have I been in ministry like 12 years online?

This is the first time I’ve talked about politics. Yeah, talk about slow to speak. OK, they’re slow to speak. Slow to anger. It doesn’t mean not to be angry. Like there are things that like there is a righteous anger that babies are being murdered every day. It’s OK to grieve that and to be angry that that’s happening and that people are funding it and trying to get people to have abortions. It’s OK to be angry about that kind of stuff. It’s OK to be angry about injustices. Right. But we need to be quick to listen, slow to anger, slow to speak, slow to anger and quick to listen.

But self-censorship is not the same thing.

And so we need to evaluate that. We need to discern we need to be wise, have people speaking into our life and God calls us out of our comfort zone. If you’re walking in him, he’s probably got some awesome adventures for you in the future.

And I encourage you to listen to our last episode that talks about the challenge we’re facing, because if you want to know how to pray for us, you have to watch the whole thing hour and 54 minutes. If you want to have an opinion about what we’re doing, please don’t talk to us or message us until you’ve watched that. nd if after watching it, you have a different opinion. We’re OK hearing it. But what we have experienced is once people understand what actually is true and what actually is happening, we’re getting overwhelming support. And it is so encouraging because right now we are fighting to keep courageous parenting going. Why? Because if there’s slander, that’s not true. That leads to very dangerous things about our ministry, about what God is doing on the Internet, then that will deter people away from the ministry. And at some point we will not be able to continue. And so this is a battle for even truth, biblical truth, being able to be proclaimed and preached on the Internet. We are not going to recede, but we need your help. And this is a fight. So please pray for us. Please go to the courageous parenting and donate the so great to see all the people coming in and supporting us with action.

That’s right. Someone sent me a message that said Love is action and behind you expect a donation. I was like, whoa, that’s super convicting. But you know what? There’s a lot of other actions to you guys. Grace is an action. Yeah, grace is forgiveness. And it literally is a verb that you have to purpose to do. And I just want to encourage you guys that, like if you watch the other video, know that we have been praying for both of the women involved. Absolutely. All the whole time. And we’ve already forgiven them already. But just like when you forgive, like your family member who sins against you. Right. Like you, you don’t just let them continue in their sin if you love them because you understand that that sin is bondage and there is a truth. The truth will set you free. And so there are natural consequences to sin. And we don’t protect people from experiencing those because that’s God’s lovingly loving way of.

But we’re out and we’re absolutely seeing God’s favor in the actions we’re taking. We’re seeing him open up doors. And even in our move, it’s just been incredible. And we’ll talk more about that in another. The episode, so we owe you a couple episodes coming up, we’re definitely talk about why we’re pro Trump and in those kinds of things coming.

Yeah, God bless you guys. Take care. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.

For more resources, go to CourageousParenting.com And CourageousMom.comFor free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program, Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with the downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, Live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line.

Where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone if you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program to secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com.

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