Buckle your seat belt as Isaac and Angie get pretty intense in this one. As you hear the inside scoop on what it takes to do the ministry, all that’s involved, reflections, and insights into 2023; you will most likely be inspired by your own vision for the new year too. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT EPISODE as we all need to be courageous to serve and lead our families well during uncertain times.

Main Points From This Episode:

• It takes courage in a post-truth world
• Normal Christian rhythms aren’t working
• God is in control but He gave us important responsibilities
• Our mission is to equip God’s people to be courageous in uncertain times
• 10 million legacies movement explained (in the episode)
• Review of what happened this year
• Vision for 2023
• Behind the scenes look at how the ministry works and what’s happening

Scripture From This Episode:

2 Timothy 4:2-5 – “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

2 Timothy 3:1 – “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.”

Romans 12:2 – “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Joshua 1:9 – “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip 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 and the following. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Today is such a special episode as we’re celebrating.

We’re celebrating our fourth year doing the podcast. You guys, this is so exciting, just amazing.

And I know there’s so many because we hear it and we’d love to hear more of you that have been listening since the first episode or that are newer to it, but then started over at episode one and it’s just no matter how many you’ve listened to it, we’re just thankful.

Yeah, it’s been pretty awesome to see how God has been the one getting this out to people. It’s just been really cool to watch how the spirit has moved and we love hearing your testimonies as well. So we thought that today we would spend an episode as this is like the fourth anniversary of the Courageous Parenting podcast, doing a behind the scenes of the Be Courageous ministry.

Which is going to obviously have some practical insights in it. We’re never not going to do that, right? So buckle your seatbelt. But we thought it might be fun just to hear about some things we don’t normally share. Hear how the ministry did this year so far in terms of what God’s doing through it to impact people. And we’re just really encouraged, really by you. I mean, it’s just incredible to see how God’s using so many people to spread the word about what God’s doing with the be courageous ministry.

Yeah, it’s been exciting. So. Well, you guys, let’s just dive in here. We’ve had there’s a lot that we’re going to talk about behind the scenes. We’re going to talk a little bit about family. We’re going to talk a little bit about all the things that we do on a regular basis during the week. Isaac So why don’t you share, start sharing a little bit more?

Yeah, we’ll dive into more in a little bit. But yeah, you know, this is a family effort, meaning that Megan works weekly doing a lot of different things, mostly social media related, but we’re so thankful for her help. Austin, since near the beginning, has been doing production of the main podcast and the kids podcast as well when that started a year ago. So we’re just so thankful for his support. Obviously he has a full time career and job and he does that in his off hours to support the ministry. And of course we pay him and we pay Megan. And actually, I don’t know if you know this, the kids also all of the kids, minus Zander, he can’t quite speak very well yet. A few words here and there, but they all do kid episodes and they each get paid for that as well. Because if somebody is going to work and contribute, they deserve to be paid.

Yeah, due wages. It’s kind of cool. We started out the Courageous Kids podcast with the vision of trying to disciple our children in being able to teach their convictions and communicate what they believe and the things that they’re learning through God’s Word, or just in relationships on a daily basis that are very applicable to things that kids deal with on a daily basis. And we wanted them to also be getting some practice with. It’s kind of like a speech and debate, if you will, but on a different kind of scale, because they have to create a keyword outline, they have to get their thoughts together, the scripture that they’re going to use, and then they have to communicate and then we take care of it from there. Obviously, Austin edits podcast and then gets it in the app, but so.

But it’s all recently some friends asked us, Wow, it seems like, you know I think it was yeah some people that we go to church with and like you know it seems like you guys shoot the episode pretty close to when it goes out, right. You know? And we’re like, Yeah, we do. Definitely week of most of the time, sometimes even as close as the day before we’re shooting the podcast episode. The benefit of that is whenever you’re listening to a new episode, it is literally what the Holy Spirit has prompted us to talk about with whether we’re dealing with things in our own lives or we we’ve realized this is something people need help with. Or we got a recent question and it felt like, Wow, that’s what God wants us to.

Do, right? And I think too, that one of the things that’s been super helpful for us regarding finding topics to talk about on the podcast, just doing the Courageous Parenting Mentor program and the Q&A that we do every two weeks in the programs that we do every six weeks, that’s been really insightful for us and knowing what topics are relevant to talk about more in depth and prepare big, bigger messages on the podcast are generally how long Isaac, How long are each of our podcasts? For those who might be listening for the first time, they.

Are 30 minutes to an hour, and if you’ve been around a long time, you know that there’s probably only a handful that are actually 30 minutes. Most of them are 45 minutes to.

An hour, which is a lot longer than most podcasts that are out there for sure. I think that part of that is that, you know, when you listen to other podcasts, there’s a lot of opinion, there’s a lot of chit chat, there’s a lot of like banter and things like that in podcasts, at least that’s that’s one of the things that I’ve noticed in some podcasts. And for us, we really have chosen to not let that be the case. We really try to get to the point. We try to have points and sub points and scripture references, and we try to back up the things that we are teaching with Scripture as much. As possible because we would rather be pointing you guys to the word into like what our thinking is and what the Lord has impressed upon our heart biblically, rather than pointing you to just do what Isaac and Angie do. That’s not the point of the podcast or the ministry in any means. And so sometimes we even share the things that we’ve learned the hard way, right? Yeah. And talking about and the things that we’ve been convicted on, the things that we’ve had to confess to either people that we’ve been walking with in life or each other or kids and repent of, and then we teach on it years later or weeks later or whatever.

And we aim to only teach about what we have experience in. Yeah, and I think that’s important. And we really have a conviction that if we don’t if somebody asks a question and we don’t have firsthand experience, we tell them that first. We can also draw from other experiences and what we’ve heard from other people in the Bible. But we’ll always tell you, if we don’t have that firsthand experience ourselves, it’s super important, I think. And as there’s it’s a world full of experts trying to teach things. And in a lot of ways, that’s awesome. That’s great.

Yeah. But a lot of times those experts also haven’t lived through a lot of those things. So all they’re doing is regurgitating information that they read in another book, which is something that Isaac and I have really tried not to do unless it’s the book of the Bible. And we want to point you to Jesus and we want to point you to Scripture itself.

Amen. So I’m going to rip through this real quick. So just day in the life of the work behind the ministry and how to make it happen. Obviously, the kids are going to start with them beyond the podcast. They have to help watch kids when Angie’s involved. So if Angie’s ever involved and I’m also involved, then the kids are helping and they’ve been such troopers, they understand that it’s helping impact people and so forth. So that’s great content creation. That is something that is very important to come up with content that we’re inspired to give based on biblical truth. And obviously we do that with the podcast. We do that in the courses, the books, the things that we do. But as we look into next year and we’ll talk a little bit more about this later, we hope to do more new content creation and we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But that’s a major part of the ministry that we want to spend more time on customer support. That’s just something that goes with the territory, especially when there’s products and all the different things. People trying to get in courses, forgot their password, forgot how to get into a certain course.

We have several different platforms we use, so they’re not all in one place based on different reasons for that. So customer support is something that’s an everyday thing that’s happening and we try to have excellent customer support, get back to people right away, that kind of thing. Technology, we use lots of different pieces of technology we even use from WordPress to Squarespace to a webinar platform to a text messaging platform to I think we have six different websites. Technically, they’re all linked together through courageous ministry now. So lots of different technology. Technology breaks, things happen. Sometimes I can fix it, sometimes I need a professional person to that. We pay to fix those things so and keep them running also as tech on the tech side, there’s servers, right? So it was interesting as courageous parenting was growing, all of a sudden I got a reach out from the server company and they’re like, Hey, you know what? It’s taking a while for people to actually be able to load your pages because there’s so much traffic. I’m like, That is such fantastic news. That is great. Can I pay you more money? This is.

Awesome. Get a bigger bandwidth.

So we can, you know, and it actually is good news, meaning that it’s impacting more people. Praise the Lord. And so, you know, it’s actually quite a bit of money to have a large amount of traffic hitting websites and to be able to have a good experience. So these things are some things people might not realize.

Yeah. What are some other things, Isaac On the side of technology that that’s more on the practical side. I mean, you guys, if you’re watching us on Rumble, right? You see that there’s some mikes here and there’s some other technology, and sometimes those things don’t work the best, but we’ve been blessed to be using the same equipment for the past four years.

It’s amazing. It really is. This We’ve.

Replaced maybe one thing.

In a couple of cords, but really, really pleased with the technology. There are some things we haven’t upgraded one time since the original stuff, and some of it was given to us Praise the Lord. And so we’re just super thankful. But there are some needs on on equipment. But yeah, it’s it’s really not too complex actually what it takes to do a podcast. And obviously on the tech side we have three different course building platforms we also use.

So yeah, right software.

But right now social media is another aspect of it. Social media is an ever changing realm. I’m so thankful for Megan having a young mind.

Oh my goodness, keep us up to things that take would take me hours to do in like a matter of 10 minutes or something. It’s pretty incredible. So yeah.

So she, she keeps us up to speed with the. Changes in that world. But really, we’re so thankful for the Be Courageous app because now we can have a safer place of posting and other people posting where we can really speak our minds and other people can too.

But we’re still don’t have to worry about censorship. But we’re weird.

We’re still out there. We’re going to be wherever Christians are and and to encourage them and so forth. So social media is a daily part of the ministry. And it’s not just posting, by the way. It’s all the messages that come in. It’s all those different things. We’re not perfect at that side of it because there’s so much, but we try to get back to people and that kind of thing. There’s an effort constantly to reach more people that takes brainpower, that takes creativity, that takes know How do you do this If you’re not willing to advertise on Instagram and Facebook, which is.

The main place? And how do you grow a ministry when you have the enemy against you? Right? Like for us, we’ve experienced censorship. I know that especially the courageous mom platform has experienced a lot of that and is very, very obvious that they have put thresholds on me because you can tell when they let it off and when they put it back on and it’s really like night and day. Well.

Man gets it to when I talk about vaccines or things like that.

Yeah, yeah. So it’s like depending on what we do, we always know that if we’re going to post something that we’re willing to be like in time out for a couple of months, oh, they might have put us in time out again. But the reality is that that even like has been an issue with people being able to get a hold of me. I know that there have been times with social media where someone will dam me and I won’t actually get the message until like a month or two later. It’ll pop up, but it’ll have the date on when they sent it, because I keep my box clean at all times. And sometimes it really makes me mad because there’s like this last week there was an issue where there were two different women who are suffering miscarriages and were really looking for some advice on something like because one of them might have been in danger. And I was like, I didn’t even get this message for a month. And so they literally are putting people’s there was like a an issue of life in danger where I would have said, you need to go to air right now. And I hope that they did. But like, there’s just it’s frustrating because for other people to potentially think that affect my reputation, that I’m not getting back to them when in reality it’s that I’m not getting their message right. And so that element has been a constant challenge. Just even with my thinking, I have to take thoughts captive and not allow it to impact me.

Continuing to try to encourage people in the Lord and try to be the witness that I know that God has called me to be. But in that with social media, that’s one of the things that I’ve loved about the Be Courageous app since we launched that a year ago, is that there isn’t any kind of censorship in that way and people can get a hold of us a lot easier. Now another thing that has been a big thing that Isaac works on on a regular basis is just managing things. He talked a little bit about, you know, content with social media. He talked about technology, talk about customer support. And then there’s also like the weekly blog posts that go along with the each podcast. And I’m not sure if you knew that, but at be courageous ministry dot org, when you click on podcasts and that takes you to where all of our podcasts are, there is a transcript, there’s a video embedded, there’s an audio. So if you ever have an issue with being able to listen to one of the podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Stitcher or Google Play or Spotify or any of those places, sometimes things do happen in the future. I’m just giving you a heads up. You can always go to our website. You can also see the scripture references that we cover that are there as well as other links that we have that are like potential blog posts that we’ve written over the years that are going to be helpful on the same topic.

So yeah, and there’s of course administration, there’s, there’s managing coffee inventory and there’s just a lot of different things about it. And we’ll talk a little bit later why we’re doing that, which I think, you know, there’s also photography free. We have some gifted people closer to love photography. They’ve been great, Austin has been great.

We’ve had our son is a photographer as well. So that’s been helpful.

So, you know, but we always, you know, get help that way. And then advertising, we’re looking for new ways to we’ve done advertising in the past, ever since the presidential election in the US. We stopped, but we’re looking for alternative ways to advertise. That will be something for this year, but that takes quite a bit of work actually to manage production, production, work, producing things and so forth and having other people help in that. And I would say also protection, prayer is really important and other forms of protection too, because there’s really a target on your back when you’re doing Christian ministry. It should never discourage somebody. If somebody is thinking about that, it’s just something you have to be aware of. You should be praying, you should be rock solid in your marriage. You need lots of marriage communication. You need people praying for you. Because believe it or not, there’s actually probably people praying against you sometimes in. Evil people out there and so forth that want to do bad things. So that’s that’s an element that that is there. We have to be careful about certain things and so forth.

One of the things that I’ve always been encouraged in a weird sort of way is that if you aren’t experiencing the enemy’s attacks and you’re probably not a threat to him, and that’s probably one of the things that for me in the midst of it, because I get that question a lot from people like how do you handle da da da da da da? You know, all the things that I’ve shared over the years of just different attacks that we have had on ministry or on our accounts, whether it’s been people who have taken our pictures and started extra accounts and just been harassing us or stalking us. That’s also happened. Like there’s there’s certain things, but I go, you know what? That is the enemy. And I’m not going to let the enemy win. You have to get that like courageous spiritual Holy Spirit power activated where you go, Nope, I know that God has called me to this. This is just another sign that we are in the times that we are in. And I’m not going to stop because it’s about glorifying him. It’s not about me. And I think that hopefully if you’re in ministry and you’re listening to this, you’re going, amen. And because I hope that that’s an encouragement to you to keep going, we need more Christians to be rising up and to be purposefully sharing how God has impacted their lives. That’s testimony. That’s what you know, when I think about the Bible. Isaac One of the things that is just so impactful on me is that it is recount of history, right? It’s God’s it’s his story. His story, right? It’s history. And in there is tons of testimonies of men, human men and women just like us, the mistakes they made and then the ways that God redeemed those things, that he brought beauty from ashes, the ways that people glorified him. And it’s all about God. And I just I love that because we get to be walking history, right, in the sense that we are to be pointing people to Christ just as the people of old were.

Yeah. Amen. Amen. So I thought we’d just take a moment and talk about some of the really cool things that have happened this last year. And then we’ll share some vision that could encourage you to, as you cultivate your own vision for your family and those things. This is a time of year to do that. And if you haven’t listened to a full episode on Vision, listen to podcast episode number one from four years ago. So anyways, some really cool things that have happened. Did you know that the podcast has been downloaded over 184? Actually, precisely. 184 countries this year? That’s amazing, you guys. The podcast isn’t translated into other languages. That means English speaking people in 184 countries are listening to the podcast. I wanted to share some really. We’re so encouraged by this. And you can think about the geopolitical and the the challenges and the persecution of the church and some of these different areas. And people are listening to the Courageous Parenting podcast I ran, by the way, is number 90.

No.

Way number nine on the list of 184 countries in terms of total downloads, Iran, somehow our podcast is making it into that country. Turkey is number 770, by the way. Number 70. Whoa, Uganda number 51 out of 184 countries in terms of downloads. So we’ll just do a count up here. 40 number 47 is Russia. That’s so cool.

Yeah, I.

Love that we’re encouraging people there. And obviously we speak to biblical truth, parenting, marriage, but also what’s happening in the world. We do speak to those things and preparing and these kinds of things. Number 40 is Israel. That’s really neat. I love that. Number 33 is China. Can you believe it? A closed country, a close like Iran and China and and the underground churches there. And they’re listening to the podcast. Number 29 is South Korea. Number ten is Sweden. That’s kind of neat. Number nine, Mexico, number eight, the Netherlands. That’s like Norway and other Scandinavia, things like that. Right? Number seven, Germany, number six, New Zealand, number five, South Africa. That is fantastic. That’s crazy. That kind of surprised me.

That does.

Yeah, that’s really cool. Number four, the UK, number three, Australia, number two, Canada and number one USA. So I just thought that was that encouraged my heart.

Oh it does. This is the first time I’m hearing this, you guys. And I’m just like, We’re in Turkey, we’re in Russia, we’re in China. That’s awesome.

Yeah. And how powerful would that be? Maybe at some point we need to raise funds to translate or have some company that translates the podcast and pick like one language first. That would be most meaningful.

That could be something that’s something we should definitely pray about. And if you guys have that’s interesting, please contact.

I know some podcast do that and that could be interesting to reach more people. So also just the number of downloads, this is really encouraging too. The number of downloads for the podcast grew 23% this year over last year. Wow. So that’s big.

That’s really big. That’s almost a quarter.

And you know why that happened? Because you shared.

It, right? Because we literally, literally were not doing any advertising. We’re just plugging away.

Using people to expand the ministry. It’s so encouraging. This isn’t about dollars. This is about impact. This is so.

Cool. Well, the podcast is free. So yeah, in that sense, I mean, it’s amazing. It’s actually an expense.

Well, it’s free to everybody.

It’s free. Free to everybody else. Yeah.

So in November, for example, I believe it was our best month ever this last month, which was 90,673 downloads.

Unbelievable.

So that is so cool that November was so large and it’s incrementally growing and this year is going to be the first year over 1 million downloads for the year.

For one year.

For one year. That’s one episode every week, a million downloads. I don’t know how many people that is. I have no idea. Actually. That’s pretty cool, though. I can’t get those analytics, but that’s really, really cool and we’re so encouraged by that. I hope you are too, and you’re part of all of that, which is great. So anyways, I think we’ll come back to some of that in a little bit, but I think we should go into a little bit of vision and we’re going to talk about some exciting things that we plan to do this next year too. But I hope this is encouraging to you to even create a vision for your own family and or whatever you’re doing. But really, as I think about it and as we think about it, it takes courage to live in these times as a Christian. And it’s no longer where, like in the US, maybe ten, 15 years ago it was pretty much freedom of expression about your faith.

Without persecution, without persecution. I remember the time when people would look like if you said you were a Christian, then I know that for myself I just automatically gave a little bit more trust to those people because I was like, Oh, they’re more, more moral, they’re more safe, they’re more like minded. Like as a child and a teenager, I remember thinking that way and it’s just not so anymore. There’s this there’s a difference between Christian and biblical Christian as we when we communicate in our conversations, you know, in our marriage, we’re like, wow, there’s really a difference, actually. And I think that it’s an important difference that needs to be taught to our children today, because the most dangerous deception is those who claim to be Christian but are teaching false things or living in a way with unrepentant sin. They’re choosing lifestyles that are biblically sinful, and it’s a choice and they know it, and they’re justifying their sin versus living in light. They’re living in darkness. That is the most dangerous for your kids, right? The people who are doing that and claiming to be Christians. And so like teaching your children that there’s like biblical Christians or people who are actually living what the Bible says as best as possible.

And so it takes courage to parent biblically. It takes courage to have it biblical marriage. It takes courage to nourish your marriage when there could be so many distractions. It takes courage to have the discipline needed. It takes courage to stand for truth, to proclaim truth, to disagree with somebody, even in a loving way, about your your biblical stance on something. And the enemy is trying to kill, steal and destroy. He’s using three main avenues as we see it is is destroying biblical marriage, destroying biblical gender, and confusing people about sex. And those three things are rampant around the world in distortion. And the enemy is full of distortion, and God is a God of complete, infallible truth.

And I would even say there’s I mean, obviously always been an attack on life just in general. But this is just another avenue. When Isaac’s talking about gender confusion and confusion about sex, like, obviously that also is an attack on life, isn’t it? Because procreation truly can only uniquely happen one way and that’s God’s way. And so when there is confusion, obviously less life is occurring, which that is what the enemy wants because he hates life. And so we have to understand that, like all of this comes down to the truth about who God is, the truth about who our enemy is, and understanding those things and choosing to walk in a biblical way. But with your eyes wide open, it takes courage to have your eyes wide open as a parent in today’s society because there are things that could potentially overwhelm parents. Am I right? We we did a whole podcast on this, right? Megan and I sat down together, our 18 year old daughter, and we talked about, are you scared for your children’s future? Because that is truth, right? That there is an element when you look at what world they’re potentially inheriting, meaning like the people that are in it and the sense that are being deemed legal. And when I say legal, I don’t mean biblically lawful sins that are being deemed legal and and how that has influenced. Nominal Christians and the mass majority of society just to follow along. It does take courage to look at that with your eyes wide open and go, Oh, I’m so and not go. I’m so overwhelmed, I’m going to ignore it, but instead go, That’s the truth. I need to teach my kids and I need to protect my children. And that’s going to require making some hard decisions today.

It takes courage to make the unpopular, but better choice to see droves of believers going in a direction, parents and others, and to say, No, I’m going to go in this other direction. I know it’ll be unpopular, but it’s better. It takes courage to do that. Be courageous. That’s why this last year we changed the name of the ministry to be courageous ministry because it takes courage. Believers need to be encouraged to be more courageous, because if we’re not, it’s not going to work out very well. In a post-truth world, we’re living in a different time, a different world. It’s the speed of change is accelerating. We’re never to parent in fear. We’re not to operate in fear. God says, Don’t fear anything. He says. Respect and love me and know that I am in control, which is awesome. But we have responsibility, of course. So. So we’re in a post-truth world. It takes courage to do so. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet? It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night to 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 courageous parenting dot com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything at courageous parenting dot com. 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 from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot 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 in creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings 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 biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the 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 your self 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 lights to be leaders for the next generation.

Second, Timothy four two through five says preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching for the time is coming When people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And we’ll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober minded, enduring suffering. Do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. We look at that scripture and go, That is what we’re doing.

Well, and I love that this says Fulfill your ministry. So every person that is sitting here listening to this, this is something that God is calling us all to. As for you, always be sober minded. How do you be sober minded? It means you’re going to take the rose tinted glasses off and you’re going to look at the reality of how the world is. You know, there’s two kinds of people in the world. There are those people that are the glass half empty and the glass half full. Right. Truthfully, I’m just going to say we all know that. And sometimes even the people who are the half glass full people have a negative day. Sometimes you just wrong. Wake up on the wrong side of the day bed. Right. And you just have like you’re more pessimistic maybe that day and you need to get in the word and have your mind renewed. Yes. But what we’re talking about is regardless of if you are a half glass full, regardless of if you’re a half glass empty kind of person, you need to see truth for truth and you need to operate in reality. I mean, making parental decisions based upon the reality of how our world is today and knowing what God’s Word says and how we’re supposed to respond to those truths about the sin in the world today. Do you know what I’m saying? Sometimes I think that even like I think that there’s this people kind of put other people who are on like on a pedestal or people who have the ability to be half glass full people.

They’re like, Man. I just wish I could be more like that. But can I just say that one of the pitfalls that those types of people fall into is that they will gloss everything over is going, Oh, it’s OC, it’s OC, And then what happens? Their children end up getting injured, either spiritually or physically or emotionally, because they’re not doing their job to protect the way God has called them to or they don’t fully fulfill the jurisdiction’s that God has called them to do and their responsibilities walking in this ravaged generation, in this fallen world. Right. If you’re constantly trying to look for the good all the time, like yes, God’s Word says to meditate on things that are true and pure and well. Oc But is that only good things says true? Truth. Right? And so sometimes you do have to go, och, this is the reality of what we’re dealing with so that you can make a wise decision. Right. And so I just bring that up because this is saying always be sober minded, This is a word to all of us. And then it says, Fulfill your ministry. So what is your ministry?

Right. Amen. Right. And it also says in let’s see here, right in the beginning it says.

Second. Timothy three one.

Thank you. Second, Timothy three one. But understand this. The last days there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to the parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappealable slanderous without self control, brutal, not loving, good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God having the appearance of godliness but denying its power avoid such people from among them are those. So anyways. And it goes on and on. So this is so important to realize because the normal Christian rhythms are not working to have fruitfulness. Most children who launch from Christian homes are be are launching and denouncing their faith, even if they went to church every week, even if the parents had some conversations with them, even those that frankly have accepted the Lord. You’re watching droves of children fall away from the faith. And I don’t want to get into a theological discussion about that, but we all can agree that that’s happening. And so the normal go to church on Sunday, put your kids in all the programs and. Live isn’t working very well. It takes parents discipling their children. It takes parents having open communication and discussing things where children feel comfortable talking about their unbelief because of how they’re being raised instead of being in a kind of a religious home. It’s a relationship home, and it’s in your cultivating and pointing them to Jesus. And you’re having these discussions and you’re discipling, you’re teaching the Bible. They see the physical Bible being opened not just on Sundays, but all during the day.

And they have their own Bibles and they’re praying, they have their own prayer lives. And they you know, there’s this authentic Christianity happening. There’s this authentic experiencing God. Parents are giving credit and glory to God. The father for prayer requests they prayed with their children together on. And two weeks later, they’re circling back and going, Wow, look how God answered that prayer. See, a lot of these things don’t not aren’t happening because they don’t naturally happen in this world, because it goes against the culture of normal Christianity. And I hate that that’s the case. But we’re in a post-truth world. There’s so much pressure, access to anything through technology. There’s so many distractions that it takes an intentionality that’s different than previous generations to equip confident Christian kids to launch into this world, into the future world. That’s even more change than today. We’re not preparing them for today. We’re preparing them for a future world. So remember that scripture is accurate about today. The Bible is becoming more relevant as things progress in time. It’s always relevant, right? But, you know, sometimes people think, oh, is that still relevant today, especially young people. And we’re constantly showing our kids how it’s even more relevant, how it’s incredibly relevant in everything. And so now so just be careful of that. And some people, some people call it nominal Christianity, which is, you know, they believe in Jesus, but they’re just really isn’t very much spiritual leadership. There just isn’t that component of relationship with God and relationship of their kids.

And.

Then bringing them all together and experiencing God together. It’s just there’s there’s a drought. And our ministry, which is really God’s ministry that he has us stewarding, is to wake people up, is that we have to be courageous in these times. We have to go against the grain. We have to be willing to look like a fool Sometimes for the sake of the godliness of our families.

We have to be willing to be like like people, like the disciples that try to walk out on water. Right. Like it takes courage to walk out on the water towards Jesus and to take that step of faith. And I think over and over again, as a mom, how many times has God called me to be doing something that maybe wasn’t the normal thing that I grew up with or wasn’t the normal thing that I’ve ever seen before with anyone else before? Right. And or or what the world says is just weird. Like, I even think about having our sixth child or having our seventh child or having our eighth or being pregnant for the ninth time, 10th time, 11 time. Like every time I have felt this like more, I’ll be honest, I felt more alone from the world, but closer to God, because what he’s calling me to do each of those times, which is just between I’m just sharing my own personal testimony in this. This is just one way that God has called me to be courageous. And I know that it’s like it’s caused my walking in obedience has not caused division. But I think that with other people, it’s caused them to think and then they they just it affects them somehow. And either our relationships grow stronger or they don’t. Do you know what I mean? And so it’s it’s become the thing that it’s like, well, do we actually live what we believe when we believe that life is a gift? Do we actually live that? Do our kids see evidence of that in our lives? And then I think about like just even the choice that we made for me to be a stay at home mom, to be a one income family all those years ago and to to choose for me to be at home with them so that they would not be in daycare, they would not be with other people.

Like there were a lot of sacrifices along the way as the world would look at it. But for us, we looked at it as it was our ministry. We didn’t look at it as sacrifice in that regard. Amen. And but it did take courage because there were people who opposed us in every single decision that we made. And now what’s awesome is that 23 years later, some of those same people are our biggest cheerleaders, that are our biggest supporters, and they’re like, Wow, look at what you God has done through you guys. And good job. And and I share that with you. Not to impress you, but to share with you. If you’re in a stage where you feel like you’re making decisions where maybe your family isn’t supporting or maybe you’re you’re realizing, well, I don’t know. They’re not as like minded. Those friends that we were going to church with, why are they doing that with their kids? We would never do that. Maybe you’re thinking those things. Maybe you’re dealing with those situations. I have to encourage you to be courageous and do what God has called you to do. Do not allow the people pleasing human flesh in you to change your actions in your decisions, because this is about you being obedient to what God has called you to.

Now, here’s the really good news. God is in control. God is sovereign. He loves you. He loves your children, He is working, he’s active, and he wants deep relationship with us and with your children. And that is really, really encouraging. But we don’t just know that and believe that and forget about that. God gave us responsibilities. He gave us jurisdictions and authority in our children’s lives on purpose. In fact, you are the God authorized authority that has the most influence, at least as supposed to, and to be the spiritual leaders on Earth. Most important ones. There might be others, like a pastor and so forth. But you’re the most important ones to to to teach, equip disciple the children. And so that is so important in. Romans Thank you. On Romans 12 one through two, it says, I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. And then it goes into this really famous scripture that we love do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by the testing, but sorry that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So we have a responsibility to discern what is good, not go with the flow, go along to get along with other believers. It is to discern, is this the very best thing for my kids education? Is this the very best thing for my children’s health is it’s a very best thing for peer influences. This is the very best thing for their character. Is this the very best thing for their future is the very best thing for the world. They’re going to be launching into verse, or am I preparing them for a world that’s past that I grew up in? And so we have to discern we have to have a renewing of our mind. Sometimes we have to forget what we cared about, what we loved, the experiences we loved, and realize that those experiences have to be a little different today for the protection and discipleship of our children.

So that our kids are actually equipped. Like Isaac was saying, for the future that they are going to be launching into. But also for now, I think that children, more than anything, especially if you have young adults and you have teenagers, can I just like put in a little tip here? Your kids need to know that God has a purpose for their life today. God has a purpose for them right now. Their life does not begin when they graduate. It does not begin when they launch from your home. It does not begin when they get married and they have kids. It has begun from the moment that they were born. Amen. And God has had a purpose for them. But are you raising them up with the excitement and the enthusiasm for what that is, for growing them up in spiritual maturity? Right. That they would move from milk to meat like Paul teaches us? Like that is an exciting journey that we as parents get to facilitate, cultivate, nurture water, and witness it grow.

Amen. So God is in control, but we have responsibilities and we need to take those responsibilities seriously. And the world has changed. Just different ballgame. Like are we playing with the old strategy or the new strategy that is needed now? The biblical truth never changes, but. There are new situations today. There’s new threats. The enemy is posing against families. There is the purposeful desire by the enemy. It’s evident. The World Economic Forum, all of these things that are happening, you think politics, politics, international stuff, all the different things happening is really a war on God. It’s a war on God’s goodness, and it’s a war on how God set up the family. It’s a war on all of these things. It’s a war on freedom. Right? And so we have to understand that we have responsibilities. It will equip our children for a different world. And by the way, if we’re being intense, it’s because God gave us a prompting, a vision. Yeah. To be serious about these things for the sake and benefit of his people.

Well, it’s his Titus to command. And we recognize that we’re in a season now with having older children and having learned a lot. And we still have a lot to learn. And but we realize that, like for us, there were many gaps and holes in seasons where we wish we had mentors in people who had done it well, where we could say, Hey. What is your advice in this to be able to seek wise counsel? And there were many dry seasons. There were seasons where we had mentors, like when we lived in Portland, and then there were drier seasons that we didn’t have people that we really looked up to because of fruit in their life and we wanted. And instead those was the season where God had us teaching others. And so we recognize and we hear it from you guys all the time, that you’ve asked people to mentor you. And people say, no, we are saying yes to the command and the call to be Titus, to men and women. And even though it’s it’s a little bit different because it’s virtual. Right. We’re hoping that the transparency that we bring in these podcasts on a weekly basis are a huge encouragement to you guys because that’s part of the mission.

Well, and the Bride of Christ is active. The church is active all over the world, and God is doing something God deeply cares about the church. There’s no perfect churches and those kinds of things. But one of the things that we were told in starting the ministry a little behind the scenes here is that and we notice too, is that the really isn’t a lot of discipleship of parents in the church, right? There isn’t a lot of really practical equipping, biblically based equipping in the local churches. Now, if you have that, praise the Lord.

That’s.

Amazing. I think God has had us in others to to try and help fill that gap. And if you can find it locally, that’s always the best. Look for it and find it. But we hope to maybe fill some some of the gaps in in that in that God has put us on a mission. So our mission it’s on the front of be courageous ministry dot org the new website. This year our mission is to equip God’s people to be courageous and uncertain times. And so we’re so committed to that. And that has to do with marriage. That’s to do with parenting, and it has to do with even impacting kids. Now we have the Kids podcast in the Be Courageous app. We’re really committed to all people and I’m sure we’ll be sharing about being grandparents to eventually.

Yeah.

Which is pretty cool. But Joshua one nine, the signature verse, you guys all know about, have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous, Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord. Your God is with you wherever you go. Isn’t that encouraging?

I love that verse. There’s another one that’s in Deuteronomy 31 that’s very similar, where Moses is telling Joshua to be courageous. It’s in Deuteronomy chapter 31. Let me see if I can just get it here, says. Be strong and courageous. First five Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. And I think that both of those verses going together is such a huge encouragement, especially for parents who are operating in reality and recognizing the truth of the world. God is not forsaken us. He is not left. And I’m actually encouraged and I hope you guys are too. I hope that you are raising your kids with an excitement and enthusiasm that God has actually designed them and made them and chosen them to be in their generation for a reason. These are exciting times to be living in, not times to be dreading being in. Right. And that is what we need to be encouraging our children with. But we also need to be equipping them, which is one of the reasons why Isaac and I have felt like God was calling us to expand our goal, if you will, right? Originally when we started four years ago, it was a 1 million legacy, right? And God had has already been impacting so many people and we just feel like he’s saying, Hey, think bigger, you guys. Yeah. So we’re at what, hon?

Well, 10 million legacy movement. And when we say that this is what it means, we feel like God has called us to have an indelible impact on 10 million families, to live biblically, parent biblically, and launch offspring, launch their children into the world as strong Christians equipped and ready to do the same through their families and through their communities. So think about the impact of this. This is what gets me excited, right, is if the ministry, if God can use the ministry to impact 10 million families, what is that in the next generation and the next generation, it is exponential and the influence of all those believers. And so we’re really excited about it. We appreciate it when you’re excited about it. Sometimes on social media when people share, I’ll say, Hey, thanks for furthering the 10 Million Legacies movement because it literally is right. Every time you give a review you share, you give us an encouragement. We need it. You give, you donate on the website, you buy a course, you you buy a hat, you buy a mug to remind yourself to be resolute or be courageous. All of that stuff helps this thing keep moving and we so appreciate it and we need it. Frankly, it’s it’s it’s really important. All of it’s.

Important. That’s right. I even wanted to share with you guys this is one of the passages in Scripture that’s been a huge encouragement to Isaac and I over the years to even just audit. And as we’re headed into holidays and New Year and I just think this is a good thing for us to always have at the forefront of our our minds. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. And that is like the foundation of this ministry is that we have been letting the Lord build this ministry. But also we have dedicated our family and our home for the Lord to build. And we pray that you would be dedicating your family, your marriage, your home, that the Lord would be building it so that those who build it don’t labor in vain, Wright says. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are our heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, A reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is a man who has fills his quiver with them. He will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. You guys, this is the time that we’re living in where there are enemies in our gates, there are enemies in the social media, there are enemies in our workplaces.

There are. There are. Like I when I was a child, I remember reading verses about enemies and going well, But that just doesn’t even make sense. Because if we’re living as Christians and we’re nice to people, then how would we ever have an enemy? Well, there is pure evil that hates goodness, that hates nice. Actually, there is pure evil that is out to steal, kill, destroy. And it is masquerading as light. That’s why the Bible warns us about false teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need to teach our children about these. Just like in the verse that we recently read that says Avoid such people, Avoid them. It literally was the last sentence. Avoid such people three words. And that is how Christians are. Actually, we’re supposed to do a certain discernment in this world and make decisions out of courage versus just what the nominal normal Christian rhythms where like we were talking about that are like, Oh, just tolerate it all. Listen, let it all in, let it all in. Well, that’s how it infects the body of Christ. And God wants his church to be blemish free. He wants us to be holy because he is holy. That is not a self righteous message. That is a. God righteous.

Message. Amen. So to wrap it up in the last few minutes here, we just want to share this year our 52 episodes, over 200 encouraging social media posts. A lot of work goes into those, by the way, make sure the biblically accurate to write them out, to design all that stuff. You know be courageous site this year that was launched the app that was you know kind of started the end of the previous year but really all happened this year and launching coffee the be courageous coffee the courses over 385 people took the parenting mentor program that’s growth by the way, over the previous year. And so just really amazing to see people taking seriously their parenting to a new level. And already the coffee is supporting, helping. It’s a piece, small piece. It’s about 1000 a month to be candid with you, of supporting the ministry. So we so appreciate it. We literally needed that. So, so thankful we started that there’s some revenue areas that for the ministry and for our family that have disappeared. And the reason is out of standing for truth. We we dropped something that wasn’t directly ministry but provided a good amount of money this last year. And so it is important. So we’re looking to the ministry to completely provide for our family when it actually has been subsidized by my consulting and past something Angie was doing. And those things are disappearing. And so because we’re so bold for the faith and and now there’s so much work to be done that we really are trying to find other ways.

And we’re not a nonprofit because we really believe that there’s going to be increasing pressure on nonprofits to move away from biblical truth in those three areas I highlighted earlier and others. And you’ll see it start to happen because they want to preserve their nonprofit status because they only survive through donations and that everybody’s conditioned, you know, a lot of people are conditioned to give only when it’s a nonprofit. So because of that, we are not going that route, although we’re operating very much just like a nonprofit. But we’re not going to do that because we don’t. We want preservation of freedom of speech so that biblical truth can be proclaimed. And we never get in that moment where, like, should we share this about marriage? Should we share this about gender, Should we share this about what’s the truth around sex and and in these different things? We’re never going to purposely put the ministry in that kind of jeopardy. Yes, jeopardy, I believe it is to go the nonprofit route. And so that is the why behind that. We think we’re being wise. We think that as we go into the future, there’s going to be increased pressure for nonprofits not to say the truth. And they’ll have to wrestle with the ones that are. We’ll have to wrestle with that.

And I and even wrestle with the different things that they’ve had to sign off on, if you will, when they become a nonprofit to say that they won’t participate in, whether that’s talking about political issues and different things like that, like we just believe that literally every aspect of our life involves God and faith and that God can’t be compartmentalized out of those things. So, yeah, our faith should impact how we vote Yes, Our faith should impact how we buy things and where we buy things and who we endorse. And so those are not popular things to talk about.

And by the way, I feel complete freedom to post anything, and I want to keep that. That is so important. If God prompts me to share something, I want to be able to share it. And amen. So that’s be courageous ministry. We’re trying to steward it really well and we appreciate your help with that. So this year, so many cool things happened and we’re so excited about next year, 2023, we aim to do over 100 new podcast episodes. So for both podcasts, so the kids.

For both podcasts, I’m.

Like.

We’re going to do a week. Oh my goodness.

No. But it might even be more because you know what, I’ve been saying this for a while and it’s just been a matter of priorities, but I’ve got to get the Resolute Man podcast going just because.

I feel so many people asking.

About and I just feel like a burden. I feel a burden to do that. I really feel like God has given me some wisdom around this. And I think that and we’ll have some guests on and stuff. I just think it’s so important. So it would be way more than 100 episodes, would be three podcasts a week, hopefully. And that’s not counting Be Peculiar, which is Meghan’s ministry, right? So it’s not even part of be courageous ministry. She’s 18, she’s starting, be courageous or sorry, be peculiar. And so but that’s that’s separate books. We really want to create more content. We have books written, but there’s more books to be written. It’s time to start writing some books again and and to really get the ones done that we’ve already written. And we need some equipment. There’s there’s real needs for.

The skills we need people that actually have skills even more than equipment in that sense. Right. That can come alongside us and help us with like interior.

If you want to help, you can be courageous ministry. Reach out and you can reach out and things like that if. Have skills on book editing and these kinds of things.

Where even just like lifting the burden on certain things like customer service or I don’t even know what we would be looking for, but then that would provide you more time to do the Resolute man.

And we hope to do tons of free content in the Be Courageous app. Obviously the app has a small monthly fee, but we want to do tons of free content in there. Angie’s already been doing a weekly live in the birth and pregnancy. She’ll probably do in the Courageous mom next and she just is really committed to weekly doing a live and Q&A. And then we do a monthly live Q&A together and they’re so we’re really committed to lots of free content in the be Courageous app. It’s safer. We can really be ourselves. You can be yourself. Talk about those things and A supports the ministry for a very small amount, which is amazing so that we have a vision for expanded impact. 1.3 million downloads this next year for the podcast, the Courageous Parenting podcast alone, we’re super thrilled and encouraged by having you on the journey with us, so we so appreciate it. We hope this episode was helpful.

Yeah, Thanks so much for joining us, you guys. We’ll see you next time. And Merry Christmas. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com for 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 a downloadable parenting packet 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 Webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragements straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com