There’s a lot you can do to cultivate a stronger Biblical community right where you are or even if you move somewhere new! As you may know the Tolpin’s moved to a new state seven months ago despite having strong Biblical community right where they were. They give an update on building new community in Idaho and share six keys that will help you right now!  There’s a lot of change happening around all of us over the past year and it’s more important than ever to run the race with other Biblically minded people you trust during these increasingly uncertain times. Listen to this episode and ask yourself honestly where your opportunities exist to cultivate the kind of community that’s good for your whole family.

Main Points In This Episode:

There are eight major points in this episode:

1. 1. During change lead your children well with ample communication and vision
   2. Have the confidence in the Lord to be fully who you are (Online too)
   3. Don’t let fear stop you
   4. Put relationships first and practice hospitality
   5. Be discerning when meeting people but don’t have a critical spirit
   6. Be out in the community
   7. People are in three different places (or you could be a fourth perhaps)
      – Willing to sacrifice Biblical standards to be a part of their community
      – Make their strong community an idol
      – Cultivate a real Biblical community while not sacrificing God’s plans for their lives.
   8. Here are reasons you may be desiring to build new community
      – You are thinking of or have already moved to a new place
      – Covid restrictions dismantled your community
      – You are desiring to run the race with people sincerely striving to live Biblically

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

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. And. Hey, welcome, everybody, to the podcast. Good to have you back.

Hey, guys, still here and pregnant.

And back in the studio. Great to be back home from vacation. Lake Havasu was gorgeous.

It was awesome. And I have to just encourage you guys, because there are places that are operating

In full freedom. Oh, no masks. Yeah, no. No masking at all over there in Lake Havasu. We checked that out before. We would have never gone somewhere that required us to, you know, do that kind of thing

Because we would have been dreaming of being back home, which is we did the opposite of

Idaho. Idaho has been amazing. But anyways, that’s not what this episode’s about. What we’re talking about today is how to create a biblical community wherever you are. And there might be many reasons why this is interesting right now because, well, you might be thinking of moving or you have moved or there’s other reasons to like covid could have shut down

Your church

community or relationships or caused you to reevaluate relationships and things like that. A lot of change has been happening. Right.

We’ve actually been getting I mean, I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of messages about this particular topic, about how do you how do you find new people? In a lot of times it is families that have just recently relocated somewhere. They knew No one. Yeah. And they moved in faith. And they’re like, how do I how do I build community? How do I get the community that I see you hanging out with and stuff, things like that? Yeah. And and so we thought that it would just be a really relevant thing for us to cover. It’s going to be edifying for everyone, though, and this is why the reality is, is that at some point in your life, you’re likely to experience either moving changing communities, changing churches, changing schools, work, whatever it is that helped you to build the community that you’re in. And wouldn’t it just be better to be prepared before that happens?

Absolutely. So we really narrowed it down in thinking about this, that there’s really three groups and you can self identify yourself in one of these groups. So maybe there’s a fourth one we didn’t mention. But so that’s always you could be the case for sure. But the first one is willing to sacrifice biblical standards for their current community,

Meaning, you know, this year especially, I think a lot of people didn’t really realize that people that they thought were in their community from church or whatever, they actually had completely different views on things that are actually more of the close handed issues as a Christian, because there’s close to it issues, there’s open handed issues, and you need to really discern those. Of course, we’re not getting into that. Yeah, but a lot of people became aware for the first time, whoa, I’m not as like minded with that person or that family as I thought I was for the last six years or two years. And that’s what we’re talking about, being you. You might be in this turmoil of like I really like them, but I can’t sacrifice this truth.

Remember, we’re raising kids that are watching and you want them you want to ask yourself at all times, do I want my kids to replicate all the things that I am doing? And so this is one of those areas. And the second one of the groups is what,

Making an idol out of community, which is a huge thing. If you guys have heard us for a while, we actually did a podcast on not making an idol out of family. Yeah, we’ve talked about not making it. I had a lot of marriage or work. This is not a podcast all about that. But this is an important issue within this podcast because a lot of times people will make decisions. Yeah. Like where they’re going to live or where they’re going to go to church or where like who they’re going to spend time with because they’ve made an idol out of their community because things are so awesome. Right. And this was something that Isaac and I, we’ve been blessed a lot over the years with many great communities, that little that we absolutely loved. And, you know, I’ll be honest, we even made decisions to stay where our community was when it was easier. Well, because it was we just love them so much instead of moving back to where like our Damascus vineyard, right?

Oh, there was a time. Just quick story. We had a beautiful estate in outside of Portland where we did the vineyard. We were renting it. We had moved to Bend,

Renting it out to people,

Out to people. We moved to bend, we felt led to do that Bend, Oregon, and developed great community there. And it came up to a point where financially almost it looked like it was more responsible and perhaps a better decision to move back to our estate in because it would have

Been better to Paramount. And it was

A beautiful house house near the whole deal and probably could have worked that out in an amazing way. But we felt led to stay in bend mostly because. Community, strong community, which ended up being the right decision, right?

And so the reason why we wanted to share this little story with you is because this is making there you need to evaluate. Right in that situation. We had not made a of community, but we evaluated it actually talked about this concept of like, OK, are we making this decision because of the community the God’s blessed us with? And though that was a huge decision. Yeah, I mean, that was a huge part of our decision. It really had to still wind down to what is God calling us to do. We want to obey him, but then later set aside the things that we loved, like we are a great community to really evaluate what God wanted.

And later that community was even stronger and even more blessed by community. Later and we decided to move states so much.

Right. And so what the point is in this is you have to evaluate if you’ve made an idol out of community and be careful not to do so so that you can actually hear God

Calling you to do something else. Betray your Matthew six thirty three, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all of these things will be added to you. So seek first the Kingdom of God. There should be no idols, even the idol of friendship.

Right. Or like so seeking wise counsel, like in all of the decisions that we made, we always did go to people and say, hey, this is what we’re thinking. What do you think? However, you have to seek first the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God.

You can hear him clearly.

You can hear him clearly. You do get wise counsel, but you have to hear God’s voice. And sometimes you guys have heard this many times. Sometimes what God is calling you to do can seem very countercultural. Yeah. To well, other people might be doing or seen. And that’s OK. You the point is, is that you need to be confident in an alignment in your marriage and making your decision, and it has to be from prayer fasting. So the kingdom

Our hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make always were the more fruitful on the other side, the ones that looked oddist

Right. And you know, and this as we look back, that specific verse that you were just talking about, too, I think the thing that is so encouraging about it is that says seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you. I don’t want to I don’t want to ignore and all these things shall be added to you. We’re talking about the desire that people have to build community. Yeah. If you are seeking the kingdom of God first, all these things, the desires of your heart to have biblical community be added will be added to you. So if you’re following God’s will and so it’s a matter of trusting, well,

We’ve got a dime. So the third one is called to be real biblical community and not sacrifice God’s plan for your life and God’s promptings in your life. And so sometimes if we have something that’s an idol, we can miss God’s promptings. So that’s what we’re going to talk about, how to do that. So, like I said, you might be building community for different reasons and you might be just realising I want to join I want to cultivate a community around me with where our biblical standards align. We’re really running the race together, adhering to the Bible. And I hope that’s what you want.

And that’s a good thing. Before we jump in, that’s a really good thing to desire. But you never want to build community ever at the expense of biblical truth. Right? And so this is something that we have definitely learned over the years, like as far as like mindedness and fellowship with other believers and going to even larger churches. Right. Where it’s like all of a sudden something either there’s like a doctrinal misalignment or or some kind of a need for church discipline or something swept under the carpet or anything that you could potentially think of. And then you’re at this crossroads going, do I stand for biblical standard and just stay because of all the community or do I stand up for righteousness?

Ok, so we have six points for you and we’re trying to keep our podcasts episode short. So we’re going to spend about five minutes on each point is going to be a rapid fire episode. But before we dive in here, thank you so much for being part of the one million Legacy’s movement. When you share online, we know you’re part of it. When you give us reviews on iTunes, it is meaningful. We read every one. And you know what? It encourages us. It causes us to press on, what, over one hundred and twenty episodes every single week. Haven’t missed a week since the beginning. Here, Angie is doing four days and we’re plugging away because we love this and we love all of you and but we love hearing from you. Yeah. Because we feel we actually are energized by the movement if you’re energized by the movement to let us know, because that just creates more energy for us to and, you know, keeps us going. And we’re we’re doing something together. We don’t want to do something just and you know, we’ve always been about doing something together with lots of people to further the gospel in the kingdom of God. And that’s what we’re about. That’s where podcast is about. So we just we. Knowledge that when you do things like that, it helps our donate or buy courses or any of that stuff, it helps us at CourageousParenting.com or CourageousMom.com. All the show notes our courageous parenting dotcom, too. So let’s try to dive in. First thing is you need to lead your children with vision. OK, now if you’re little, little more than a little harder because they might understand everything, but you can still do it a certain level. But if you’re thinking about changing community, whether that’s church or friendships outside of church or whatever it is, new location, same location, you need to lead with vision. Don’t just all of a sudden one day make a decision and announce it to your family. That is the worst kind of leadership possible.

Right. So one of the things that we have learned over the years is that guess what? Children are mini adults. There are many you just like our kids, are mini Isaac and

You like to be respected. So your kids like to be respected also.

That’s right. And one of the best ways to develop honoring respectful relationships that are reciprocated, because if you’ve gone through the courageous parent mentor program, you know that we talk about this concept of respect and reverence and obedience and all of these things. It really stands to what what way you’re leading your family relationships. And this is a perfect example that will actually reveal the fruit of if you are a more of a dictator or an authoritarian leader or if you are one that is actually chasing after hearts and working hard at the respect

In authoritarian leadership leads to silent distrust and secretly disobedience.

Secret disobedience on the outward have obedience, but on the inside is their attitude there. And we all know that we need to be caring about the heart more than anything.

Solid lead with vision. And the second point is confident to be fully who you are. That is so important because you are if everywhere you are, even online, if you are not fully yourself, then you’re not going to retain people around you if you project something different when you first meet them or online.

Let’s give an example. Let’s say someone asks you a question about something that you’re actually really passionate about. Right. But you give them a wishy washy answer because you don’t you’re like, well, I don’t want them. I really like this person. I want to be friends. And if I tell them what I really think, they might not want to be friends. So you give them a wishy washy answer or answer later, a year later goes by and maybe you post something online that is actually what you believe, or you share somebody something and they go, hold on a second. I thought you

You know what jail looks like for the christian. It’s to live a double life is to project something that’s not for you or not where your convictions are to enough people to where you can’t be yourself around your people. That’s jail. We want freedom, and if you want to be in freedom, you need to be confident in who you are and be exactly project the biblical convictions, whatever they are with love and grace and, you know, discernment and all those things. But just realize you don’t want to build community on the sand,

On fakeness, right. On what you think people will be more accepting of. Let me just share something with you. When we moved from Damascus to central Oregon, something happened where you and I both became more emboldened to be more forthright and open about our biblical standards and Christian living. Yeah, and in doing so, we realized that a lot of like the surface friendships that we had had when we lived in Damascus, though, we had a couple that were deeper. Yeah, it was really hard to go deep when we were there. And now we have a whole like where there’s a lot of reasons behind that. But I think that part of it is that when you are willing to be fully who you are and be fully known, you are going to attract people who are like minded. So if you are holding back the like minded people that you’re actually attracting are also people who hold back. Does that make sense? You have to be deep with others. For them to reciprocate is the same thing is respect with kids. Right. And so we really want to challenge you guys to be fully who you are when you are trying. This is about how to create biblical community wherever you are. So wherever you are, you need to be fully you so that the people who are around you and are going to invest in a deep friendship, it has to be founded on Christ and it has to be founded on biblical standards and Christian living in these understandings of who you are, who I am. And I love you and I’m walking with you.

I was just it just reminds me it’s even about the the warts and the challenges, meaning the the not so glamorous parts of who you are, your sins, your mistakes. And I just think that’s so important. Just remind me, I was giving a sermon on Sunday and it was I was just sharing that I’m selfish sometimes and we’re going through Philippians and how that’s made me realize even more where I’m selfish sometimes and how awful it is. And I just think you want to run the race with people who are transparent and guess what? They are transparent with you and you’re going to track people that want that deeper than scared by that. And I think that’s important. You want to be confident people. You are on this. And the next point is don’t let fear stop you from really cultivating community wherever you are. Fear of what people will think of you, fear maybe you’ve been hurt by relationships. I know. I know. Everybody has. We’re talking about human beings here. We’re all, you know, unperfect. And you know what? Don’t let the past fears prevent future blessing in relationships. 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 CourageousParenting.com And subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, at CourageousParenting.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 and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com.

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 teachings and just a 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 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. It’s interesting when we are preparing this podcast and you’re talking about. Yea, I’m sure transparently when we were about to move, there was a little bit of not fear, but just the questioning, the unknown that was lingering out there for me as a mom with my kids is going to be the best decision for my kids. You know, OK, this can be a lot of work because building community requires the next steps that we’re going to talk about in a minute, which is a lot of work actually is intentionality. It’s opening up your home is all these things. And I the unknown of. OK, well, what? People don’t have kids that are like minded. And, you know, once we get there and know and you think about those things and they can become heavy on your heart. But you know what God says in his word over 80 times he says, fear not me. He commands us not to be anxious. In Philippians four, he commands us in Isaiah to not be fearful. So here’s Isaiah 43 that says, Fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name.

You are mine. Guess what? Regardless of where you are. What church you go to, fear not, I have redeemed you. Is that a truth, whether you go to this church or that church? I mean, as long as their Bible believing churches, right? No, you fear not, because you have been reading by God and he’s called you by name and you are his. And that doesn’t change whether you live in Timbuktu or Mars. Yeah, OK. You are his. And it says to Fearnot, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. So, yeah, eventually at some point, are you going to pass the waters? Yes. It doesn’t say if you pass the waters. It says when you pass through waters, I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned. Does that mean we’re going to walk through fire at times? Yes, not if you walk through fire. When you do, we have to start reading the Bible and recognizing this is a word that is alive for us today. Amen.

So I just remember on this point, I remember this my my problem was I was guarded in my relationships. Maybe some of you guys can relate to that, meaning I was guarded. I would only go so far because it was dangerous territory, because I was around so many people that when I tried to go deep. They just were quiet and then I’m like, what is wrong with me? And I almost felt like something was wrong with me and I’m like, oh, maybe I’m just not good at building friendships. I started believing lies. Now, are there things I needed to work on and maybe you need to work on? Yes. So I was honest about that. What you never when you’re dealing with an issue. Yeah. There might be other people involved in the relationship challenges always look to yourself to always be introspective, to not to a point of debilitating bad beliefs about yourself, but to be honest with. OK, but how can I improve? How can I contribute to this relationship in a better way and and be praying about that? I think that’s super important, you know.

So one of the things that changed for us that helped with building the community was that epiphany with you and letting people into our lives on a more like every business where guys listen, life is too short and there are too many excuses that could prevent you from this next point, which is hospitality. Yeah, OK. There are too many reasons to not let people into your home. All my house is messy. My house is too small. I don’t know what I’m going to feed them. Well, guess what? You can have people over when it’s not meal time. Yeah, there are a million things that you could use as a potential excuse. I’m too busy. My husband works from home. My husband is introverted. I’ve, I have heard it all. I have thought at all.

What are they going to think about my house. Their house is nicer, right.

Weird stuff. I just say none of that matters. They’re all lies from the devil. Yeah. If you need more encouragement on this issue, I’m just going to put a plug in to go find my biblical online friendship course. Good. Because there is a whole thing on the comparison trapped in there.

I keep telling you, we need to raise the price on that thing I think is so cheap and she doesn’t let me raise prices.

Ok, I just want to encourage you guys, though. There are a ton of verses in scripture that actually command us to be hospitable. Yeah. And one of them is in first Peter, Chapter four, if you look at verse eight, nine says above all. Above what, above all, above doing laundry, above having the perfect time, above all, love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins and then you’re thinking, OK, love each other deeply. What does that mean to love each other deeply? What God says in verse nine here, here, here is part of his solution for loving each other deeply. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling again. God is drawing attention to the heart attitude when we’re doing it. Yeah. And so we should have open doors. I have to tell you, you guys. Yes, there are times when I go, oh man, we got to get back on track with this or that and we got to get our schedule. So I’m going to have to say no for a time. But the reality is, is that stuff can’t get in the way. I can’t get too busy that we don’t have time to just say, yeah, sure, come on over. When we moved here, I have to tell you how many times I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve had random text messages from the real estate agent behind us going, hey, do you live here? Because I have some believers that are looking at a house. Can we just pop over and then they come in, go to ours?

What a blessing that ended up being a wonderful Christian believers.

But this is the thing. Are you willing to just drop what you’re doing? So, yeah, come on over. My house is God’s house. Yeah. me casa Su Casa, you know,

It’s it’s the point of putting relationships first. And you might think you do that. You might do that and you might think you do that. I know I used to think I did that but didn’t do that. And no, we’re really in a different place. I’m really in a different place of where I, I literally am looking for the relationship versus the thing I need to get done or doing. And I find that when I put relationships first, God blesses the thing I need to get done. He just makes it work and expands time and enables supernatural ability in myself to do something that I thought would take way more prep work. And so I just think that God wants us to be in relationship, because that is how people learn about God. That is how people get strengthened in their walk with God and for his people community.

And he’s talking about I mean, you guys, we’ve been crazy busy since we moved here with renovating. And it would have been easy for us to just say no to everyone and everything because we have two main projects going on. But instead we’re like, hey, you know what? We’re doing this. You want to join us? Yeah. And it has built some very deep. Yeah. Community, you know, doing productive fellowship together. And then it gets to be reciprocated when they have a need. It’s just beautiful. It’s God honoring. There’s another aspect you’ve heard us talk about many times about how God’s word has qualifications for eldership right now. I’m just going to be brief. One of the things we always say is even if you are not in the season of life where God would call you into that ministry, we should all be striving to be qualified and living as if we are striving for that. Right. And one of those qualifications is that you must be given to hospitality, Titus 1:8, when he says rather he he’s talking about older men must be hospitable. It’s not kind of like it. No, he must be hospitable. One, he loves what is good self-control, upright, wholly and disciplined. You just can’t ignore what scripture talks about regarding hospitality. Yeah, doing a deep study on it, you’ll find that it also is actually calling us as Christians to be hospitable to strangers.

So who is on your heart right now? You haven’t had over that. You really need to do you need to obey God. You need to have them over. And who of you may be judged wrongly and you haven’t spent actual time with them? Right. I need to have them over.

Yeah, hospitality, having people in your home, that’s where discipleship happens, that’s where community happens, it’s where deep walks happen. So if you guys want to build a biblical community, it literally is impossible to do if you do not practice hospital.

Ok, in five minutes, we’re going to give you our last two tips, OK? You ready to discern? But don’t be too critical. We need to have biblical discernment, the Holy Spirit, discerning relationships, people that are good for our families to be around, good for our kids to be around and so forth, but not too critical. Maybe you’re in different seasons and there’s different don’t allow understanding.

Families can be beautiful

If we’re believers. Here’s kind of how I look at if maybe we are further down the road in age or experience in something or biblical understanding. It doesn’t mean we don’t have community with people. Not at all.

That are all, you know.

But but but I think the key is these people that want to learn

It’s a heart attitude. And it’s a

Part of it, you know, and we didn’t see ourselves. We put ourselves around people older than us because we want to learn. If we’re all striving to learn and grow in our journey, then that’s beautiful. It really is. But let’s not be too critical because maybe someone’s not the same place you are. And I think

This is a really beautiful point, because the reality is, is that we have to be also willing to let people grow because we need room to grow. And that’s what we should expect. And our relationships to other people would give us room to grow and change as well.

No, I mean, please give me room to grow. Yeah.

So I just think that this is something you need to exercise with your kids, your kids, friends. Can I just say your kids friends? Because the reality is, is sometimes you can make a discerning judgment call on a family based upon how certain kids will be acting when you first meet them and us. And that is there is a wisdom in that you definitely don’t want your kids hanging out with other kids. They’re doing drugs. I’ll just put that there. That’s a good example. However, are you allowing the Holy Spirit to move in that kid’s life and give them second chances, third chances, fourth chances, and still opening up your home on specific terms, looking for the growth, encouraging the growth, being an advocate and even used as a change agent in their life? At times,

Yeah, but not depending on your kids ages, not at the sacrifice of your kids ever. Not letting you know kids off without seeing where they’re at and not fully understanding where those kids are at those other kids. You know, you got to be careful. Listen to other our podcasts on about these things get the final point is be in the community. How can you expect to connect, make new connections if you’re not actually a participant in the community? What? I mean,

You’re saying don’t stay at home all the time. Yeah, which is hard during covid. So we just states that are

We just went to a political event with our older kids and met people and we met people. We go out to eat sometimes and try and meet people.

We we go to events at the coffee shop and support local businesses. The farmer’s markets and just having people over in the community meeting, meeting people.

And it’s amazing. We’ve met so many wonderful people.

You guys, I just have to put in I’m going to share this as so first of all, I don’t share this to like. To make anyone feel bad, so I hope you don’t take this, but we just had a baby shower, which was just amazing. What a really bless my heart. A friend came from Bend. My mom drove from Portland. But, you know, I Isaac and I were looking at the picture that was taken of all the women there. There was a ton of women, well over 20 women that were there. God have only lived here for six months. And there were women who brought gifts to me during the week that were like devastated that they couldn’t be there.

And I heard it was a prayer fest. It was it was amazing.

It was just it was a real blessing. And so I have to just.

You’re in tears several times I heard.

Well, yeah. I mean, when a little seven year old sweetie pie Audrey Kosice starts missing and God told me to share this Bible verse with you and she recites Joshua on one nine, which is one of the verses that our ministries founded on. And she goes in and then she prays during the prayer time for for the baby’s safety and my safety. The seven year old, the sweetest prayer I’ve ever heard from a little kid. I just I of course, I think everybody was crying in that mouth. But the reality is that, yes, you can build community. We’re only six months in. And look I look at that. You can go to my Instagram and see the picture that I’m talking about from the baby shower. God can do that same work in your life, but you have to invest in people. You have to get together with them. We’ve got on date nights with some of these couples we have doing Q&A is for their church communities. All of these women were from different churches.

You know, it’s part to we’re going to leave you with this this extra point, which is pray be praying for God to bring the right people, but then have your eyes open. A lot of times we pray and then we missed opportunities. We don’t realize they look different than how we would project how to meet somebody, you know, so so be praying. I know we’ve been praying as at church together, and it’s amazing. Like, I’m continuously in awe of God, just answering prayers. There’s so many praise reports.

Well, it’s just crazy every week.

Yeah, it’s just remarkable. And it just reminds me, I just wanted to send that back to you is

Are you praying with people

pray and individually and collectively and as a marriage and just pray

Your relationship loves you in your community built on that. That’s a foundation, right? Yeah. Rock of Jesus Christ that you can go to people ask for prayer. You can be honest and giving your heart to people. Right. Like I just did that today. I just texted a couple of the ladies that go to go to church with us. And I just said, hey, this is happening. And I’m just this is where my heart’s at and we be praying for me and just transparent. Yeah, I love that I can do that. And we’ve been blessed to be able to do that for many years. And I just want to encourage you guys, if you don’t have that, you need to cultivate biblical community. If you don’t have people that you can text and say, this is what’s going on, we pray for me. And they’re not either praying for you in the end, the text message back or praying for you right then and there, you may find biblical community

And don’t hold on to your community so tightly. That might mean you’re there’s an idol. You’ve made an idol. instead, let’s not let’s be that third one, which is called to be real biblical community and not sacrifice God’s plan for your life and whatever that is. And remember, there’s many examples in the Bible where God separated strong communities and strong people so that more disciples would be made. And so let’s let’s let’s hold it loosly too.

And, you know, on another note, and I think this is a good thing to end on, is this this thought do you do your actions and does your life actually reflect that you believe that God’s people are everywhere, amen. The God’s people are everywhere, and that you can build biblical community anywhere because actually God that does the building because you’re being you’re being fully who you are, you’re being hospitable, you’re being confident, not letting fear deter you from relationships. You’re being discerning. You’re doing what God called you to do. But he’s the one that brings the increase. He’s the one that brings people into your life. And I just want to encourage you guys, because we have moved multiple times now and we have seen that God’s people are

Everywhere they are. And we’ve traveled to. Yes, all but maybe six states

In the in the

In the United States. And God’s people were in every house, everywhere we went.

They were. And so you can build biblical community anywhere you can. So don’t believe the lie that you can’t and think that what you I got to stay here because it’s the safest or you know, if you feel like a prompting for God in God’s telling you to move, it is a matter of

Trust or even where you are. But you’re shifting. You might want to shift the church to a different church to, you know, live out, run the race with people that have high biblical standards.

You know, and I just yeah, I think that it’s this is one of the things that has. The trigger of why we’ve gotten this question so many times is because so many churches were closed down, because so many are just either starting to, but they’re like, hey, if this happens again, we’re going to close down again. And so you may be valuating going I need people to run with in real life because the people that were at the church were not there in real life when the church closed.

Or maybe you’re in Canada and you need to break the law and start a little home church because churches aren’t allowed in Canada in many places.

Yeah. So in other parts of the world, you guys, we just care about you. We want you to be an active part of a body of Christ, which is not in a building that says people right in the church or his people. And there are things that you do have to take action on. But God, if you pray and you give him the desires of your heart and you’re seeking his kingdom first, all these things will be out of you.

Amen. Thanks for joining us.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom 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 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. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com