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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 Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

We’re praising the Lord. That ministry continues to expand and impact more legacies. We couldn’t do this without you. Whether you pray for us, give us five star reviews, or share on social.

Or even if you purchase courses and merch or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies movement.

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous Ministry.

Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Welcome to the podcast. So glad you’re here.

Hi, friends.

We’re just diving in, aren’t we, honey?

Oh, we are diving in. You guys were today where we have an important conversation. Some of our most popular podcast episodes are the ones that are like. Why your kids won’t obey you and dealing with disrespect and things like that. And and lying when we talked about lying. How to talk to your child who’s struggling with lying, right? Yeah. Um, another one that comes to mind is don’t be a parent that’s struggling with anger or how to deal with anger as a parent, right? Yeah. So today we’re we’re we’re doing a podcast episode that is on a topic just as relevant as those ones. Um, because if you have a child, that’s why you’d be listening to a parenting podcast. But if you have a child, they’re human, and humans are sinful and selfish at times. And so we are talking about the important conversation around pride and boasting and bragging and self-centeredness.

Really, selfishness and selfishness leads to fighting amongst siblings. It leads to not a peaceful home, and it also leads to a challenge in building friendships down the road. It leads to you know. Well, yeah, it can lead to loneliness too, because people don’t really love hanging out with boastful people.

That’s right. So if you want your child to grow up to be someone who is a part of the member of the body of Christ, for example, um, being a part of the body of Christ, it’s all about putting other people before yourself. That’s part of being a Christian, right? Love your neighbor. Um, treat other people as you would want to be treated. Not. Yeah. So anyway, we’re we’re really diving into this. This is a big topic.

One of the things I think is interesting is when children are really small and young, those things that you see also can be kind of cute and and and and sometimes like.

The self-centered like I’m the center of attention kind of.

Stuff or look at that little boss right there. He’s two years old and he’s like, so confident. Like you can almost it almost looks confident.

He’s talking to people with like, a command kind of voice. Yeah.

But if you just let these things go, they quickly are not cute. No.

Like, you actually just made me remember of an instance where, you know, every parent has seen there’s there’s a kid in every ballet class, there’s a kid on every soccer team, there’s a kid in every insert your experience right where they want to be the center of attention. And they think that they’re doing everything perfect and they’re like, look at me. I am the one in the group, right? And that like, little like, I remember sitting with all the other moms and everyone would be like, wow, she’s so confident and she’s so this, she’s so that. But but really that not discipled will turn into total pride, arrogance, meanness later in life if it’s not pointed in the right direction.

Absolutely. And it really actually comes across people that with experience it comes across as insecure and it comes across as challenging. And so we want our children to mature into being resilient, confident Christians that glorify God but are not. And if they’re resilient, well, pride and arrogance and boastfulness is kind of the opposite of being resilient, actually. Yeah. Because resiliency, which we believe is required in a greater sense in the future, the future they’re launching into resiliency requires a humble attitude, a learning attitude, ability to be flexible, to shift gears, to learn from other people younger, older and their same age to um, to base, base, basically make sure they keep getting the best information versus always thinking they have the best information. And you know, it reminds me of this quote I just in the Resilient Man podcast I shot earlier. But this somebody once said it’s like a bore, talks too much about themselves and a gossip talks about others. And an interesting person talks about ideas and asks questions. I adapted it a little bit. But you know, I think that’s so important. It has to do with this topic because a boastful, prideful person.

Is just going to talk about themselves, or they’re going to potentially talk about others with a prideful attitude of like making other people look bad to make themselves puffed up, which is that what it really is is insecurity and making other people look worse so that they can be puffed up. Right. And that’s so sad. You, you know, I don’t know if just describing these things, you’ve probably even thought of people in your own life that are they tend to be more of the harder people to be around. Right. And the truth is, is we want to learn from that, and we want to teach our kids to learn from that and to learn from the Word of God. And we have a bunch of awesome scriptures that we’re going to share with you today. But before we do, hey, thanks.

For being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement this year. We are excited about the idea of Double Impact vision and we need you to come alongside us. What does that mean? Pray for us that if you just prayed for the ministry and prayed for us and protection over us. And that more people would find the Courageous Parenting Podcast and the Be Courageous ministry site with all the resources. That would be amazing if you could specifically pray to. We feel like the ministry is perfectly positioned and has the biblical resources to plug right into churches to make a massive difference, because one of the places that’s hardest for churches to solve is parenting. It’s hard to have the bandwidth and resources to effectively teach biblical parenting with a lens towards uncertain times. And that’s the core of what this ministry does. Really the core, our passion is evangelism. Yeah. Is evangelism that more people come to know his name. But this ministry has been all about equipping the parents to evangelize their homes and disciple their children. So they send them out to make a difference in his name and then that happens again and again and again, many generations deep. That is the power of this. So less programs for kids, more parents equipping kids.

Amen I love it. I love it when you get fired up. Hey you guys, I just want to also say something. Um, if you didn’t know this, we have a YouTube channel and it’s be courageous right on YouTube. And we would just be so encouraged. It would be incredibly helpful to us if you would just pop over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. Um, all the podcasts. We are moving them over, right? Isaac. And we’ve been doing some other fun things. They have a section for shorts, so we have some short videos. That’ll be a huge encouragement to you as well. And so please join us over there. We would love to be.

The Resolute Man podcast, courageous Parenting podcast, extra videos in the short videos. That’s right.

So let’s dive in. This is a big topic. But you know, you mentioned selfishness. And really every sin could be narrowed down to that one sin of selfishness. That’s true. Um, and really, you know, that would take us back to the Garden of Eden talking about sin, sin entering the world and this desire that humans have to be like God and to really that’s an arrogant thinking that they could even attain that. Right? Yeah. And the truth is, is that humanity, we live in a fallen world and inhumanity, people do still struggle with that temptation, whether they recognize it or not. So this is the thing is, like, most people can’t see themselves, right? Like when you’re in the midst of sin, unless it’s this, there’s a difference of the sin of omission and sin of commission, right? So there’s like the times where you purposefully intend to sin, where you are doing something you know is wrong and you do it anyway. And and then there’s the other kind of sin where it’s like, maybe you are unknowingly hurting somebody’s feelings by something that you said, right? And needing to. So there’s an offense there and you need to apologize for that or whatever.

And so there’s different types of sin in that regard as far as the person’s conscience. But this is why we need Jesus. This is why our kids need Jesus. Today, though, we want to talk about this aspect of selfishness narrowed down to really it’s it’s again, it’s pride. Um, but boasting, bragging, self-centeredness, thinking too highly of themselves is another like biblical terminology that we’re going to read that scripture in a few minutes. Um, self indulgence. I also think of, right, like, um, people who are just all about indulging the self and they’re not really thinking about other people. This is these are character qualities, actually, if you think about it like is a person giving or are they the type of person that just wants for themselves, like that’s a character issue, right? Um, or a good character quality if they’re servant hearted. And so there’s so many aspects that we could talk about this, but really it it does. It’s all centered around pride and thinking that you deserve the attention or you deserve the best thing, or you’re so deserving of everyone listening to you or getting your own way or not having to give up your thing, right?

I also think it’s a lack of self awareness that parents need to teach their children to lack of knowledge. They may not even understand if they’re little that they’re coming across this way. And so we really want to give you the practical how tos, how to talk to your kids about this in the scriptures to support it.

That’s right. So, um, the other thing we wanted to this is like the big motivator. So obviously like homes and dynamics between your kids. So like, siblings can get really difficult at times when selfishness is involved. Right? It gets loud. It gets loud. People have hurt feelings. Sometimes there’s grudges. Sometimes kids will label other siblings. They’re always this way. Um, we don’t want that sort of. Right. We want to cultivate a home where there is, um, honesty, sharpening one another to grow and become better people, become more like Christ, where we’re giving up ourselves, not pointing towards wanting to indulge ourselves. And so really like these, some of what we’re talking about here, you might be thinking, well, my two year old’s not going to understand that language. And you know, while self indulgence, for example, your child, your two year old might not understand that they’re going to understand if you’re always saying you’re not sharing, that’s selfish. You say that 1020 times. The two and a half year old is going to get it just like that, because they are so smart. And we just want to really encourage you guys to use a biblical vocabulary whenever you have the opportunity. And we talk more about that in the very first live that we do in the Parenting Mentor program, which you can find out more about that at Be Courageous Ministry. Org. You guys, it’s so important that we are are truly discipling our children biblically. And part of that is using a biblical vocabulary. Okay, so Isaac, let’s give these parents signs to watch for. So obviously we’ve talked about not sharing and it’s all about them and it’s theirs and that kind of selfishness. But what are some others.

Well they’re never wrong or they immediately. Um, if somebody says they’re wrong, they immediately defend themselves. That would be an arrogance. Uh, they’re bossy sometimes, you know, the older siblings bossing them around and thinks they’re all that forgets that they once were that age and had some folly in them, too. Um.

Which is really folly in the older sibling not.

Realizing they’re more mature version of folly. Yes. Um, you know, they always want to pick the show. They always want to have control over things. A high controlling attitude, center of attention. Think they’re better than others? Uh. Elitist attitude. Um, you know, look at me. Look at what I did. All these things. Um, this can lead into an overconfidence, in a way. And when they’re older, it’s like, hey, look at me. Oh, they’re looking at me, or I did this or.

Or even craving to be doing things where they’re going to get attention. I think that this is something that parents need to be aware of because we either, um, feed that or we by putting them in the activity or whatever it is, or we can actually teach them something different by pulling them away from that experience. Right. And so I think that there is a time where that might be appropriate if a specific child’s really struggling with pride in that way. Right. Um, there is a.

Balance though, because we do want to build children with self confidence. That’s in humility. It’s okay to be proud of an accomplishment without being prideful. Um, you know, these kinds of things and boasting and, and these. So there’s there’s a nuance there. So I think, I think as parents, we need to just be aware just after this episode, just start being aware of how a personalities are projecting around you. And even if it’s small, if you notice that boastful attitude, it’s good to address it because it’s easier when it’s small and easy rather than when it’s more ugly in their older.

You know, that’s the that’s the thing is that your kids are going to turn into teenagers and then your teenagers are going to grow into adults. And so that’s really like our heart is that it’s so much easier to pull weeds or deal with sin when it’s smaller, when it’s minor, it’s much harder to have those deep conversations with the 20 some year old that’s super prideful, used to being the center of attention, and talks over other people. It’s harder to confront that than it is with the four year old. That’s like, I know you have something important to say, but we want to ask what your brother’s opinion is. Can you be quiet and listen and give him your attention? And so it’s like takes extra effort for parents to really, especially with many children to instill this like care of wanting to hear other people and not always be the one talking. And I think that for big family, like for us, we are a big family, right. And so there’s always going to be a few personalities that are stronger than others, and those ones always have an opinion. And so to with those kids to challenge their strength to be a good leader and be able to listen hard, which is one of your terms that you use with us all the time with the kids and stuff is we want to be better at listening, hard listening, long listening, you know, and teaching those kids that are used to doing all the talking how to listen long because it is harder. It’s harder the older you get to practice. What maybe you were never challenged to practice when you were little on that.

I just have to teach this one thing about personalities. This is very important. There’s some people that believe three seconds is an eternity of a pause, of nobody talking. They physically three seconds a hard time. One. Two. Three. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Okay. They have to fill it. They have to fill it like, oh, what? Things are not right right now. I have to fill the silence. Some people it takes four seconds to say their next sentence because they’re thinking for a moment. And so it is really important to teach those people that like to fill the silence to take a break. This episode isn’t necessarily about that, but I thought it was a good point for that.

Yeah. No, it is. It’s it’s a selflessness of being aware of how other people are made differently than you. Yeah. And again, not being selfish and thinking everyone should be like me. Yeah. Why are they not talking? Or maybe they don’t have anything to say. I know that for myself, I tend to be pretty quick. And so especially being married to Isaac, he likes to think deep about things and have deep conversations. And sometimes I give too many details and then he forgets things. But I love that you.

Love to talk, too. I mean, when we’re in social circles, it’s really much nicer for me. I mean, I love to talk, but, you know. Give me some, you know, breaks.

Uh, we’re definitely we’re a good team. But I will say that it is one thing, though, where, like, one one thing I’ve learned as a wife is. And I think that every wife could probably benefit from this, even if they’re more introverted themselves, because women tend to have more words than men. If we’re talking about gender here, this is a true, proven social science thing that women have around 30,000 words a day. Men have around 10,000, right? And on average, that’s kind of what this the studies have shown.

And I always usually get my 10,000 out at work.

That’s right. So then you come home and I’d be like, so how’s your day? He’s like good. And I’m like, tell me everything. That’s not I know.

It’s not an excuse.

No, but you want to honor one another to.

Say the extra words.

But you want to honor one another. So while the man is thinking, use extra words. Try extra hard to describe things to your wife, your.

Best to your family. Not the last, right?

That’s awesome. For wives, my exhortation is have realistic expectations of your husband and don’t expect him to remember every conversation he had that day.

Okay, I thought we were talking about self-centered kids. Let’s get back. I know, I know, all right, so we’ll do that in a marriage episode. But, you.

Know, I do want to just point out why I think it was a really important conversation. Is that, like I just said, your children become teens and then they become adults, and Lord willing, they get married. And so this topic massively impacts their marriage in the future. And all of us want our kids to have a successful biblical marriage. And so truly teaching selflessness is at the heart of one of the main top things we want to disciple our kids in before they leave our home.

Let’s talk about what to teach, what to teach our kids. Okay? Okay. So, uh, one of the things is others before self. So a lot of times when a young child in our home is like, can I be first, can I do this first? Can I pick first all the first things? With all that energy, I remind them that the first shall be last.

Right? We use it all the time.

It is so good. And it’s just like their heart sinks because they know.

Oh, I’m going ninth. Our kids really learn the lesson.

And I just think, you know, little things like that that’s biblically based is the first shall be last. That’s the servant heart none of us should be vying for first. That is a heart posture that is out of whack.

You know, Romans 12 three says, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. And then it continues talking about the the body of Christ and how it’s many members, because this is the part where it’s talking about the different gifts, but our families are actually image bearers of the body of Christ, and our families are where our children learn, first and foremost, how to be a part of a family teaches them how to be a part of the body of Christ, the family of God. And so there is this element where this scripture is so incredibly important as we’re teaching our children to be sober in the judgment of themselves and to not think so highly of themselves, but to think highly of others and to care about others opinions. And really, truly, our families are the starting ground that help them to do that successfully in the church, in work, and in their marriage. Um, so you guys, this is a this is a hard thing. There’s going to be many opportunities as your kids are growing up where you’re going to feel like frustrated, right, where you’ve maybe confronted the exact same sin or the same selfishness a million times. And, and you’re thinking, I’ve been consistent and it’s not working. What would you say to that, Isaac?

I would say, first of all, usually you aren’t as consistent as you believe you are. You’re actually not following through every time. But let’s say you are. Let’s say you really believe you’re consistent and let’s say that’s the case. Then you have to try something different. Sometimes it’s not even just the words, it’s the way you’re saying them. We come across in a way that’s creating an outcome, and we need to think about who the person is we’re having it, who is having a difficult time or we’re having a difficult time with and go, how can I change my approach? I think that’s a valid leadership perspective. To always have is how can I think a little bit more, pray about it and come with a different approach? And sometimes it’s very close to the same words actually, but it’s from a different heart posture within you.

Yeah, sometimes it’s not just in the moment when you’re like, you are going to have the hard conversation with the kiddo and pull them aside. Yep. You have to stop playing. I know it’s so sad. That’s why you’re crying and you’re like, come with mom. You sit down and you go. This isn’t acceptable. How you’re treating your siblings when you’re playing. This isn’t kind. Being willing to take the time to have the conversation with them and go, how would you feel if your brothers were treating you this way? Would you want to keep playing with them? Like, sometimes we have to teach our kids how to have perspective, right? And whereas in the past, maybe you were always like, this is sinful, this is wrong. We don’t treat people this way. Now you’re bringing in a different aspect of like trying to put them in other people’s shoes and recognize how they would feel.

I know our next point is love thy neighbor, right? That principle and all of this just really goes back to the heart. It’s just a it’s a heart condition. So I just want to take a moment and share that. Session three in the Parenting Mentor program is all about the heart or session two, actually, it’s all about the heart. So theology then heart. And just that heart session I believe is transformative. Like the investment of the program is worth it. Just for that. But then you get everything else with it. And I just think it’s so important that we recalibrate and think about, are we really tending to the hearts of our children? Are we going heart deep in our conversations? Are we breaking through the surface level conversations that we might think are deep? But really, there’s a deeper level that needs to be gone? Are we getting to the core of the issue or just handling things with our in in a being annoyed and frustrated, maybe even anger? If we’re not tending the hearts, we have no business correcting our kids.

That’s really what the heart goes. That is. Yeah.

We must have a motivation to get their heart. There’s a heart issue happening, causing them to be boastful, causing them to be selfish, prideful, lying, disobeying whatever it is. And we all have that condition sometimes, don’t we? That’s why we need Jesus, and that’s why we have to wrap all that together in the way we approach our children in correcting them. It is so, so important. And that’s why you need to join us for the next Parenting Mentor program. You really do. There’s only 37 spots left and they’ll fill up, so I hope you get one. Okay. In Philippians, where are we at in Philippians.

Chapter two, verse three.

Verse three, love Philippians. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

This is one of the best verses to memorize with your kids, and to use over and over again. Because when a child is struggling with sharing, for example, or maybe they’re struggling, maybe they’re a little bit older and they have a debate partner and they’re working on assigning between the two of them who’s going to be doing what arguments. I’m just using this as an example, and they’ve just got their heart set on, like, I really want to fight this argument. I don’t want to do the rebuttal or whatever it is. They’re just thinking about what they’re passionate about or excited about because they already know something about it. What is the Scripture say? It says do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Those are two different things. Selfish ambition is like striving to get somewhere and nothing out of selfish conceit, right? Which is that arrogance, that pride. And it literally can hurt other people. We need to teach our kids about that. And I think that when they’re really little, the easiest example is when they’re being selfish and they rip a toy away from another kid, or maybe they don’t want to do something that a sibling or a friend wants to do, and they’re always the leader, or they’re or they’re just never, um, they’re never going to listen to anybody else because they’re just kind of going about things and expecting everybody else to do what they do.

And I think that it’s important that we as parents recognize and we take the rose tinted glasses off because it it takes for parents, especially if it’s not to your other other children. I think that as moms, when we see our kids arguing, it’s easier to recognize the sin if one of our other kids is getting hurt. But if it’s somebody else’s child, sometimes those rose tinted glasses stay on a little too long, if you know what I mean. And I think that what we need to do is recognize how our child is impacting another child’s development, also by their sin. And so I want to stop for a second and put you in the mindset of having a child that maybe is more meek, timid, less likely to lead, and thinking about how maybe they don’t want to exert themselves. Maybe the parents of this child have also taught and and and shared scriptures and really taught them and discipled them on being selfless, on caring about what other people think. But then their best friend has never been.

And so while they’re being challenged to be selfless, the other one is taking advantage of that. Have you ever experienced that situation? I know I have that’s very uncomfortable and very difficult, but it requires us as parents, being bold and trying to encourage our child to also have confidence. And maybe that confidence is that they confront the other child and say, you know what? We’ve been playing what you want to play for the last two hours. Can we play something? I want to play, um, and like teaching them. How do you teach a child this? It’s role playing, having conversations with them, observing again, rose tinted glasses off and asking them, so how was your play time? Oh, I noticed this happened. How did that make you feel? This is going heart deep kinds of questions on your way home where you’re like, I noticed that you kind of looked sad, um, during part of the play date. Why was that? Was was Susie being nice? Were you guys able to play the thing that you, you wanted to play with or to or, you know, just asking good questions to where your child is thinking and they’re not just yes or no kinds of questions.

By the way. You’ve got to get our go heart deep. Uh, download it’s free be courageous ministry.org. Just get on our list. Get that download. It is how to ask three questions deep in the same direction to break through the surface and develop that really deeper conversation and relationship with your children.

Hey, will you guys flip with us to James for a second? Because here’s a couple more verses that we want to share with you, James. Um, chapter four, verse six through 16. I know it’s ten verses, but this is a you can take one verse out of it. Maybe you hear one verse that pertains to one of your kids and. One verse that pertains to another, and you guys just decide to memorize them.

Whenever you say the book of James, I perk up. I’m like, oh goody. Oh yes, I love the book of James. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. The wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

This is such a great passage, because if you think about it, it’s talking about, um, well, there’s a lot of things talked about here, but if you have different children, especially if one is struggling with being prideful and not humble, there’s something for them, right? Humble yourselves. Be for the Lord, and he will exalt you. Um, God opposes the proud. Here’s a warning in Scripture for you what will happen if you don’t? Okay, I understand it’s difficult to be humble. I understand it’s difficult to apologize. That’s why we need Jesus. It says right here, submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. This is literally our equation, if you will. If God was a God of equations, it’s giving us instructions to then pass on to our children to teach them what the steps are of how to do that hard thing, of being less selfish and it’s really beautiful because so many of us parents can sometimes feel like we don’t know what to do. What do I tell them, Lord, how do I handle this? Jesus, will you help me? Will you like help prepare their heart because I have a hard word for them, or I want to share this scripture with my child. God can do that work. But we need to be like prepared and we want to help equip you. We want to encourage you with the scriptures that we’ve seen here. This gives us what we should be teaching our kids so they can do it well. So it’s really important. So loving your neighbor, putting others before themselves or what we want to teach. What about encouraging others?

You just did a YouTube video that came out about encouraging others, creating a home that has encouragement in it and so forth, and I thought that was so good. It’s so important. I mean, you know, sometimes you want more of a peaceful home, right? Well, what are you doing to create a encouraging home where people encourage each other, where siblings literally encourage one another? Well, one thing I want to give you is when someone does that, you need to, uh, blow it up. Meaning you need to. You need to make it known. You need to recognize it. So anchor points and behavior anchor the good behavior. Acknowledge it, appreciate it. Let other people know it anytime. Be a good finder. We naturally are bad finders. Okay, so we see the bad. We try and correct it and things like other things. Yeah, you you need to do that. But I would say the the more peaceful homes are the parents that are good finders. Because when you’re a good finder, you see it and you acknowledge it and what gets acknowledged gets repeated. And then other people want to repeat it too, because it feels good and it’s good and it’s great and it’s making the home better. And people acknowledge that. But if a leader doesn’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t get repeated as much. And so be a good finder. Look for those times. They’re good. Also, the challenge of not being a good fighter and just seeing the problems and solving them is now you’re only giving them attention in a deeper way when they’re misbehaving. And so we want to give them a balanced view of themselves too. They’re not always making mistakes, right? And they’re not always good.

So having that balance is super important. We talk about this in parenting mentor program more right. Like where there’s it’s like a teeter totter of needing to be able to both be correcting and pointing out sin and not sweeping things under the carpet because then our kids won’t ever change. They won’t ever see a need for Jesus. They won’t have humility. They will have elitism. They will be center of attention. I’m amazing kind of perspective. And that’s not okay. It’s not biblical and God abhors it. Actually, he opposes the proud. And so instead like but having that balance because parents when they stay over here in the correcting side too long, their homes are just overwhelming. I can’t tell you how many moms come to me saying, I’m just so exhausted. I’m just so burnt out. I’m just so tired of this or that. And part of it is that there’s so much correcting happening and not any like looking for the good, which is so important. I’m really glad that you brought that up. Um, and I think that this is, you know, what you’re talking about too, is what you’re verbalizing, right? How we as parents use the tongue and leading our families and teaching our kids to use their tongues appropriately also, which is in James three verse five, it says, so also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.

The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire. Listen to this. By hell, you guys. For every kind of beast and bird and reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and father, and we curse people who are made in the likeness. Listen, if people are cursing. Other people, it’s because they think too highly of themselves. The real root problem underneath that is like thinking too much of yourself and judging other people and being critical spirit and cursing other people. And so if we don’t want our kids to fall into this kind of sin where they’re struggling with their tongue, and this is a problem all humans have, that’s what the Bible is saying. The first thing is to teach our children to have self control over their tongues, yes, but not to view themselves so amazing and to to to view other people so poorly, but to have sober judgment of ourselves and other humans in a fallen world. Have grace, have love, have kindness, have mercy. That is what we need to be discipling our kids in.

It’s so true. I’ve read the beginning of that many times to the kids at a table, uh, that the tongue is small member that can create a fire and all these things. And that’s such a visual. I mean, children remember things when there’s a visual like that. God knows that. That was so many visuals in the Bible. So it’s such a good tool just to use and share with them. But also, I’ve done things around the table where I’m like, hey, there’s a verse somewhere that talks about walking in love. Oh, hey, hey, Ethan. How how did, uh, hey, everybody, how did Ethan walk in love today.

Mhm mhm.

And you’re getting people to think about how he was loving that day. And of course I would bring that up because I noticed some things and maybe I acknowledged it to him, but I wanted other people to notice too. And also it’s creating a culture. What we talk about career moves the culture in a good direction. There’s always a culture, but if you’re not moving in a direction, it’s just moving backwards. A culture never stays good. It never just stays bad. It’s either getting worse or better. And so really, your family culture is moved by your proactive words you use. So you have to be thoughtful if you’re just always reactive, just correcting. And then oh, here’s dinner and then oh, here’s the next thing. And then okay, it’s bedtime. But there isn’t real leadership of being thoughtful and thinking about how I need to move the culture forward in my home, uh, so that people, uh, are good finders, too. So you’re a good finder, and then you’re creating a bunch of little good finders.

It’s huge. Okay, so here’s another verse for you guys in Second Timothy chapter three. It starts out with but understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. So obviously we believe that end times or the days of end started when Jesus ascended to heaven. Okay. And so back in the disciples day, they thought the end was coming in their lifetime. Everyone who has ever lived thought the end was coming within their lifetime at some point. And so here we are, raising and equipping confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. We want them to be resilient. We want them to be prepared for the times where it’s difficult because it says it will be difficult. How is it going to be difficult? Listen to this for a second. Verse two and think of how every single one of these things in this list comes down to self indulgence. Indulging the flesh, living to satisfy the desires of the flesh. The old self, as God calls them. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having an appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people. This is a really powerful word, because every single one of these things can be the root of it.

Could go back to self indulgence, selfishness, the self like. Think of sexual immorality. How selfish is pornography? How selfish, how prideful is living in sexual sin? How prideful is living arrogantly and loving money, and how prideful and like all of this, disobedient to parents being abusive? How prideful is an abuser like literally every single one of these things. So here’s the deal. This is the world that our children launch into, because it’s the world we launched into. There’s going to be continued difficulties throughout history. So how do we best prepare them? Eyes wide open, rose tinted glasses off, recognizing that we have to actually dig in with our kids and we have to confront them when they’re being selfish. We don’t want our kids to be ladies man’s and playing with girls hearts and being a player, as they call it. We don’t want girls to be, um, you know, the wayward woman that are that is flaunting things or being arrogant. Like, think about the way of the world among teenagers today. I’m sorry. Like that whole lie of kids will be kids. Nope, nope. Not having it. So while you see the little. Girl. That’s maybe being sassy to her mom and has her hand on her hip and got her finger up in the air. And it may look cute because she has A22 on and she’s three. Not cute, not laughable. Guys, it takes.

All the years consistently shaping the character of your children. If you make a big difference, you make a massive difference. You are incredibly important. Sometimes it feels like I know that wow, are my words even being heard? Is this going to work? And sometimes it’s just a long game. Sometimes you don’t see it in the short time you’re doing the right things, but you’re going to see it in the long terme, right? Which is so important. So Second Corinthians 1130 says, if I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness the God and Father of the Lord Jesus. He who is blessed forever knows that I am not lying.

This is a big deal. Think about social media for a second. Think about what we all see. We all see a lot of like really glamorous, uh, highlights and not so many realities often. Okay. And the truth is, is there’s boasting in highlights. There’s boasting in and versus like really showing truth. Right. And truth would be a little bit of both. Kind of like we were just talking about being a good finder, but also being honest about things that are a struggle. And I’d like to think that Courageous Parenting Our Ministries is founded on reality. Rose tinted glasses off, talking about hard topics, being honest about the things that we’ve struggled with in the past at times, or we’ve had to walk through, um, and learned sometimes the hard way. Sometimes God is just really gracious to us.

That’s what experience is, right? You’ve learned from your mistakes, right?

But this is the thing. Guys like this concept. Like how many of you guys have known a know it all? A little kid. Like I remember thinking years ago, one of the reasons why I didn’t want to homeschool Isaac is because I didn’t want my kids to become nodals, because I hated all the know it alls in school. It was just like, uh, are you kidding me? The one that’s always raising their hand. Eager, eager, eager Beaver always has the right answer. Changes the curve. All the things you know. And it was just. It was prideful, this incessant, I know everything kind of attitude. And I kind of thought that a lot of homeschoolers were that way. So I was opposed to homeschooling.

Because you were judging the whole I.

Was I know well, God. He he rebuked me, obviously, because I turned towards it. But I will say that when you’re when you’re focused on academics with your kids or you’re pushing your kids towards high standards and high, high standards are good, having good expectations for your kids, that’s good. They need to be striving for excellence. We need to all be doing our best in whatever God’s given us to do. Right? Work heartily as unto the Lord for his glory. Yes, Amen. However, is there an elitism in academia of knowing knowledge and things and thinking you’re better than other people because you do? Do you have an attitude? Or here’s the real question. Maybe you don’t have that attitude, but people perceive you that way because of how you come across. This is incredibly important for everybody to actually ask themselves. I’ve had to ask myself that question before, too, because I tend to love research and I love knowledge and stuff, but sometimes it can be overwhelming to people.

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