Parenting takes more intentionality than the previous few generations, especially with the seismic culture shifts increasingly against Christianity in the last few years. We have to get good at standing firm in a loving way even in Christian circles, this episode will help you do so.

Main Points From This Episode:

• Be aware of the adult peer pressure in your life and prevent it from making you conform away from your parenting standards.
• Make sure your parenting standards are driven by biblical truth and the Holy Spirit’s promptings versus fear. How you get to your standards gives different impressions to others around you. One shows the power and wisdom of God, and the other shows the fear of man.
• Don’t sacrifice your standards for the sake of relationships and community, but always lovingly stand firm.
• Make sure your marriage is aligned with your standards
• Trust your gut as long as you are walking strong with the Lord. 

Scriptures From This Episode:

– 2 Timothy 1:7 – “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

– 1 Corinthians 15:58 – “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

– Romans 14:1-5 – “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

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Hey, real quick, we hope you love this episode. It’s so important as Christians to be able to stand for truth but be loving at the same time. Easier said than done.

I know sometimes you feel like you need to apologize for your parenting standards, right? So today we are exhorting you to not apologize for them to be immovable and steadfast in the biblical standards that you have for your family, equipping your kids while also loving people. Well. So I hope you enjoyed today’s episode.

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.

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Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Welcome to the podcast. Hey guys. Talking about don’t apologize for your parenting standards. This is so important.

This is a stand firm title if I ever.

Heard Stand firm. We’re wearing in the video. Stand firm, hats. We’re ready.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, if you knew the backstory, you’d know that Angie’s wearing her stand firm hat because her hair doesn’t look so good today. It was a little bit of a rough morning for me. My back was out.

You’re making it. Yeah, that’s right. I’m just thankful I’m not doing this episode by myself.

You were going to be a few hours ago.

Your voice is so important, right? You’re really sweet. It really balances me out.

Praise the Lord that I am able to be sitting here right now. I’m so thankful for my chiropractor. So anyways, side note, guys, we just were so happy to be here with you guys today. This is a very timely conversation. Pretty much any time, any season of parenting doesn’t matter how old your kids are, you have likely experienced feeling pressure by somebody to conform your standards or to relinquish your standards or to change your standards. Or maybe maybe you have even been influenced or felt peer pressure to have higher standards, which can be a positive thing or it can be a negative thing if they’re disputable things.

And sometimes in Christian communities it comes in slowly and in a subtle, subtle, I always say that word wrong on purpose, but.

It’s fine just because it’s a joke between the two of us anyways. So anyway.

But but these things come in that way and sometimes slowly over time and we feel it and we silently agree. Even though we disagree by our actions, we start conforming. And this day and age we need to stand firm while loving others well, and both of those can go together. So we’re going to try and talk about that concept of how do we love others? Well, when there’s different standards, different decisions about parenting, and to allow other people the freedom to make their own decisions. Parenting is a very personal thing, while at the same time holding to our standards and walking in community together. And what does that look like? And I think everybody feels this and wants this. We call it adult peer pressure. There is definitely peer pressure just isn’t in the teenage years for kids and young people. It is also for adults and not a good thing for adults. But it does happen.

Well, I can give a couple scenarios of times in the past 23 years of parenting where I’ve kind of felt a little peer pressure before. Maybe, maybe you can relate to one of these scenarios here. Let me give it a shot. Ready? Here’s a little role playing for you. Have you ever been asked on the spot by one of your children in front of another child if that child can come over and play or if they can go over to that child’s house and play when you already had a different agenda for that day and you’re feeling the pressure to change your plans even if you already like expressed to your child what the plan was for that day. Have you ever Maybe you have. How about this one? How about you have chosen to maybe take a more conservative stance on a specific boundary that you’ve set within your family? That’s a family culture thing. Like for us, I can think of No Sleepovers has been one that we have always had. And maybe you experienced the a peer pressure from other family members or friends to just bend that rule every now and again and let your kids sleep over at their house.

Even though your gut is making you feel agitated. Right.

You know that if you give up, if you just are inconsistent one time, all it takes is one time. And then what are you going to get? You’re going to get nagged over and over and over again the rest of your parenting. Right. And so maybe there’s two different scenarios.

There’s lots of them out there. And we just have to really realize that it’s a whole different ball game right now. Parenting is a long game, but it’s also a short game too, meaning that we have to make good decisions in the short run and play them out in a long game manner, and those get messed up when we start caving to peer pressure, start changing our standards that we feel this Holy Spirit’s prompting us to that. Are biblical standards not made in fear? And we don’t hold to those two for the sake of peace or the sake of. We think it’s loving or just wanting to be included and valued in a community or something like that. And we start to slide on these things. Well, you know what? In the short game, you’re hurting the long game. And the long game is where the fruit happens. Yeah. So we don’t want to do that. No.

And I think too, like if you have a gut feeling on something when your kids are younger and you’re just really tired, let’s just say that maybe you’re tired because you feel like a salmon swimming up water, right where the culture is constantly in opposition to you, you feel like maybe you’re the only one that has chosen the specific path that you’re on and you’re just tired. How many of you guys feel that way? That would be the influence of worldly peer. You’re potentially right. Like obviously you’re experiencing the pressure to cave or to give in or to change your standards, your expectations, your boundaries, whatever it is, it could be a million different things. You guys, you’re feeling the pressure to change because you’re feeling alone and everyone else seems to be going a certain direction. That can be exhausting. We get it. So today we want to encourage you guys to stand firm, as Scripture says, to be confident in your decisions, to be confident in the Bible, truly having biblical standards and not having to feel like you need to give an excuse for why you believe what you believe. Because it’s clear to you it is clear.

And previous generations don’t always understand. It’s it’s it takes more. It takes a greater level of intentionality today than just the past generation, couple, few generations. And so if someone doesn’t actually actively have children in this generation, it can be not always, but it can be difficult for them to understand the extra precaution in a certain area, extra intentionality and extra standards and these kinds of things. And I just want to say, as we dive in here, thank you for being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement you can find all resources at Be courageous ministry.org. There’s lots of free resources and there’s things that support the ministry. We literally it’s a full time effort more than full time effort and there’s a lot of pieces to it and we really absolutely rely on your prayer You’re sharing things right now with Meta. We’re even considering where do we advertise, right? And we’re even considering the idea. Maybe we need to figure out how to advertise on Meta again, we’re praying about that, but our accounts are locked like they won’t even allow us to anyways, I was just looking at it, so it’s just an interesting world we’re in and the restricted for no apparent reason they won’t tell me. So I just we would really appreciate your prayers. And every time you purchase something, every time you give, every time you share that literally makes us able to do all the free content. It literally makes us able to do all the different things that happen in the ministry. So we we appreciate it. Thank you guys.

For your faithfulness. So let’s dive in here, you guys. You know, previous generations, you were just talking about this and I just want to bring a few aspects or perspectives into the conversation. So obviously, the Bible commands Titus, two men and women, ties to men to teach the younger men. Titus two women to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and children, be busy in the home is what the the declaration or command is for older women. And obviously the older men have a different exhortation that they are taught to encourage younger men with. And there is an element of that that if someone is biblical, just purely reading the Bible, giving advice based upon the Bible, not based upon their experiences, not based upon necessarily even what they did, that is safe. And that is true and that is unchanging. And I believe that the I know that for myself, the older I get, the more humbled I be. I experience being trained, I guess, because the longer that you live, the more mistakes you make, the more your eyes are open to the realities of your imperfections. And and you’re not trying to prove anything anymore because you just get it. I don’t know. There’s just something about like, not needing to glorify yourself and wanting to just glorify God. And I. I think young people can have that too. But I have definitely noticed that older people are just they’re just who they are and they don’t apologize for who they are. Do you get what I’m saying? There’s a different kind of strength of identity that I have seen in that it’s not in everybody that’s older. It’s not like I’m saying that age equals spiritual maturity, because I definitely don’t believe that. But there is a reason why God’s word does exhort the older men and women to teach the younger men and women.

So it’s so important as we go into this that your marriage is aligned, right. Marriage alignment is one of the most crucial things in parenting. And I just might have made some people feel sad. Actually. Now, think about it, is because maybe your marriage isn’t aligned. Maybe that’s something you’ve been praying about for a long time. Maybe it’s there’s a real division about your approach in parenting and those kind of things. And I would just make sure you’re being walking in humility with people in church and that you’re asking for prayer and you’re having open conversations about those areas because it does affect things. And it is one of the most important things to do is to get aligned about your approach. And remember, your standards are your standards. They’re your standards. You get to make the standards for your family. And I think that a lot of families think they’re making standards, but they’re really falling to whatever the community is around them. And I think it’s important not to do that, you know, and ask yourself that question, Are we just assimilating into the community, the Christian community, or are we actually thinking through everything, not just going along to get along and actually looking at the. Bible says, asking for God in prayer and making decisions, even if sometimes they look different than others. And I think that’s really, really important to do no matter what community you’re in, because God made you the leaders of your family and put your children in your stewardship, really his children also in your stewardship. So it’s super important.

I think that one really good test, if you want to test yourself and and really put yourself through the gauntlet of, hey, am I assimilating or am I leading my family culture or my family standards? One thing I would ask myself is, have I taught my children the why behind our standards, or are they just expected to follow our lead and not ask questions? Because that’s not leadership? Actually, good leadership, servant hearted leadership, courageous parenting, where you’re equipping your children for an uncertain world. Part of the equipping is that you have to have those conversations where you are equipping them with the answers so that when someone asks them for why they don’t do X, Y, Z, or why they do do or why they why they believe what they believe or why they have the standard of modesty that they have or why they choose to do one thing and not another. Like your kids need to know the reason why they believe. And obviously, if there is a biblical answer for that, we as parents should be equipping our children with that biblical answer so that they have an answer to give to other people when they ask them for why they believe what they believe. This is literally a Bible, biblical exhortation that we have in Scripture from Paul. I think you.

Just hit you just touched on something that I want to bring about a little bit more even, is that sometimes we can make decisions about our standards and not go deep enough into that. Why? Where we put our children in precarious positions where when we’re not around, they’re asked why and they don’t have a good answer and they feel foolish. They feel small, they feel wrong. Other people make them feel wrong or they feel made fun of. They made fun of because they don’t have a good answer. And that’s one thing I can remember many times doing with our children is helping them to have a good answer. So when we’re not around, they can confidently communicate in a way where they earn respect versus ridicule. I think that is so that’s a.

Good statement, like prepare your kids to be able to give an answer where they earn respect versus ridicule. That’s so powerful. And I think that that is really the test of like, are you assimilating or are you leading? Right? That standard, whatever the standard is, whatever the conversation is about, this literally could go into every aspect of your parenting. Like, are we really truly equipping our children? And I think that, you know, for us as parents, too, this holds us accountable to not parenting in fear. Right? And so I just want to share with you guys from second Timothy one seven. It says, for this reason I remind you to fan into the flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of hands for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self control. There’s two things that point out to me, right? Like not being in fear, but then also the importance of having other people around you that can fan your flames. Right. And encouraging you. And we’ll be talking more about that in a few minutes. The importance of having likeminded community and not sacrificing community for living in an assimilated standard, if you will. But really, truly like are you walking with the kind of confidence where he’s it’s the God kind of confidence, power, love, self-control. Another version says sound mind, right?

And a lot of people are like power. That’s an interesting word. You know, it is interesting. In our society, the word power is actually has a negative connotation. But here it is in the Bible in many, many places. So a lot of times people will hear that scripture and they’ll just focus on the love and they’ll focus on these things which which are great, but don’t miss the power part, okay? We are to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in us, which is not our strength, but God’s strength to be able to have courage and do these things that we’re supposed to do. Not in fear. Fear is a lack of power. It’s it’s empty. It’s it’s not able to make a difference.

Right? Walking in the strength that God says that we should be walking, we should.

Be walking in the power of God. Power is a good word, actually. So it’s so important that we don’t offset that and realize that, wow, what is that? What is what is it about my rhythms in life when I don’t even think about that part of the scripture? And I just want to give a warning there. So it’s biblical and Holy Spirit conviction led standards, not fear based standards. Right. And that is what we’re talking about. There can be a place where fear based standards are bad, right? Because most decisions made in fear are bad decisions. And even if, let’s say it’s really what’s behind it is the intent. Entrance of it. Can somebody have the same standards? And they got there through fear or they got there through biblical and Holy Spirit conviction? The answer is actually yes. There can be two different sets of parents. One is fear based comes to the same conclusion and one comes to the same conclusion without any fear at all. Total trust in God and seeing what’s in the Bible. The reason it’s different is because of one of the reasons is the impression it gives to other people. One is weak impression and one is a confident, strong impression.

You know, I just even think like as people are listening, they’re like, Oh yeah, Isaac, I agree. But what are some examples of what that would look like? I even think of people who choose to home school. Some people who choose to home school might be doing it out of fear, right out of the fear that they’re going to lose their child’s hearts and through the indoctrination being their children being exposed to bad things. No, those are realities that are happening in the world today. And we’ve said this many times that God actually created our emotions and fear is a human emotion that people all experience at different times. So that fight or flight, when you’re first injured or you’re experiencing pain or loss or grief or something like that, it’s a normal thing. And that’s different than this. We need to be careful in being able to think clearly. That’s why God calls us to be sober minded, to think clearly. You talked about this in the Resolute Man podcast. Second episode, right?

Oh, the art of clear thinking.

Yes. It’s so it’s so powerful, you guys, because you can’t think clearly when you have fear overcoming you because you’re going to be prone to and tempted to constantly bend towards what your feelings are leading you towards. There are so many scriptures I even think of the heart is deceived above all things, right? Like we need to be careful to not let our feelings like our feeling of fear, be the thing that is the decision maker. And we’re not saying don’t listen to the fear. Sometimes fear is an emotion that that pinpoints or wakes you up to go, Wait a second, something’s wrong here. Something’s off. I need to look into this more clearly. I need to investigate here. I need to pray about this. Those are good responses or reactions to fear. The bad responses to fear would be the I’m going to pull away. I’m going to isolate. I’m going to be careful. I’m going to de, de, de, de, de, de. Now, this is the thing. Are am I saying that all people who homeschool are parenting out of fear? No, not at all. I’m not saying that all we homeschool and we’re not parenting out of fear. Our choice to homeschool. I mean, I’ll be really honest. I didn’t really want a homeschool all those years ago, but it was it was something God was calling us to.

And it was looking at the options and making a decision in wisdom for our family. Yes. And so I think that that’s the thing. You can see bad things and and inferior choices and make a better choice in confidence, in trusting God, in wisdom, because you’re looking at everything. But there’s a difference in just doing it out of fear and literally feeling fear inside. And that’s driving you to do something. It’s going to make you less effective. It’s going to make your impression not as good on other people. It’s not glorifying the strength of God because obviously you’re not embodying God’s strength, right, when you’re showing fearfulness. Right. 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. 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.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything at Courageous Parenting.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 Courageous Parenting.com.

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So walking with confidence, I mean, you can’t let’s just all be honest for a second. Think for a second. Can you tell when you’re around someone who is exuding God’s kind of confidence? I’m not talking about arrogance. I’m talking about God’s peaceful, the peace that surpasses all understanding, walking uprightly, knowing that they’re walking righteously, they’re doing their best. They’re giving God the rest. There’s just this calm peace, this this around someone, right? Like you get it. You’ve been around somebody like that that making sometimes when you’re in that making that those kinds of life style decisions while having confidence that is biblical, making that same lifestyle choice but making it out of fear would be not biblical. And so we want to just make this huge distinction for you and then ask the question like, when it comes to your standards, have you just chosen to make the quick judgment call, the quick parental decision based out of fear because you just don’t have time or you don’t want to take the time to investigate all the reasons. And if you have, I just want to encourage you and exhort you to get into the word and surrender that to God and you may come to the exact same decision it was. But let me tell you, it was not a waste of time to take that time and give that fear to God and let him redeem it and to rebuild your confidence and for you to have a why and be on mission and then share that mission with your children, that’s when legacies are changed and that’s when your kids are like growing up and they’re understanding a deeper conviction and they they have a respect for it. It’s very different. And so, you know, when you’re deciding your standards, whatever those are, please don’t make those decisions out of fear.

Now, we have this gut reaction, don’t we, this sense about things. And that can be out of fear because we’re not walking strong with the Lord or it can be Holy Spirit inspired.

Like that, prompting.

That prompting. And how do we know which is which? I think that that’s why it’s so important to be walking closely to the Lord. It’s so important to be in the word in prayer so we can trust when we have those gut feelings. That is the Holy Spirit and we have confidence to say that. And so we move, we trust it, we stop, we say no, even if we don’t have a full sentence of why, because we got this sense in us. And then later it’s completely revealed. Why? Because you just saved your kids some heartache. And so it is so important to be walking strong and to keep our standards and and for them not to be fear based. And the next thing is don’t sacrifice your standards for the sake of relationships or community. Now, by the way, community and relationships are extremely important. We’re to love other people. Well, we’re to glorify father by the love we show to people even when it’s not deserved. Right? We see that in the scriptures.

Love our neighbor as ourself, right? Like I even think of like, obviously I’m sure that you can think of times in relationships with people where you’ve needed grace from them in your life. And so here’s the question, though. If you are expecting other people to give you grace, are you giving that same grace to other people? And so reciprocating what you yourself will also need at some point in your life that is loving? People like thinking deeply about that, giving compassion, knowing that one day you’re going to need compassion, understanding that you’re not perfect and so you don’t expect perfection from other people or even just impressing upon others your expectations, right? Like that’s something that has for a long time. The comparison trap. If you if you want a deeper look into this, we actually have the biblical friendship online Bible study. It’s 12 weeks long and there’s a whole like four weeks just focused on the comparison trap where we dive deeply into like, what is the difference between disputable and indisputable issues? How does how do relationships impact our identity in Christ? And part of that is like allowing expectations that we put on ourselves or we allow other people to put on us or the society or worldview to put on us. And being able to walk in freedom from all of that, understanding what God’s expectations are. And so that can be incredibly freeing.

So but don’t sacrifice for the sake of relationships or community, right? Your standards. That’s really important. So that being said, we have to make sure that at the same time we’re not so seeking relationship approval, belonging, that we’re sidestepping what’s actually best for our family. We’re not listening to the Holy Spirit’s conviction and taking action on it. We’re going along to get along. And that is, you know, no one wants to admit that they do that. But I think. That most people have experiences doing that. I think maybe everybody has experience of doing that. Okay. I know I do. I have experiences in my life of doing that, and I think I’ve just learned that, you know what? It doesn’t matter so much what they think. If it’s because of me doing something right for my family, it does matter what people think, right? We want to glorify the father. We want to have a good reputation and these kinds of things. But when it doesn’t matter is when I’m doing something that the Holy Spirit convicted me to do that is best for my family, then I can’t think I can’t care how that rubs on other people. Everything needs to be done in love. But I can’t be so concerned about it that I don’t do the right thing.

Hey, speaking of which, I just want to say something like, you guys are all aware of what’s happening in society today. We got bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Good. Good being called bad and bad calling good. And the Bible talks about this specifically. It’s woe to the person who does that. Right? We get that. But let me just share something with you. The reality is, is that in today’s society where that is so common, there there are accusations of just because you homeschool or just because you have this many kids or just because you do this or you do that, or you have a home birth that the way that you live your life will be convicting to other people. That does not mean that you stop doing the thing that God has called you to, that you and your husband are in alignment for. That has been the best decision for your family just to make somebody else feel better, that would be compromising. And so I have to speak that word very strongly because that’s actually a question I get a lot from people is like, Hey, I’m just really struggling right now. And and I get it. There are attacks coming even from within the church. It’s called friendly fire. But you’ve got to stand firm making decisions between you and your spouse, what’s best for your family, what’s in accordance with scripture. And that’s it. You just leave it at that. You don’t need to have mom’s approval. You don’t need to have your mother in law’s approval. You don’t need to have your your neighbor’s approval or the girl that leads the Bible study class or even your mentor. Like when it comes down to it, if you are seeking the Lord, your husband is seeking the Lord, you guys are in the Word. You make decisions. That’s where the buck stops. And so if other people are having a hard time with that, my encouragement to you is to dive even deeper into biblical fellowship. Be praying specifically for like minded friends that are going to exhort you like how we are right now.

If a community or a relationship makes you feel bad or inferior or not. Like you can belong here for a decision that is a biblically based, Holy Spirit driven, marriage aligned, discussed decision that is best for your family, then what kind of community in relationship is that really? In First Corinthians 1558, it says, Therefore my beloved brothers be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. So what is the word immovable mean? I think that I don’t hear that word a lot amongst Christian living immovable. That’s why we made these stand firm house because it reminds us when I wear it, it reminds me to be loving but immovable on the things that matter.

Yeah, you’re going to stand strong on your convictions. It’s interesting because I think of the word what’s a modern word for this that can oftentimes be confused with immovable or standing firm would be stubborn. Right. And that would be the fleshly. I’m not going to listen. I’m prideful. I’m arrogant. That is the opposite of what we are saying here. God’s word is commanding us really to be steadfast and immovable in the things that are biblical, always abounding in the Word of the Lord. So that’s the that’s really the the clause that gives you the permission to be immovable is if it’s in the Bible and it’s abounding in the Word of God, you stand firm and be immovable. If it’s not a biblical thing or if it’s a disputable issue, meaning it’s not a salvation issue, that’s where you can have grace and you can step back a little bit and give some compassion. I just want to share with you guys another scripture that is coming to mind in this topic. It’s in Romans chapter 14. This is really and this is off cuff. Sorry, Isaac, you’re always making fun of me for adding more scripture verses. But when we’re talking about being immovable, but we’re also talking about having compassion in those times that are needed. Romans 14 comes to mind because it’s a it’s another verse that talks about judging and it talks about having compassion or understanding for the person who has the weaker standard. Actually, that’s why this comes to mind.

It says in verse one, As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but but not to quarrel over opinions. So opinions. These are not. Biblical abounding in the word items. These are opinions, fleshly opinions. We’re not to quarrel about them. Okay, One person. Here’s an example. Then the Bible gives us. One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. Okay. Let not the one who eats eats anything. Okay? Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains. Pass judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld. For the Lord is able to make him stand. And then it continues on and talks about like a Sabbath one. One person esteems a day as better than the other, while another seems another day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. Just continues on and on. Talking about conscience. And to one man at sin. This is an incredibly important chapter to have memorized as Christians regarding Christian living and making any kind of decisions and standing firm in any conviction that we have. This is something we have to teach our kids. Like in my mind, when I think about a Bible verse that is an equipping verse about teaching your kids how to stand firm, stand up for their convictions, I think Romans 14 because this is a balance of like, listen, guys, there are things that are indisputable about the salvation of and how Jesus redeems us.

He was born of the Virgin Mary. He died on the cross. He rose again from the dead. There’s all these things we could talk about. These are indisputable. We are not going to argue about these. These are not going to cause division. We’re going to have unity in these. And then God literally uses Paul to say, listen, but not to quarrel over opinions. And so that is where we have to go. Okay. I don’t I don’t know everything. And this is my opinion and I have maybe have some biblical convictions as to why I have this opinion. But I’m willing to disagree. And I can we can still have respect for one another. But. That’s the reality is like he’s literally saying don’t despise each other. Right. And so and the reason why I think this is so important is we’re talking about community, right? And like not sacrificing our things for community. The same goes both ways, right? Like within community like that, you need to have love and respect for one another, not despising one another, but having the ability to honor and not pressure the other person to come your way. And so this is something that I’m going to just share with you guys, I think is an ongoing lifelong lesson.

We don’t want to be propellants to other people because we’re so staunch in expecting others to conform to our standards at the same time. So it can go both ways. I think it’s important that we show love and that we treat others how we would want to be treated, obviously. And it’s so important. And you know, this the big question I think people are going to have because we get this question all the time, which is about boundaries and setting boundaries and so forth. And while that could be its own episode, which probably will be let us know if you’d like that. But boundaries are important and sometimes you have to have hard conversations with those you love most, extended family neighbors that you care about. Different situations out there, people at church that just maybe don’t have some of the same standards. And I think you’ll find if you come with a loving approach, people are super receptive. And, you know, one of the ways that makes it easier these days is every Christian at least understands that the world has changed in many ways in the last three years, specifically that the evil is growing and God is also God’s. People are also growing stronger too, right in the midst of this. But it’s interesting and I think that you can get a really good conversation going based on the changes that are happening in these last few years and, you know, bringing up your issue and we really have this standard. How do you feel about that? And I’m not asking how someone feels about it because I’m going to bend. I’m just creating conversation and letting finding out how they feel about what I just said so that I can see where they’re at and then go from there.

But there’s a lot of ways to have this. And my number one tip for people when they’re having hard conversations is to pray for them, pray for the conversation, pray for an open heart, and to bring God into it through your prayer. So basically pray. And that is the biggest tip. You don’t have to do a bunch of writing, write an outline of all your thoughts and things like that unless you think it helps you. But I really think if you go in tender to what the spirit’s convicting you of and the words the spirit’s asking you to talk about, and walking in the spirit because you’re walking strong and prayer beforehand, that means is going to go well. And even if it’s hard, even if it rubs a little wrong on the other person, if you do it in love, nothing really can be held against you. And that’s that’s the key. And the whole goal here is the love and care of your children. And that’s what should matter to everybody. Everybody should have that same goal. And while we might disagree on some of these standards, if it’s really important to you, you’ve got to have it. Otherwise, you know what you have. You have a loving relationship with a high dose of fake peace. So you have this relationship where you love each other or deeply care about each other, friendships, but you have some fake peace involved in that relationship that really creates a barrier for going any deeper. Yeah.

No so good. And I think that it’s important that when we’re having these conversations, we are trying to see ourselves. I know that that’s something that Isaac and I have been talking about for years just within our family, is that every person struggles with this inability to actually see themselves at times. And part of that is just an exhortation to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, right? And that’s something that like, I know that for myself, I think about on a regular basis, like, Oh, whoa, what if I was sitting in the other person’s shoes listening at that moment? Would that be intimidating? Would that be intense? Would that be, you know, and just thinking and putting yourself there and that gives you the ability or the motivation, I guess, to be more understanding in those moments. Because the truth is, is the person that has the more stringent expectations or standards biblically speaking, according to Romans 14, it’s like we are actually called to have compassion and understanding with the people who are weaker, right? And so there’s a need for us to really take the rose tinted glasses off ourselves and try to come at conversations, having an open ear to hear the other person so that they feel heard, while also like knowing strongly what God has called you to and standing firm in that. So hopefully this has been encouraging to you guys. I know that when it comes to family and friends and just community, these this is a hard topic. It is a hard topic.

And I just I think we want to wrap up with this this idea that how important it is to stand firm. And when we don’t, we’re even though we might have the right priorities in our life, God, marriage, family, then others in that order, even though we might have, you know, that priority in our head, in our mindset written down somewhere, talk to each other about before heard from a sermon or marriage counseling or something like that. You know what? It doesn’t mean we’re operating in it. And whenever we don’t do what’s best for our family for the sake of others, which are fourth in our priority list, that sacrifice something higher in the priority list, it means our priorities actually aren’t right prioritized correctly, even though we know what they should be. And so just remember that, that when we cave for something that’s best for our family to the nurture of a relationship outside of our immediate family that is usurping the priorities and it’s usurping what God’s already convicted you on anyways.

Well, and I just even think about an exhortation we’ve talked about so many times over the years in this podcast of being 100% who you are in private as you are in public. And if you’re doing that, you’re not going to have that problem because you’re going to have your priorities straight within your family. And then when you go into public and you’re in that public square, wherever that is, right? Whether it’s in church, community, neighborhood, community, family, community, whatever, like you’re going to be the same person, then there isn’t going to be a sacrifice of your family. And so just remember who you are in Christ. I think it would be a good final wrap up for this. Like you guys, when you remember who you are in Christ and what he’s commanded you to in Christian living, and then you have no one to be apologizing to because you’re just obeying Christ. And if you get condemned, we know what the Bible says about that. If you’re living biblically and you’re trying to live your life according to this Bible right here, then any persecution you get is really persecution against Christ.

And we know as Christians we can anticipate that, especially because we are. We’ve been living in End Day since Jesus left, right. And so the growth of persecution is going to continue on. And that’s part of what we need to equip our kids with is this immovable. Stand firm as long as you are walking biblically, not about opinions, not about feelings, not about like what we want or even what we desire, It’s Lord, seek first your kingdom and all these things and your righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. If we teach our kids those basic truths, love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is nothing to be apologizing for. Amen. So have a great week you guys. Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. Go to be courageous ministry org for more biblically based resources. Ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible be courageous app community for believers.

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