This is a battle every parent faces more strongly today than ever before. There is an orchestrated agenda with the purpose to confuse children in ways that cast doubt on Biblical truth. Unfortunately too often it comes from friendly fire; other believers are unaware of their nominalness, friends, and even family. This episode dives into this challenge with practical insights and empowerment to take effective action.

Scripture From This Episode:

• The enemy is the author of deception
• God is the author of truth
• With a purposeful effort to confuse children in society make sure you are instilling Biblical truth about the issues.
• Love others well, but our love for others should never perpetuate confusion in our children.
• Your omission silently gives your kids permission to do the same someday
• Always clear up any confusion even if it means talking with your kids about others’ sins.
• Teach your children how to discern for themselves what’s a trustworthy decision, path, or the quality of wisdom coming at them.
• Talk to others in your children’s lives if you need to about the issue.

Scripture From This Episode:

John 8:44 – “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”

1 John 3:18 – “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”

Galatians 5:19-21 – “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

1 Peter 5:8-9 – “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.”

Romans 12:2 – “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Romans 8:6 – “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

Proverbs 27:6 – “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

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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 I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the following. Well. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, guys.

Today we’re talking about don’t let anyone confuse your kids. This was requested by many listeners and has to do with the topic we actually talk about often in the app and the parenting mentor program.

That’s right. And today, I think you would agree that confusion is definitely something that seems to be around every corner, lurking around every corner, if you will, as well as deception. Those two things are not to be confused, and we’ll get into that in a minute. But before we before we dive in, Isaac and I just want to say thank you for joining us here on the podcast. And for those of you who have been following for a long time, we just really appreciate you. We are thankful for the ratings on iTunes. Do you know what we are like? Five ratings away from 2000 ratings.

The ministry has got a good rating there. So we’re so.

Appreciative of that. So thankful for you guys. But every every comment, every message that you guys send really means a lot to Isaac and I. It keeps I know it keeps me motivated for sure. I’m one of those people that I like to connect more personally with you guys. And so whenever I get a message, it really means a lot.

Yeah. So, so good and a lot of good things about to happen. So keep your ears peeled as coffee is launching soon. If you want to be on the launch team, you might get some notifications about that. We would love the help with that and there’s going to be a video out soon which really talks about the whole ministry. So make sure you keep your eyes peeled for that on social media and stuff. It’s just a really exciting time for the ministry and a lot of good change that it allows a bigger impact. You might be asking, Well, how does coffee allow a bigger impact of all? You have to see the video, but we’re really excited about it. And there’s going to be a new website at some point where it’s the hub for the whole ministry because right now, right, you go to creator’s parenting dot com and if you want Angie’s blog, you go to courageous mom and the guys. If you want to, you know, check out the shop at Amazon.com. Right.

A lot of dot coms as well.

And then there’s then there’s the app and the app store. But, you know, sometimes people might how do I get to that? So just really, you know, bringing clarity to all that. So, hey, we’re going to dive in confusion, you know, don’t let anyone confuse your kids. I think everybody agrees with that. Why would anybody want their kids to be confused? However, this is a really difficult problem in today’s world. As you know, we’re in a post Christian nation as far as the United States is concerned. And those of you all around the world have probably been post Christian for a long time or never. And so and so it’s a really an interesting time. It’s the time where these woke beliefs are harmful and confusing. There’s a lot of confusion that can happen about lifestyle, about worldly beliefs, even from Christians, Christian Nominalism that even seeps into many churches. Now we love the Bride of Christ, so we’re not disparaging the bride of Christ at all. But we do have to deal in reality that there is a nominalism that has seeped in sometimes for the sake of loving others and really love doesn’t have to be that way. We’ll get into it.

I’d say to that confusion tries to well, confusion doesn’t try to sneak in everywhere. The enemy tries to deceive people. And I think we would all agree that there is a massive attack on our children these days as much as there is on adults. But children are. We all know that children are the future in the sense of leadership of who the future citizens are going to be, of decision making for the Earth, all of these things. And the enemy knows that he is on a timeline. And it seems like the attack on children has definitely sped up, if you will. There’s been a much more at least exposed effort. I think a lot of us are able to see more of what’s going on regarding children’s education, media, movie. And when I say media, I’m not talking about social media, although that definitely if you have teenagers that are on social media, there’s an attack avenue right there. Another attack avenue would be movies, books that are in the library, books that kids are being assigned to read in school. Aside from parental peer pressure that parents have to allow their children to participate in video games or social media or watching certain movies, children are also exposed to a massive quantity of different kinds of peer pressure. When you and I were kids. The peer pressure that we had to be prepared to say no. Do you remember that the just say no verbiage that was being taught in schools? That’s right. I mean, that was that was a huge thing. Just say no to drugs. Just say no to sex. That was something that was taught to our generation when we were in the public education system. Nowadays, that is definitely not being taught. In fact, there’s a different agenda that is being taught, which is how can you know that you’re a certain way unless you try it? And there’s descriptions of how to do certain things being taught to children. There’s teachers using their influence in their position and sharing from their own personal convictions and lifestyle choices, trying to influence other kids to be like them.

It’s a really an orchestrated effort, an orchestrated agenda that we all know about. So which is really difficult. And The Enemy is the author of Deception. But the good news is God is the author of truth. There is truth. And as believers we believe that and we believe in the Bible and so forth. So then as parents, the most important job as parents is to love our kids well and point them to Jesus. Right? That’s the most if you get really down to it and equip them to share the gospel in the future. So that’s the most important thing. So then what is a parent’s job? The parent’s job is to make sure there isn’t confusion, right? To make sure there is truth instilled in their minds and understanding of godly principles.

In part, there’s many different ways that you can do that, right. Like I think of little kids, a parent’s job is more to protect them from confusion so that they’re not even necessarily exposed to confusing or conflicting agendas or lifestyles or different things like that. There is an element of protecting that we as parents are called to do. It is our jurisdiction. It’s our duty as parents, right, biblically. But then there’s also this element of as your kids are getting older, equipping them with so much truth and teaching them that it is right to discern that they do need to judge, especially within the church, when it comes to who they make friends with, who they listen to, who they allow to influence them. We talk about all this stuff in many different podcasts, more in depth than the Parenting Mentor program, but there’s this element of equipping, so there’s protecting and there’s equipping. And those are two of the main ways that you can be truly engaged in this battle, if you will, because I do believe this is a spiritual battle to fight against confusion and to fight against the enemies, plots and schemes to try to deceive your children.

Remember, confusion, just a little bit of confusion leads to a little bit of doubt and a little bit of doubt. Breathe life into more doubt. And pretty soon it can sway a whole paradigm of how a human being looks at the world. And we want to look through a biblical paradigm and the enemy’s constantly trying to whittle away and help anybody. Then began to look through a worldly, self seeking, self glorifying paradigm.

So we want to start off, we’re going to go over a few different scriptures here with you guys that, that to, to kind of really cover some bullet points that are super important here because there are many different ways that your children are potentially exposed to confusing ideology, confusing philosophies, confusing ideas, confusing agendas, if you will. You could call them many different things, confusing issues of the day. Current events, people use different terminology to describe all these different things. But really what it comes down to is that we know that we have we have three enemies, right? We have our flesh, right? The temptation to sin. We have the world, the secular fallen world, and the temptation of the world. And then we have the enemy, the devil, we have Satan. And the Bible gives us some different verses throughout Scripture that will describe who He is in character. We’re not going to dive in deep into that, but but I do think that there is an important thing that needs to be said here. I was just talking to a mom about this in an app and messaging the other day. She was like, I don’t really think I know very much about my enemy. And I went, You know what? I think a lot of Christians don’t. And a lot of times Christians I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this before.

I’ve heard this many times. Well, I don’t want to give the devil any power, so I don’t want to talk about him. And I’m sorry, talking about him actually doesn’t give him power. That’s a lie from the enemy because he doesn’t want to be talked about. He doesn’t want to be exposed for the liar that he is, for the schemer that he is. The agenda that he has to that set to steal, kill and destroy. Right. Like he doesn’t want to be exposed. He likes lurking in darkness. We know this from First John, where God says that we as children of light need to walk in the light as God is in the light and expose darkness. Right? Because then it has no power of us. There is no bondage. It’s when we hide that sins have power in our life. And so as believers, when we think about all of Scripture and we think about who Lucifer was in Genesis, we think about the different things that God has said in His Word that give us insight into his character. We as Christians need to be wise. We need to understand that he has certain character traits and a schemer is one of those things. Right? We know this from Ephesians six where where God is saying to be able to withstand the devil’s schemes, the flaming arrows of the evil one.

So we know that he’s like an archer with arrows, right? Otherwise, why would that even be in scripture? And so when we’re reading these different verses and we’re talking about things, it’s important to go, Wow, God is so good that He is warning us about our enemies so that we can be strategic and prepare our children so that they can be strategic and be able to discern, to be able to obey. Where God says, be aware, be alert, be aware, be alert of false teachers that are going to confuse your kids or deceive them. Be aware and alert of the enemy. Right. So here’s John. Chapter eight, verse 44, actually, before we dive into verse 40 for the part that’s just before I really want to encourage you to read it. It’s too much for me to read here in the podcast, but this whole section, Jesus is basically like saying there’s a difference between being a child of God and being a child of the devil. And he’s literally telling them, like, if you were truly like the sons of Abraham, this is not what Abraham did. So listen to this. In verse 44, it says, You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. This is telling us about the devil. There is no truth in him. He’s out to murder. We can see these different character qualities of the devil, which are terrible character qualities. It says when he lies, he speaks out of his own character. See, God is saying Satan has character. He’s speaking out of his own character when he’s speaking of lies, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me which one of you convicts me of sin? And then he continues on. This is a really important passage of Scripture. I really hope that parents actually study this with their children. Isaac Because it’s important if God, if Jesus himself is saying this and one of the Gospels and He is telling us to be and he’s doing this for our good you guys, he’s warning us that Satan is a liar. He’s a father of lies. There is no lying in God. There cannot be. There is no sin in God. And so if you were to lay those to people before your children, they would clearly go, Well, I want to be on God’s team.

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 parenting dot com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also you can get all of our show notes and everything at courageous parenting dot com. And I also just want to share real quick about the parenting mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal. This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications. This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart. We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and 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.

And so this all makes sense to everybody listening, and I’m sure they’re like, Amen, amen. Angie And that was so good. And but then when it comes to family and when it comes to people close to your family. Yeah, that’s where it gets difficult, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s this it’s this tension of how do we make sure people aren’t confusing our kids. I get that out there with people that aren’t close to the family. But then how do we handle this with people who are in our family, who have chosen an ungodly lifestyle that kids witness or they are proclaiming things that are wrong? Or as your kids get older and they’re teenagers, they see other family members and people on social media pontificating and supporting things that are.

Their.

Woke, that are terrible. Yeah, right. So how do you handle that? And I think that’s the deeper question that people really want. So we’re going to talk about that. And first, John, 318, it says Little children, let us not love in word or talk. But indeed and in truth, as I looked at that scripture, I’m like, that is the shortest sentence that has so much weight to. It’s unbelievable. It is. Let me just read it again. Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but indeed and in truth, this isn’t written just to little children. If you read first, John, he’s talking about everybody. So we are to not just have lip service and we’re not just to have action. Good deeds. Deeds are actions once you agree to do something good for someone else, but also in truth. And when the Bible is talking about truth, what is it referencing? Biblical truth, sound doctrine, what is real? That is true.

And so isn’t that true about like what our kids see in us? Also, like you could spend all day talking to your kids or at your kids, but if they see you literally doing something that you have also taught them or if you haven’t taught them, but they see it all the time, like, let’s just I’m going to use an example forgiveness. Maybe you haven’t sat down and taught your kids about forgiveness, but have they seen you forgive your husband? Have they seen your husband forgive you? Have they seen you guys come together and forgive one another? Have they heard you talk about to one of their siblings the importance of forgiving them? Have they experienced you worshiping God because he’s forgiven you and seen you being reflective during communion for the forgiveness of it? Like there’s so many aspects where what we’re doing is more important than what we say.

And this really comes to the question about what do you do with family? And people close to the family is we need to love others. Well, and that scripture is talking about how also we should love others as well, not just in deed but also in truth. Do we omit truth because we’re scared to hurt the relationship? Does that fear of hurting the relationship then continue confusion in our kids? Does that confusion our kids continue? Because we’d never would want to say anything corrective or disrespectful about somebody that’s an extended family member. But we we have that desire and that sense tends to trump the God authorized directive to make sure our kids are not confused, to make sure that we’re discipling them and equipping them, and we’re allowing someone influential then to be pontificating and doing things in their life in a way that doesn’t get corrected, even if it’s silently between you, just in your child, and now by omission, you are authorizing what they’re seeing. I hope you heard that by omission. Not talking about something with your kids. You are actually authorizing in their mindset, something they’re seeing out there but somebody they love doing. So I think that’s pretty convicting, but it’s truthful. See, our love for others should never perpetuate confusion. God would never have it be that way, especially for children.

Yeah. I even think about like how many people actually, they think that they’re loving the other person by and respecting them and whatever you want to call it, tolerating the sin, all the things they think that that is greater. And, more important, justified in their brain. They must have justified that in their brain, then correcting it with their child. But what they don’t understand is that by allowing their child to be deceived or be confused by what the other person is doing and not talking about it, it’s the most unloving thing that they could do as a parent for their child. So what they’re actually choosing to do is, in their mind, they’re loving this person, but actually they’re not loving their own child in that way. Yeah, and that’s an important distinction that we as Christians need to understand that we’re actually putting priority over this adult over here who’s maybe an extended family member or a neighbor or a friend. And we’re putting this idea of what love is, which isn’t actually love at all, because that person is literally living in bondage of sin and they’re lost. And if we loved them, we would try to help them to find breakage from that bondage, which there’s freedom in Christ. Right. And so and there are gentle ways of being able to communicate that with an adult. But the reality is, is if they have chosen this thing and they know the gospel and you shared the truth with them, and they’ve chosen to not walk in the truth, but they’ve chosen to walk in the flesh. By just allowing that friendship or that relationship to go on. There’s no boundaries. And to let it just continue on the way that it was before, at the expense of your child is unloving to your child.

Hey, you know, if you read about elders and pastors in the Bible and the qualifications for elders and pastors, you know, it’s talking about one of the things they’re to do is to protect sound doctrine in the church, to adhere to biblical truth and protect that. And they’re not to allow divisions to come in about myths and things like that. But how much more actually does God want us to do that for our own kids? Remember, husbands, you’re the pastors of your own family and wives. You’re incredibly important spiritual leaders in your family, of your children as well. And so it’s so and you’re that team, that marriage team, that spiritual leadership team in your family working together. And how how important is it that you never allow your flock to take the church analogy real quick, to be confused, to get wayward on unsound doctrine, to attach some worldly thing, and to allow adultery to exist in your family because they’re witnessing it existing in extended family members.

I even just think about sin, you know, we know that there’s sin of omission, sin of commission. There’s like we all sin at times and sometimes we’re unaware of sin. But there are certain sins that people literally choose to walk in a lifestyle of sin. And those are the sins that are outwardly being pushed on children. For children to join in on those things, there is an effort, a concerted effort like we talked about by the enemy to try to deceive children into not just tolerating, but also participating or wanting to participate in the future in sexually immoral sins that are going to be choices that are lifestyle, choices that are like continual sins. I want to read to you guys from Galatians chapter five, verse 19 through 21, and the part before the part before again is talking about the difference between walking by the spirit, walking by the flesh. This is super important. And so we need to have realistic expectations of people who are not saved, who are lost. They will not have the ability to walk by the spirit because they don’t have the spirit in them. And so we need to have compassion and grace on them. But that is also what should motivate us to share the truth with them so that they can experience the power of the Holy Spirit, helping them to walk by the Spirit and not by their flesh. Right? That’s the distinction. But in verse 19, it says, Now the works of the flesh are evident sex, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. So there’s a whole bunch more things like these, and then it continues. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

So there needs to be a point of clarity made with your children in the most loving way you can for the other person, of course. And while you still want your children in most cases to still respect these other people and so forth, in some cases you may not if it’s such a terrible situation, in a challenging situation, but you have to discern these things. And so we want to talk about these things in the best possible way. And so remember, parents, that’s a different category. It is a unique category. When you think of parents. Parents do not have as much leniency to allow things to fly in terms of communication from others towards the people that are in their jurisdiction. They have God authorized people in their jurisdiction to disciple and raise up.

God is it’s actually their authority. They are supposed to be doing this because regardless of if you’re exercising your authority or not, guess what God created at the beginning of the world? When He created man and woman and the family unit, he created image bearing. And as parents we are image bearers to our children. And we need to understand that that brands God to our children.

And that comes our children come before any other sphere of influence outside of the family. That is the priority, and we all agree with that. But then what are our actions actually show? Do we allow certain relationships to allow confusion to be perpetuated on our kids? And then we don’t even correct it. Now we’re not isolationist. We don’t believe in. Completely isolating our families from the world and from people in the world on these kinds of things. Absolutely not. But there is a discernment. Very young children, the very careful and protecting them. And as they get older and they get stronger, you want them to experience conversations and things to where they come back and you have good discussions about it and you correct any confusion, you correct any unbelief or wrong communication that has come at them from the the arrows of the enemy or the arrows from just people not thinking rightly.

And I do think that it’s important. I think that one of the most positive things that a parent can do, because we’re talking about what they can do, what they should do. We’ve been talking a lot about what you do to protect your kids. Right. So it’s kind of like, okay, well, there’s probably going to be some relationships where you need to put boundaries around them. That’s a hard thing to do. Here’s an easier thing that’s more fun to do. You get to actually help cultivate. You’re going to do this with prayer, with insight, with discernment, with judging, in alignment with your spouse. But you guys get to cultivate good community, like minded community, where your kids are able to grow up with people who are like minded, who love the Word of God, who view things the same way that they do. And so it’s not that they’re isolated because they are around other people, but you’re choosing who they’re around so that as their worldview is being formed, it’s not being formed in a confused fashion. It’s not being formed on lies, it’s being formed on truth. And while you’re doing that, you teach them about what’s being taught over here in the world from a biblical worldview here and there, age appropriate conversations. But it’s not like they have to literally go experience the thing in order to learn it. No, that is a lie. That’s what you actually see the the hole in the whole. There’s pride parades and there’s all kinds of crazy things happening with drag queens out there. They’re literally exposing children to something sinful to teach them.

And to normalize it and then to raise up a generation of people who normalize all of these things.

You don’t need to teach kids by having them go experience something, is what I’m saying. Like, that’s a lie, actually.

So our next point is, and we kind of talked about this, but we’re going to talk a little at length and how is always clear up confusion. So when do you clear up confusion? Always clear up confusion. Well, what happens with so-and-so? Always clear up confusion. Remember, a mission is.

Giving permission.

Of permission to that. And so if there’s something happening close to the family or with family member and so forth, within reason, you need to clarify and, and in the way to do that is. Well, what let me ask you, what would be the loving way to do that with your children as much as you can, remaining the reputation of the respect for the love for the other person while differentiating.

What they’re doing.

Their sin, what they’re doing is sin. And if they’re non believers then you can teach them about that. They don’t have the Holy Spirit. This is what happens to people that don’t have a mind of Christ and so forth. And this is, you know, they’re following the ways of the world and these are really normal things, unfortunately in the world. I don’t think it’s bad to say that we need to prepare them for the world they’re launching into.

And so and we need to be praying for them. Like if we really, truly are people who love God above other people, like, I know that’s a hard thing to say, but who’s number one in your heart? Everyone talks about priorities and how God’s they’re number one. But this is really where the rubber meets the road or where like the truth is revealed. If God is number one in your heart, if you truly care more about what He thinks than you do what other people think. This is also the test of if you have truly surrendered all to him, including your opinions in your convictions. This this is a test above all tests. Right. And when it comes to our faith with our children and bringing them up, if there is hypocrisy anywhere, if we’re willing to just be lenient over here a little bit on this doctrine, because our kids chosen a lifestyle of sin, da da da da da. What does that teach our other children? And we see this so much with older parents, don’t we? Like as we’ve grown older and kids, we’ve gotten.

Older, so many parents follow the watered down doctrine of their kids.

Their wayward.

Children.

Yep. And I would say another way to put that is that we have definitely witnessed people actually sacrificing their own personal, deep convictions, which are based on Scripture that they always believed they’re sacrificing them for their children. And what that tells me, they think that that’s being loving. They think that they’re they’re they’re they literally have chosen to love their children’s sin more than loving God is what that has done. And so we need to be aware of this and recognize that there is like and it’s subtle, you guys. Sometimes it starts out it’s a slippery slope. It’ll start out so subtle just to, oh, I’ll lean up a little bit there, because if I if I really point out my sin and the teenager, then they might rebel. So I’m not going to say anything. Have you heard this from other people? This is literally the most disastrous thing that you could ever do as a parent. If you are claiming Christ and you have been raising your children in spirit and in truth, and then you go back on that out of fear. Which are based upon lies from the devil. By the way, I just want to bring that up. Then that child literally gives way to their flesh.

Hey, first, Peter. 5839. It says, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour Resist him firm in your faith, knowing the same kinds of suffering of being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. So it’s not an abnormal thing. This is the thing happening all the time to people. The enemy is trying to destroy everybody. And there’s we’ve got to make sure that we’re not letting the enemy have any footholds in our family through extended family. We’re not letting the enemy have any footholds through other relationships, other influences. We’re going to correct that in a biblical way. We’re going to love others. Well, while talking about what the Bible says, well, let’s say there’s some really bad idolatry happening and your child is being influenced. Your your middle schooler is being influenced to have this idolatry over something and then go to Scripture and read what idolatry is and talk about how God doesn’t like it and why it’s so bad. Because idolatry is one of those ones where it doesn’t appear to be that bad. Oh, that person is just ambitious actually.

One of the.

Ambitions within reason. True. And you know. But but when something becomes distracting away from a relationship with God becomes more important than time with God in the Bible and these kinds of things. And it deters and it changes and it creates an unhealthy competition between them and others. And all of these things like sports can be adulterous sometimes, all kinds of things, right? And so what are we teaching about our kids so that they have a correct view on that? And there’s, of course, all kinds of other worst things in your mind probably you.

Can think of. Yeah. So I think that when you’re evaluating so some of you may be listening to this going, Oh man, this is a heavy hitting podcast, Isaac and Angie and where do I where do I even begin is probably where some people are thinking. I would say the first question you need to ask when it comes to confusion and evaluating the friendships, the the relationships that curriculums or teachers or influences or environment or culture that your kids are in. I’m talking activity school, all the things youth group, literally you need to evaluate all the things that you’ve decided as a family to commit your children to, because every time you put them somewhere, you’re putting your stamp of approval on that person that is influencing them and what is being taught, even if you disagree with it, because what are you doing when you’re sending them into school? You’re literally like, Do you got everything? You got your pencils, you got your journal. Pay attention. Take good notes. Did it like that is literally like you’re telling your child to learn from that person. Do you even know that person? Like you need to know them. And so so you can ask yourself this one question is this person confused themselves?

Hmm.

That is the first question that you need to ask. Is this person confused? Then I would say the next question is, is this person deceived? Because confusion leads to deception. Kay. Confusion can be deception, but it also leads to further deception. Sometimes this is interesting. I was looking up the definition of deception. Deception can happen by way of lying, but there are other forms of deception as well. Confusion, though, is the inability to think clearly or being bewildered. Right? So a person can think clearly about something and be open to having a good conversation and go, Oh, now I see. Oh, thank you so much for clearing up that confusion. But a deception is different. It’s when someone has been deceived and they are literally believing lies. That is their conviction. And if they are in a teaching or influential position, then what do they do? They turn around and they teach from their worldview, which is all muddled up by the deceptions that they believe in life about all the things. I’m not going to rattle them all off. Now, how do you how do you get to this place where as a parent, you go, okay, but how do you not get confused? How do you protect your kids from being confused? How do you protect your kids from being deceived? You have to teach them. They need Jesus. Yeah, you need Jesus. You need His Holy Spirit. Your kids need Jesus. They need His Holy Spirit. But you guys, you cannot underestimate the power of the Bible. The Bible is where our minds are renewed. Amen. In Romans 12 two, it says here, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed. How by the renewal of your mind.

And you get to help your kids have a renewing of their mind about any areas they’re confused about by other people. And how do you know if they got confused? You need to have an open, good dialogue relationship with your kids where you talk about anything and everything they need. You need to give make them feel comfortable talking to you about anything, even if it’s things you don’t want to hear. They need to feel that comfort from you by your reactions when they’ve talked to you about things before, do you overreact or you calm in a good listener and asking questions and not jumping to conclusions? That is vital if you actually want to know where a kid is being confused.

You know, it’s interesting too, because this concept of renewing your mind, I think that, you know, Isaac and I, when we were planning this podcast, we even talked about the scripture verse. It says, Your heart is deceitful above all things or deceived above all things, depending on your translation. And we are talking about the importance of this concept of understanding that in our humanity, our flesh can become deceived. In our humanity. We have blind spots and we don’t see sin in different areas of our life. That’s why we’re constantly saying, Hey, parents, take the rose tinted glasses off. Look at your child. In reality, look at yourself. In reality, look at the world. In reality, rose tinted glasses off. That’s the first starting point. Second starting point is being honest and being humble, understanding that you need to repent, understanding that your child is struggling with the sin so that you can actually help them. You have to be honest about that. And if you’re constantly hiding it, no progress will ever occur. But in this scripture that I just read to you about being transformed by the renewal of your mind, it’s for this reason. Listen that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Yeah, it’s all three things. What’s good, what’s acceptable by God, but also what’s perfect. And like this is this is how you teach your children like so many of you are going. But how do I teach my kids to know when they’re being taught something confusing? This by being renewed by their mind and then right.

And then not by when the renewed by their mind, they’re able to discern such a good word. And she’s very discerning, discern what’s happening with somebody they’re interacting with somebody that’s trying to influence them, someone that says something wayward that they thought they could trust.

Or if someone tempts them into sin and says, Hey, let’s go do this, this will be so cool. What if we were to post this on Tik Tok? We would get so many likes. I bet there’s conversations like this happening with some of the teenagers. Yeah.

I talk, by the.

Way, for sure. Well, yeah. We’ve never been on TikTok and we never would be because we don’t want China to own our faces. I’m just going to say it. But the reality is, is that we need to teach our kids to discern when someone is like so focused on what the world thinks and what is going to be popular and all these kinds of things that should be in your kids mind. It should be, oh, red flag, right? Teach your kids what are yellow flags? What are red flags? They should have red flags and yellow flags popping up, especially if they’re older. Understanding this isn’t biblical yellow flag. This isn’t biblical red flag. Like, you know what I mean? Like, our kids need to be able to discern that. And Romans eight six says for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. So, parents, you have to read the Bible with your kids so that your kids have their minds set on the spirit, and there will be life and peace in your home. That’s what this is saying. Yeah, there’ll be life and there’ll be a peace about your parenting because your kids are walking in the spirit so important now.

Discernment. How do you discern? How do you know? What do you look for? Will you look for the fruit in their lives? God says over and over again in the Bible. Well, how will you know? You look for the fruit. Is the fruit good? Is it average? Is it great? Is it bad? You know, you’ve got to discern these things. Well, there’s lots of good fruit over here, but there’s just one little bad thing. Well, what happens when you put one bad piece of fruit in a basket full of good fruit? Yeah. See, having these agricultural conversations is powerful. Gardening with your kids could be incredibly important. You have a plant that fruitful conversation, bad fruit on it, and you have plant over here with good fruit on it. Well, let’s talk about why does this one have bad this one. Oh, there’s some over there’s there’s some problem with the dirt, the soil over here. There’s a, you know, some some pests that are getting to this one, but not this other one.

Or maybe the plant is diseased.

There’s disease and things, and you go.

Wait a minute beyond help, and then you need to pull it out. Otherwise it’s going to destroy the whole crop.

You go a little, Charlie. This is like human beings. Yeah, we’re like plants. And we got to look for people that have good fruit. And sometimes you can’t tell the fruit yet because it takes time to be around somebody. But once you start seeing that fruit, then you can start making judgments, not being judgmental, but judgments for yourself. On discerning is this someone I want to take wisdom from or not? Is this someone I want to spend more time with the same amount or less? They have to start to discern that if you’re working that discernment muscle as they get older and they understand this and they understand the Bible, that’s important. And Andrew was just talking about renewing your mind. So look at the fruit, but you can’t renew your mind without the Bible. I mean, there is an aspect of we do have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit convicts us and it does help us renew our minds. So I’m not going to discount the power of God. Right. But in addition, he also gave us the word of God, which is so.

The sword of the spirit. It’s part of our armor. You know, I even think about like the helmet of salvation protecting us, like our if we’re setting our minds on the spirit, then we’re going to be thinking about things that God wants us to be thinking about. I even think about the passage in Philippians that talks about thinking on things that are noble and and peaceable and lovely and lovely and that are righteous and and it’s like, okay, that is a great practice. That’s a good thing that you can teach your kids to do. And we need to be doing that as parents. But we also don’t just ignore the realities that are not peaceful in the world. We don’t ignore them. Instead, we go, That’s not truth. I’m going to have my focus on the Lord, but I’m going to equip my children so that they don’t get confused and then deceived and start believing this lie that’s over here in society when you’re so focused on like, I need to protect myself, I can’t handle this. This is so overwhelming. And I know many moms feel this way. That’s why I’m bringing it up. So many moms are like, I’m just I’m going to just focus right here on my kids because the world is just way too overwhelming and I’m scared for my children.

Okay, can I just say something if you have fear like that or overwhelm. Ignoring the fact that you have fear and overwhelm is not going to make it go away. You actually need to repent and you need to grow in strength and in constitution and understanding that God has put you here for a purpose, that He will equip you as a saint because you are his royal priesthood. And he has called you to read his word, to grow in strength, to be able to see the truth and not be shocked by it and go. These are the days that we live in. I’m going to stand strong. I’m going to stand for righteousness. I’m going to point people to Jesus, especially my child. Do you see the difference in this like timidity and fear? What does that do? It literally disables and cripples people from doing the work they’re supposed to do. If we want our kids to stand firm in their generation for for goodness sake, we have to start doing it now.

And by the way, you start to feel so good when you take new action, when you take good action, when you start equipping your kids, when we don’t feel good is when we just coddle them and do everything to protect them because there’s no equipping happening. Actual equipping like you can give people food, but isn’t it better to teach them how to grow their own food? That’s what you’re doing. That’s what this whole ministry is about, is in empowering you to look to the scriptures. And from experience that we have and we share to to equip your children while they’re young so they go in the right direction when you launch them.

Lord willing.

Lord willing. Right. Only God can save. But you have so much influence in it, so you’re so important equipping. So we were just talking about teaching how to discern, look for the fruit, be in the word, teach them scripture, talk about it, dialogue with them. Scenarios. Don’t just give the answer. Well, what do you think about what they said? Let them wrestle with the themselves. You’ll find out where they’re at. And you know what? Usually you’ll grow in confidence about your kids intelligence. When you don’t just give them the answer, you let them wrestle it and talk about it. And then you go, Wow, that part right there is really sound. But what this part right here, I have a little wisdom for you. You mind if I share with you? Yeah. Okay, here it is. And they’re like, whew. I just grabbed on to that mom because you just valued the part that I came up with, and you made me feel smart. And then you gave me a little nugget, and I grabbed on to it like it was my own. I’m so excited to keep that forever. See, the way at which you equip is important. It needs to be a coach relationship honoring approach. It’s really important.

Grace So think about that way. You’re communicating to to teach them how to discern and equip them. And the final thing is to communicate with others. Sometimes you need to sometimes you need to communicate with other people who have influence in your family. And we want to do everything in a way that hopefully grows a stronger relationship. You know, sometimes when there’s some truth shared in a relationship and you go through something together and there’s forgiveness and there’s talking things out and so forth that you actually see more eye to eye than before you actually grew in relationship with them. So potentially our fear of hurting relationships is hurting relationships. Potentially. Our fear is is holding us back to decisions made in fear, usually the worst decisions possible. And right here in Proverbs 27 six, it says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Kisses of an enemy is flattery. It is telling people what they want to hear. It’s making them making your words amicable for short term relationship. It’s to make them good for getting what you want. And maybe what you want is just no conflict. I just want peace. I just want no conflict.

But what they’re really doing, they’re not actually pursuing peace because peace is impossible to have without truth. What they’re actually just trying to create is tranquility. We talk way more about this in one of the podcast interviews that Isaac did with Pastor Steve Crain. You can go look that up. Very important.

Blessed be the peacemakers.

Yeah, that’s the name of the podcast. You guys have to go listen to that in conjunction with this. I definitely think that that would be an additional encouragement to you if you haven’t listened to that. But all in all, what this is saying is that if you love your friends and you’re a faithful friend, then you’re going to actually point out that sin when you see it because you love them and you don’t want them in bondage. And you know that sin, the wages of sin is death, that, you know, you understand, again, like teaching agriculture, this is something that I’ve taught the kids for many years. When you have weeds and weeds are smaller, they’re much easier to pull than when they grow into being these huge thistles that literally will break a blade on a tractor. It’s the same thing with sin when you let sin go. When it’s a little sin and you don’t. Correct. And over and over and over again. Because you’re just so fearful or you’re just so tired, or you don’t want to hurt the relationship. Guess what happens? That sin gets more and more control in that person’s life and it gets bigger just like that we did. And then it gets harder for them to let go. And then they love it so much that they’re willing to keep the sin and let go of the friendship. And you don’t want that. I know you don’t want that. A faithful friend wants their friends to be walking in the freedom that is in Christ.

Jesus in a faithful friend would understand that that little wound from hearing some truth is in love and would grow your friendship stronger. And you may discover who your real friends are as you do this, because some may disappear. And but we always have to do things in love. We have to pray beforehand. We have to find common ground. We have to talk about not just the challenges, but what you appreciate our people too, and mention and ask permission to share something with them. People are much more receptive when you go, Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about and do you mind? Is this a good time? Do you mind if I share it with you? And just what happens from a psychological standpoint is they actually, even though tepidly in their mind, they’re like, Oh, what’s coming? They say, yeah, of worse. When someone vocalizes, their receptiveness just went way up. You also just gave them a little warning before you shared something so they can prepare the heart. They can be thoughtful for a second before they even found out what the thing is. So that is a really important coaching tip or relationship tip, whatever you want to call it, but you need to do that and then you share it and you wrap it in love and you hope for the best and you.

Continue to pray for them, too. And I think that, you know, hiding the truth of these kinds of situations from your kids is probably one of the most detrimental things that you can do for your children, especially if they’re older children, because this is actually something that they need to learn how to do. And if we’re going to teach our kids, you need to choose friends wisely and you need to confront your your friends when they’re in sin, too. If we’re teaching these biblical truths to our kids, if we’re just reading proverbs to our kids and saying, do proverbs, but they don’t see us doing proverbs and they don’t know the stories of what we’ve dealt with and the outcomes, both the good, victorious, God pleasing God magnifying stories as well as the ones where people have walked away and it hurt. But we live with no regret because we found out who they really were like. Our kids need to understand that. They need to see us living it out as well. And so just like Isaac and I have done podcast on living out life trials and being transparent with your children and how that can grow your family culture and grow their faith in God and grow their their belief in prayer and all of these awesome experiencing God elements. The truth is, is that if we ourselves as parents are not willing to share with our children and I’m talking about like age appropriateness, obviously, and you want to protect your kids from being able so that they can have respect for certain family members and different things like this.

I’m talking about like on a level of friendship, why are we not spending time with those people anymore? That is an opportunity where if you prayerfully think about it, pray about it, and God gives you permission to share that with them, you should. So what I’m posing before you is that after you have done biblically what God has called you to do to try to step in the gap and protect your child from becoming confused after you have confronted the person that is walking in deception. If you are at a crossroads and that person goes one way leaves or there’s victory, pray about if you can share this with your children, because that those kinds of testimonies are what your kids need to see to help them be equipped to know that we are the kind of people that love God enough to actually do what the Bible tells us to do. And we’re not just going to be mouth pleasers. We’re not just going to say these things, but we’re actually going to do.

Them deed and truth. And sometimes the question might come up, Do we always need to communicate with other people? No, actually, you need to discern, is this something I need to talk about or can I just correct this one thing with my children and equip them and that’s something for them to handle. We don’t need to handle everything for our kids. In fact, as they get older, them handling it themselves is more and far better in almost all situations. And so we don’t need to always be in the middle of every relationship or anything like that. We don’t need to always be communicating with others. The best thing in the world is. Is it you’re quipping your kids so they actually in real time share their disagreement with others that they even love and respect in a loving way. And that’s what you’re working up to. You’re working a muscle of them, seeing you talking to them about it. You’re doing it in your life and then they’re getting older and they grow into have worked that muscle, witnessed it, having the courage in the biblical understanding and the discernment of to go, you know what? I don’t think that’s something I want to participate in because the Bible says this. And what do you think about that?

Yeah. Sometimes just equipping your children with the ability to remember where Scripture is and to ask a question that’s like the best way for them to be able to confront friendships or situations, because usually it kind of flabbergasted the person, if you will, or it kind of like stuns them. It puts them in a posture of like, how can I argue with that? They just quoted scripture, oh, do you know what I’m saying? And so like, that is really, truly the best form of equipping. But when it comes to our hearts and our minds, I just want to wrap up reminding you what the first and greatest commandment is that Jesus said. He said to love the Lord, your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Yes. And when we do that, when we love him with our whole mind, heart and strength, we’re going to pursue the Bible and our minds will be renewed. We’re going to be in tune with the Holy Spirit. And we, like Philippians, says, we can plead with Jesus to be the one who actually guards our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus.

Right? When He’s guarding our heart and our mind in Him, then we’re less likely to become deceived, right? And so we need to look at the word and go, Wow, God, thank you for this wisdom. Thank you for your warnings. Thank you for your guidance. Thank you for giving us such great equipping tools to help us in this process. We’re thankful for them. We’re thankful for them in our personal life. We’re also thankful for all the things that God’s taught us in our parenting, and we’re just sharing them with you guys. We would love to hear from from you how this podcast has impacted your life today. So please leave us a comment on iTunes or shout out on social media, tag us. We’d love to hear about it and we just so appreciate you guys. But more than anything, we want to hear the testimonies of how God is transforming your families, how your kids are standing up for truth and righteousness, and how you’re feeling more equipped to be standing and running the race with us as courageous parents who want to glorify God.

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 packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

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