God does the saving and directs parents to disciple their children pointing them to Jesus. There’s so much more to it than going to church, having Bibles, and proclaiming we are Christians. The Tolpins dig in giving you practical insights and examples on how to encourage your kids to have connections with God. He wants a relationship and there are so many ways to help your kids nourish that relationship with Him.

Main Points From This Episode:

• How does your family connect with God?
• Tune in to get many practical ideas on encouraging greater connection with God.
• Normal Christian parenting is largely failing so don’t be normal.
• Make sure they see parents who connect with God regularly.

Scripture From This Episode:

1 Peter 5:6-7 – “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

Luke 4:8 – “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Psalm 145:18 – “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.”

Matthew 22:37 – “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”

Matthew 6:19 – “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:”

Matthew 28:16-28 – “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

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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 following. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, everybody.

So glad you’re here today. We’re talking about encouraging connections with God. I can’t think of anything more important than that.

That’s actually true. I mean, for a parenting podcast, for us to get down to the nitty gritty was the most important thing that, you know, every parent says that they pray that their child would love the Lord and that he they would follow after him, that they would want to serve him. And really, it comes down to being introduced to God first, but then also connecting with him. And so you’re right, this is probably the most important.

Also, regardless of what time of year you end up listening to this. And a lot of people listen to them right away when they come out. But we’re going into the fall right now. There’s transition and sometimes we can get caught up in our to do list and all the things we have to do, whether it’s education wise or changing with sports and relationships and the list of people that we haven’t had over yet and we need to and all those things and remodel. And for me it’s the RV, I have to record it and things like that. But you know, there’s a lot of things, yeah.

I have to overturn a garden and continue processing all the fruit, which.

Is great. So there’s a lot to do. And the most important thing is this actually, we would all agree to that. So we’re going to encourage you to encourage a growing faith in your children. Now, parents can never save their children. That’s something only God can do. We all agree with that. But a reminder that God put us in charge, put us as the loving authority in our children’s lives to point them to Jesus. It is our job.

Yeah, it’s one of the greatest jobs, actually. I mean, in the Bible, in Deuteronomy six, if you want a real good encouragement, go read the entire chapter because talk about it’s it’s good. It’s exhortation, if you will. Have you ever read parts of Scripture and you just go, Ouch, I’m not doing that. And I need to, because the Bible is literally commanding me to do this. God is commanding me to do this. Well, that’s what Deuteronomy six is for parents, right? God is commanding us to teach our children while we sit, while we stand, while we lie down, while we like all the time. The whole point is all the time to be talking about God and and teaching our kids about God and singing hymns and all these different things. Right? All the different ways that they would learn about him. So we’re going to talk about some of those ideas today. But before we do, we just wanted to say thank you guys so much. As you know, we just days ago launched the be courageous coffee dot com.

Oh, yeah. It tastes so good. Cheers.

Yes. Isaac’s using one of his courage is calling mugs. Yeah. I don’t know if you guys knew this, but we. We have a couple of shops and we have a bunch of different mugs in them, and they all like they have these great Bible verses on the back. This one has first Corinthians 558, which is awesome, but I just wanted to put that out there anyways.

We’re so encouraged. The shop already has 23, I believe five all five star reviews so far of people who’ve experienced the coffee and loving it. People that got it early were on the watch team and so forth, and orders are coming in and people are sharing. If you want to follow, be courageous coffee on Facebook or Instagram. Please do see what’s going on. And it’s just a pivotal thing to really support the ministry. If you want a vision, what’s going on? Go to be courageous ministry dot org. There’s a video right there. That’s the new ministry headquarters website. It’s access to everything there because we had all the different pieces. You know, there’s courageous parenting dotcom, there’s courageous mom dotcom, there’s resolute man dotcom. There’s the be courageous app there’s you know lots of different that be courageous coffee dot com. Now they all still will have their own websites but if you’d rather just go to be courageous ministry dot org it’s all there it links out to everything there’s a lot of stuff that’s only there to it is really our shops both shops in one place so just so much easier.

Yeah. And what’s great is we have some things that are upcoming to which I’m not going to tell you what it is, but there is a slightly secretive thing that is revealed on the website. But you have to go to be courageous mystery dot org to find it. Here’s a tip. Go look at and click on what podcasts say and you’ll find out what’s coming.

Oh, I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know what you’re talking about until you said podcasts. Plural.

That’s right. Well, they know it. They know that we have this courageous parenting podcast and they know we have the Courageous Kids podcast, which is in the app.

But somebody.

You have.

Else is launching a podcast.

Now. They know they need somebody else, not us.

Well, good.

You guys. Anyways, anyways.

You’re an important part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. We so appreciate your support. Even if you’re praying for us and you’re listening, you’re downloading episodes. That is so helpful. Thank you so much. So let’s dive into this. You know what? As a Christian family, here’s some cool things that Christian families do. They say they’re Christians. That’s a good thing.

They identify that. That’s what that is. Right. Identifying their identified Jesus, Jesus.

And then they might have, you know, our house serves the Lord or some scripture on the wall. Don’t have to, but you might. Some homes have that kind of thing.

Actually, Deuteronomy six again says, bind behind the words of the Bible on your door fronts.

And I’m sure you know, you have Bibles, you know, going to church, praying before a meal. And the reason I mentioned those things is because I think most Christians have most of those in common or some aspect of those. And while that’s awesome and those are good things we’re going to talk about more because really we believe it’s good to do more to connect with God than only those things. It’s what God wants. For example, He says, pray without ceasing. So that’s beyond that list I just talked about. We’re going to go into that because it’s so important. While our kids are in our homes that were nurturing their relationship with God, we’re encouraging connections with God. I think it’s a great way to say it. Yeah. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night to just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to 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.

It’s interesting because I think of, again, one of the I bring this Bible verse up a lot lately we’ve been talking about this a lot and we talk about in the parenting mentor program because it’s one of the things that the parts of the program are completely, wholly, solely inspired by love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength, the first and greatest commandment. And then to love your neighbor as yourself. Right. And you know, I when we think about that as a believer, as a disciple of Christ, what that means for us on a personal level, to love God with our whole heart, not half our heart, not part of our heart, not a quarter, not an eighth to love God with our whole mind, not not just the Bible portion of our mind that we read only on Sundays, but our whole mind to love the Lord, our God with our whole strength. Right? So what does that even mean? Right? Like in my mind when I read that I’m convicted to think about the things that I do on the physical level and to be doing them as unto the Lord, like the Bible says. Right. And so sometimes when I’m having a hard time doing something, I’ll just whisper a little prayer or I’ll have an ongoing conversation with God where I say, Lord, would you help me to be able to do this? I know that this is too heavy for me. Or would you help somebody to come in my family that can help me or, you know, with a good heart attitude. And I’ll literally have this conversation with the Lord and I do things with my whole strength.

So and then there’s this concept of whole soul, right? Like, are we taking time in our busy schedules to connect with God and for our souls to be filled up with the Holy Spirit and to be walking in the power of the Holy Spirit throughout the day? And and this is the thing, like all of those four things that that I just mentioned that come from the greatest commandment. Jesus said, this is the greatest commandment. He’s basically saying all of the commandments, the laws and the prophets are summed up in these two things. Right. Because if you love the Lord, your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength, what is going to happen next? Everything else is going to flow from that, right? It’s going to be easier to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s going to be easier to love your enemies. It’s going to be easier to honor your mother and father. It’s going to be every aspect of what he calls us to as Christians. It comes back to that first heart love that we have with God. And the truth is, is really that is something that we are doing in an experiential way with God. And it’s an intimate relational. Thing in a relationship with Jesus, with God and with his spirit and experiencing his presence in our lives, him guiding us and giving us wisdom. And isn’t that really, truly, at the end of the day, what we we would hope for our kids. Right. Yes, it is. Absolutely. But we can’t expect that for them if they don’t witness it, if we don’t share it.

So a question for everybody. Question for us, too, is how does your family connect with God? Now think about it for a second. How does your family, not just you, you’re included in your family. How does your family connect with God? How did your family connect with God last week? Or maybe just more simple here, how did how did your family connect with God yesterday? Now, as your kids get older, some of them are having and even when they’re young, actually, sometimes even more when they’re young. Depends. Right. Is their having their own personal relationship with God and connecting with God and you don’t even know about some of it, right? That’s awesome. So beautiful when you like. The other day we were witnessing Eli worshiping the Lord because he thought nobody was looking and he’s just belting it out.

He was just singing his heart out because he didn’t realize that we saw him or heard him and it was so precious. Right? I mean, he had his eyes squinted and he was just like, that’s right. You could see the little veins.

He just turned four so just a couple of weeks ago, but so cool. So just think about that. And I think it’s good to audit things and have some self-reflection and family reflection on that. First, Peter, you know, we’re going to go into some ideas now on how to lead your family and connecting with God. And first, Peter, five, six through seven says humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. I thought, what a beautiful scripture to kind of kick this part off, because one of the most beautiful ways to connect with God is when we lower our pride and increase our humility. We we lower lower our strength and increase our reliance, and we can lead our children in these situations. Have you seen your kids be prideful? What an opportunity to read the scripture to them and connect with God. And maybe you could talk about it. And what does humble mean? What does humility mean? And then guide them in a prayer, you know, or pray together or encourage them to pray if they’re older, you know? So I just think that’s a beautiful way. That’s a connection with God. I think it’s really hard. I thought this was good to have at the top of the list because it’s hard to connect with God. If we’re walking our own flesh, it’s hard to connect with God. If we’re operating in our own strength, it’s hard to connect with God if we’re prideful.

And it’s hard. It’s interesting because pride is a sin, right? And so any sin actually would make it a stumbling block or a wall, if you will, that separates us from being able to connect with God, because that’s what sin does. Sin separates us from his presence in that sense, and he’s always there. It’s that we’re walking away. And that’s something that also needs to be taught to our kids, because there will be conversations where they’re like, I’m talking to Jesus, but I don’t feel like I’m communicating with him both ways. And they’ll put that in their own words. When they start explaining it to you, they’re like, How do I know that God’s hearing me? And how do I know I feel like I’m talking to the air. I’ve we’ve heard all kinds of things, guys. We’ve had nine kids, right? And so that concept of learning how to pray and why we would pray and what to pray about and all of these really exciting like those are the kinds of conversations that are truly discipleship conversations. And at the end of the day, I think that what’s really important for us to understand is that our our kids don’t have to be eloquent at praying for God to hear them.

They don’t need to have long prayers for God to hear him. They don’t need to. So sometimes kids just like us as humans, don’t we all get those ideas in our heads. Those or we’re tempted to believe lies actually whispers from the enemy, or maybe expectations that we’ve imposed upon ourselves because we’ve compared ourselves to other Christians that we’ve seen in Bible studies or in small groups or whatever it is. Right? Like we all do that where we go, Oh, maybe I can’t do that because I don’t do it as good as that person. And then maybe we forget about that person altogether, but we remember how well it was done and we have this expectation that that’s how it’s done. Kids do the same thing. And so we need to make sure that we’re having those conversations with our kids and they don’t have to be 45 minute conversations. I’m talking like only talk about one thing with a four or five year old for like 5 minutes before you pray to encourage them.

Well, prayer prayer is such an important way to connect with God. It is why God encourages us to pray as much as possible, as much as we can throughout the day, throughout everything, because it’s a reorienting effect. It’s it’s the opposite of being prideful. It’s a posture of humility towards an all powerful. An all loving, all knowing God has authority over our lives and to to praise him in our prayers and to ask for help in our prayers and to intercede for others in our prayers. And doing that with our kids. Them seeing us. Our own prayer life and then encouraging that in them is incredibly powerful.

It is. Psalm one 4518 says The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him. In truth, I think that this is really important for us to understand. God literally repeated himself there. Did you hear that? To make a point. The Lord is near to all who call on him. Comma. The sentence was not over. To all who call on him. In truth. In truth, you guys. And this is this is why it’s so important. How can we call on God in truth? Well, are we walking in truth? If we are coming to God and we’re saying, Lord, I cry out to you and I ask for you to do this and this person’s life. And I ask for this. And I’m, you know, maybe you’re praying and you’re just like putting request after request after request and you’re saying things like, I love you, Lord, but then how you’re living your life is actually hypocritical. Is that asking the Lord and calling on him? In truth, if we’re living in a way that doesn’t show that we love him, like literally living in sin, but then we’re calling out to God and then we’re saying, Oh, he’s not answering my prayers and we wonder why. Right? Like, we need to be careful because we have a responsibility ourselves to be humble like Isaac was talking about. And and part of that is that when we come to the Lord, we come with contrite hearts. We are not haughty or boastful. We understand the humanity that we walk in, the fleshly temptations and and we repent of those things. And we cast those things before the Lord. And then we walk in the freedom every day. Right? And that that concept of like walking with God and growing with him on a daily and throughout your day, like Christianity is not a Sunday time thing.

It’s not even a three days a week thing. Like when you are a Christian, you’re made a new creation. You’re not the old you anymore. So your whole life, like God does not want us to compartmentalize him into certain categories of our life. Now I’m going to get fired up because this is something that for a long time we’ve been talking about that for many, many years, where it’s like, wow, like as believers, we need to understand that when God saves us, when we are born again, there is evidence of Jesus all over our lives. Like I remember when our son got baptized, one of our sons got baptized. I remember that that night there was like this. I’ll just say it like that adrenaline and that, you know, some people might describe it as like a spiritual high, in a sense. But as a parent, like when you’re when your child receives Christ and gets baptized and you’re like, this is like the pinnacle for that child. And you’re like, so thankful that Jesus has saved him and that he’s dedicated his life. You’re just like, there’s nothing that quite compares to that with each of your children. And I remember, though, the next day reflecting and going, he really is a new creation. Mm hmm. God is so good, you know? And that’s that’s remarkable when you understand that the old has gone and the new is here and that it literally every aspect of what you do and who you are and what you talk about and what you desire is transformed. Your mind is fully renewed, all because of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Amazing.

And so you got to encourage your kids in this and for living it out, we can encourage them. Another aspect of prayer is a lot of times as parents will pray for something, a need for the family or fruitfulness with the business or whatever the thing is. And we forget to circle back and share how God showed up. And this is so powerful. We’ve had so many experiences. In fact, one thing I found is really helpful is to even. Brainstorm all the ways God showed up in the last week or the last couple of weeks. And to talk about that and to come with some some answers to that, to kind of get things going. And I think it’s important, too, that we don’t miss the small things. God does care about the small things and he shows up in small ways. Unfortunately, it’s those small things that sometimes we take credit for. Sometimes they have to be so big for us to give God the credit because we just default to, Oh, I probably did that, or that probably just happened because of this other thing I did. I would err on the side of if I prayed for something, I’m going to give God credit. What? How faith building is that to the children? Circle back. That’s a connection point with God. That’s a that’s showing God’s might and strength and authenticity and his.

He’s just that he cares and he listens and he does answer our prayers and he does give us the desires of our heart when we are in alignment with his will. And teaching your kids that concept too, that their heart desire would be changed, that they’re not just like asking God for things, but that their heart would change, that they would desire the things that God would want them to desire, so that they are praying in alignment with His will. So important, I think, to when we are just talking about this concept of encouraging our kids to connect with God and have their own personal faith, because that’s really what it is, right? As parents, we get to introduce our kids, kind of like if you’re introducing someone to to one of your friends, right? As our kids are growing up, we get to introduce them to Jesus and introduce them to other other aspects of who God is. You know, when you’re teaching them about how God is an intelligent creator and he’s an intelligent designer, are they not learning more about God? They are. They’re learning about a different character quality, a different attribute that he has. And it just further expands their relationship and their understanding of their father in heaven. And it’s the same thing when we’re like trying to teach them the different spiritual disciplines and and we’re trying to live them out ourselves. Like, it’s so easy, I think, for people, especially when you’ve been a Christian for a long time, or maybe you were raised in a Christian home.

So maybe you have some habits that are good habits that you do like, for example, maybe going to church every Sunday. That’s a good thing to do. God tells us not to neglect the gathering together, right? Because He created us and he knows what’s best for us. And we need accountability. We need teaching. We need to be in his presence of his body. We need to be exhorted and encouraged and edified. And all of those things can happen during a church meeting. There’s so many reasons we need to rejoice with those who rejoice. We need to mourn with those who mourn. We need people to mourn with us. When we mourn, rejoice with us when we’re rejoicing like there’s so many aspects to why we would go to church on a regular basis. But for the argument’s sake, maybe you’ve been going to church your whole life, and for you it’s just this like. Religious thing that maybe you’re doing, or maybe it is something that in your heart of hearts you just like you love going and and you desire to go and you can’t wait to worship God and you can’t wait to learn more about Him with the body. And you can’t wait to serve and you can’t wait to share your gift with the body. Maybe that’s where you’re at, regardless of where you’re at. Do your kids do your kids understand all the whys behind it or are they just going on Sunday? Because every Sunday this is what we do.

One thing with church, it’s really important to connect it back to God, which should already be connected to God, but is to have those conversations after church. So what did you guys think about this when the pastor was talking about this section or in the pastor was talking about this other thing? What do you guys think about that? And kids will say wonderful things. And it’s such a, I believe, a faith building experience when people are able to vocalize in discussion what they thought about something, what they thought about the scripture, or maybe somebody got baptized or, you know, there’s people raising their hands and worshiping the Lord fervently and your kids witness that maybe they were doing that right. It’s just to kind of have a conversation about the experience of God being present at church. And what happened I think is so important. Family worship is another one. This is huge, is to worship the Lord together. This is something that Angie has really been the one to initiate in our family because I didn’t not grow up singing really to anything and didn’t know God until I was 23. So this was a new thing for me when we got married. And but it’s beautiful. Of course, we all worship together. And I love looking at the pictures of when our our oldest kids now were all younger. And I remember Ethan having a drum, a little hand drum, and Austin with a guitar and Kelsey singing and Megan playing the piano just a beautiful.

You could rotate all those instruments, too, because they all were doing them.

It was just so beautiful to see and I’m so thankful for what those pictures represent. When they pop up and I see them, it’s just it’s just an amazing thing. I’m so thankful for the family worship we’ve done and it’s a reminder to even for us to do more of that. Obviously, one of the things that’s been special lately is Home Church, because our kids have all been doing guitar lessons and some of our older kids, I guess they’re the middles.

Now, they’re the metals now, but the oldest ones that are at home.

After or leading worship in church and just a such a sweet thing to see other kids from other families also do. And they take turns and it’s just really neat to see children activated and worshiping God sincerely.

And it’s not. I think that for us, I know that not very many people have the same church setup that we have as far as being a part of a smaller fellowship, if you will. But one of the things that’s been great is that they have had courage to be able to do that right. Like even after they’d only been taking lessons for three or four months, they were giving it a go and even Ethan was trying to lead worship and now he is leading worship and doing such a good job and they’re always improving. But what’s great though is that like they understand that they don’t have to be like a professional performer for God to delight in their worship. And I think that, you know, for our family, like we have family worship, like Isaac and I were talking about this concept of family worship and it looks different in every family and then definitely should not be any kind of competition between family and families and different gifting, too, right? Like some families are just much more gifted at music. Right. But I will say that you can have music playing in your home throughout the day. I talk about this in Parenting Mentor program. It literally changes the atmosphere of your home, and it’s one way to literally be experiencing the presence of the Lord and to be in communication with him all day long. If you’re singing under your breath in between, talking to the three year old and changing the diaper of the toddler and doing homeschool with this kid, you’ve got worship music going on in the background. It helps you to be patient. It helps you to have just to be to be kind with your words.

It helps you to mediate. When there’s conflict between different children, it helps you to have a better attitude when you’re trying to do maybe some of those mundane tasks in the home that you really have been putting off when they’ve gotten worse and you don’t want to get to them. Right? Like I have a few of those. And so the truth is, though, is that worship is something that can happen all the time. It doesn’t have to look like a formal thing, like in a church setting. Worship can be many other things. Also, I believe that praise like singing praise hymns or praise songs is a form of worship, but so is how we actually serve our families. How we clean our homes can be worshiped for. And part of that I would say where where do we draw the line? Right? Like, how do we know if it’s worshipful or not? Well, are we doing it as unto the Lord? Do we have a good heart attitude? Because if we’re grumbling and we’re complaining, there’s not a song in our heart while we’re doing it or or or we’re like, just mad about doing it. We’re doing it because we have to. That’s not really worshipful, but if we are like any of the above, it doesn’t have to be all of these things. If we are thanking God for the family while we’re doing the dishes because we’re preaching to ourselves, Lord, I want to enjoy this and we’re trying to make it worshipful and we pray. God, would you help me to have a worshipful attitude while I’m serving my family that does turn into worship because God sees that you’re praying while you’re doing it.

Yeah.

But you can also be singing while you’re doing it.

To worship is so important in Luke four eight it says and Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord, your God in him only shall you serve. It’s quite a few scriptures about worship and what what a great way to connect with the Lord. And, you know, sometimes not everybody, but a lot of people, I think when they worship the Lord and they’re sincerely worshipping, there is you feel it inside like you can you can feel that connection with God. And if that happens to you, express it, share it with your kids.

Yes.

That’s part of sharing a relationship with God that you have with them. With them.

And it’s the same thing with serving. I mean, this verse says, you shall worship the Lord, your God and him only shall you serve. And so it’s interesting that it’s talking about worshipping and serving together. I would say that serving is another one of those experiences that you can have with your children where either they’re participating in serving with you or you get to go serve. And then you come back and you share with them how what you got to do, what, what, what that did to the people’s hearts that you were able to serve. Right, and to share those experiences or those encounters. Like, I just even think about like this last week. You guys know that we just became grandparents. Yeah.

Oh, we’re so excited.

We love our granddaughter, our son. And see.

May.

Yeah, our son and his wife had their baby last week. Today, the day that we’re recording, which is a few days before this podcast comes out. She’s one week old today. Yeah. And her mom was helping with her with just taking care of things around the home so she could rest for the first few days. And then I was able to go yesterday. Megan went today. And we’ve just been really just enjoying being able to serve. And I have to tell you, like I had worship music playing while I was cleaning and cooking for them in their house and it was just a delight. And I got filled up and I came home and I was I was lit. You were? I had energy, like more energy than I had had in a long time. And and part of that I was working. I literally cooked like three meals in a matter of like 4 hours. And I cleaned all the dishes from that and I did some laundry. I was there and I was doing other things, but I came home and I was filled up because what I was doing was serving because I serve a good God. And I really, really wanted to bless my son and his wife. I wanted to bless them. I wanted them to rest. And it’s just it’s a beautiful thing. It says, you shall worship the Lord, your God and him only shall you serve. And I do believe that when we go with that heart attitude to serve other people in the name of Jesus, we get filled up. But then coming home and your kids experiencing how you have joy, even though you went and did some things that maybe people might not have joy about, that that literally shines so brightly for them. They know that. But I’m even convicted now as we’re talking, going, Hey, I should have shared more with Solomon and Eli when I came home about how neat it was that I got to be there.

It’s hard to remember. Sometimes we have to work that muscle of being purposeful. How can I encourage my children by what God is doing, by helping them hear what God is doing in my life? And how can we on the serve thing is how can we encourage our children to serve and experience that? That’s another way to connect with God, which is helping his people and doing it for no gain. But for just because we love them, right? And we’re doing God’s work. And I think that’s that’s a beautiful thing. So so what.

Are some other ways that we’ve connected with God or or invited our kids into that connection with God as they’ve grown up over.

The years? Well, I think it’s so important, especially, well, all ages, but it’s conversations with them about God, you know, how is your relationship with God? What a good question to ask a child, you know, and not in a pressure way or anything like that, but just in a conversational way. Maybe when you have one on one time. And you know, just maybe they have questions about God and you can answer those questions. You can dig into the Bible. I know at times we’ve taken different kids out and just done some Bible study with them. I’ve had, you know, few of the boys with me in the studio and done that. And you’ve had breakfast with the gals and yeah, with the daughters and just, you know, bedtime and Bible time and all those things. I think the Bible is so powerful and we should talk about that for a minute because it’s not as we know, it’s not just a book, but your kids don’t really grasp that unless they experience God from the Bible. Does that make sense? You kind of no matter what you say, it still is a book to them until they start experiencing what you’ve experienced, which if you’re like me, I’ve experienced reading something for the third time, all of a sudden it.

Makes.

It makes so much sense in a new way and hits me right where I have opened the Bible before to a Scripture. That was exactly what I needed at the right time. How many times that happened to you? A lot. I know. Do we share those with our kids? And because now that they’re like, wow, I’m excited about that happening. Maybe, maybe that stirs in your child who’s a little bit older, maybe it stirs in them to go to ask God to make the Bible real to them and so that they can understand it. Because remember, the Bible says that people won’t understand it unless they’re seeking. And so we can encourage our kids to be seeking so that the Bible starts to make sense to them. You see all that? How many teenagers today in Christian homes? They read the Bible and they don’t understand it because they’re actually not seeking. It’s just part of the culture of the family to be Christian. They don’t even understand that’s what’s happening to them. But they don’t. They aren’t really cultivating a deep relationship with God. And the Bible is always confusing to them when they try and read it and they never tell their parents that.

Yeah, I think too that little kids as well. I mean, sometimes there’s hard things for them to understand, big words and different things like that. And so having conversations as you’re reading Scripture to your kids before they can read is going to be really important that you slow down and you have patience and you go, Do you know what that word means? You know what exhortation means, Oh, let’s look it up together. And then you teach them how you look it up and you’re teaching them, discipling them, really, in how to be a disciple of the word and teaching them that like even Mommy doesn’t know all these words. Let’s look this up in the dictionary. Let’s look this up. Oh, I have this really neat app called Blue Letter Bible. Oh, let’s listen to what the word is. And when they see you excited about learning, that literally lights a fire in their heart for having a desire to want to learn that same thing to and if you have an excitement in you. And so I have to ask, like when it comes to this, do you have an excitement? Do you have an urgency in your heart where you just are hungry to read the word you miss God when you haven’t been in the word? Like there are times we’re all like, Tell Isaac.

I’m like, I’m just dry. Like, I, I really need some time to. I just need to be with Jesus. I just need to be in the word because it’s literally the only thing that gets me excited. I mean, just even before the podcast, I was tired and I’m like, Oh, it’s been a big day. Like, there’s so much has happened today between harvesting a huge harvest, which was wonderful. Praise Jesus because he brings increase. But that also means lots of work for Mom on the preserving end of things. And I haven’t even really gotten started. I was just using up the stuff that we had harvested three or four days ago. And so there’s a lot of work and and homeschooling and trying to get the house going and all the things. But you guys were then we sat down and I started really reading these verses and it, it woke me up like I’m much more awake right now. And that.

Is.

Something that you want to share, like that experience of like, wow, this really is the bread of life that gives you energy. This really is the life giving water, if you will, that keeps you hydrated so that you can keep on keeping on. Do your kids know that about you? Do they know that this is your life source? And having that conversation with them just again, it puts us in that posture of like, I am not a good mommy without Jesus and I would not be raising you the way I’m raising you if it wasn’t for what God had done in my life. I don’t know how many deep conversations I’ve had with our older kids where I’ve said that, where it’s like you guys. I think that sometimes they like we. I love our kids. They’re wonderful kids. Don’t get me wrong. Not perfect, but but I love them and they they all love Jesus. Praise God like I’m so thankful. But there are times when I think to myself, I was even thinking it today. I wonder they’ve got. I wonder if they take. For granted how they’re being raised and that they’re raised by two parents who love Jesus more than each other, even, right? Like we fully love Jesus and we’re chasing hard after Jesus. And then we meet at him, right? And that our everything is found on him and centered on him. Like, how blessed are the kids that they have that and that they don’t recognize how different it would look if it wasn’t that way. Right. And that is huge. Right.

Well, so we’re talking about here overall, I think his testimony is little testimony here and there of how the Bible impacted us, changed our attitude, how this happened, and the circle back of the prayer where God showed up and it happened and not second guessing whether you did it or God did it. Just let’s give God the glory. If we asked God for help, he’s a good God. I’m just going to believe that he did it. And I think that that’s that’s like having a faith having faith like a child that Jesus prescribed for us.

It’s interesting, in the Old Testament, God had commanded his people, especially when they were sojourners, to make him an altar. When they had experienced his blessing and his provision in different things, they would oftentimes make an altar. And the reason why they made an altar was to honor God. But it was also so that when they were traveling in, other people would come to this altar. They would know, Whoa, God met with someone in provided with that person here and it told a story, right. It it brought God glory. Well, today we don’t build altars, Dewey, but the truth is, is there’s still a need for us to remember those milestones, if you will, in our spiritual walk with God, and that we give him honor and glory by sharing those those testimonies, if you will, with our children. Because that’s it’s like the Jewish people sharing the mid rocks over and over with their children and that their children would know Jesus through their, through their historical testimonies as well. Right. And as Christians, we also need to do this. That’s what that’s part of the Deuteronomy six charge is that we would be teaching our kids God’s word, but that we would also, when we’re talking about relationship with God, that we would be sharing with them the testimonies of our faith journey with him so that they also can know God and so that they expect him to show up in all of the things, the big times that are awesome, the mountain top moments, as well as the valleys that they walk through, that they would go, Well, okay, so my parents, they did this when they walked through a hard time and I’m in this hard time now.

Maybe it’s the first time that they’ve had a really, truly hard time. And then they start praying and they start seeking God and they experience him. And then that becomes their testimony, a spiritual milestone in their personal relationship with God. And those are the connecting moments that we as parents cannot conjure up for our children. But what we can do is when we experience them with God, we can openly share what we’ve learned from Him and that we were experiencing him all throughout our child’s childhood so that they seek him hopefully in the same and in different ways too.

Yeah. So a final thing we want to talk about is generosity. We can connect with God through a generous spirit and through tithing, through helping somebody with their finances. So it’s important that children, as soon as they can, they can start having some things they can do where they can earn some money, because when they earn it and they have it and they give some of it in with a heart of pleasing God and a joyful heart about it, then it’s a beautiful thing and there’s an experience there. They’re experiencing God, they’re there understanding it’s God’s money, that God is the provider and that God asks me to do this and I can’t wait to obey Him and look at what God did with that money.

And that I mean, that’s huge right there, like connecting the dots for your kids. On what? How was that used for God’s glory? Matthew Chapter six, verse 19, says, Do not lay it for yourselves. Treasures on earth where moth and breast destroy, where thieves break in and still but lay up for yourselves Treasures in heaven were neither moth nor rust destroys And where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will also be This is so priceless. Like when you start experiencing with your children, you’re leading them. In that practice of being generous, like Isaac was saying, you start to see their hearts change their eyes. Start focusing more on Jesus and less on things of this world. And that is a practice that we all have to exercise. It’s like a muscle that we have to exercise regularly or that muscle starts to deteriorate and then if it deteriorates so much, then it literally isn’t there anymore. And as adults, if we want to continue being the people that God has called us to be, that we want to continue growing in spiritual maturity, we do not want the things of this world to distract us from what is truly important, which is eternity and eternal souls, and doing the work that God has called us to with the Great Commission.

And so, like all of us are a part of that. We are all called to the great commission starts first in our home, and that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about encouraging your kids connections with God because that is part of discipleship. Bible says Go ye there and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That’s Matthew 28. Making disciples starts first with your kids again in I think it’s first Timothy when when they’re talking about qualifications for leadership and different things like that, right? He warns them and says, If you can’t manage your own household, how can you manage the church? Right. And so we need to be all pursuing, discipling our children well so that we, in our older years can walk out the calling that he has for each of us in the body of Christ.

Amen. And hey, we hope this is helpful to you. If you love it, please share it. I kind of have a feeling this one would really help a lot of families. As you know, together we’re on the road to impacting 10 million legacies. And so we appreciate the impact together. Hey, we hope this is helpful.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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