“Equipping Kids for a Different Future”

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Episode Summary

The global trends show movement towards authoritarianism, transhumanism, and increased persecution against Christians. Tune in to get practical parenting insights.

The speed of change requires something different from parents today. It’s even more important to understand the trends that are influencing the future so that we can equip our kids today to handle those future challenges well. Have you thought about what jobs will no longer be available because of AI? How about the move towards transhumanism and authoritarianism? Just a few of many things that should cause us to adjust how we equip our children today. Tune in for the practical insights!

Scripture From This Episode:

  • It’s vital to teach your kids public speaking, sales, and entrepreneurship.
  • They need to be well-versed in knowledge about how the world works.
  • Help your children grow in confidence communicating with adults.
  • Encourage them to rely on the Lord when facing difficulties and glorify His name when He comes through.
  • Equip them in Apologetics so that stand firm for their faith when it’s challenged.
  • Prepare them to know when to defy authoritarian control.
  • Help them understand the value of freedom and the dangers of socialism.
  • Transhumanism is a big part of the world they will be living in. Make sure you help them understand what the Bible thinks about their body.
  • It’s more important than ever they grow up in a home full of people who experience God in their lives. Where God is a daily topic, where prayer and bible teaching is vibrant.

Scripture From This Episode:

2 Timothy 3:12 – “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”

2 Timothy 4:3-4 –For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

1 Corinthians 6:19 – “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

Titus 1:9 – “Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.”

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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 a following. Hi. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Isaac here. My wife Angie couldn’t make it today. We’re going to give her a little break. She’s doing so much and it’s so much more fun to have her with me. But I do have, I believe, a compelling topic that everybody will find interesting, practical and really helpful in your parenting today. It is thinking about the future a little bit. We have to consider the future to make sure we’re doing the right things today, not the future how we view today, but the future how things will be way down the road, right? So vision hearing, right being you don’t have to be a visionary, but vision is required if you’re a parent and we have to be thinking about these things. We can’t just have our heads stuck in the sand and equip our kids according to how, you know, normal Christian parenting has kind of always done it there. While biblical truth never changes, their world is changing. So there’s some things we need to, in our opinion, do even better than previous generations to equip our kids for the future they will be launching into, which is so much different than the present now, or how we were raised or grew up, even if it was awesome.

So it’s really important to think about these things. So we’re going to be talking about upgrading your parenting to overcome change. Change is inevitable. The speed of change is happening faster than ever. We all agree. We feel it every day, don’t we? We look out there, we see the news, we see the things happening and so forth, whether it’s technology in health, it’s in the kinds of work opportunities that are out there and what’s happening, the decrease in morality and all these things. Right. And hey, this isn’t a episode where the goal is to make you aware of things but not give you the practical. This is a little bit of both, and I think it’s really important to do both. And I think it’s important, too, that we have no fear about change. In fact, this episode is to help you fetter that fear away. Most important way is relying on God, trusting in the Lord and respecting His authority in control of our life in the world and so forth. Right. But at the same time, fear is a natural emotion, fear of things happening, fear for our kids. And while we’re not to fear, the Bible talks about that a lot. We still do at times. And but what I have experienced, obviously, my faith and trust in the Lord, but also the more I take action in doing things that equip my family to be able to handle and rise up, stand strong, thrive during and through whatever the challenge is and things that will be coming.

I feel energized inside. I feel excited about the world I’m living in. I feel excited about the future for my kids because I’m doing things. I’m doing what I can do to prepare them and I wouldn’t say everything. I, like many of you, probably feel like, Wow, there’s more I could be doing. There’s this thing I was hoping I was doing with my kids and it ended up not happening and so forth. Right? We all probably have that. I have that feeling inside too, and none of us are perfect. So let’s just let ourselves off of that perfection wagon for a second and just listen in and think about these things. So I think these are important points to think about as we go in. I’m going to talk about, you know, what does provision look like in the future? Like, how are our kids going to provide, what are the jobs look like and these kind of things? I’ll talk a little bit about that. What about the move? The world is the world’s moving towards authoritarianism, right? Versus liberty and freedom? A little bit. We’re seeing that. So we have to understand the trends of things to understand what’s going to be happening. We also have to understand the biblical truth of end times and what kind of things are going to be happening. And we see the alignment of these things, don’t we? We see things happening today that are moving in, alignment towards people, for example, potentially putting things in their bodies right or one world currency and these kinds of things.

We see signs of how, Oh, this is interesting, this cryptocurrency, perhaps that’s a way one world currency happens. And and now it seems more feasible that this thing happens. So it’s not to be fearful. It’s to be observant, understanding the trends and then practically equipping our kids to be able to do well in these environments and potentially maybe not be forced to put something in their body, for example, because of how we’ve equipped them and the directions we’ve kind of directed them in, in providing. So we’ll talk about authoritarianism, providing time, teaching, you know, educating our kids, the spiritual aspects, spiritual readiness and kind of some thoughts on that and church a little bit. And then transhumanism. What a weird word, right? That’s like a word out of a science fiction movie, but. Transhumanism is actually here. It’s talked about a lot. There’s billionaires planning for it. Building companies like Elon Musk. Neuralink is all about transhumanism. So this isn’t conspiracy theory. These aren’t just ideas. These are things we actually need to contemplate and think about as we’re equipping our kids while our kids are in our homes and they’re most receptive to our words and they really are hanging on those things. And over and over again, we need to educate them about certain things.

So we’re going to dive into it in a second. First of all, thanks for being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. We’re so thrilled you’re on the journey with us. We really, Angi and I feel on our hearts to steward the ministry in a way that has an indelible impact on the families into the future and 10 million of those families and their legacies. How do you impact the world? Well, we really believe it starts with parenting. It starts with marriage and parenting so important, equipping the next generation, while it’s a long term vision and we may not see all of it happen quickly in in the next five years, for example. But I think it is possible we’re in it for the long haul, and we think this ministry could have an indelible impact. Even the people that come after us, whether it’s our kids or who knows what’s going to happen right down the road. So the podcast, the courses, the social media content, you know, the products and services that remind people to stand firm wearing a stand firm hat or the mugs, the coffee, the be courageous coffee coming very, very soon. All of these things are pretty exciting and we’re excited to be part of it with you guys and the Be Courageous Ministry. So anyways, let’s dive in. So things to be thinking about. So I wrote down time and teaching. It takes time to teach things right. And we have to think about as you think about this thing, do I need more time or do I just need to use my time better with my kids? I mean, when we’re driving, we have time with them, right? And we could be worshipping the Lord.

We can be listening to a podcast, but sometimes maybe we need to turn that stuff off even though it’s good and dig into deep conversations about some of these things and awareness about things and so forth. Age appropriate. You decide these things based on the age of your kids and maturity of your kids and so forth. But these are important things to be considering is who is teaching our kids. And there’s a big movement towards home schooling. You know, we do that and we’re big advocates for that. But I know that everybody’s situation is the same. Not maybe not everybody can do it quite the same. But regardless of where your kids are going to school, they we need to be the main educators. They need to look at us as the most important teachers. And so if we haven’t been working that muscle, we need to start working that muscle with our kids and teaching them things because that is so important. And maybe we need to think about too, how do I reorientate my life a little bit to be able to teach some of these things that are really important? I’ll come back to this in a second. Some practical ideas on what I really believe and I know Angie does, too, are some of the most important things that aren’t just academic that kids are being taught for the world are launching into provision.

Let’s talk about that for a second. As I think I mean, I have seven sons, you know, and one of them’s already launched and doing great, providing well for his family. Praise the Lord and my daughter providing well for herself. She’s also launched, which is awesome, but I think about provision in the future. Some of my younger kids, you know, it’s I have a one year old, right. So when he’s launching, it’s going to be 17 years from now, likely 16 or 17 years. What is all the change going to be like? You know, what have robotics and automation changed the landscape of work? For example, a lot of computer programming will be probably robots coding, you know, artificial intelligence, creating code. So you think about these amazing opportunities to make good income like that one and how that might be replaced in the future. So I think about that, you know, and it’s not that I wouldn’t want a kid that’s interested in it to learn coding, but I would have in my mindset like, okay, maybe he’s managing the robots or leading coders or or something like that, or building his own product. Even better idea is building his own technology because he understands that, or being able to manage people that build technology for his own business because he understands that side of the technology.

That’s just a small example, right, in the technology world. So but providing you have to think about what are the trends and what’s going to be automated and these kinds of things down into the future. And I really want my kids to be. Resourceful. I want them to know how to do lots of different things right. And one of the things that’s important to think about and we’ll come back to this, is that it used to be thought that entrepreneurship was more risky than getting a really good job at a really good company. I would say that it is far more risky today and into the future to work for a company in a really good job. Than it is to be an entrepreneur. And I know that everybody’s wired differently and everybody has the wiring for entrepreneurship. But I will also say due to technology advances and the Internet and all different things, there are ways for different personalities to actually entertain and move in those directions. And so I wouldn’t count it out for any of my kids, even if they’re wired differently, because I think it’s more necessary now, and even if they have a job, is to be able to have a side, something that they’re working on, to have multiple sources of income into the future. I know when COVID first hit, we did a podcast and generated podcast episode. Hey, it’s going to be really important that people are thinking about multiple sources of income and we recommend at least two, but three ideally so where, you know, sources of income coming through without neglecting your family, of course.

And that’s a challenge. But we encourage you to figure that out. And sure enough, lockdowns came all these things, people losing their jobs later. And that was, you know, what was that two years ago or something like that. So I think it’s so important that we’re thinking it’s even more important now as we think about our kids, what they might be faced with in the future. 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 Craig’s 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.

Stephen 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. The next thing you think about, and I’ll give you some more practice in a little bit, but authoritarianism, the world is moving towards more of a authoritarianism approach and belief in things versus instilling liberty and freedom, personal freedoms. And we see that encroachment happening, right. So, you know, if that trend persists, which, you know, we know there’s going to be one global leader eventually from what the Bible says. So if we understand that where we’re at now and there’s this trend happening and we know what the Bible says about end times, then we can extrapolate that probably authoritarianism is here to stay and to get more difficult, more entrenched in our lives and so forth. Although we might have some pockets of freedom, I think in the United States, we might have a pocket of freedom for the next four years, depending on what happens in politics. But overall, I think the trend is towards more authoritarianism. So with that in mind, what comes to my mind for my kids and I hope you’re thinking about this, is how do I help my kids grow up and develop skills and ways of providing and so forth where they don’t get stuck in situations where the loss is so big if they stand their ground. I’ll give you an example of that. In Canada, churches were forced to shut down. But not only that, my understanding is in some places they can’t even say everything in the Bible.

And if they do, there’s a penalty for that. And just remember that churches are mostly, I think, almost always nonprofits. And if you lose the nonprofit status, that doesn’t enable the church to pay their bills because people give based on being able to write it off. In a lot of cases, that’s how people have been conditioned. And so because of that, if there’s an. Not right up there. A lot of people would stop giving and they wouldn’t be able to pay for the building and the pastor salary and these kinds of things. And so then they get stuck in this situation of, well, we’ll just preach what we can preach and we won’t preach those certain things on gender or marriage or whatever it is, and then we’ll be able to continue. You never want your kids to be in that situation. Whether it has to do with their job or has to do with some way that they’re living and and that kind of thing to be more entrenched in being controlled by an authoritarian control. And so just that’s just something I think about. I don’t know if you guys think about that, but it’s something to think about. We’ve seen some of that around the world for sure. And second, Timothy 312, such a great verse. It says, Indeed, all who desired to live a godly life in Christ, Jesus will be persecuted.

Interesting. And then it goes on to say, well, evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continuing what you have learned and have firmly believe, knowing from who you learned it and how, from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And it goes on to talk about the power of Scripture. Right. And as you know, this is Paul talking to Timothy and this is in second. Timothy is the actual last epistle Paul wrote, and he was killed shortly after writing it. And so I kind of believe that he probably knew that his time on earth was ending and these were some of his last directions. So by the way, side note, I encourage you to read first and second. Timothy is the last two epistles before he died and they are so important. What would you write if you knew you were going to die soon and what would the direction be? Well, here you have Paul giving that direction for the church, how church should be done, how to interact in the world, what’s going to be happening in the world and these kinds of things. But that scripture right there, that if you are of Christ Jesus, you’re going to be persecuted now in some places around the world. You know this very well that my friends in America, we don’t know that as well.

We don’t know what it feels like to really be persecuted in most cases. Some of you do. And so I think we’re starting to get a little taste like we get cancelled maybe on Instagram or something like that. That’s very mild persecution compared to I think the persecution we see happening to Paul in the Bible and others and persecution we see happening around the world. Now, as authoritarianism increases, that’s not led by godly people, then you can extrapolate that persecution is going to increase to the trend towards persecution against believers. So it’s just something to think about how important it is. They’re entrenched in understanding the Bible, willing to stand firm for the Bible, which comes to the next topic, which is spiritual things to be thinking about to to upgrade your parenting for the change coming in the world and that we’re seeing that our kids are going to launch into a different future. Right. Second, Timothy four, three through four. So also in second, Timothy, such a great book says for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. We not only see that amongst the non believers, we see this amongst the Christians, amongst the believers in droves, right? You’ll see people not agreeing with biblical truth and they’ll leave a good Bible believing church.

In its literally prescriptive, clear in the Bible, biblical truth. Right. And so we have to be careful for the time is coming. When people not endure sound teaching but have itching ears, they will accumulate from themselves teachers to suit their own passions. So then they’ll go find a book or a teacher or another church or whatever it is that aligns, that is willing to skip over a part of Scripture, a part of biblical truth or something like that, to align with their passions. So just remember that it’s not just a nonbeliever issue. We’re going to see an increase of this. So what does that mean? It means that our kids, again, not trying to create fear or anything, it’s just we have to be sober minded in the realities. We have to deal in reality about what is the world going to be like our kids are going to launch into because we don’t want to be them to be another statistic that just falls away and gets trampled by worldliness as they launch from our homes. So it’s going to be a hostile environment. It already is in some cases, but that hostile environment towards Christianity is just going to grow. That persecution is just going to be. Gross So how important is it then that they know their Bibles? How important is that? They consistently were in a home where they saw their parents reading the word right.

These things are so important. Even Christians are going to be going against each other. You see on the Internet all the time. Right, is people saying this Christian is teaching the wrong things and this and arguments. And, you know, we don’t have to agree as believers on everything, but we are to try hard when we’re part of a body of Christ in church to be of one mind. And we can disagree on some things that aren’t the main things in the Bible. Right. The main thing is we do have to agree on because Christian means follower of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins, right? So we could be right with God. We have to have one mind about that. Right? But in the future that’s going to there’s going to be more hostility, even believing exactly what the Bible believes. So now think about church. If what happened in Canada and happens around the world, happens in America and other places, where in this increasingly gets worse, where there’s more and more things that the the law of the land does not like, that’s in the Word of God. What’s going to happen to nonprofits is they’re going to be influenced to admit those things. And when you start to emit scripture from the pulpit, what starts in the Bible studies and everything, what starts to happen is that body of believers literally don’t understand that part of biblical truth and those parts of biblical truth actually are really important.

So what is going to happen when you’re when that happens in the future generations for our kids and their kids and so forth? Well, I think it’s really important, actually, that they understand how to teach the Bible. They don’t have to have the gift of teaching, but they should be versed and have experience teaching the Bible and searching for things in the Bible and understanding and memorizing all the books of the Bible and loving the word. And obviously, we hope the self, you know, they become saved. Right? The mystery of God and only God can do. But but we’re to stir up faith in our children that’s so strong and backed by biblical truth. And they they understand the arguments that they can make. Right. And then the final thing, I’m going to go back through and share some more tips on these things. But transhumanism, transhumanism is human evolution beyond limitations using science and technology. So that’s simply means that we can the idea is that we can improve ourselves beyond how God made us using science and technology. I don’t know. I believe in science and technology. I love technology when it’s used for good. I love using it for good. I’m using it right now using an awesome microphone and a camera and other technology.

My MacBook Pro over here and a mixer and scan cards and these lights and all this equipment and the stuff so that we can share good things. I like technology, but I don’t know. I don’t believe that God had in mind our Creator that we would be unhappy with His creation in us and we would try and improve it, like make our eyesight see father like eagles through technology. No, I think we’re we see exactly to the level we’re supposed to see. Do I believe in using technology to fix challenges in medicine and so forth, to get back and restore and be healthy in a normal level? Absolutely. But I think that there’s a danger when we try to be our own gods in a way, by making God’s creation. Even better than he made it. Right. So that’s transhumanism and it’s not an idea. This is Elon Musk building Neuralink. Right. This is Jeff Bezos talks about this. The idea of billionaires are talking about this, that eventually we’ll be able to upload our brains and live forever. The actual goal, there’s people working hard on this to be able to live forever. The problem is, is they don’t believe in God. They don’t believe. And they don’t have an understanding of our souls and heaven and these things. And so I don’t even think it’ll work. I don’t even think people will be able to upload their brains and be the same person because our brain isn’t our soul.

You know what I mean? That’s a whole nother topic. But this is something to think about because this stuff how about the World Economic Forum recently had an article talking about how they want to chip children, put microchips in children across the world, and how this right now is not looked upon favorably, but it will become widely accepted in the future, just like there was a time where buying things online and putting your credit card online was not looked at favorably, and now almost everybody feels comfortable with it. There will be a normalization of putting technology in our bodies, and that’s transhumanism and that’s being worked on and promoted and influenced and all these different things. By the way, I don’t want to get to make your name people upset and things like that, but the mRNA technology, it is called a technology and the mRNA COVID vaccines is an interesting topic because you could almost think that is transhumanism, right, is there’s technology being put inside people’s bodies to handle disease and potentially not a super expert, but I have read quite a bit be programmed to handle other difficulties in the future once it’s put inside a human being. Why was the push so strong to get mRNA in so many people? It’s a good question to ask. Perhaps that was the first step into transhumanism at a mass level.

Now you think about, Oh, nobody’s going to microchip their kids and things like that. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think millions, maybe billions of people did have mRNA technology inside of them. If you disagree with me on that, no problem. We can still love each other. But these are things to think about, right? So what do we do about this? What do we do about these things as we’re raising our kids? Well, let’s go back to time and teaching. Here’s some things, homeschooling, if you can. I think it is so important right then. We have other episodes about that. We have a homeschooling blueprint you can get at courageous parenting that’s super helpful even if you’re already doing it. But regardless, you’re the most important teachers, as I talked about. But here’s a couple of things about that you want to educate them on, regardless of where their formal education is happening, is confidence and speaking to adults. This is often overlooked. And you want to spend time with people that will look your kids in the eyes, know their names and respect them just like they would respect a fellow adult. It is really important because that in itself draws people up, children up into maturity and experientially helps them understand how to communicate with adults. That is so important as they’re negotiating in the future, as they’re getting jobs in the future, as they’re building their businesses at a really young person and able to attract older clients and serve older clients and things like that, super important.

They have confidence speaking to adults, let your kids mature. At first I had allowed them or I had something else there, but letting them. I think a lot of times parents don’t actually let them mature because we want to hold on to them and we relish their young age and and time flies. And while look, they’re already older and we’re kind of like wanting to go back when they’re younger. Well, that, I think, is a normal feeling. I actually look at it the opposite. I actually get excited about another year. I get excited about them watching it in the world. I do miss them, but I’m excited about their progress. I understand the progress is so important and I think having a mindset shift towards that is really important to let them mature faster. I don’t want to have them mature faster than they should, but I don’t want to hold them back from maturing. I think society at large holds children back from maturing the way things are set up and so forth. So. How can you ask yourself the question? Have marriage meaning? How can we allow our kids to mature? And in a normal fashion, which is faster than what usually is happening. How can we do that? Another thing when it comes to spending time with your kids and teaching them things and equipping them is public speaking that is so important.

Not everybody needs to be a professional speaker, but everybody needs to be able to express their viewpoints with confidence in front of people and handle impromptu questions, criticism and so forth, and be able to handle that. If we want our kids to stand strong for their faith in a world where more persecution is going to exist down the road, they’d better have good public speaking experience. And about anything, it’s just the confidence to be able to orate and to express your point in a loving way, in a way different kinds of people will receive it well. And to be able to do that, I think it’s really important for entrepreneurship, too. Doesn’t matter what someone’s doing, they’re going to have to sell what they’re doing. They’re going to have to be able to do that. And that brings me to that next point, which is I think all kids need to know how to sell. I don’t know necessarily that they need a sales job, although that’s a great idea at some point. But they need to know how to sell and sell what they’re doing. I think that is really, really important. So a couple of last things and we’ll move on on teaching is experiencing God in difficulties. That means there needs to be challenges that happen. Of course, we’re never fabricating challenge, we’re never wishing challenge upon our kids.

But navigating and helping them have a spiritual experience when there’s challenges is important because the natural thing to do is to rely on our own strength and our own willpower and perseverance to get through something. Those things are fine, usually part of the equation, but we also need to be relying on God and pointing our kids to Jesus and to God and prayer and looking at how God and acknowledging how God’s coming through for them and glorifying the Father when He does, and helping Him experience God and difficulties. Because when they have their difficulties in the future, we want them relying on the Lord, not their own strength. If things are going to be harder, we, they, they their own strength, they going to work. It’s not going to be good enough, you know, and it’s not good enough today, is it? So like when we start offering our own strength, it’s not good enough. We need the Lord and that is building a real relationship. Now there’s a way for them to see God working in their life, in giving the Lord credit to. It’s okay that they take some credit for persevering. You give them atta boy and pat on the back for following through and these kinds of things, but also acknowledge how God is helping them to and help them experience that. Part of it is when we have hardships. You might have heard her say this before.

Don’t disclosed them from your own hardships and seeing that you walk through things with the Lord’s help and glorifying the father too, and then praying with you for things that you’re going through and the family’s going through. So that’s really important. Educate them about the world. So important, more important than ever to be talking about it not just one time to times, not just a special meeting, but it’s got to be in the part of your rhythm. When kids are old enough, obviously that’s really important, but for certain things. But you know what? Usually they can handle it younger than you think. And I really like to educate them on these things. I share stories about transhumanism, I share stories about persecution, I share stories about authoritarianism and the importance of liberty. We teach history about liberty and freedom and and what it took to create freedom and these kinds of things. Right? We talk about ideas about how to provide and experientially do entrepreneurship and these kinds of things. So super, super important. And the final thing under teaching is apologetics. Apologetics simply means arguments for something. So literally knowing how to argue something not in a negative way, but to stand firm for your faith. That’s what apologetics is, is the ability to actually have backing for the to the naysayers about Jesus dying the cross, about biblical marriage, about biblical gender, about what the Bible says about sex and these different things.

By the way, those three things I just said, them are the hot button issues of the day marriage, gender, sex. We need to be teaching our kids all about what the Bible says on this, while at the same time loving people. Well, that that aren’t believers. Right. And and understanding that. But knowing what the Bible says and knowing what’s right in the Bible is so important on those three issues. So that’s got to be really important. The enemy, it looks like, is going to use. Those three things into the future to create division amongst Christians and to really create weak points to make it look like there’s weak points in biblical truth. And there will be a lot of hostility increasing over these different things. Right. We know that. So if we know that, then those are areas we need to be educating our kids and they need to understand apologetics for the faith, but also these different hot button issues in the world, I would say also. Yeah, I think that’s good enough on that. So and then the next one, right, going back to authoritarianism. Is we need to teach the value of freedom over and over and over again how it is hard fought for. They need to understand the history on that. It’s super important that our kids understand capitalism, the difference between capitalism and socialism. These topics need to be talked about over and over again.

We need to show examples. While capitalism isn’t perfect, I’m always sharing that nothing’s perfect, right? But it is so much better than socialism. And I tell kids, I say, you’re going to see over and over again. What happens is socialism has been proven to be terrible country after country in history time and time again. And what you’re going to see is, oh, they just didn’t do it right. We’re going to do it better this time. And the leaders trying to make this thing happen again, you’re going to see that it’s a cycle. History repeats itself. So you’re going to see this. So don’t fall for that. Don’t fall for weaken. We can do it better. And this is a good path. No part of what helps children understand the evils of socialism in the goodness of free markets is that the spiritual of sowing and reaping. So look in the Bible where it talks about sowing and reaping. Teach your kids about these things so important to do. And we don’t want entitled kids, right? So don’t do things that creates entitlement in your kids. That could be a whole podcast episode. I think we’ve done that one, but it’s really important that people understand the value of a dollar or a pound, depending on where you live. Right? The value of currency, the value of what it takes to have that. And when you trade that for something, what the amount of work it takes to to do that and understanding that there is nothing that’s free.

Right? We all have to work and be productive and that’s the way God wanted it. And so that’s really important providing. So let’s talk back about that for a second. So I talked about entrepreneurship being less risky than a job. I stand by that. I believe that it doesn’t mean I look down on people for getting jobs. Not at all. Again, that’s awesome. But as we think 10 to 12 years from now, I think all of every kid needs to experience entrepreneurship, even if that’s not what they do right away or whatever. They need to have that confidence in the back of their mind that if I had to, I could figure out a way to provide for my family by bringing value in some way to others, selling it and supporting it. Well, so that’s a little business, right? Or it could become a big business. So I think one of the things that’s important before kids launch from our academy, from our house and so forth, our educational system and the open family leaving a legacy academy, Angie and I believe is really important. They learn how to make a profit, that they learn how to make, that they spend money on some expenses, whether it’s wood or whatever, to create something and they sell it and they experience making a profit. What the money left over after spending on making the thing that is so amazing.

I remember when I was eight or nine years old and I started making profit. I built little wooden boats. I set up a card table downtown. I lived in a little tiny town and people would walk by and every once in a while somebody would buy one of my boats. It wasn’t always rosy. I had high schoolers stop by and mock me, ridicule me, laugh at me in front of my table. And it was terrible, right? And I remember that. And I remember. Wow, maybe I should just pack it up, you know, maybe this is the wrong thing. Maybe. Maybe my stuff’s no good. You know, I stayed the course, and I’m so glad it did. Not too long after there was this thing called the Wooden Boat Festival, set up my card table, and I made. I made a lot of money in one day. I can’t quite remember. It was over 100 bucks, maybe $200. And I remember just this powerful experience that somebody had a $20 bill and they wanted change for it. And it was such a new experience for me that I didn’t even think I had the change for a $20 bill. And this other adult that was near me came over maybe at another selling something else near me. And he said, You actually do have change for that and helped me out. And I just remember that amazing feeling.

But most importantly, I remember the feeling of watching parents buy boats for their kids, with their kids, with them, and then going over to the water and watching them experience joy from using the little toy boats that I had built with my own hands. What an amazing experience it was. Such a win win experience. I made a profit. They love what they have. That is the most transformational experience I had as a child. Obviously, I didn’t become a believer till 23 other that would have been, but that was such an amazing, transformative experience. So get beyond the lemonade. Not that that’s not a good idea to do that for sure, but think about how they can build something, create something that they’re proud of, and then sell it and see people use it. I think that is so important. So stretch your minds on that a little bit. I think it’s important to learn entrepreneurship, and the only way to learn it really is to do it when they’re young. And it’s also the part of the process is so amazing in this is their ability to create value that wasn’t there before. So they created something that didn’t exist until they created it, at least their version of it, and somebody purchased it with their hard earned dollars and use it. They added value to the world. What is one of the epidemics is happening to kids, suicide and depression and all these things.

Entrepreneurship. Everybody needs to feel valued and like they have something to contribute into offer the world. And I think that is such an important experience. So there are some practicals on that. Teach entrepreneurship, learn about it yourself, get them involved, do something with them. Maybe they can be involved in your own side, hustle, you know, packaging up orders or doing something like that. Our kids have been very involved. They’re very involved in our ministry. Right. And so it’s really important to to do that. By the way, part of the reason we do the kids podcast is they’re getting public speaking experience and they’re creating value that didn’t exist until it was there. It’s in the Be Courageous app. There’s 4948 episodes this week. There’ll be 49 episodes already every week, every Friday that comes out to play for your kids. That’s just an example of one of the things we’re doing which people are loving. All right. So so let’s talk about the spiritual for a second. So spiritual. It is so important. We’re reading the word. It’s so important we’re doing Bible time with our kids. It’s so important they see us in a physical Bible, not our phones. It’s so important they see us loving the Lord. They so it’s so important they see us relying on the Lord, glorifying the father when he comes through, making lists together, maybe on a whiteboard. We do this of all the ways God showed up in the last week or the last month, reflecting on the goodness of God taking our kids to church.

If you ever listen to the episode, go to church. That was last week. And it’s just so important to do that and to to be raised up with other like minded believers and understand how to have biblical relationships and to go deep and to talk about things spiritual and to to love the Lord and to start to discover their own spiritual gifts and to teach them what spiritual gifts are and talk about these things. I mean, just spouting off the top of my head, folks. But I know one thing, dads, we need to be teaching the word, whether it’s a dinner or breakfast, we need to consistently do that. They need to see us doing that. And because we want them to model that in the future for their kids, for your grandkids, super, super important. So spiritually, though, remember marriage, gender, sex, make sure they know the arguments for those. Make sure they can stand on their two feet against five people around them saying they’re crazy for believing in Jesus and they have a loving way to respond to that. You know, it’s really important that they are ready to stand for persecution. Are do they understand the stories? Do you have books on the martyrs and the people standing for their faith? I think that that’s important to definitely be reading through so spiritual and then trans trans humanism.

We already kind of talked about this, but just a little bit. It is just to realize the God made each person exactly how he wanted to make them. You were perfectly knit. I knew you in the womb, right? These scriptures. I didn’t have it ready for you. But you can look him up where God perfectly makes each human being and to understand the value of life and that there’s not a need to live forever in this earth. And to tell them how that’s going to happen, it’s because they don’t believe in Jesus and that why would we want to live forever on earth when we can live forever in heaven? I think it’s a misunderstanding of the power and amazing how heaven is. Have you talked to your kids about how amazing heaven is? I would never want to live on Earth forever when I have the option of living in heaven forever with God. And Heaven is 1000 times better than Earth. But do our kids really believe heaven is 1000 times better than Earth Day? Or they just think it’s like this boring place, you know? Do we talk about heaven and these kinds of things? I think that’s important. So when these kinds of topics come up and also, how about, you know, that our bodies are the Holy Temple, right? First Corinthians 619 says first 3619.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You were not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. So we can’t just do whatever we want with our bodies. I think it’s vital that our kids are taught that over and over and over again. It is really important that that that our kids understand this so that when the time comes of, you know, keep your job or put a microchip in your body, that they stand for not putting a microchip in their body, that that is not something that’s going to happen in your legacy, that you’re instilling that today for the sake of good decision making in the future. Remember, in the old days, you could just you could kind of know what’s going to happen in the future because change didn’t happen as rapidly. So you could kind of just train them up on the normal things. But now you have to train them up in things that aren’t part of today’s reality but are likely to be part of their future reality. That’s what this is talking about. And it’s not to create fear in you. It’s to create intelligence about what’s happening, to be mindful about what how we need to equip our kids to to look at these things with sober eyes. And I hope this was helpful for you guys.

So, hey, dig in and learning. And if you’re overwhelmed by this, maybe we need to reorientate our life a little bit to spend more time with our kids teaching things. Or maybe we just need to utilize the time we have in a different way in the car and different things like that. But keep these things on your mind. How can I help the spiritual walk of my kids to a whole nother level, not over relying on youth group and these kinds of things, but to understand that we are the the dads. You’re the pastor of your family and moms. You’re an incredible spiritual leader in your family. So important and together, your spiritual leadership team that needs to raise up these kids. Right. And provision might look different in the future. So be careful of pointing them in a direction that might not be profitable for them in the future. Maybe you need to think through that a little bit more and be open to entrepreneurship. And if the world is going more towards authoritarianism and going to put pressure on people to believe in socialism, these things, maybe we should be preemptively teaching about capitalism and making sure they’re not entitled. And they understand the spiritual laws of sowing and reaping these things right, and transhumanism and understanding the basic direction of these things and how our bodies are the holy temple. And we shouldn’t do that. Hey, I hope this is helpful for you guys. If you love it, share it. Take care.

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.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Written By Angie Tolpin
Angie has been married to Isaac for 19 years and together they have eight children, whom she homeschools. She is the Founder of CourageousMom.com, a doula, the author of the best-selling book Redeeming Childbirth, and the creator of the first ever Christian Postpartum Course. Angie loves ministering to Women and has created a few online Bible Studies on Biblical Friendship and Motherhood.

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