“Experiencing God vs. Doing Christianity”

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Episode Summary

Yes, take your family to church, but cultivating a culture in your home where people experience God is a whole different thing.

Too many children are launching from Christian homes and denouncing their faith. If the normal rhythms of Christian parenting aren’t working, then why? The Tolpins believe part of it is; if the heart behind the Spiritual things parents do with and for their families isn’t right, then it may not be having the effect they hope. If we feel a need to do something spiritual, is it only out of duty as a parent, or our love for God? Is it checking off a box, or is it a deep desire to draw closer to the Lord and encourage our family to do so as well? What will the perception of your children be about your spiritual leadership as they get older by what they lived out in your home? Yes, take your family to church, but cultivating a culture in your home where people experience God is a whole different thing

Main Points From This Episode:

  • Is there a family revival happening in your home?
  • It’s more about what actually happens in your home over a long period of time than the events you take your children to.
  • It’s about a heart posture of pursuing God versus checking spiritual things off our list.
  • Are the reasons you involve your family in Spiritual things duty-driven or desire for closeness with God driven?
  • Practical ways to encourage your children to experience God in your home are:
    • Family Worship
    • Serving others
    • Excitement for learning from God and reading His word.
    • Heartfelt prayers
  • Don’t neglect to do what God commands us to do, but let’s do them from a heart for God.

Scriptures From This Episode:

Psalm 73:23-24 – “Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.”

Psalm 139:7-10 – Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”

John 14: 23 – “Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

John 14: 31 – “but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.”

John 5:39-40 – “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

Jeremiah 29:12-14 – “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

John 14:16-17 – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

We’re doing something new. We thought we’d just give you a quick note on what you should expect from this episode. So in today’s.

Episode, we’re going to talk about experiencing God versus just doing Christianity, specifically having like a religious and legalistic culture in your home. We’ve talked often about how the reality of what’s happening in the world today is that kids are leaving the faith by age 18 and that it doesn’t have to be that way. But there’s also a growing majority of this younger generation that is also choosing to talk about their upbringing from a perspective of it being really focused on legalism. And so we want to really dig into that with you guys.

Experiencing God is so important and you’re going to get that out of this episode. Also, we just spontaneously talked about my heart condition and an update on that. We’re praising the Lord, so we hope you catch that. Lots of practical insights to to really cultivate a culture in your family of people experiencing the Lord.

So, you know, in today’s episode, we go over about 4 or 5 different scriptures. So make sure you grab your journal or something that you can jot them down on because these are really awesome scriptures to be sharing with your kids as well as having conversation with your spouse as well. If only one of you gets to listen to the podcast today. So we hope you guys are encouraged.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom.

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

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

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

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

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

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes and other biblically based resources, go to be courageous ministry.org.

Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey, welcome, everybody. Hey, guys. We’re so glad you’re here. If your first time. Welcome to the podcast. If you’ve been listening a while, we just so are so thankful for you following along. And we’re so we feel so blessed to be able to try and be helpful to families around the world. I mean, it’s just an incredible feeling to be able to do that. We feel a responsibility to to continue and every single week have a vibrant, biblically based episode for everybody to benefit from. And so the 10 million Legacies movement is is real for us. And I hope it’s real for you and you’re part of it every time you share something. So we just thank you so much. Yeah.

You know, guys, one of the things that as we’re going to be talking about experiencing God versus doing Christianity, that’s the name of today’s podcast episode. I think that this is a timely episode just because of the statistics of how many more people go to church on Resurrection Sunday or Easter, whatever you choose to call it. And obviously it’s like at Christmas time, right? The statistics of attendance go out the roof for every church because there are more people in attendance. And I think that there’s there’s a dilemma with that on both sides, right, where it’s like, okay, we don’t want to be the type of Christians that only go to check something off a list or because we’re only acknowledging God during these holidays, if you will. Right. Um, but at the same time, we definitely don’t want to be the, the Christians that are legalistically just doing Christianity in our homes and our relationships, including our relationship with God, where it’s just this really lacking the heart, lacking personal relationship with the Lord. And so while we want to obey him and we want to be going to church and be faithful faithfully going in that regard, there is definitely a dilemma on both sides, right? Because there’s ditches within Christianity on both sides of the road. And so as we’re parenting our children, we want to make sure that we’re parenting biblically as much as as possible. And that’s our mission. That’s Isaac and I’s mission. That’s what we feel called to here on this podcast. And with the courageous parenting ministry. Be courageous ministry is to be encouraging Christians to be faithful, but also to make sure that in the faithful walk that they’re doing things to first be putting the heart first. Right? To be putting your relationship with God first, to be modeling that for your children, but also to be verbally expressing, leading, teaching our kids the importance of having a relationship with God and inviting them really into that.

Absolutely. So well said. And those ditches can happen and we don’t even realize it. And so this this episode is for everybody. This episode is for us. I mean, it’s it’s something all parents need to be introspective about and thinking about is, are they what is the rhythm of the week? Because what is a week? Well, it’s seven days. And then what’s another week? Well, it’s what’s two weeks. And then pretty soon you have 52 weeks. And pretty soon you have ten years worth of weeks. And so the week matters because usually what we do in a week overall is kind of the same thing we do the next week and for the next ten years. And so we want to make sure those rhythms that we have with our influence and our actions are something that is pointing our children to a relationship with God is not pointing them to just doing Christianity. Right. And there really is a difference. And obviously people who have a relationship with God do the Christian things too, right? They’re woven together. But unfortunately, the reason we kind of know this is because so many children are leaving the faith that are raised in Christian homes and the world’s getting ahold of them. And it really doesn’t have to be that way. So why is that? Well, there’s probably multiple reasons, but one of the major reasons is that a lot of parents are doing Christianity without experiencing God.

Yeah. And I think, too, if we were to add in a whole nother statistic, you know, you just mentioned that there are a lot of children that are leaving the faith by age 18. We know that this is a staggering truth statistically. You can look at Barna Group statistics on on kids leaving the faith by age 18. And I know Josh McDowell, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have all done research on this in depth and we’ve appreciated that. It’s definitely been eye opening. But I think what we’re seeing even more now today with the millennial and Gen Z generation is you see a lot of kids who are potentially raised in Christian homes, even authentic faith, Christian homes, but they themselves are not necessarily experiencing God or invited into a personal relationship. Or maybe they. But they’re not choosing to walk with God yet that’s on them. And so there’s this staggering statistic of these kids, these millennial kids and Gen Z’s especially, that are are then accepting Christ. And then what are they doing? You see them turning around and blame shifting and blaming the either the home and the parents that they were raised by or people that like churches that they were raised in for legalism. Right and they’re and they’re they’re so when a kid grows up and they do that, it’s because they haven’t seen real authentic relationship portrayed for them. And so I think that there’s it’s important that we as parents, both are outright important, right? That we would be raising our kids to know God and to love him. But you can’t change your kid’s hearts. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.

But but imagine being raised in a in a home that is more legalistic where maybe you never your kids never see you praying just on your own, aside from the meal prayer, like I mean really crying out to God. Imagine your kids never seeing you seek the word or read scripture with delight and joy just because you love Jesus and you love him and you want to know him more. And what if there’s never a sense of peace in your home or your kids don’t experience what what the Holy Spirit like that feeling that you have in a home where the Holy Spirit resides, that those are the traits, if you will, along with many other think of the fruits of the spirit, right? Where if your kids don’t ever experience those kinds of things, then they’re much more likely to grow up and be those kids that are blaming and going, oh, legalism or whatever. And so I think that it’s an important conversation, right? Because there’s the two sides of the ditch for us to be talking about parenting in regards to you don’t want to just raise your kids so that they say they’re a Christian like that should not be our goal. Our goal should be more that we would want to be authentic disciples ourselves and that we would bring our children along in this teaching mentoring relationship where we’re discipling them so that they see the real authentic faith, they see humility, they see leadership, they see transparency versus hypocrisy versus checking off a list versus, oh, why do we do this? Because the Bible says so. I think.

You know, I was just thinking of something is that when children are in our homes, if they don’t know the Lord, there’s a lot of benefit to going along with Christianity, because that’s what the whole family is doing and it creates cohesiveness and alignment. And these things, they may not realize they’re just going along. Let’s face it, lots of kids are going along until at some point God gets a hold of them and they accept the Lord, and that’s their personal relationship. So the world.

Gets a hold of them or they walk.

Away. But but what I was going to say is that there’s a lot of benefits while they’re in our home. But there’s it’s increasingly becoming only costs when somebody leaves the home, when they’re on their own of proclaiming Christianity in this world. And so in a world where the costs are becoming greater, certainly different parts of the world, they’re really great right now. The costs are huge. But even in America and, you know, so-called free countries, there’s costs to proclaiming Jesus Christ. And so, you know, really we want to encourage our children in their walk with God, in experiencing God in the best way to do that is that, like Angie said, they see us experiencing God. I just have to pause for a moment. I just my wife is so incredible, so wise, and I just so appreciate her. It’s really neat how we can get together and just by the Holy Spirit and, you know, our minds cooperating to come up with a topic and come up with an episode and do this every single week and there’s so much more involved with the ministry. But this part is really special. We get to do it together. It’s good for our marriage. Yeah. And I just really value you. And another reason, just taking a moment to value my wife is, as many of you probably know, I had a little heart issue, and I just want to share the good news. My heart is, well, yes, spiritually, but also physically. And that is really good news and an issue. We asked for prayer. There were so many people praying and God healed me. And it’s amazing because I literally had a resting heart rate that would go in a moment down to 40, up to 150, sometimes higher, erratic heart rate. When I’m doing nothing either. I’m just sitting and hadn’t been doing anything before either. And it would just go up and down. And I know because I have my Apple Watch and it used to not be like that. And then it was like that and then.

The alarm was going off and that was.

When I got diagnosed. From my doctor of having long COVID, and that was one of the symptoms. I’m just praising God. That part of it is gone. The dangerous part. And it’s just completely gone. Have a totally normal beating heart. So praise the Lord.

Yeah, so thankful. And I’m sure that I’m going to get a ton of messages now from a bunch of people going, I have a cousin, I have an aunt, I have my husband, you know. And so let me I’ll just share a little bit briefly. Um, like Isaac said, our functional medicine doctor diagnosed Isaac with long haul COVID symptoms, specifically vagus nerve dysfunction, which is your autonomic nervous system. For those of you who you know when you’re thinking about human anatomy, the nervous system is one of the main systems in human anatomy that God designed. And there isn’t a lot of information out there about how long haul COVID has affected the nervous system. And it was basically getting his heart to misfire, if you will, to tell it to spike or to drop at times when it did not need to be, which is a hard thing to treat. Right. And so we were praying, praying, praying. Many Christians trying to be practically helpful. It was really sweet. Yeah. And a lot of care definitely was a lot of work for even our family. We had to travel for for different.

That’s the part I was thinking my wife for because I was just thinking about her. She it was actually Jen’s don’t do this on purpose, of course, but it was really good for our marriage. I was telling I was telling Angie we should go through something like that every year. But that’s not really. We should not what I want. But on the benefit side is, wow, she was so loving.

Well, just as far as care.

Of me, it was amazing.

When you are in a place where you’re you don’t know if you’re going to have the rest of the day with your spouse or tomorrow. You really do that verse about really valuing every day in every day being a gift and that our lives are like a vapor. You really understand that. And, you know, we’ve had other life threatening scares in the last 23 years with, you know, with me or with different losing babies and different things. And and every time something like that happens, it definitely stops you in your tracks to be reflective, both spiritually, biblically, relationally. And it’s a good recalibration time. Right? And and anyway, I’m just so thankful God saw fit to heal Isaac’s heart and.

Use some incredible people that worked on me to to do.

That. You know, on that note, we just wanted to give a shout out. This is the end of what I’m going to share. We just want to give a shout out to our friends who had a Airbnb in Bend, Oregon. If you guys are thinking of traveling to Beautiful Bend, Oregon, it’s definitely a tourist destination A lot of people love to go to. We lived there for seven years and we have friends who own a Chavista, the Christian. It’s a owned by Christians. It’s a coffee shop there. You got to go check out Vista. But also they have a couple Airbnbs above Vista that are just so beautiful. And they were really sweet to put us up there so that Isaac could see specialists there for treatment. And we’re just so thankful. So we’re going to put a link in our blog post. You can you can find it be courageous ministry.org, right? Isaac Yeah.

Every episode has all the things we.

Talk about. Yep. So if you need a place to stay to go check out Bend, we recommend their Airbnbs. So anyway, let’s get back into this.

Yes. Just one last thing is the reason I bring that up is because I think it’s really important to circle back. What I mean is when we ask for prayer, let’s circle back and share what God did, even if it’s months later, because then God is glorified and he gets the credit for something awesome He did. And people are encouraged by that. So we hope you’re encouraged by that. And thank you for your prayers. Yeah.

And you know, just to end it, you guys, it’s been a month. Yeah. I realize this week has been a month where Isaac’s heart rate has been completely normal.

I’ve been playing Spikeball volleyball.

He’s back into doing his active life, which is very helpful to me because we had put all activity on the back burner for him, which meant gaining £12.

But anyways, let’s move on.

That’ll be our next thing we work on. But yes. So we’re so thankful to be here. Yeah. So let’s talk about pursuing God. So it’s about real life versus real events. We talked about how this last weekend was Resurrection Sunday, and so statistics were out the roof as far as attendance for churches, same happens at Christmas time and recognizing that we should not be living Christianity from event to event. That’s not a biblical way to to be walking out our faith, right. Especially in front of our children especially, and in consideration of all the things that God commands us to do, right, like not neglecting the gathering together. And that should be an important thing. But we don’t just do that on a weekly basis and call it good, right?

Our children need to see us living. Our walk with God, living out our faith. And so it’s just good to to think about that. And we’re never doing anything for the purposes of show, even to our children. But an authentic relationship with God is there’s actions. There’s there’s people should witness prayer and there should be the desire and interest of getting the family together to worship the Lord, for example, or. Right. Um, you know, not just the same simple prayer that’s always said at meal time, but really praying for issues and believing that God’s going to come through and like I just did, circling back and sharing what God did. So it’s edifying to your family. We really believe that. You know, there was a revival recently you probably saw in the news and so forth. Maybe some of you know more about it than me. I just know what was in the news. And I even though these things, there’s imperfect things that happen, praise the Lord that God is moving that mean that’s my reaction is praise God. The gospel.

Preached. Amen. Accept him. Yes. So that’s awesome. That’s what we need to be.

That’s awesome. People are messy. Things happen. But praise God on that. And we really believe that there’s a family revival happening in building in America, in in every other country around the world that God is moving and he wants to move in your family. He wants to move in our family. And we have we are the gatekeepers, if you will, to our families, not necessarily spiritually. God bypasses us. Thank you, Lord, and goes right to our children. Thank you for that. But in a large part, we are gatekeepers of a lot of their experiences. And, you know, I don’t know about you, but how amazing would it be if family after family and thousands and ten thousands of families and pretty soon a million families and 10 million families and beyond are experiencing a revival? What is a revival? It’s when you would never say, Oh, look at the revival. They went to church. That’s not what revival is. Revival is. Look at people are being baptized. People are growing in relationship with God. They’re moving away. Their lives are changing. They’re moving away from their past ways of living because they desire to live in new, godly ways. And nobody’s perfect. And they still make mistakes. But they are they are loving the Lord. And you can see the Holy Spirit in them. And they’re exuberant for the Lord. They give God the credit and they’re doing things in his power, not just their power. And they’re voraciously diving into the word and they want to worship the Lord through song and they’re praying and they just stop and go, Hey, let’s pray for that. Versus, you know, oh, wow, just listening. And then there’s no prayer in those relationships with people. Are we just dropping things and praying with our kids and like a revival where everybody in the family is is getting awakened for the Lord and for his purposes and there’s a desire to go out and serve and to serve him together. And wow, that that’s amazing. What do you think?

Well, when I think of revival, I think of people living lives differently for sure. Right. That they’re actually living life for the first time the way because life, the way God purposed them to live. I envision freedom chains and shackles being broken, new family legacies, people repenting. I, I see forgiveness happening. Grace you know, like all of the different when we talk about consequences, a lot of times we think of it as a negative thing. But there are good consequences to life decisions as well as negative ones depending on what our decision is and what we do in life. Right. And so envision the positive consequences of people turning their lives over to Christ of relationships healed and truly living victoriously. I think that that kind of sums it up is living victoriously, living your real purpose in life and the joy that comes can I just say this? This is how I used to describe it many years ago when I was a teenager, and I would serve overseas in missions or even in Mexico. I remember coming back and and people asking me, why do you keep going year after year? And I just said, because it’s the one time in the year where I feel like I know I am doing exactly what God wants me to do 100%. I am 100% where God wants me to be. Like I. It’s like, and imagine living your life that way.

Like I, I truly can say that where I am today, serving in my family, serving in this ministry, married to Isaac, I’m 100% where God wants me to be. Can you say that? Can you? When you think about your life and you think about the service that you bring, do you value the discipleship of your children? The help meet aspect for wives. Right. The the. A servant oriented leadership that you and your spouse have for your children. Do you view that as I am 100% where God wants me to be? And do you live that out? Those daily tasks, those things with the joy that comes from knowing confidently that that is the truth? I mean, and I don’t do that perfectly. Neither does Isaac. But that right there is living victoriously in Christ when you have an eternal perspective for the things that you’re doing on a daily basis. And that is so beautiful that when you walk out that way, your children simply cannot deny the truth. They simply cannot deny the reality and realness of their God. So when you experience things like we just walked through with Isaac’s heart, for example, our whole family is praying for him. We’re working diligently, seeing doctors. We’re trying many different avenues. We’re taking supplements, we’re changing diet. We’re doing all these different things. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, one day Isaac wakes up and it’s like a light switch goes off and his heart rate is normal.

Do we? So then after all this prayer and crying out, truly crying out to God, Lord, heal my husband. We have so much work to do. Still, would it be weird for me to just drop it and to be like, okay, great, we can just move on now and leave it where it’s at? Or would it be? It would be opportune. It’s an opportunity for me to be even more exuberantly crying out to God and thanking him for what he did in my husband’s heart. And that truly is where the rubber meets the road in faith. Do we just come to God with our needs, or do we praise him when he answers those those need prayers also? And do your kids see both sides of it? Yeah, right. Because if you hide the fear of the heart condition from your kids and you’re just praying about it and God heals them and then you come to them later, they don’t know the depth of how serious it was. And so like for our kids, like they knew what was going on, we were praying for Daddy’s heart and then for him to be perfectly normal, like we’re all kind of like, Wow, that was God, that’s awesome.

It’s amazing. So all this is about pursuing God, experiencing God versus just checking off the box that we did the real events and we did all the things that we feel like we’re supposed to do, but instead, are we doing all the things that we desire to do just simply because we love God and we want closer relationship with him? And that a household that has that kind of culture a a real spiritual culture, a real spiritual presence on an ongoing basis, that is a big difference than the religious home. That is about just doing the real events, Right. And checking off the box. Read my Bible today. Do we read the Bible to check off the box or to read the Bible? Because we want to know our Father in heaven.

So when it comes down to it, like experiencing God, you guys are like, Where’s the punch line? Isaac and Angie? How do I teach my kids to experience God so that they don’t have this legalistic mindset? Like, you’re probably even thinking you could probably label one of your kids or maybe you see it in one of your children where maybe one of them just seems to be more faith. Like they just have this incredible faith, right? And then maybe you have a different child that it’s like they’re just going through the motions and they’re being obedient because they’ve been trained to be obedient. But you can tell that the heart thing is just not clicking, that there’s something not there. And like, So how do you move that child from one place to the next? That is something you can continually invite them to grow. You hold them accountable when you see that there isn’t true sincerity when they’re apologizing, for example, or remorsefulness. Right. They’re just saying sorry because they know they have to say sorry because you just told them to versus this like heartfelt. I’m really sorry I did that. And I know that you must feel this way and da da da da da. You know, like you can tell the difference when there’s a sincere heart.

That’s what I’m saying. Right? And so the parents that are sitting there going, Yes, okay, I have that problem with my with this situation between these kids. First of all, pray. But we have to teach our kids and model. Those are like modeling is one way you teach but also like verbally telling your children, showing them reading scriptures with them that are going to talk about the importance of a personal relationship with God and how to experience. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit here in the first scripture I want to share with you guys is James four eight. It says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. I think that this is important for us to understand. There are many different verses like even think of the ask, seek Knock, which I think we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. Like God is always there. He literally never moves. I get that I’m getting into some theology here, but God is telling us to draw near to him. And so we need to understand our responsibility is to draw near to God and he’ll be right there.

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

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 the 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 lights to be leaders for the next generation.

So in this desire for our children to be experiencing God, to know Him, for there to be sincerity of heart, for there to be real, real life relationship where they’re experiencing God, I think the first thing that we need to put our finger on that we need to teach, promote, lead, invite our kids in the process is to learn how to pursue God because God says in his Word that he will, when we draw near to him, He will draw near to us as James four, verse eight says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. So understanding that is a promise of God, actually. Amen. Right. That he promises that when we draw near to him, he will draw near to us. And so when we teach our children to pursue God and what that looks like, there are many different ways that that can look. We’re going to talk about those in a minute. Um, that right there we are. We are moving as parents into doing something that we know is a biblical promise of God that will have consequences, that he will He will come through on his part. And then it’s up to our children to respond to Jesus, to respond to the gospel, to respond to God in their own heart. Right? But if we just go through the process of doing Christianity, like going to church or saying our prayer before our meal each time, and these are I’m not saying that these are bad things.

I’m not saying don’t do them. So don’t, don’t think I’m saying this this way. Um, but my point is, is if we go about Christianity from a checkpoint, like I have to obey the rules perspective, and even if your heart is not that, what is your child perceiving? We have to ask that question like the way I parent, the way I run my home. How would my children be perceiving Christianity based upon how I am running my household or what I expect of them? And for the most part, like we need to take a step back and go, okay, have I looked my kids in the eye? Have I pursued relationship with my children? Because that is the. First place where they learn how to pursue a relationship with God is to actually experience a real relationship with their parents and with their siblings. And so, like, we cannot underestimate the power of pursuing our children and then teaching them how to pursue God in relationship. This is a very simple it’s simple, right? Isaac But I just can I just share like from a personal place, Like I have nine kids and a couple of them are out of the house already and we have a lot of littles at home. We have three kids that are seven and under, and the other day I’m with Zander all the time. He had been sick with the tummy bug and just wanted mommy all the time around the clock.

So I’m with him. Envision I’m with him carrying him. He’s with me all the time. And then at night before he was going to bed, it just dawned on me as I was looking at him in the eyes and he had this different kind of giggle and smile. You were sitting next to him on the sofa and I was just tickling him and he was smiling back at me. And there was this different kind of connection that we hadn’t had all day, even though he was literally with me all day. And if you’re honest and you think about it, I’m sure that you can think of some times, too, where you’re like, Oh, you know what? I’m maybe with my kids all day, but have I connected with their heart? That’s what I’m talking about. Connecting with the kid’s heart, with your kid’s heart is an aspect of your relationship that it it is so necessary. Otherwise you’re just parenting them, which is actually just doing something kind of like how we were talking about Christianity and just doing Christianity versus truly connecting with the heart of God and experiencing him. And so for some of you who are listening to this story, maybe there’s some conviction. I have to say, like I was convicted in that moment when I saw how he lit up and he smiled so big at me for the first time in like, you know, ten hours. And I know he was feeling crummy. But I have a.

Similar story, too. It’s like because my heart thing, I wasn’t wrestling with the boys and these kinds of things like I used to. And then recently I just wrestled with Zander and he had that just exuberant, giggling and smiling. I was on the trampoline with him for the first time in months, and it was so special. And then I noticed how he responded to me after that. The rest of the day was so much stronger he would come to me more. He gave me a hug, which I wasn’t experiencing.

Psalm 7323 says, Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to your glory. I think that this is, you know, obviously, if I was to ask you, do you want your child to receive God’s counsel all the time, you’re probably like, Yes. Do you want to see that God is walking with your child continually? Um, yes, I want to experience that and I want my kids to experience that. And so understanding like this is part of being in relationship, right? I am continually with you. That has nothing to do with knowledge of a person, although knowing someone helps you to be helps your relationship. Like think about when you meet somebody for the first time and you’re investing in a relationship with them, you’re going to get to know them. You’re going to ask questions. You’re going to spend time talking and sharing testimonies and parts of your life that you think are are valuable or important to making you who you are. And the truth is, is that God in his goodness is continually with us. He he knows us better than anyone. And so teaching our children the truths like that, our in Psalm 73 is so critical because then they understand, Oh, I God does know me. He knows me better than anyone.

And he’s always there. He’s always there. We’re the ones that move away. And as you read in James, you draw towards, he draws towards you, but he’s always there.

So he’s literally going to be with us wherever we go. And teaching our kids these different passages of Scripture help them to understand the depth of like, God is always with me. And that is a basic foundational truth that we need to teach our children so that they know that they can communicate and pursue God in prayer, for example, or in worship or in all of the different spiritual disciplines, because he is always there. And so having that like foundational understanding. So yes, we want to teach our kids God’s Word. We talk about this all the time in podcasts, right? The importance of memorizing scripture, your kids, knowing biblical geography, if you will, knowing how to navigate the word. Because this is a skill that they’re going to use their whole life. But it’s more than that. Those things would be like checklists on the list of like, how do I equip my child to know how to study the word right? But that’s different than pursuing a personal relationship with God. There’s there’s an element of where you’re going to find God in that. In the reading of the scripture, your relationship with him is going to grow richer, for sure.

But understanding that, like just being able to talk to God, you’re driving the car and you’re like, Hey guys, let’s have a conversation with Jesus right now. I just really feel like we need we need to talk to him. We need to give him our day, or we need to say, Lord, will you help us to recalibrate our day or will you protect us while we go out? And and what do you guys want to pray for? And you let their little hearts start talking to God and you encourage that. Those are the times when they understand that, oh, that Bible verse that we memorized, that God is with us, whether we go to heaven or we go to Sheol or wherever we are, he’s with us all the time. Oh, that. Oh, yeah, he is here in the car. Oh yeah. He is at the soccer game or wherever. Right. And that is part of how we make God. Like we allow him to be the real God that he is in our kids lives versus maybe compartmentalizing him and making it more of a big person thing that, you know, like kids can think that way sometimes.

So what needs to be woven in to our rhythms in a week, in the next week and onward towards years and so forth. You mentioned the Bible, which is so right on that should be woven in from in an intention place of desire versus checking off the box. And that’s the whole point is like, where is the motivation coming from? Sometimes it needs to it does come from a checking a box and it turns into real desire and motivation. We get that. But you know, something that we should think about is, is this does it come from service? You know, this is another thing that should be woven in to the hearts of our family. The culture of our families is of service.

Which really is like when you think about service, it’s in the sense, yes, we’re saying you should find ways to serve in your community together or serve family together. That is important. But like living a life of selflessness where on a daily basis you see certain things that would be a way to serve one another, and you just do them without being asked, right? And you’re doing them for the Lord, not for man’s eyes. It’s interesting because that was something that I just experienced with one of our sons, and I brought it up at breakfast the other day because I had this cupboard door that broke, okay? And I was kind of like, Oh, man, are you serious? I’m in the middle of cooking this huge meal. I can’t stop cooking the meal to fix the cupboard. And then of course, I went on to serve the family of the meal. And then there was a dish crew and I wasn’t in the kitchen. I forgot about it. Well, the next day I come into the kitchen the next morning and I open that same cupboard and the cupboard door is fixed. And I went, Hey, guys. And I just I kind of already knew who it was based upon his character and the fact that he’s done this multiple times and I just called it, called him out. I said, Hey, Luke, thanks for fixing my cupboard without me ever even asking you.

And he got kind of red and embarrassed and he was like, Yeah, sure, mom, you know, and like, but that’s what I’m talking about, where where your kids have that heart of wanting to serve even within their family, like the people that are the closest to them. You’ve heard Isaac say that very old idiom, which is familiarity, breeds contempt sometimes, and that’s a very common thing that can happen within families where there’s not really a pursuance or a purposeful, like appreciating one another or serving one another or loving one another. And that is something that we all have to work at actually, so that we don’t. So that the familiarity and the daily grind, we don’t just forget to be selfless and love one another and serve one another. And I was just super encouraged by the fact that Luke did that. And so I brought it up to the family. And he I think he was just shocked that one. I knew it was him. He didn’t have to say anything, you know? And I just think that that that’s being that’s an example of it being woven into your daily life. Right. It’s not a thing that you’re going to go do that you signed up for is service woven into your daily life and to your hearts, because, you know, that’s something that God’s called you to.

So that’s just part of, you know, a culture and a family that’s good. Is is there service in your family on the Bible in John 539 through 40, it says you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God. Within you the act of just reading the Bible, it’s like, are we do we are we checking the list? Do we believe he’s in control of our lives? And are we surrendered to that? Do we? Have we really received and have our children really received the mystery of the gospel salvation? The only God can do but through faith? Yeah, right.

Or do you have that personal experience of God forgiving you and the and having that overwhelming sense of, Wow, I don’t deserve this grace, this second chance, this third chance that God’s given me over and over and over again to where you’re humbled. You have a humble heart posture towards the reality of who God is and what he represents in your life. And do your kids know that there’s an element of this scripture that Isaac just read in John Chapter five, You’ve got to go read that with your kids. The reason why we chose that scripture is because that really, in my opinion, I believe that that describes a warrant. It’s a warning really for the legalist Christian that is just checking things off their list when he’s saying, I don’t know you, right? Like you don’t have them within you. There’s an element where we need to understand, like when we’re raising our kids and we’re we’ve got the flash cards, the Bible flash cards, and we’ve got the the planner out and we do everything. We check off our boxes as we’re going through our day with our kids. And okay, we prayed and we did our we read our books before nap time. And, you know, these things are all good things. You guys I’m not mocking them at all. I am just warning us. I feel like there’s a need for a warning to make sure that we do not quench the spirit. That we do not.

Focus so heavily on doing these things that we miss out on making the eye contact with our kids that will show them that we love them and that we enjoy spending time with them. And how do we invite them to to lock eyes, if you will, or lock ears with God? Because that’s experiencing his presence in the same way that you experience that connection with a human individual. When you lock eyes, when you listen to hearts. And that has to be done not only and solely we’re saying that both are needed in the Christian walk. Both are needed because when you love God, when you have that personal relationship with him, then the service happens. Then you want to read more of the Bible because you want to know more of God. And then when you know more of what he’s commanding you to do, you want to do those things because you just love him. And that is a very wildly different thing than having a religious home or a religious perspective. That’s we read the Bible. What’s the Bible say? Da da da da da, You know, and and being harsh in a way. And so we just want to exhort you guys to maybe, maybe take some time as a couple to do an audit of your parenting. And what do you think your children are perceiving over time in regards to how you portray and teach the Bible and and invite them into relationship with God?

Another great way to experience God is worship. And just the other day, actually yesterday we did family worship and it was so special because three of the different kids played guitar at different times. And I know different seasons, different age kids. Maybe no one can play a musical instrument in your family, but maybe that’s a vision. You have to do lessons as they get older and you can still play worship, but you can still you can still play it and you can still sing. But we had a few kids playing and and then Eli, our four year old, just started belting out, hit.

His eyes.

Squinted shut.

And he had the loudest voice in the room.

It was Jesus paid it all. And he was just he was just Jesus paid.

It was incredible.

I look over at Isaac and he’s just like awestruck, staring at Eli. And it was the sweetest moment because you guys, if you if you know this child like he’s he’s by no means not a shy child. He loves relationships with people. But even within our home church, which is a is a smaller setting than like a large church. He sings sometimes, but not always and not with the same comfortability that he was worshiping God last night when it was just our family. It was so.

Sincere. It was incredible. It was loud, it was beautiful. And I’m just like, Wow, thank you, Lord. And it really enabled me to see in Eli’s heart to see God moving through him. If we didn’t do family worship, I wouldn’t have seen that. And it just gives me it. It just gives me more motivation to do that.

Even more. Do that more. Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, I get it. And so what is it that you could, like, cultivate in your family that would give opportunity for your kids to express and share in worship or in prayer or even different gifts, different spiritual gifts? I think of all the gifts of the spirit, right? Like, there is that time, Isaac, where we were having the kids prepare a sermon message and then bring it. And after dinner it was like a different kid each night. Remember that? And they would kind of expository teach a section of scripture which is equipping your kids to be able to communicate the word and communicate what God is teaching them, which is a really wonderful thing. But how often do you see pastors who have relationships with their own siblings and their family where they’re like, they don’t have the invitation to openly challenge or hold one another accountable or speak into each other’s lives on a biblical level. And we didn’t want that for our kids. So we started this like little process, which we should bring that back. But I bring that up as an example of like another thing that you could cultivate in your family that would then encourage that spiritual gift of teaching and exhorting one another as iron sharpens iron. And, you know, there are so many different ways that we could go through this.

But the whole point I want to bring it back to this is like, do your kids get to express with just as much validity as you would express their relationship with God? And what I mean by that is that some in some denominational circles, I really think that they put a damper on children. And what I mean by that is that, oh no, you’re not old enough to do X, Y and Z. Oh, you’re not old enough. You have to be 16 before you can be baptized or you have to be this. And listen, if this is your church, I’m not trying to be critical here. I want to challenge you, though, to think biblically for a moment. Did God. Put age categories on the things that he calls his people to do in his word. He did not because there is a heart. It is not about age. In fact, over and over again, he commands us adults to try to have faith more like a child, actually. And so in in regards to like really experiencing God. And we need to have the the the perspective that our children could actually teach us a thing or two about faith. I just even think about in regards to Isaac’s heart, how many times like we’ve we’ve talked about prayer in previous podcasts we have a specific podcast. I want to encourage you guys to go back and listen to is in season one How to Make God Real to Your Kids.

I think that podcast goes so timely along with what we’re talking about here today because one of in there we have a bunch of different testimonies. This is from like four years ago. Um, of ways that we saw God moving in some of our really little kids. Now they’re teenagers and teenagers, but seeing how God and his, their faith was moved in through prayer and praying for miracles or praying for things to happen when we were going through a business failure. And I can even say that like what we just walked through with Isaac’s heart, like seeing your children pray. We have an appreciation, Isaac and I specifically, for understanding that kids have this ability to pray with faith even better than adults do in most cases, to where we ask our kids to pray for all kinds of things like Daddy’s heart, because we do believe that they have this element of faith that we need to be challenged to have more of. And so that being said, do you have that conversation with your kids where you’re like, Hey, will you pray for this too? Like, were you value their connection with God? That shows them that you believe that they have a personal connection with God. They need to know that.

I think the kids right now are praying for my health even more because they want me to have more energy now. And now I just got notified that I have an exercise regimen that Luke Andrew already put together and I’m showing up for it for his trainers.

It’s pretty sweet. So, okay, the last scripture that I want to share with you guys I just think is so timely. We have a long list of things that you don’t want to neglect. Isaac, Do you want to share some of those real quick?

Yeah, just real quick. You know, we don’t want to neglect the things that we should do also with the right heart. And that was what this whole episode is about, is having the right heart towards these things. But don’t neglect the cross. And what I mean is what Jesus did on the cross for us, the freedom in Christ is not a freedom to live any way we want. No, we’re not to trample on God’s grace. So let’s not neglect what Jesus did on the cross, and let’s not let our children either and have deep conversations about that. When these things happen. Let’s not neglect the gathering, believe it’s in first or second. Timothy It talks about this Don’t forsake the gathering. That’s not just getting together with another person one on one for coffee that is talking about the church gathering. We are not to neglect that. If your family is not going to church, that is an issue. There is no perfect church because they’re full of people and there’s no perfect people. So it’s really important that we’re leading and going to church and not ripping on it on the way home in front of our kids. Why would we rip on church when it is the bride of Christ? Okay, so that’s really important.

Hebrews 1024 and 25 is what Isaac’s talking about.

So let’s not neglect authority in our lives. We all need authority. God knows we need authority. We’re under his authority. And there’s other authorities in our life, too, that we should yield to. Hospitality. Let’s not neglect hospitality. It’s not neglect, forgiveness.

You know, I just even think of the things that you just, you know, the cross and relationship with God gathering with his body authority, people in your life that have authority. Right. Where they’re going to potentially be holding you accountable, hospitality, having people in your home, all of those things are relating to relationships. And when you’re in relationships with people, especially on a personal level where you’re being real, you’re being raw, they’re being real, they’re being honest, There’s going to be offenses because people are sinners, like Isaac was saying. And whenever there is sin or offense, there’s a need for forgiveness and reconciliation. And so we can’t neglect that part of relationships. If there isn’t a need for forgiveness to be happening, then maybe there’s a lack of realness happening. Maybe there’s a lack of honesty of truly coming to someone when they offend you or holding people accountable. Right. And those would be more surface relationships. That’s what I would call them. And in consideration that we’re talking about relationship with God here we do. Not want a surface relationship with God. We don’t want our kids to have a surface relationship with God, which would be purely just knowing what the Bible says and doing it versus loving him and letting him love you and having a relationship that’s a two way road, right? The last one that we wanted to talk about, we have some scripture we want to share with you. It’s the Holy Spirit. We don’t want to disregard or neglect the power of the Holy Spirit. God gave His Holy Spirit. And we have a Scripture here in John chapter 14.

I really would encourage you to read the entire chapter. I’m going to kind of skip around to a couple places just for time’s sake. It says in verse one, Believe in God, believe also in me. So this is obviously the very first step to pursuing God is to believe, to have faith in him. And that’s something that we need to teach our children. In verse six. Thomas says, Well, in verse five, Thomas is saying, Where do we know where you’re going? Lord? How can we know the way? And Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father. Also, from now on, you do know him and have seen him. This is intimate. Knowing, seeing, hearing. Okay, this is. This is relationship. Okay. Then Philip says to him, Lord, show us the Father and it’s enough for us. And Jesus says to him, Haven’t I been with you so long? And you still don’t know me? Philip, Whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father. Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me. And then it just continues on. And then about whoever believes. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.

That’s all of us. We get to experience God when we are doing the works that God has called us to. And when our kids witness that they are seeing him, they’re seeing him. We need to give God the glory for those things. It’s like when God healed Isaac’s heart. Are we saying, Oh, we went to this doctor and we did this and we did? Yes, we did those things. But God’s the one who chose the fruit. He chose the outcome. He chose to let those things help in the healing process. He did it right. And so we have a responsibility, but we give God the glory. And then verse 15, this is very, very important. It says, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth, large s whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. He will be in you. This is the Bible, guys. I’m not making this stuff up. I have seen Christians go, Oh well, teaching your kids to not invite them into your heart isn’t really biblical. I’m sorry. I just read that that he, you know, him for he dwells with you and will be in you. That is powerful. We need to teach our kids that when we believe and we keep his commandments, we can receive the helper, the spirit of truth who will be in us. And it says, I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you. And then it continues on. I just have to skip to verse 21. It says, Whoever has my commandments and keeps them. He it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas not as scary it said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? And Jesus answered him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the father’s who sent me. And then it continues. Talking about the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace. I leave with you my peace. I give to you guys. I just have to say that there is an element here when we talk about like experiencing God, part of experiencing him is being able to experience peace. Like, do your kid. We said that earlier. Do your kids ever experience peace in the home? Because that would be the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That would be peace that God gives when we’re worshiping him. And we’ve been praying, Is your home at peace? There is a different kind of atmosphere and we get to be a participating in cultivating that.

Well, hey, thanks so much for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening. And being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to be courageous ministry. Org for more biblically based resources. Ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible be courageous app community for believers.

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We’re doing something new. We thought we’d just give you a quick note on what you should expect from this episode. So in today’s.

Episode, we’re going to talk about experiencing God versus just doing Christianity, specifically having like a religious and legalistic culture in your home. We’ve talked often about how the reality of what’s happening in the world today is that kids are leaving the faith by age 18 and that it doesn’t have to be that way. But there’s also a growing majority of this younger generation that is also choosing to talk about their upbringing from a perspective of it being really focused on legalism. And so we want to really dig into that with you guys.

Experiencing God is so important and you’re going to get that out of this episode. Also, we just spontaneously talked about my heart condition and an update on that. We’re praising the Lord, so we hope you catch that. Lots of practical insights to to really cultivate a culture in your family of people experiencing the Lord.

So, you know, in today’s episode, we go over about 4 or 5 different scriptures. So make sure you grab your journal or something that you can jot them down on because these are really awesome scriptures to be sharing with your kids as well as having conversation with your spouse as well. If only one of you gets to listen to the podcast today. So we hope you guys are encouraged.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom.

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

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

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

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Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey, welcome, everybody. Hey, guys. We’re so glad you’re here. If your first time. Welcome to the podcast. If you’ve been listening a while, we just so are so thankful for you following along. And we’re so we feel so blessed to be able to try and be helpful to families around the world. I mean, it’s just an incredible feeling to be able to do that. We feel a responsibility to to continue and every single week have a vibrant, biblically based episode for everybody to benefit from. And so the 10 million Legacies movement is is real for us. And I hope it’s real for you and you’re part of it every time you share something. So we just thank you so much. Yeah.

You know, guys, one of the things that as we’re going to be talking about experiencing God versus doing Christianity, that’s the name of today’s podcast episode. I think that this is a timely episode just because of the statistics of how many more people go to church on Resurrection Sunday or Easter, whatever you choose to call it. And obviously it’s like at Christmas time, right? The statistics of attendance go out the roof for every church because there are more people in attendance. And I think that there’s there’s a dilemma with that on both sides, right, where it’s like, okay, we don’t want to be the type of Christians that only go to check something off a list or because we’re only acknowledging God during these holidays, if you will. Right. Um, but at the same time, we definitely don’t want to be the, the Christians that are legalistically just doing Christianity in our homes and our relationships, including our relationship with God, where it’s just this really lacking the heart, lacking personal relationship with the Lord. And so while we want to obey him and we want to be going to church and be faithful faithfully going in that regard, there is definitely a dilemma on both sides, right? Because there’s ditches within Christianity on both sides of the road. And so as we’re parenting our children, we want to make sure that we’re parenting biblically as much as as possible. And that’s our mission. That’s Isaac and I’s mission. That’s what we feel called to here on this podcast. And with the courageous parenting ministry. Be courageous ministry is to be encouraging Christians to be faithful, but also to make sure that in the faithful walk that they’re doing things to first be putting the heart first. Right? To be putting your relationship with God first, to be modeling that for your children, but also to be verbally expressing, leading, teaching our kids the importance of having a relationship with God and inviting them really into that.

Absolutely. So well said. And those ditches can happen and we don’t even realize it. And so this this episode is for everybody. This episode is for us. I mean, it’s it’s something all parents need to be introspective about and thinking about is, are they what is the rhythm of the week? Because what is a week? Well, it’s seven days. And then what’s another week? Well, it’s what’s two weeks. And then pretty soon you have 52 weeks. And pretty soon you have ten years worth of weeks. And so the week matters because usually what we do in a week overall is kind of the same thing we do the next week and for the next ten years. And so we want to make sure those rhythms that we have with our influence and our actions are something that is pointing our children to a relationship with God is not pointing them to just doing Christianity. Right. And there really is a difference. And obviously people who have a relationship with God do the Christian things too, right? They’re woven together. But unfortunately, the reason we kind of know this is because so many children are leaving the faith that are raised in Christian homes and the world’s getting ahold of them. And it really doesn’t have to be that way. So why is that? Well, there’s probably multiple reasons, but one of the major reasons is that a lot of parents are doing Christianity without experiencing God.

Yeah. And I think, too, if we were to add in a whole nother statistic, you know, you just mentioned that there are a lot of children that are leaving the faith by age 18. We know that this is a staggering truth statistically. You can look at Barna Group statistics on on kids leaving the faith by age 18. And I know Josh McDowell, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have all done research on this in depth and we’ve appreciated that. It’s definitely been eye opening. But I think what we’re seeing even more now today with the millennial and Gen Z generation is you see a lot of kids who are potentially raised in Christian homes, even authentic faith, Christian homes, but they themselves are not necessarily experiencing God or invited into a personal relationship. Or maybe they. But they’re not choosing to walk with God yet that’s on them. And so there’s this staggering statistic of these kids, these millennial kids and Gen Z’s especially, that are are then accepting Christ. And then what are they doing? You see them turning around and blame shifting and blaming the either the home and the parents that they were raised by or people that like churches that they were raised in for legalism. Right and they’re and they’re they’re so when a kid grows up and they do that, it’s because they haven’t seen real authentic relationship portrayed for them. And so I think that there’s it’s important that we as parents, both are outright important, right? That we would be raising our kids to know God and to love him. But you can’t change your kid’s hearts. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.

But but imagine being raised in a in a home that is more legalistic where maybe you never your kids never see you praying just on your own, aside from the meal prayer, like I mean really crying out to God. Imagine your kids never seeing you seek the word or read scripture with delight and joy just because you love Jesus and you love him and you want to know him more. And what if there’s never a sense of peace in your home or your kids don’t experience what what the Holy Spirit like that feeling that you have in a home where the Holy Spirit resides, that those are the traits, if you will, along with many other think of the fruits of the spirit, right? Where if your kids don’t ever experience those kinds of things, then they’re much more likely to grow up and be those kids that are blaming and going, oh, legalism or whatever. And so I think that it’s an important conversation, right? Because there’s the two sides of the ditch for us to be talking about parenting in regards to you don’t want to just raise your kids so that they say they’re a Christian like that should not be our goal. Our goal should be more that we would want to be authentic disciples ourselves and that we would bring our children along in this teaching mentoring relationship where we’re discipling them so that they see the real authentic faith, they see humility, they see leadership, they see transparency versus hypocrisy versus checking off a list versus, oh, why do we do this? Because the Bible says so. I think.

You know, I was just thinking of something is that when children are in our homes, if they don’t know the Lord, there’s a lot of benefit to going along with Christianity, because that’s what the whole family is doing and it creates cohesiveness and alignment. And these things, they may not realize they’re just going along. Let’s face it, lots of kids are going along until at some point God gets a hold of them and they accept the Lord, and that’s their personal relationship. So the world.

Gets a hold of them or they walk.

Away. But but what I was going to say is that there’s a lot of benefits while they’re in our home. But there’s it’s increasingly becoming only costs when somebody leaves the home, when they’re on their own of proclaiming Christianity in this world. And so in a world where the costs are becoming greater, certainly different parts of the world, they’re really great right now. The costs are huge. But even in America and, you know, so-called free countries, there’s costs to proclaiming Jesus Christ. And so, you know, really we want to encourage our children in their walk with God, in experiencing God in the best way to do that is that, like Angie said, they see us experiencing God. I just have to pause for a moment. I just my wife is so incredible, so wise, and I just so appreciate her. It’s really neat how we can get together and just by the Holy Spirit and, you know, our minds cooperating to come up with a topic and come up with an episode and do this every single week and there’s so much more involved with the ministry. But this part is really special. We get to do it together. It’s good for our marriage. Yeah. And I just really value you. And another reason, just taking a moment to value my wife is, as many of you probably know, I had a little heart issue, and I just want to share the good news. My heart is, well, yes, spiritually, but also physically. And that is really good news and an issue. We asked for prayer. There were so many people praying and God healed me. And it’s amazing because I literally had a resting heart rate that would go in a moment down to 40, up to 150, sometimes higher, erratic heart rate. When I’m doing nothing either. I’m just sitting and hadn’t been doing anything before either. And it would just go up and down. And I know because I have my Apple Watch and it used to not be like that. And then it was like that and then.

The alarm was going off and that was.

When I got diagnosed. From my doctor of having long COVID, and that was one of the symptoms. I’m just praising God. That part of it is gone. The dangerous part. And it’s just completely gone. Have a totally normal beating heart. So praise the Lord.

Yeah, so thankful. And I’m sure that I’m going to get a ton of messages now from a bunch of people going, I have a cousin, I have an aunt, I have my husband, you know. And so let me I’ll just share a little bit briefly. Um, like Isaac said, our functional medicine doctor diagnosed Isaac with long haul COVID symptoms, specifically vagus nerve dysfunction, which is your autonomic nervous system. For those of you who you know when you’re thinking about human anatomy, the nervous system is one of the main systems in human anatomy that God designed. And there isn’t a lot of information out there about how long haul COVID has affected the nervous system. And it was basically getting his heart to misfire, if you will, to tell it to spike or to drop at times when it did not need to be, which is a hard thing to treat. Right. And so we were praying, praying, praying. Many Christians trying to be practically helpful. It was really sweet. Yeah. And a lot of care definitely was a lot of work for even our family. We had to travel for for different.

That’s the part I was thinking my wife for because I was just thinking about her. She it was actually Jen’s don’t do this on purpose, of course, but it was really good for our marriage. I was telling I was telling Angie we should go through something like that every year. But that’s not really. We should not what I want. But on the benefit side is, wow, she was so loving.

Well, just as far as care.

Of me, it was amazing.

When you are in a place where you’re you don’t know if you’re going to have the rest of the day with your spouse or tomorrow. You really do that verse about really valuing every day in every day being a gift and that our lives are like a vapor. You really understand that. And, you know, we’ve had other life threatening scares in the last 23 years with, you know, with me or with different losing babies and different things. And and every time something like that happens, it definitely stops you in your tracks to be reflective, both spiritually, biblically, relationally. And it’s a good recalibration time. Right? And and anyway, I’m just so thankful God saw fit to heal Isaac’s heart and.

Use some incredible people that worked on me to to do.

That. You know, on that note, we just wanted to give a shout out. This is the end of what I’m going to share. We just want to give a shout out to our friends who had a Airbnb in Bend, Oregon. If you guys are thinking of traveling to Beautiful Bend, Oregon, it’s definitely a tourist destination A lot of people love to go to. We lived there for seven years and we have friends who own a Chavista, the Christian. It’s a owned by Christians. It’s a coffee shop there. You got to go check out Vista. But also they have a couple Airbnbs above Vista that are just so beautiful. And they were really sweet to put us up there so that Isaac could see specialists there for treatment. And we’re just so thankful. So we’re going to put a link in our blog post. You can you can find it be courageous ministry.org, right? Isaac Yeah.

Every episode has all the things we.

Talk about. Yep. So if you need a place to stay to go check out Bend, we recommend their Airbnbs. So anyway, let’s get back into this.

Yes. Just one last thing is the reason I bring that up is because I think it’s really important to circle back. What I mean is when we ask for prayer, let’s circle back and share what God did, even if it’s months later, because then God is glorified and he gets the credit for something awesome He did. And people are encouraged by that. So we hope you’re encouraged by that. And thank you for your prayers. Yeah.

And you know, just to end it, you guys, it’s been a month. Yeah. I realize this week has been a month where Isaac’s heart rate has been completely normal.

I’ve been playing Spikeball volleyball.

He’s back into doing his active life, which is very helpful to me because we had put all activity on the back burner for him, which meant gaining £12.

But anyways, let’s move on.

That’ll be our next thing we work on. But yes. So we’re so thankful to be here. Yeah. So let’s talk about pursuing God. So it’s about real life versus real events. We talked about how this last weekend was Resurrection Sunday, and so statistics were out the roof as far as attendance for churches, same happens at Christmas time and recognizing that we should not be living Christianity from event to event. That’s not a biblical way to to be walking out our faith, right. Especially in front of our children especially, and in consideration of all the things that God commands us to do, right, like not neglecting the gathering together. And that should be an important thing. But we don’t just do that on a weekly basis and call it good, right?

Our children need to see us living. Our walk with God, living out our faith. And so it’s just good to to think about that. And we’re never doing anything for the purposes of show, even to our children. But an authentic relationship with God is there’s actions. There’s there’s people should witness prayer and there should be the desire and interest of getting the family together to worship the Lord, for example, or. Right. Um, you know, not just the same simple prayer that’s always said at meal time, but really praying for issues and believing that God’s going to come through and like I just did, circling back and sharing what God did. So it’s edifying to your family. We really believe that. You know, there was a revival recently you probably saw in the news and so forth. Maybe some of you know more about it than me. I just know what was in the news. And I even though these things, there’s imperfect things that happen, praise the Lord that God is moving that mean that’s my reaction is praise God. The gospel.

Preached. Amen. Accept him. Yes. So that’s awesome. That’s what we need to be.

That’s awesome. People are messy. Things happen. But praise God on that. And we really believe that there’s a family revival happening in building in America, in in every other country around the world that God is moving and he wants to move in your family. He wants to move in our family. And we have we are the gatekeepers, if you will, to our families, not necessarily spiritually. God bypasses us. Thank you, Lord, and goes right to our children. Thank you for that. But in a large part, we are gatekeepers of a lot of their experiences. And, you know, I don’t know about you, but how amazing would it be if family after family and thousands and ten thousands of families and pretty soon a million families and 10 million families and beyond are experiencing a revival? What is a revival? It’s when you would never say, Oh, look at the revival. They went to church. That’s not what revival is. Revival is. Look at people are being baptized. People are growing in relationship with God. They’re moving away. Their lives are changing. They’re moving away from their past ways of living because they desire to live in new, godly ways. And nobody’s perfect. And they still make mistakes. But they are they are loving the Lord. And you can see the Holy Spirit in them. And they’re exuberant for the Lord. They give God the credit and they’re doing things in his power, not just their power. And they’re voraciously diving into the word and they want to worship the Lord through song and they’re praying and they just stop and go, Hey, let’s pray for that. Versus, you know, oh, wow, just listening. And then there’s no prayer in those relationships with people. Are we just dropping things and praying with our kids and like a revival where everybody in the family is is getting awakened for the Lord and for his purposes and there’s a desire to go out and serve and to serve him together. And wow, that that’s amazing. What do you think?

Well, when I think of revival, I think of people living lives differently for sure. Right. That they’re actually living life for the first time the way because life, the way God purposed them to live. I envision freedom chains and shackles being broken, new family legacies, people repenting. I, I see forgiveness happening. Grace you know, like all of the different when we talk about consequences, a lot of times we think of it as a negative thing. But there are good consequences to life decisions as well as negative ones depending on what our decision is and what we do in life. Right. And so envision the positive consequences of people turning their lives over to Christ of relationships healed and truly living victoriously. I think that that kind of sums it up is living victoriously, living your real purpose in life and the joy that comes can I just say this? This is how I used to describe it many years ago when I was a teenager, and I would serve overseas in missions or even in Mexico. I remember coming back and and people asking me, why do you keep going year after year? And I just said, because it’s the one time in the year where I feel like I know I am doing exactly what God wants me to do 100%. I am 100% where God wants me to be. Like I. It’s like, and imagine living your life that way.

Like I, I truly can say that where I am today, serving in my family, serving in this ministry, married to Isaac, I’m 100% where God wants me to be. Can you say that? Can you? When you think about your life and you think about the service that you bring, do you value the discipleship of your children? The help meet aspect for wives. Right. The the. A servant oriented leadership that you and your spouse have for your children. Do you view that as I am 100% where God wants me to be? And do you live that out? Those daily tasks, those things with the joy that comes from knowing confidently that that is the truth? I mean, and I don’t do that perfectly. Neither does Isaac. But that right there is living victoriously in Christ when you have an eternal perspective for the things that you’re doing on a daily basis. And that is so beautiful that when you walk out that way, your children simply cannot deny the truth. They simply cannot deny the reality and realness of their God. So when you experience things like we just walked through with Isaac’s heart, for example, our whole family is praying for him. We’re working diligently, seeing doctors. We’re trying many different avenues. We’re taking supplements, we’re changing diet. We’re doing all these different things. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, one day Isaac wakes up and it’s like a light switch goes off and his heart rate is normal.

Do we? So then after all this prayer and crying out, truly crying out to God, Lord, heal my husband. We have so much work to do. Still, would it be weird for me to just drop it and to be like, okay, great, we can just move on now and leave it where it’s at? Or would it be? It would be opportune. It’s an opportunity for me to be even more exuberantly crying out to God and thanking him for what he did in my husband’s heart. And that truly is where the rubber meets the road in faith. Do we just come to God with our needs, or do we praise him when he answers those those need prayers also? And do your kids see both sides of it? Yeah, right. Because if you hide the fear of the heart condition from your kids and you’re just praying about it and God heals them and then you come to them later, they don’t know the depth of how serious it was. And so like for our kids, like they knew what was going on, we were praying for Daddy’s heart and then for him to be perfectly normal, like we’re all kind of like, Wow, that was God, that’s awesome.

It’s amazing. So all this is about pursuing God, experiencing God versus just checking off the box that we did the real events and we did all the things that we feel like we’re supposed to do, but instead, are we doing all the things that we desire to do just simply because we love God and we want closer relationship with him? And that a household that has that kind of culture a a real spiritual culture, a real spiritual presence on an ongoing basis, that is a big difference than the religious home. That is about just doing the real events, Right. And checking off the box. Read my Bible today. Do we read the Bible to check off the box or to read the Bible? Because we want to know our Father in heaven.

So when it comes down to it, like experiencing God, you guys are like, Where’s the punch line? Isaac and Angie? How do I teach my kids to experience God so that they don’t have this legalistic mindset? Like, you’re probably even thinking you could probably label one of your kids or maybe you see it in one of your children where maybe one of them just seems to be more faith. Like they just have this incredible faith, right? And then maybe you have a different child that it’s like they’re just going through the motions and they’re being obedient because they’ve been trained to be obedient. But you can tell that the heart thing is just not clicking, that there’s something not there. And like, So how do you move that child from one place to the next? That is something you can continually invite them to grow. You hold them accountable when you see that there isn’t true sincerity when they’re apologizing, for example, or remorsefulness. Right. They’re just saying sorry because they know they have to say sorry because you just told them to versus this like heartfelt. I’m really sorry I did that. And I know that you must feel this way and da da da da da. You know, like you can tell the difference when there’s a sincere heart.

That’s what I’m saying. Right? And so the parents that are sitting there going, Yes, okay, I have that problem with my with this situation between these kids. First of all, pray. But we have to teach our kids and model. Those are like modeling is one way you teach but also like verbally telling your children, showing them reading scriptures with them that are going to talk about the importance of a personal relationship with God and how to experience. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit here in the first scripture I want to share with you guys is James four eight. It says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. I think that this is important for us to understand. There are many different verses like even think of the ask, seek Knock, which I think we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. Like God is always there. He literally never moves. I get that I’m getting into some theology here, but God is telling us to draw near to him. And so we need to understand our responsibility is to draw near to God and he’ll be right there.

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

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 the 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 lights to be leaders for the next generation.

So in this desire for our children to be experiencing God, to know Him, for there to be sincerity of heart, for there to be real, real life relationship where they’re experiencing God, I think the first thing that we need to put our finger on that we need to teach, promote, lead, invite our kids in the process is to learn how to pursue God because God says in his Word that he will, when we draw near to him, He will draw near to us as James four, verse eight says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. So understanding that is a promise of God, actually. Amen. Right. That he promises that when we draw near to him, he will draw near to us. And so when we teach our children to pursue God and what that looks like, there are many different ways that that can look. We’re going to talk about those in a minute. Um, that right there we are. We are moving as parents into doing something that we know is a biblical promise of God that will have consequences, that he will He will come through on his part. And then it’s up to our children to respond to Jesus, to respond to the gospel, to respond to God in their own heart. Right? But if we just go through the process of doing Christianity, like going to church or saying our prayer before our meal each time, and these are I’m not saying that these are bad things.

I’m not saying don’t do them. So don’t, don’t think I’m saying this this way. Um, but my point is, is if we go about Christianity from a checkpoint, like I have to obey the rules perspective, and even if your heart is not that, what is your child perceiving? We have to ask that question like the way I parent, the way I run my home. How would my children be perceiving Christianity based upon how I am running my household or what I expect of them? And for the most part, like we need to take a step back and go, okay, have I looked my kids in the eye? Have I pursued relationship with my children? Because that is the. First place where they learn how to pursue a relationship with God is to actually experience a real relationship with their parents and with their siblings. And so, like, we cannot underestimate the power of pursuing our children and then teaching them how to pursue God in relationship. This is a very simple it’s simple, right? Isaac But I just can I just share like from a personal place, Like I have nine kids and a couple of them are out of the house already and we have a lot of littles at home. We have three kids that are seven and under, and the other day I’m with Zander all the time. He had been sick with the tummy bug and just wanted mommy all the time around the clock.

So I’m with him. Envision I’m with him carrying him. He’s with me all the time. And then at night before he was going to bed, it just dawned on me as I was looking at him in the eyes and he had this different kind of giggle and smile. You were sitting next to him on the sofa and I was just tickling him and he was smiling back at me. And there was this different kind of connection that we hadn’t had all day, even though he was literally with me all day. And if you’re honest and you think about it, I’m sure that you can think of some times, too, where you’re like, Oh, you know what? I’m maybe with my kids all day, but have I connected with their heart? That’s what I’m talking about. Connecting with the kid’s heart, with your kid’s heart is an aspect of your relationship that it it is so necessary. Otherwise you’re just parenting them, which is actually just doing something kind of like how we were talking about Christianity and just doing Christianity versus truly connecting with the heart of God and experiencing him. And so for some of you who are listening to this story, maybe there’s some conviction. I have to say, like I was convicted in that moment when I saw how he lit up and he smiled so big at me for the first time in like, you know, ten hours. And I know he was feeling crummy. But I have a.

Similar story, too. It’s like because my heart thing, I wasn’t wrestling with the boys and these kinds of things like I used to. And then recently I just wrestled with Zander and he had that just exuberant, giggling and smiling. I was on the trampoline with him for the first time in months, and it was so special. And then I noticed how he responded to me after that. The rest of the day was so much stronger he would come to me more. He gave me a hug, which I wasn’t experiencing.

Psalm 7323 says, Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to your glory. I think that this is, you know, obviously, if I was to ask you, do you want your child to receive God’s counsel all the time, you’re probably like, Yes. Do you want to see that God is walking with your child continually? Um, yes, I want to experience that and I want my kids to experience that. And so understanding like this is part of being in relationship, right? I am continually with you. That has nothing to do with knowledge of a person, although knowing someone helps you to be helps your relationship. Like think about when you meet somebody for the first time and you’re investing in a relationship with them, you’re going to get to know them. You’re going to ask questions. You’re going to spend time talking and sharing testimonies and parts of your life that you think are are valuable or important to making you who you are. And the truth is, is that God in his goodness is continually with us. He he knows us better than anyone. And so teaching our children the truths like that, our in Psalm 73 is so critical because then they understand, Oh, I God does know me. He knows me better than anyone.

And he’s always there. He’s always there. We’re the ones that move away. And as you read in James, you draw towards, he draws towards you, but he’s always there.

So he’s literally going to be with us wherever we go. And teaching our kids these different passages of Scripture help them to understand the depth of like, God is always with me. And that is a basic foundational truth that we need to teach our children so that they know that they can communicate and pursue God in prayer, for example, or in worship or in all of the different spiritual disciplines, because he is always there. And so having that like foundational understanding. So yes, we want to teach our kids God’s Word. We talk about this all the time in podcasts, right? The importance of memorizing scripture, your kids, knowing biblical geography, if you will, knowing how to navigate the word. Because this is a skill that they’re going to use their whole life. But it’s more than that. Those things would be like checklists on the list of like, how do I equip my child to know how to study the word right? But that’s different than pursuing a personal relationship with God. There’s there’s an element of where you’re going to find God in that. In the reading of the scripture, your relationship with him is going to grow richer, for sure.

But understanding that, like just being able to talk to God, you’re driving the car and you’re like, Hey guys, let’s have a conversation with Jesus right now. I just really feel like we need we need to talk to him. We need to give him our day, or we need to say, Lord, will you help us to recalibrate our day or will you protect us while we go out? And and what do you guys want to pray for? And you let their little hearts start talking to God and you encourage that. Those are the times when they understand that, oh, that Bible verse that we memorized, that God is with us, whether we go to heaven or we go to Sheol or wherever we are, he’s with us all the time. Oh, that. Oh, yeah, he is here in the car. Oh yeah. He is at the soccer game or wherever. Right. And that is part of how we make God. Like we allow him to be the real God that he is in our kids lives versus maybe compartmentalizing him and making it more of a big person thing that, you know, like kids can think that way sometimes.

So what needs to be woven in to our rhythms in a week, in the next week and onward towards years and so forth. You mentioned the Bible, which is so right on that should be woven in from in an intention place of desire versus checking off the box. And that’s the whole point is like, where is the motivation coming from? Sometimes it needs to it does come from a checking a box and it turns into real desire and motivation. We get that. But you know, something that we should think about is, is this does it come from service? You know, this is another thing that should be woven in to the hearts of our family. The culture of our families is of service.

Which really is like when you think about service, it’s in the sense, yes, we’re saying you should find ways to serve in your community together or serve family together. That is important. But like living a life of selflessness where on a daily basis you see certain things that would be a way to serve one another, and you just do them without being asked, right? And you’re doing them for the Lord, not for man’s eyes. It’s interesting because that was something that I just experienced with one of our sons, and I brought it up at breakfast the other day because I had this cupboard door that broke, okay? And I was kind of like, Oh, man, are you serious? I’m in the middle of cooking this huge meal. I can’t stop cooking the meal to fix the cupboard. And then of course, I went on to serve the family of the meal. And then there was a dish crew and I wasn’t in the kitchen. I forgot about it. Well, the next day I come into the kitchen the next morning and I open that same cupboard and the cupboard door is fixed. And I went, Hey, guys. And I just I kind of already knew who it was based upon his character and the fact that he’s done this multiple times and I just called it, called him out. I said, Hey, Luke, thanks for fixing my cupboard without me ever even asking you.

And he got kind of red and embarrassed and he was like, Yeah, sure, mom, you know, and like, but that’s what I’m talking about, where where your kids have that heart of wanting to serve even within their family, like the people that are the closest to them. You’ve heard Isaac say that very old idiom, which is familiarity, breeds contempt sometimes, and that’s a very common thing that can happen within families where there’s not really a pursuance or a purposeful, like appreciating one another or serving one another or loving one another. And that is something that we all have to work at actually, so that we don’t. So that the familiarity and the daily grind, we don’t just forget to be selfless and love one another and serve one another. And I was just super encouraged by the fact that Luke did that. And so I brought it up to the family. And he I think he was just shocked that one. I knew it was him. He didn’t have to say anything, you know? And I just think that that that’s being that’s an example of it being woven into your daily life. Right. It’s not a thing that you’re going to go do that you signed up for is service woven into your daily life and to your hearts, because, you know, that’s something that God’s called you to.

So that’s just part of, you know, a culture and a family that’s good. Is is there service in your family on the Bible in John 539 through 40, it says you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God. Within you the act of just reading the Bible, it’s like, are we do we are we checking the list? Do we believe he’s in control of our lives? And are we surrendered to that? Do we? Have we really received and have our children really received the mystery of the gospel salvation? The only God can do but through faith? Yeah, right.

Or do you have that personal experience of God forgiving you and the and having that overwhelming sense of, Wow, I don’t deserve this grace, this second chance, this third chance that God’s given me over and over and over again to where you’re humbled. You have a humble heart posture towards the reality of who God is and what he represents in your life. And do your kids know that there’s an element of this scripture that Isaac just read in John Chapter five, You’ve got to go read that with your kids. The reason why we chose that scripture is because that really, in my opinion, I believe that that describes a warrant. It’s a warning really for the legalist Christian that is just checking things off their list when he’s saying, I don’t know you, right? Like you don’t have them within you. There’s an element where we need to understand, like when we’re raising our kids and we’re we’ve got the flash cards, the Bible flash cards, and we’ve got the the planner out and we do everything. We check off our boxes as we’re going through our day with our kids. And okay, we prayed and we did our we read our books before nap time. And, you know, these things are all good things. You guys I’m not mocking them at all. I am just warning us. I feel like there’s a need for a warning to make sure that we do not quench the spirit. That we do not.

Focus so heavily on doing these things that we miss out on making the eye contact with our kids that will show them that we love them and that we enjoy spending time with them. And how do we invite them to to lock eyes, if you will, or lock ears with God? Because that’s experiencing his presence in the same way that you experience that connection with a human individual. When you lock eyes, when you listen to hearts. And that has to be done not only and solely we’re saying that both are needed in the Christian walk. Both are needed because when you love God, when you have that personal relationship with him, then the service happens. Then you want to read more of the Bible because you want to know more of God. And then when you know more of what he’s commanding you to do, you want to do those things because you just love him. And that is a very wildly different thing than having a religious home or a religious perspective. That’s we read the Bible. What’s the Bible say? Da da da da da, You know, and and being harsh in a way. And so we just want to exhort you guys to maybe, maybe take some time as a couple to do an audit of your parenting. And what do you think your children are perceiving over time in regards to how you portray and teach the Bible and and invite them into relationship with God?

Another great way to experience God is worship. And just the other day, actually yesterday we did family worship and it was so special because three of the different kids played guitar at different times. And I know different seasons, different age kids. Maybe no one can play a musical instrument in your family, but maybe that’s a vision. You have to do lessons as they get older and you can still play worship, but you can still you can still play it and you can still sing. But we had a few kids playing and and then Eli, our four year old, just started belting out, hit.

His eyes.

Squinted shut.

And he had the loudest voice in the room.

It was Jesus paid it all. And he was just he was just Jesus paid.

It was incredible.

I look over at Isaac and he’s just like awestruck, staring at Eli. And it was the sweetest moment because you guys, if you if you know this child like he’s he’s by no means not a shy child. He loves relationships with people. But even within our home church, which is a is a smaller setting than like a large church. He sings sometimes, but not always and not with the same comfortability that he was worshiping God last night when it was just our family. It was so.

Sincere. It was incredible. It was loud, it was beautiful. And I’m just like, Wow, thank you, Lord. And it really enabled me to see in Eli’s heart to see God moving through him. If we didn’t do family worship, I wouldn’t have seen that. And it just gives me it. It just gives me more motivation to do that.

Even more. Do that more. Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, I get it. And so what is it that you could, like, cultivate in your family that would give opportunity for your kids to express and share in worship or in prayer or even different gifts, different spiritual gifts? I think of all the gifts of the spirit, right? Like, there is that time, Isaac, where we were having the kids prepare a sermon message and then bring it. And after dinner it was like a different kid each night. Remember that? And they would kind of expository teach a section of scripture which is equipping your kids to be able to communicate the word and communicate what God is teaching them, which is a really wonderful thing. But how often do you see pastors who have relationships with their own siblings and their family where they’re like, they don’t have the invitation to openly challenge or hold one another accountable or speak into each other’s lives on a biblical level. And we didn’t want that for our kids. So we started this like little process, which we should bring that back. But I bring that up as an example of like another thing that you could cultivate in your family that would then encourage that spiritual gift of teaching and exhorting one another as iron sharpens iron. And, you know, there are so many different ways that we could go through this.

But the whole point I want to bring it back to this is like, do your kids get to express with just as much validity as you would express their relationship with God? And what I mean by that is that some in some denominational circles, I really think that they put a damper on children. And what I mean by that is that, oh no, you’re not old enough to do X, Y and Z. Oh, you’re not old enough. You have to be 16 before you can be baptized or you have to be this. And listen, if this is your church, I’m not trying to be critical here. I want to challenge you, though, to think biblically for a moment. Did God. Put age categories on the things that he calls his people to do in his word. He did not because there is a heart. It is not about age. In fact, over and over again, he commands us adults to try to have faith more like a child, actually. And so in in regards to like really experiencing God. And we need to have the the the perspective that our children could actually teach us a thing or two about faith. I just even think about in regards to Isaac’s heart, how many times like we’ve we’ve talked about prayer in previous podcasts we have a specific podcast. I want to encourage you guys to go back and listen to is in season one How to Make God Real to Your Kids.

I think that podcast goes so timely along with what we’re talking about here today because one of in there we have a bunch of different testimonies. This is from like four years ago. Um, of ways that we saw God moving in some of our really little kids. Now they’re teenagers and teenagers, but seeing how God and his, their faith was moved in through prayer and praying for miracles or praying for things to happen when we were going through a business failure. And I can even say that like what we just walked through with Isaac’s heart, like seeing your children pray. We have an appreciation, Isaac and I specifically, for understanding that kids have this ability to pray with faith even better than adults do in most cases, to where we ask our kids to pray for all kinds of things like Daddy’s heart, because we do believe that they have this element of faith that we need to be challenged to have more of. And so that being said, do you have that conversation with your kids where you’re like, Hey, will you pray for this too? Like, were you value their connection with God? That shows them that you believe that they have a personal connection with God. They need to know that.

I think the kids right now are praying for my health even more because they want me to have more energy now. And now I just got notified that I have an exercise regimen that Luke Andrew already put together and I’m showing up for it for his trainers.

It’s pretty sweet. So, okay, the last scripture that I want to share with you guys I just think is so timely. We have a long list of things that you don’t want to neglect. Isaac, Do you want to share some of those real quick?

Yeah, just real quick. You know, we don’t want to neglect the things that we should do also with the right heart. And that was what this whole episode is about, is having the right heart towards these things. But don’t neglect the cross. And what I mean is what Jesus did on the cross for us, the freedom in Christ is not a freedom to live any way we want. No, we’re not to trample on God’s grace. So let’s not neglect what Jesus did on the cross, and let’s not let our children either and have deep conversations about that. When these things happen. Let’s not neglect the gathering, believe it’s in first or second. Timothy It talks about this Don’t forsake the gathering. That’s not just getting together with another person one on one for coffee that is talking about the church gathering. We are not to neglect that. If your family is not going to church, that is an issue. There is no perfect church because they’re full of people and there’s no perfect people. So it’s really important that we’re leading and going to church and not ripping on it on the way home in front of our kids. Why would we rip on church when it is the bride of Christ? Okay, so that’s really important.

Hebrews 1024 and 25 is what Isaac’s talking about.

So let’s not neglect authority in our lives. We all need authority. God knows we need authority. We’re under his authority. And there’s other authorities in our life, too, that we should yield to. Hospitality. Let’s not neglect hospitality. It’s not neglect, forgiveness.

You know, I just even think of the things that you just, you know, the cross and relationship with God gathering with his body authority, people in your life that have authority. Right. Where they’re going to potentially be holding you accountable, hospitality, having people in your home, all of those things are relating to relationships. And when you’re in relationships with people, especially on a personal level where you’re being real, you’re being raw, they’re being real, they’re being honest, There’s going to be offenses because people are sinners, like Isaac was saying. And whenever there is sin or offense, there’s a need for forgiveness and reconciliation. And so we can’t neglect that part of relationships. If there isn’t a need for forgiveness to be happening, then maybe there’s a lack of realness happening. Maybe there’s a lack of honesty of truly coming to someone when they offend you or holding people accountable. Right. And those would be more surface relationships. That’s what I would call them. And in consideration that we’re talking about relationship with God here we do. Not want a surface relationship with God. We don’t want our kids to have a surface relationship with God, which would be purely just knowing what the Bible says and doing it versus loving him and letting him love you and having a relationship that’s a two way road, right? The last one that we wanted to talk about, we have some scripture we want to share with you. It’s the Holy Spirit. We don’t want to disregard or neglect the power of the Holy Spirit. God gave His Holy Spirit. And we have a Scripture here in John chapter 14.

I really would encourage you to read the entire chapter. I’m going to kind of skip around to a couple places just for time’s sake. It says in verse one, Believe in God, believe also in me. So this is obviously the very first step to pursuing God is to believe, to have faith in him. And that’s something that we need to teach our children. In verse six. Thomas says, Well, in verse five, Thomas is saying, Where do we know where you’re going? Lord? How can we know the way? And Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father. Also, from now on, you do know him and have seen him. This is intimate. Knowing, seeing, hearing. Okay, this is. This is relationship. Okay. Then Philip says to him, Lord, show us the Father and it’s enough for us. And Jesus says to him, Haven’t I been with you so long? And you still don’t know me? Philip, Whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father. Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me. And then it just continues on. And then about whoever believes. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.

That’s all of us. We get to experience God when we are doing the works that God has called us to. And when our kids witness that they are seeing him, they’re seeing him. We need to give God the glory for those things. It’s like when God healed Isaac’s heart. Are we saying, Oh, we went to this doctor and we did this and we did? Yes, we did those things. But God’s the one who chose the fruit. He chose the outcome. He chose to let those things help in the healing process. He did it right. And so we have a responsibility, but we give God the glory. And then verse 15, this is very, very important. It says, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth, large s whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. He will be in you. This is the Bible, guys. I’m not making this stuff up. I have seen Christians go, Oh well, teaching your kids to not invite them into your heart isn’t really biblical. I’m sorry. I just read that that he, you know, him for he dwells with you and will be in you. That is powerful. We need to teach our kids that when we believe and we keep his commandments, we can receive the helper, the spirit of truth who will be in us. And it says, I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you. And then it continues on. I just have to skip to verse 21. It says, Whoever has my commandments and keeps them. He it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas not as scary it said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? And Jesus answered him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the father’s who sent me. And then it continues. Talking about the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace. I leave with you my peace. I give to you guys. I just have to say that there is an element here when we talk about like experiencing God, part of experiencing him is being able to experience peace. Like, do your kid. We said that earlier. Do your kids ever experience peace in the home? Because that would be the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That would be peace that God gives when we’re worshiping him. And we’ve been praying, Is your home at peace? There is a different kind of atmosphere and we get to be a participating in cultivating that.

Well, hey, thanks so much for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening. And being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to be courageous ministry. Org for more biblically based resources. Ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible be courageous app community for believers.

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 session 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 tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group and the Be Courageous app, live webcasts and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program, secure your spot now at be courageous ministry org. That’s be courageous ministry.org.

 

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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