Training our children in the character quality of honesty in a world that disregards the value of telling the truth. Join us for three important questions to discuss with your children to teach them what God’s word says about lying and the consequences they will reap. Let’s raise trustworthy honest men and women who will stand for truth in an age against it.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. It’s important to use Biblical truth with your kids when they Lie and spend the time to help them understand how harmful it is.
2. Educate your kids about sin.
3. Help your kids understand the heavy repercussions of lying.
4. Discover the reasons that compelled them to lie.
5. Make sure you create a comfortable environment, to tell the truth.
6. Acknowledge kids who fess up quickly even for small things.

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Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom.

And I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

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

Hey, guys.

We have an important topic. I think I say that a lot, but it always feels important.

It does. I know it’s actually kind of funny how that is true.

We get excited about something and usually it’s you telling us an idea.

And that’s actually the case with today’s podcast. We are going to pull out the topic of lying and honesty. We get a lot of questions from people worded similarly differently, but asking about how to teach kids about lying, how to teach them not to lie.

And you’ll get a good list of Bible verses that’s practical that you can use with your kids.

That’s right. We are going to be diving into the word today for sure. Isaac is like, wow, that’s a lot of Bible verses, so get your journal and pen ready or just go over to courageous parenting and hit that hamburger at the top left part of the screen. And you’ll see a spot that says podcast. If you click on that, all of our show notes for every single episode are on our website and we list out the Bible references that we cover. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Yeah. So thanks for being part of the 1 Million Legacies movement. Whether you’re sharing giving us reviews in the app on social media with us, listen to the podcast. All of it helps and this is what we’re doing full time. So thank you so much. We are honored to be on this journey with you to impact 1 million families and their legacy. So we’re going to dive in midpoint. We’re going to talk a few about a few important things that really help the ministry candidly. But let’s dive into the topic.

So I start out with a lie that I think a lot of parents fall for, and I believe this is a lie from the devil. You’re ready for this one. All kids lie and they’ll grow out of it. That’s totally a lie that parents fall for. All kids lie and they’ll grow out of it.

I think it’s more like all kids lie and then they get better at it.

If they are not corrected.

They’re hiding.

It and they’re not convicted and they don’t change.

Right. And it’s not a kid problem. It’s a human condition problem.

Right. So you probably were like, okay, she said this was a lie from the enemy. Does that mean she thinks that all kids don’t lie? No, no, no, no. I think all people struggle with this issue, at least have struggled with it at some point in their life. And they either learned why it was important not to lie or they did not. And they got better at it. And it may be morphed into other, more subtle ways as they got older. Right. I mean, you get there’s there’s all kinds of things out there, even in the business world. You think about spin, for example, or manipulation that can sometimes there is lying when they withhold important information or minimize purposefully minimize information and make other issues bigger. That would be a form of manipulation. Right. And some people could you could categorize that as lying if you’re withholding important information. Right. And so we’re not going to talk about that as much. But I wanted to bring it up because I want you guys to understand that as parents, we are molding our kids character or we are at least the most influential people in molding their character, if you will. And we have a responsibility, a privilege and a jurisdiction to be training our children in the way they should go. And part of that is pointing out their sin. When they do sin right. It’s important. And helping them to have a biblical view of themselves, a biblical view of Jesus of themselves in light of who Jesus is, because that’s how they come to salvation.

And this is one parents we got to spend a little time on when our child lies to us, even if it’s a small lie, that doesn’t have big repercussions because the real big repercussions is their character moving forward. And if they’re not corrected and corrected many times over and over again, but not just corrected, but we’ll talk about this, but really getting to the core of the issues. Then what happens is you are launching eventually somebody that has become really, really good at lying and people can’t always tell. But you know what? Humans can feel it even if they can’t pinpoint it, and it will have a detriment to their ability to build strong, deep relationships. And let’s face it, in this uncertain world, if people don’t build strong, deep relationships, they’re not going to be doing so well.

You know, it’s interesting because as we’re talking about launching kids into the you know, into society and that what we really we want to prepare them as best as possible. And this is really a conversation that needs to be discussed. Right. And we’re going to we’re going to dive into it here in just a minute. But I just wanted to encourage you guys, because a lot of times when you’re listening to a podcast, maybe you’re like, oh, I don’t know if this is necessarily something we’re struggling with right now. Like, maybe you’re a mom of a baby, right? And it’s you. You just had your first baby. Maybe this baby has not. Ever lied to you before and you’re thinking, my child will never lie to me. I remember thinking that way. You really thought? I actually thought that because I had not spent a lot of time thinking about the human condition regarding lying. And so I think that it’s important that we understand that this is truly something that all people have struggled with. It’s part of human nature. We’re going to get into that in a minute. And so this is extremely beneficial for you because I wish I would have been better prepared. Do you know that I actually went and grabbed a handful of parenting books that I haven’t looked at in probably 15 years today when we were getting ready to prepare because I was thinking, oh, maybe one of these books talks about how to teach your kids about lying. And I could like point people to a resource. I was all excited about it. Not one of those books talked about lying.

Interesting.

Shocking to me. So here we are. We’re going to dive into some scripture and I hope it’s encouraging to you, but we have three questions that we’re going to start out asking. I’m a name those questions real quick, and then we’ll go through them one by one. And I think that these would actually be good discussion questions, especially if you have kids that are like six years old or older, like even to listen to the podcast together to make it easy for you. So what does the Bible say about lying? We’re going to start out and I’ll read from Leviticus 19. We’re going to the Old Testament first, Leviticus 19 verse 11 says, You shall not steal, you shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. Listen to that. You shall not lie to one another. I mean, we we know what God’s word says regarding lying. But did you know that it’s actually brought up over 166 times in the Bible? Now, we’re not going to go over all 166 verses.

616 through 19. There are six things the Lord hates seven that are an abomination to him haughty eyes, a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart. The device is wicked plans feet that make haste to run to evil. A false witness who breathes out lies and one who sows discord among brothers.

So it’s interesting about this scripture. I just have to pause for a second. We dive into this particular scripture a lot in the courageous parenting mentor program, actually in the very first live, when we’re talking about biblical vocabulary and parenting with a biblical vocabulary, all of these verses that we are sharing with you guys today, this would actually be our first step. It has been our steps with our kids. They know these Bible verses. We have studied these Bible verses with our kids when we are not in the midst of correcting them. And I think that that’s really an important point to make.

Well, and there’s a power because isn’t there a moment? Just think about the times you have lied in your past and there’s this moment where you could go either direction, isn’t there? And if they’re saturated with the word of God and they care about what God thinks, yes, then in that moment they’re going to remember Scripture versus be driven towards the flesh of preserving themselves. So that’s so important. Scripture is powerful in those moments.

Right. And so what’s interesting about this particular little tiny snippet of scripture, we only read four verses here in Proverbs Chapter six, but it’s literally putting a line, tongue and feet that make haste to run to evil. A false witness who breathes out lies so twice. Two of these seven things that are an abomination to the Lord. Two of them involve lying, and God has put them in here along with things like murdering. That’s incorrect. Like so if there was ever a time for you to really evaluate and go, how important is lying to God and to teach that to your kids? Going back to Scripture is what you need to do because God’s Word is what will convict kids hearts. God’s word is His word. It’s not mom and Dad’s opinion, right? So another passage is Proverbs 12, verse 922, says, Line lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight. So I like this one because it shows like the difference between how God views lying, but then how God views honesty and, and, and viewing it as a delight, which I think is really important. You know, as we’re going through these scriptures to one thing that has been helpful over the years, especially with little kids, is finding songs and like audiotapes that you can listen to or CD tracks or even on Spotify Bible verses that you can be memorizing with your kids so that it can be written on their heart. Because what Isaac was just talking about with them, like when they know what God thinks about something that makes all the difference, because you want your kids, you don’t want them to just do what’s right because they’re going to experience a consequence of mom. And if mom and dad find out, know that that. Would be like a compliant heart attitude, right? Which we are not into that. This is not a behavior modification equation.

We want them to care what God thinks. And Ephesians 425 says, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. For we are members of one another or of another of one another. I think I said it for right the first time.

Yes. So, you know, obviously in the New Testament, there’s scriptures, more scriptures that talk about this. But this one specifically putting away falsehood. Right. That’s what lying is. And I think that it’s important, you know, before we get into some more scriptures, this just brings up like falsehood, believing lies. For example, sometimes people will say something and they seem like even kids I’ve seen this where a kid will really believe a lie, actually. And so I think that when that happens, when your kids say something that, you know is a lie, whether it’s an intentional lie. Right. Or a lie that maybe they’re believing getting to the root of the distinction between those two is really, really important. This wasn’t on our agenda to talk about, but it just hit me because I think that there is an element of grace and we like in parenting that we need to be looking for those opportunities for grace. And one of them would be to call out truth to a kid who’s maybe believed a lie, whether it’s a lie about themself or a lie about other people not liking them or, you know, like we struggle with things and so do our kids. And so sometimes they’ll say something and we as parents have to help them to take their thoughts captive.

You made me think of something in these times. It’s Where do you get your news from? Think about that for a second. Well, you are looking for places that don’t have falsehood, right? So if our kids are going to thrive and not be manipulated or tricked with falsehood from media in the future, they need to deeply care about receiving truth from others. And we tend to deeply care about receiving truth when we believe we deliver truth as well. So that’s super important. Proverbs 14 five says a faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies.

So it’s interesting, when I was reading this, you guys know that if you’ve read Proverbs, you know that there’s a lot of warnings in its wisdom literature. There’s a lot of scripture in Proverbs that will warn you about being careful who you are in company with. Right? Like it’ll say a company of fools suffers harm. Good or bad character will corrupt good morals. He who psalms one says he who sits in the way of scoffers or mockers will suffer harm. There’s a lot of warnings, is my point. And I read this scripture and I go, okay, but do our kids, do they understand, like the importance of line and do they know what the Bible says about lines? So much so that they also are looking for faithful friends who are not liars, who do not make a habit of lying or tempting them to lie. Because, you know, there used to be this old saying when I was a kid and I don’t I don’t know where I heard it, but it was it was it’s easier to pull someone down off of a chair than it is for a person to pull someone up onto it. And when I think about the self confidence and the determination and the moral ground that a young kid is required to have to take in the temptation of being around other kids who are potentially lying to save the skin on their back, if they will.

It is much harder for them to pull those kids who are lying. Maybe they did something bad, right? Maybe they’re playing baseball and they accidentally hit a ball into someone’s car window and they wanted to run and hide versus admitting the accident, which would be lying even if they didn’t do it on purpose. Right. It’s harder for that kid to get those kids who want to run and flee to jump up onto the moral high ground, if you will, and step into righteousness and do the right thing. It’s much easier for them to influence that one kid to do the wrong thing. And so they need to be looking for people who are faithful witnesses, who do not lie because a false witness breathes out lies. Right. And so what are the different ways that lies can happen? We made like a quick list. Maybe your child is not personally struggling with lying in the form of what we’ve been talking about, but maybe you’re seeing them blame shift, right? Not taking ownership over their own sin, but instead trying to put a spotlight on someone else so that they don’t get held accountable for their own sin.

Or it could be cheating when they’re playing games or things like that.

Or even in school.

No, it wasn’t out. No, this didn’t happen. No, that didn’t happen. Right. Even though they inside know. But they’re saying something to get. Advantage that they shouldn’t have.

Right. So cheating, blame shifting. Another one would be this one can be potentially argumentative among people. But I believe that exaggerating is lying because it if you think about it this way, if someone is exaggerating how they are viewing themselves or kind of showing themselves to the world, they’re sharing things beyond the truth. Right. And so that would be a form of line. Another form of line would be half truths. There’s this great book you guys have to remember this. It’s called Halfway. Herbert by Frances Chan. He wrote a couple of kids books and we bought this, I think, back when Luke was little, so maybe 13 years ago and halfway. Herbert He he actually does what I mentioned before, ironically, which he he accidentally runs his bike into the car, bends his bike up, and he does this because he does things halfway.

He halfway brushes his teeth.

So he half way ties his shoelaces. Right. So he has one shoelace that’s untied and that gets stuck in the tire wheel and makes his bike hit a car and instead and he closed his eyes. So he didn’t technically see himself hit the car because his eyes were closed. So then when he was asked, did you see what happened? He said, No, I didn’t see what happened because he closed his eyes. It was his way of lying. So I’m not going to go over the whole book. But my point is, is that there’s half truths, right? He was telling the truth that he didn’t actually see what happened. But did he know what happened? Yeah, he knew what happened. So if his dad would have asked him, did you know what happened to my car, he would have been forced to tell the truth.

There’s also excuses. So just making excuses for why something happened versus owning up to it, right? You might not think that’s lying, but if we don’t hold accountable for these small things, it can lead into other things.

So have you ever heard of Little White Lies? I remember my great grandma used to call them little white lies as if they were harmless. But I always hated that terminology because in my mind I’m pretty high, just as I’m like, No, either something’s a lie or it’s not right. Like it’s either true or it’s false. There’s no in-between. And the reality is, is, yes, that’s how God set up the world. There’s sowing, there’s reaping, there’s true, there’s false, there’s good, there’s evil. There’s I could go on and on and on. Now, there are certain things where, like I was saying, you have to find out if the lie is actually believed by the kid and it’s causing them to do the wrong thing. Or if they are intentionally making something up so that they don’t suffer consequences or because they’re scared or because they’re too prideful and they don’t want to admit that they’re wrong. Right. Like the cheating and the game analogy you gave. So we covered, you know, lies can be no truth at all. A half truth and exaggeration of the truth. Lies can also be cheating. They can be plagiarism. I’m just bringing this one up because this is something that I remember being taught this when I was in school. Were you taught this in school?

It was a big deal.

There was huge warnings around this. Yeah, but home schooling has become very popular in these days. And I think that a lot of parents fail to teach their kids a respect for not plagiarizing.

I remember having to write papers and so forth or read a book and give or give a.

Lawyer fees or.

A paper about the book and these kinds of things. And they were always so clear and I appreciated this. You cannot use their same sentences. You have to completely write in your own words. I thought that was common knowledge amongst everybody is to completely write your own thoughts, original thoughts.

And if you if you’re using someone else’s, it’s legally you are supposed to quote the person, because the Bible also says in Hebrew to give honor to where honor is due.

It’s so funny on the internet. I see quotes all the time and they’re not giving credit. I know I’ve read a lot of books and I know a lot about different people’s famous quotes, and you see them out there and people forget to quote and things like that. You know what it does? It just it’s another chip away on.

Their character.

Character in the way people view them. And it doesn’t matter what kind of platform they have or whatever it is, it’s that we need to quote, in fact. And when I see people quote others, I’m like, that is somebody with integrity. Look at that. It actually makes their point more powerful. We don’t have to have all the quotes when we quote other people. It makes your point even more powerful. And we need to teach our kids these things.

Yeah, we do. We need to teach our kids. And we need to teach them with the perspective of listen, plagiarism. There’s a falsity about plagiarism because you’re taking credit for something that is not yours. That’s the same thing as stealing. Stealing is a form of lying. And so. Stealing is also on our list. And then, of course, there’s like denial of sin. So we would just encourage you guys, like as parents, as we’re diving into this huge topic of line, like, one, you need to remove the rose tinted glasses from your eyes to see your your son, your daughter and yourself the way that you truly are. Right. Which are kids capable of sin? Yes, they are. And if you teach your kids and you don’t ever acknowledge that, then they just grow in pride and selfishness. And then there’s the element of talking to your kids about them taking the rose tinted glasses off of themselves, that they would be introspective and honest about the things that they’re struggling with, which is huge. So there’s just a couple more verses that we wanted to share with you guys that are important because there’s this other issue when it comes to lying. So people lie to people. People lie to themselves and believe lies about themselves, which they need to take their thoughts captive and take other people thought thoughts captive. Right. Which the Bible talks about. But then there’s this issue about lying to the Holy Spirit, which Paul talks specifically to Ananias about in Acts Chapter five, or it’s actually Peter, he says Peter said Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land.

Whoa, that. Just like when I read that scripture, I just went. This is another issue when people are literally justifying in their minds potentially, but they’re lying to the Holy Spirit, justifying why it’s okay for them to be dishonest and lie and keep proceeds. Right. I even think about taxes and people being honest when they’re doing their taxes, people being honest about write offs, people being honest about the different dealings that they have. Like when they’re an employer, are they paying their employees what they’re do? Right. And there’s just so many I could go down so many bunny trails. But this is why it’s such an important topic for us as parents, because if we’re launching confident, courageous kids into the world, we want them to stand on their own two legs without mom and dad having to remind them when they’re 30 and 40. Hey, have integrity, pay your employee properly or whatever. Right. And recognizing that when we don’t do those things, it affects our reputation. And so we need to understand that what if we choose not to engage this topic with our kids and we just brush it underneath the rug, then our kids are potentially going to destroy their reputations as and the Bible says that are good reputations worth better more than gold. So we need there’s like a lot actually at stake.

It’s a big deal. Such an important topic. And we want to just take a moment, though, and just thank you for being involved if you’ve purchased our courses or anything like that, because it really is how we fund the ministry. And we’re just going to take a moment to talk about some of the things that the ministry offers.

So first of all, yeah, so first of all, I don’t know if you guys know this, but we have a Christian postpartum course and we also sell redeeming childbirth along with the postpartum course, which comes with a 45 page workbook that teaches women how to heal naturally from common postpartum discomforts. But from a biblical perspective, Isaac and I even jump into a video together and we talk about intimacy in pregnancy and postpartum together and go through Ephesians chapter five. It’s a 45 minute video teaching in the postpartum course that’s good for husbands and wives to watch together. But we talk about all things from planning your postpartum and being intentional with your time of rest and how to do that, how to communicate with your community and creating a plan of how to be prepared for that. But we also teach in that course how to create a birth plan, a spiritual birth plan, a biblical birth plan. And then you get, of course, the bestselling book Redeeming Childbirth, which is such a huge encouragement to so many women.

Yeah. And also we made this when COVID first hit because so many people were asking us questions about homeschooling. If you didn’t know this, we’ve homeschooled our kids since our first kid went into second grade. We tried a private school and decided to homeschool. And it is an incredible six and a half hours 45 page workbook download. And it doesn’t matter if you’re new to homeschooling or if you’ve been doing homeschooling for a long time, it’s going to give you direction on what is how to build your best plan based on who you are and your children are, based on what curriculums are out there. And it’s motivational in a sense, too, to get clarity and focus on what’s going to be best for your family.

Yeah. And then we, of course, have the courageous parenting mentor program, you guys. And we’ve just started or what, 27? Session in the last three years or something like that. And so we’ve had thousands of parents join us for the Courageous Parenting Mentor program. And we have about I think it’s a little over 10 hours of curriculum that we cover and we go through three different Q&A days along with lives that are all in that app, the new app guys are going to tell about that.

So the app is going so well and it’s 899 per month, but you get biblical community with hundreds of like minded people from all over. And we also do a monthly live Q&A. We can ask us any questions. We post in there often we’re in there all the time and there’s a courageous mom group, a resilient man group as well, just for the moms and for the dads and many other groups and a feed in your own profile and you can connect with other like minded people and share with them and so forth. It’s been super fruitful. So be courageous. In the App Store, you can find that and you can find all the courses of courageous parenting show notes too, and lots of free resources to also another site, courageous mom. That’s super important as well. So anyways, all of that is super helpful. We do have two stores as well, one at Resolute Man dot com for the dad merch and we also have all the other merch at courageous parenting or Courageous Mom.

Awesome. So let’s dive back in, you guys. We we just want to encourage you more on this conversation. We’re talking about teaching your kids about lying. And it really it starts with us having an understanding of the word. Right. That’s why we’ve been spending so much time in the word today is that we need to teach our kids what the Bible says about lying, what God thinks about lying, and we can’t do that without using the Bible. And so we’ve been going through some scriptures, and we’re just going to wrap up some of the scripture part here with Mark, Chapter seven versus 2323, it says, and he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. And then you can continue on. It talks about deceit and slander and foolishness and pride and all kinds of things. But this is an important conversation that we have with our kids because this really reveals what is in the heart. What comes out of us defiles us. This is a new kind of teaching that Jesus had here. Right. And it it is the question that parents need to be asking when they see their children behaving in a certain way that is sinful, such as lying. Of course, this can go across the spectrum of different kinds of sins, and we listed quite a few that could go under the category of lying.

But what I hope that you remember is that it is a symptom of a heart problem. It’s a symptom of a heart disease or a heart disorder, if you will, which is sin. And it’s something that all people are born with. The Bible says that for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so we need to have a humble heart when we are approaching our kids and we need to share with them like, listen, I don’t expect you to be perfect. I’m not perfect. I also struggle and God washes away my sins when I repent and talking to them about what that process is, which honestly, that’s a really huge conversation. We’re not going to get into all of that. We do teach more in depth on that in the Parenting Mentor program, but it’s important that you dive into the word and you you recognize that when your kid is doing something, don’t take personal offense to it, recognize it’s a symptom of something that is deeper inside. And you get to I said get to you get to have those heart conversations, those heart probing conversations with your kids and connect with them on a deeper level as you’re pointing them to the word, to truth and to Jesus. So let’s talk for a second about why. Why, why do kids lie?

Well, it’s it starts in Genesis three, right? Yeah. Sin entered the world. And so we tend to in the moment want to go into self preservation. We don’t want to be embarrassed. We don’t want someone to know something that we did that we’re going to there’s going to be repercussions. We want to avoid the repercussions and all these different things, right? Yeah. So it’s important to understand that we need to guide our kids and how to handle these situations. It’s a little bit of pain in the short run for long term gain. That’s a good way to have a conversation about this is that it’s hard to do in the short run, is to tell the truth when you’ve done something wrong, but in the long run it’s actually going to cultivate a even stronger relationship with that person. And and you’re going to feel better immediately. And so otherwise you’re going to be hanging around with this guilt and so forth. And so it’s really, really important. And you want to you don’t want to jeopardize how people view you, right? So kids lie because they’re sinful, right?

And there’s often times when we can label things as sin, everything can be labeled back down to sin in the sense right. Like you can label pride to sin, you can label jealousy to send all these different covetousness. Even fear in some situations. If it’s not fear of God, it can be considered sin. And so this is an important conversation that we have with our kids. Teaching them like these are all like real life human struggles. These are all part of the human journey, the things that we struggle with. James Chapter three, verse 14, says, But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. I think that this gives us a glimpse into the human condition that there are. Obviously, if you’re false to the truth, right, if you’re lying or you’re believing lies, that sometimes that is a repercussion, if you will, of selfishness, selfish ambition or jealousy. And so this is a perfect verse example for what we’re talking about regarding when your kid lies. Like, don’t just come down so hard on them and take personal offence. Do not. Of course we say this over and over again as parents. The Bible warns this in Colossians 321 and Ephesians six four. Not to provoke our children to wrath, not to be angry. We need to be calm and model that for our kids. But you guys, this shows us that there is a deeper issue. Jealousy is a deeper issue than it’s the root of why they’re lying. So when a kid lies, you have to ask like, what is the root of why? Right? And you have to ask questions to get to that root.

And obviously, the third thing is what do lies do? What hurts others or hurts relationships? And it puts distance between others and it creates a shallowness in those relationships. So and it hurts us, too, and it hurts the kids. So.

Right. I just think that when we’re teaching our kids about lying, for example, to say, hey, do you feel good when you lie? And your kids are obviously going to say, No, I don’t feel good. I think about it all the time. It nags me in my head. I, you know, like, if they’re honest, they’ll say these things right and go, yeah, it hurts you. It’s it prevents you from actually experiencing joy and moving on.

Sin is entrapment, isn’t it?

But it’s.

Bondage. But lying actually creates it has to do with other relationships. Right? And so it just consistently and continually doesn’t feel good whenever you’re around that person you lied to.

And sometimes those lies, you know, when I mentioned the little white lie before, it reminds me of the snowball effect. Sometimes lies start out small, but then in order for a person to keep that lie, they have to they have to keep on adding to the lie to keep their secret of their lie, which with little kids, you’ve probably noticed this, right? Like when they hide a piece of candy or something, and then all of a sudden their lie gets bigger, and then their lie gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and then they have this really big lie. And like having those examples for your kids and talking to them about that and how that could really bug them for a long time. But not only that, this is the most important thing. So yes, if I lie, it’s going to hurt me. If your child lies, it’s going to hurt them. But we also need to teach our kids that it hurts other people and their relationship with other people in regards to trust like a trust is broken when someone lies to you. This is a conversation that I’ve had with my kids, right where I tell them I want to trust you. But now that trust has to be rebuilt through me being able to see your honesty and being able to trust you with things and you following through. And so.

So many times to I’ve witnessed our kids, obviously they are perfect and they’ve made the mistakes around lying. But when they come through and they tell the truth, when it’s hard and quickly, it’s like a breath of fresh air. And I get, I compliment them from that. Yeah. And so we want to anchor that good behavior, that good response. So when they’re in that moment, they didn’t choose to go on that fleshly path, but instead they chose because they want to have great relationship with everybody and obviously with God.

I think that this conversation about like where is your relationship at with your kid is a good conversation. It’s a good thing for everybody to audit because if our kids are scared to come to us and confess that they lied, then they have fear towards us as parents. Right. And I think that we would all agree that none of us want our kids to fear us that much. They wouldn’t come to us and confess a lie. Right. Like, so if you’ve created that kind of culture within your home, that’s something that you need to correct and repent of actually to your kids and open it up again so that they can come back to you first. John is one of my favorite chapters. The very first chapter in First John verse eight says, If we have no sin, we deceive ourselves in the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his. Word is not in us. And then it just continues. My little children, I’m writing these things to you so that you may not send. But if anyone does send, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And this this whole section is such a good passage to study in depth with your kids if they’re struggling with that like conviction and not forgiving themselves.

Like, we don’t want to just talk about lying and how it’s a sin and how you need to teach your kids that it’s a sin and leave it at that. No, we we want you guys to teach your kids about what the Bible says regarding the freedom that can be found in Jesus Christ so that they can be freed from the bondage of sin. And that’s something that we need to always follow up with regarding whatever sin we’re teaching our kids about, right? That God forgives them and that we forgive them and that they need to receive the forgiveness and forgive themselves. And I think that a lot of times young people today, that piece is missing in parenting to where kids, when they’re older, then they walk away from the Lord because they think it was all just a set of rules and oh, what does the Bible say about these things? And these are all No-No things I’m not supposed to do without understanding that in doing those bad, those things that are going to hurt them and hurt other people and hurt their relationship with God. Right? Because sin separates us from God. They need to understand that there is one person in the name of Jesus Christ who can bring us back into reconciliation with God and with other people. And we can actually walk in freedom from this bondage. And we don’t have to continue in the patterns of our old ways. Right.

So I think the answer to all this is we need to slow down when our kids lie to us and we need to take the time and we need to take them to Scripture. We need to already be versed on it. That’s why we gave so many scriptures for you. Yeah, you can write a few down and have those ready because this is a time to really contemplate, help them contemplate what happened. What is sin? Go to first, John one six because they may not understand what sin is and then go through the stuff. And I think it’s so important. And then what you’re really trying to do is get to their heart. You’re trying to understand where is their heart at because lying is a little sign, it’s a little ock. There’s something off a little bit. So now let’s go see what’s really going on, what’s beneath this little lie right here that I could. Brizzi So I could just brush it off. I could say, Hey, don’t lie, or I could dive in and go, Hey, what’s really going on? And I think that’s super, super important.

You Scripture, it’s so powerful. Second, Timothy 316 it says All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training, in righteousness that the Man of God may be complete equipped for every good work. Isn’t that what we want to do? We want to equip our kids for every good work. And good work is obviously things that are godly, that are righteous, that glorify the father with their lives and whatever they do. But we don’t want their identity jeopardized so their witness is jeopardized. Right. And we want them to live a good life and have a good marriage and good relationship with their kids once their kids launch and so forth. We have to be thinking about the bigger picture. Right. And so they’re only with us for a short period of time. Everybody says that, right? We are living it. We launched a couple of kids and we have a baby and all in between. We understand all seasons and except for being a grandparents. But that’s starting to happen soon.

Yeah, like a few months. So. But the truth is though, is when it comes to using Scripture, we have to remind our kids to that. What does God desire most? He desires their hearts, just like how we as parents do. Right. And I think that’s a really beautiful picture. And we need to remind our kids that it breaks God’s heart when they lie, just like it breaks Mom’s heart when they lie to me. Right. And that in marriage, you wouldn’t want to lie to one another. And you talk about this, you you model for them what you would, the expectations that you would you would want them to be striving for. Right. But in the end, you also need to remember that that reproof, that correcting that was we just read in second Timothy 316, we need to correct their mind because sometimes kids are taught wrong things like Isaac was talking about, like even media and the different things that they’re exposed to our children, depending on their age or even us as adults, we need to have correct thinking and scripture alone does that. Scripture alone renews our mind, like Romans Chapter 12 two says. Right. And we need to make sure that our kids are not growing up becoming man pleasers, but they’re God pleasers and that they want to choose to speak truth and not lies and take lies captive. Take those thoughts captive because they want to please God because they want good relationship with him.

And let’s face it, our kids are launching to a world where. Lying is normalised where that is the way things are. People don’t even know what’s true anymore. So the truth could be hitting them in the face and then they throw their hands up in the air and they literally go, That’s everywhere. I don’t know what’s true. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know if anything’s true. And we don’t want our kids to be in that trap. We want them to value the truth and be able to see the truth and discern it well, because they care about it and they care what the Bible says. So as they’re growing up, that’s going to reap huge dividends because there are always truth tellers out there and we want our kids to be receptive to them and we want them to be able to see who our deceivers out there and a lot of people today can’t tell the difference. And it’s because of, I think, poor parenting. I think that that this is a topic that has not been dealt with well in all the little mundane moments at age one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

18 and 40. And I mean, seriously, like, I just even think about like how many people actually seek out Titus to men and women in their life and allow them to speak truth to them and they receive it and accept it. Like even that is something that is pretty rare in young people’s lives. And so you guys listen, the Holy Spirit convicts us. God uses his word to convict. Yeah, conviction is a good thing. That’s the prerequisite. Prerequisite, if you will, to repentance. It’s the prerequisite to confessing. Right. Which is supposed to happen before repentance. And so we should be praying for that for our children. But remember that you’re not the Holy Spirit, although you may have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit may use you in your child’s life as an agent of change. If you are obedient, if you’re obedient to read the words of this Bible to your children, if you’re obedient to remind them of those things, to correct the wrong thinking, and to teach them more and more about what it looks like to live in honesty. So thanks so much for joining us, you guys. We really hope this is helpful. If this has been a podcast that is really like, I don’t know, touched you and maybe a open wound kind of area, but you were like, Oh, hurts so good. Would you mind sharing it? Would you mind leaving us a review, helping us get the word out there and help more parents to be proactive in their parenting? Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom. Com for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

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