Scripture In This Episode:

Romans 13:1-2 – “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”

Romans 15:1-2 – “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification.”

Matthew 7:5 – “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Proverbs 16:32 – ^“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”

2 timothy 3:16-17 – “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

Deuteronomy 6:2-15 – “That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; (For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.”

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 – “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

Proverbs 11:2 – “When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”

Proverbs 12:1 – “Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish.”

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Full Transcript

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 20 years and have seen the fruit in 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 the 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 in a fallen world. Welcome to the podcast. What a week.

Hey, everybody, today we have an awesome topic that we’re excited to talk to you about. I think it’s relevant to everyone in the world that has a kid. Actually, it’s true, regardless of their age.

We always try and be relevant to what’s going on and what always will be helpful. But parenting 24/7, homeschooling, work, church and more. Right. Everything converged upon the home in the last week, didn’t it?

That’s right. So a lot of people are experiencing a form of quarantine, or at least not being able to go about their lives as normal because of the Corona virus. And we’ve had a lot of people reaching out to us asking questions about homeschooling. So we’re gonna talk about homeschooling in this podcast, actually talk about scheduling, how you can go from not having been homeschooling to homeschooling successfully and having a routine because a lot of people ask about.

Also, you know, with both spouses being home, that might be a new thing for some of you working from home can be hard. And you know, the spiritual things when you can’t go to church. So in leadership. So this is good regardless, even post epidemic. This will be a hopeful episode for everybody that has to balance these things.

So. It’s interesting that so we’re talking about these things. And just so you guys meet maybe you are a new listener here.

This is Isaac and I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and Resolute Man. Yeah. And we have eight kids. So as far as the homeschooling aspect of things, we have been homeschooling for a couple decades. Our oldest is almost 20. She is in her second year at college. She’s home for spring break from Liberty University in Virginia. We live in Oregon and she’s actually not going back to school now. They’ve closed school down. Yes, she just had day one of online school today. So she’s doing homeschool college right now. Actually, just doing it from home. And we also have another son that is graduating. We have a few other high school junior hires and couple in one in middle school age and a couple little ones.

So our youngest is 18 months old. And so we are walking in this with you have eight kids at home. But Isaac has also worked from home and not worked from home.

And even when I work from home, I usually go out to a coffee shop for most days during the middle of the day just to give some space here at home. To let Angie, run the home and for me to be focused. And so that’s even changed for us. So. Right. We’re in the midst of some change, too.

Yeah. Exactly. So you will hear us sharing a little bit of the real raw, what we’ve been experiencing, what’s not working, what is working. And we want to encourage you guys, because we’ve been doing this for a really long time.

And it’s kind of second nature to us, this homeschooling lifestyle, which it really is a lifestyle. And I am going to talk about this later in the podcast. But what you what a lot of people are thrown into right now is not exactly homeschooling. It’s school at home because they’ve been given school stuff and they have to bring it home now.

I think it’s a little bit more it’s like scheduling time how to do all of this and get it done effectively and manage this well.

And so that it’s a joy, not a teeth pulling hard experience.

And so we’re going to get into that. But also, you mentioned something else. Church, churches are not running the same way. Yeah. So that’s actually something we should speak to.

I’m sure technology is helping. You’re probably streaming sermons and things like that. But I think it goes beyond that. There’s a unique opportunity right now for men to lead spiritually. That’s right. And that’s exciting. So we’ll dive into this. You know, one thing that’s interesting. Wow. Incredible what’s happening with this pandemic, with the corona virus. And it just seems if you kind of pay attention, everything is getting shut down. Then one of the things God wants of us is our total and complete devotion. And he talks over and over again how Idol worship is detrimental. And we don’t realize it. But there’s many things that we can tend to start to idol instead of being focused on God. And that it could be money. So what is God doing right now? The economy is tanking. Yeah, it could be. You know this. You think about your kids, too. If you some older kids, maybe it’s actors or being able to go to the theater with friends. Well, what’s closed right now in the theaters? You know, to sports. All sports are canceled. That could be idolized by kids, certainly, and even parents who watch on TV.

So or people who are kids who are just super, super social. Right. We have some kids that are extroverted and being not able to go out and spend time with other people all the like often is hard for some of those kids.

And so and it could be I don’t even I don’t worship friendships and things like that. Not that it’s bad, but all kinds of things could be happening. Work could be an idol for people. So you could go on and on on everything seems to be temporarily, hopefully. Temporarily shutting down. And hopefully I’ll get started soon. We’re all obviously praying. But we might be in this for a while. And, you know, it’s good to reflect on that because wherever there’s Idol worship, selfishness creeps in.

And actually so the selfishness is what is revealed. Right. And so that’s how we’re able to pinpoint what it is that we need to repent of, because God says in his word that he’s a jealous God. You know, he does not want any idols in our life. No, actually, as believers, we know this to be truth. And the reality is, is whenever selfishness starts creeping up, that’s when we need to ask ourselves the question.

Oh, wait a second, what is this revealing in me? What have I made an idol out of or what is that? Where’s that selfishness coming from?

Is it self-preserving? Is it because I’ve made that a part of my identity? And now that I’m at home and I’m not working and I’m not getting the accolades from people im like frustrated.

I can’t go to the gym anymore. And so I’m getting restless and I’m getting angry at my kids.

Right.

And so it reveals a lot of sins that maybe could have continued on in us without ever having been exposed. This is going to expose a lot things, not just in the adults. It’s exposing things in the kids, too.

And so having kids home with their parents, where both are potentially struggling with this, you know, it could be a potential recipe for some serious issues, some conflicts.

Now, some perspective here. I saw this meme online and I’m going to give a version of it. But you probably have relatives that were in World War two. My grandfather, you know, jumped out of an airplane and did those kinds of things in World War Two.

And, you know, we’re we’re being asked essentially to do our part by sitting on the couch, which is we’re in a war time right now, sitting on the couch.

It’s an invisible war, which with this virus and it is the real deal. Those people who are saying we can disagree on this is fine. You still get a lot of that. So but there’s people saying, well, what about the flu and this and it kills way more people. Why are we making such a big deal about this? Well, is way more deadly, way more viral. And when they do the models, it shows way more deaths, way more destruction on top of the flu and everything else that’s already happening. And on top of that, inundating our health care system that can’t handle it and all these things and having to make tough choices about who gets a ventilator, who not. These are this is the reality right now. So.

And, you know, if you have older kids, keep your kids home. Right. You’re saving lives by doing that.

I would say that this is actually revealing some selfishness within teenagers and the younger generations, because if they’re not willing to to stay in like the government is asking us all to know, then that means they haven’t been taught.

Romans 13, which will dive into here in a second, but that also means that they might potentially not actually be knowing the truth about what is going on, which is the parent’s responsibility. So if you have kids that are doing that, they’re being like, I just. I have to say this as another parent who has teenagers, like it is our responsibility as parents to be courageous and talk about the hard things. And yes, this virus and the reality of it is a hard thing to talk about because it’s going to lead to having to have conversations about death, potentially death of grandparents like you and saying like this is super serious.

I don’t want to be around our grandparents if we’ve been exposed to it in this sense because we love them. It’s out of love, not out of fear. And it’s out of obedience to the authorities that God has placed in our life, which is being obedient to God.

Well, the surgeon general just came out. There’s an article I just texted you before this episode. He’s just saying, hey, you know, it’s going to be a really tough week because on spring break, a lot of young people didn’t heed the warnings of the government and they went in to the beaches and so forth. A lot of beaches, Florida beaches are being shut down specifically because of the young people and so forth. And we’re not just to blame all young people. That’s not what I’m saying. But a portion of them aren’t listening. And that’s a parenting problem, right?

It is a parenting problem.

I want to share with you guys from Romans 13 here. It says, Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority, resist the ordinance of God and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.

So the Bible’s very clear that we are to respect authority. God puts all government authority in place and we’re to respect it. In fact, this scripture is Paul. And at that time and in this scripture right here, Nero was the leader of the land and was killing people, Christians and so forth. And so we just have to. So here’s Paul, who has been persecuted, jailed over and over again, literally saying we need to obey.

The government now this is in a whole episode on this. There’s certain things we would not obey anything, anti-God, anything that.

Yeah. I mean, if they if the government ever asks us to do something that’s against God’s word, we would we wouldn’t do it.

We wouldn’t do it. But if they’re things that the government’s asking us to do,then we need to obey it and we need to model respecting the authorities. God has put in place.

Right. And actually what they’re asking us to do is so that other people don’t die. actually. So for us to be against them, it’s like a double whammy. Yeah, right. And so I I just I am sharing that verse with you guys because I’m hoping that you wrote that down. ROMANS 13. That’s something you should do.

A family Bible time on, owe it to your kids as our kids see what’s going on in stories with people they know and things like that. And we’re saying to hang back, let’s obey the authorities. They said don’t group up in more than 10 people for our family. That means our whole family. We can’t add one person to the to the group.

But but there you go. So now we’ve got. We’ve got four points here, honey. You want to go through more quick.

Ok. So we’re gonna cover kids being home 24/7. Yeah, we’re gonna cover husbands being home. We’re in cover church at home on our cover home schooling. in that order. And so I hope you guys stick with us. But before we jump into those, we do have an awesome announcement. Actually, this week I was able to be at home birth. Yeah. Which was super exciting. And many of you guys might may know that I have been a doula over the years, served at many women’s births.

I wrote Redeeming Childbirth. I’m the creator of the very first ever Christian postpartum course. In fact, there’s no other postpartum course out there that teaches women how to heal naturally from all of the most common postpartum discomforts.

And I always learn something new about what’s going on in the community whenever I’m at a birth and I’m with midwives or I’m around the doctors because we have a few doctors that we’re friends with and always very candid with us.

And obviously, things are changing. So in the hospital, they were no longer allowing an attendant to come with the couple. So they’re only allowing one person in the room in California that’s a different to where they are only allowing women to birth alone, actually. And being an Oregon, we tend to be like a week behind California on a lot of things. And so we weren’t sure if that was gonna happen to this. One particular family decide to homebirth. And that was exciting. I was still able to be a part of that. But just having been there and talking to just the midwives and also talking to other people who work in that industry, things are gonna be changing drastically as of immediately. Like the hospitals are in need of help and they are they’re encouraging midwives to not necessarily be doing postpartum care after like two weeks, which is already like six weeks. Postpartum is not enough care in my in my perspective because postpartum goes for a year. And here I am, someone who has a postpartum course. Right. And we have this resource that has a 30 page workbook that teaches women how to heal from mastitis, how to heal from all of the common postpartum discomfort every single week.

Women buy this course.

Yeah. And so we created it like three or four years ago right after we lost Selah. So about three years ago and we’ve had hundreds of women go through it, just raving about it. And we want to make sure that this gets into anybody’s hands. Who is pregnant right now.

We don’t want price to be an issue if that’s an issue.

Yeah. So right now, if you go to courageousmom.com, you can find will also put a link and courageousparenting.com.

Just go to courageousparenting.com hit the show notes for this episode. Every resource we talk about is there and what she’s about to share with you will be there.

Yeah. So we. Yeah. So we have a pregnancy and postpartum bundle that comes with redeeming childbirth and then we have just the Christian postpartum course. Right. Which is often a biblical perspective, but it teaches on homeopathy at the erbal tinctures, oils, supplements, nutrition, exercise, all the things so that women are equipped and prepared better for their postpartum so that they don’t necessarily fall into the spectrum of postpartum depression issues, whether that’s baby blues, stress, anxiety, postpartum depression, psychosis, there’s a whole spectrum there. And I teach really in depth on that. And you guys listen with what we’re going through with the coronavirus. I it just breaks my heart to think that moms could be three days postpartum or a week postpartum running into the grocery store, getting themselves and their babies exposed to the coronavirus, trying to look for nutritional supplements or medicine. That’s going to help them because they’re scared to go to the doctor or going to the doctor and exposing themselves to the coronavirus because they have mastitis and they need antibiotics because they don’t know how to heal naturally.

So we’re gonna do something a little bit special. Normally think the prices over a hundred bucks for this thing. I forget the exact price, but we’ve had it on sale for a while for fifty nine dollars. Yeah. And without the book. And what we’re doing is we’re giving it for free if you need to get it for free. So At courageousParenting.com hit podcasts. There’ll be a code. Feel free to use the code. Yeah. You wouldn’t be able to get it unless you had the code. But if you can afford it and you want it, I would ask that you purchase it because that is how we support a family. And supports the minister and things. But if you can’t. Don’t feel bad about it. It is our gift. We want to give it to you if you wouldn’t want to get it unless it was free. So. So we’re gonna give it free for about four days.

Yeah. And if you don’t need the post-partum course but your like, your heart is for women who are pregnant and postpartum and you’re like listening to this, going imagining yourself with a newborn baby, potentially having to go to the doctor because you don’t know.

What’s going on and you have a fever and you’re scared, the other coronavirus.

But really you just have early symptoms of mastitis and you want to help other people to be able to get that for free. There is a donate button at Courageous Parenting.com that you could donate to the courageous parenting ministry and also share the link on the code on social media.

free for a short period of time. If anybody needs it for free.

Right. So if you have a hard time finding this stuff, you can always reach out to us on social media. Also, I met courageous.mom on Instagram and Isaac is at resolute.man.

So anyway, it’s just we wanted to share that because it was on Angie’s heart that women would have this no matter what. Money wouldn’t be a barrier. Yeah. And it’s our way of giving back during this tough time, that we are all facing. So let’s dive into the content here.

So right now, most likely if you have kids, they are home 24/7, which means parenting 24/7. And a lot of us have been living this lifestyle.

Right. But a lot of people have not been. And that can be a hard, hard but good thing, right? It can be hard. There’s you’re discovering the good things, right. You’re trying to make this as good of an experience as possible. But maybe you’re discovering bad things like sin, selfishness in yourself, in your kids. Like we were mentioning before, sin is being exposed potentially. The longer that you guys are together, maybe you’re starting to see that your kids are addicted to certain things.

I was going to say that’s it. Sometimes it’s like, wow, this is so hard. But I would shift your perspective because your perspective kind of changes your how you approach things and your perspective should be. Wow. I’m so glad I’m finding these things out. And when you’re in close quarters for a long period of time, that’s when you discover what needs to be worked on. Reminds me of our RV trip three months around the country with ten people. So this is kind of like that. We’re all in the home, totally. And you’re rediscovering and there’s always new things to work on.

There is always things to work on and you have to have the right perspective. And that’s what we’re talking about. This is something that we teach actually more in depth in the courageous parenting mentor program, which you can find more about that in the free workshop at CourageousParenting.com too.

But this perspective is instead of being like, oh, they’re doing that again or they’re talking back again.

Our perspective should be. Lord, help me to respond biblically helped me to love my child. Well, to discipline them to be consistent, speak truth, to speak life. What does this reveal? Is there a relational tear my relationship with them that I need to work on? Is there sin that has not been addressed?

Have I been lacking in my parenting and not being consistent and pointing out things to my kids, not have a teachable heart? And then thank God for the opportunity to see what there is? Because now you have an opportunity to actually work on it.

I bet this happens to some of you, right? It happens in our home sometimes where you see your lack of diligence in an area as a parent and then you get extra mad at your kids for it.

When really it’s your fault. Yeah.

I mean, there is also the element that when we talk about this and a lot of other podcasts more in depth. So I’m just gonna briefly say that kids mimic us. Yeah. So, you know, if you have kids home for the first time and you’re like, why are they losing their temper or why are they emotionally breaking down? You know, it could be that that’s actually what’s been modeled for them. And so we need to look at ourselves in mirror, realizing that our kids do learn things from somewhere, but also they don’t have to learn how to sin. It’s in their heart. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. So we need to have realistic expectations of our kids, take the rose tinted glasses off and be willing to engage on the hard topics that we are discovering.

So in Romans, 15:1-2 says we then who are strong, ought to bear with the feelings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification, for even Christ did not please himself. But as it is written, the reproaches of those who approached you fell on me.

So we are not to be focused on ourself, and the selfishness is coming alive. Alive. Our awareness of it in ourselves and in our kids and bow. And what we need to do is we need to fight that. How do you fight selfishness? You focus on God, you pray and you’re in the word, and you have to repent, Yeah. And you should do them as a family.

And if you’re not leading the family in scripture on a daily basis, you’re gonna have a really hard time with this.

Well, I guess it’s it’s that. And it’s also like, are you in the word and is your heart soft and humble? You know, because I’ll just be honest with you, to be a courageous parent, to be able to apologize to your kids, to be able to talk about the hard things.

Let’s just face it. Most people are not going to talk about sin in their child’s life if they are convicted, that they also struggle with that same sin. Yeah. So then they’re just going to not they’re going to avoid talking about that addiction. Or whatever it is. Right. Like, let’s say your kids are always on their phone, screen, time, screen. Right. And you’re realizing, oh, that phone is an idol. They are addicted to their phone. But yet you’re the one that’s sitting over there scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and you’re like like, I’m not going to and I can be a hypocrite. and tell them they can’t when I’m doing it. Yeah. Or maybe worse. You do do it, right. And so either there’s a lack of discipline actually happening and dealing with the addiction or there’s hypocritical parenting, which is not going to be effective either. So it takes humility. We have to look at ourselves, just like Matthew 6 says, how can you do surgery and remove the speck out of your brother’s eye when you have a plank in your own eye?

And why is this? This is a phenomenon, right? The behavior and atmosphere of the home when no guests are there. And then the behavior and atmosphere, the home when a guest shows up. Not that we’re having guests right now, but just I think I’ll be the same. Should always be the same. And unfortunately, sometimes it’s not right. And there’s bickering, things like that. And then people are more careful with each other when someone else is watching from the outside. Well, why would we take each other for granted in that way? This is an opportunity. There’s challenges. There’s financial challenges probably for some of you. There’s all kinds of challenges. But let’s look at the things that are good about this. What are the things we can redeem about this? Well, we have time as a family and where there’s challenges. Just know that those exist elsewhere. A lot of people do these challenges, but let’s deal with them.

Let’s work on God that you have the undivided time right now to actually dig in and get your hands dirty and do the hardware. There’s a part of it.

There’s part of me that’s kind of loving part of this right now. Not some of it. There’s challenges, for sure, but part of it, all of us being together, no distractions and no and no one’s ever asking to go anywhere.

It’s been really there’s a part of it that’s been really good for us. Let’s go on to point two.

There’s just a couple other things. There’s there’s like three little things. All right. On discovering the good and the bad and kids being home 24/7, you might see that there’s some bad habits, right. That maybe bothered you a weensy bit before. But now it’s like a big deal because you are together all the time. And so you’re going to have to choose right now. You either have to choose what Bible says it is to man’s Glory to overlook an offence. You have to choose that. And then that means you never bring it up again. That’s in Proverbs. You have to overlook it or you have to deal with it and go. Matthew, 18. Yeah. And why is this and usually Matthew, 18 is because of being sinned against. Right. So you need to evaluate. Are you just being nit picky and controlling? Because that’s your own set. Right.

And but at the same time, what is the fruit of that habit that you’re seeing in your child going to create in them long term? And is that really truly is it sinful on their part? Like you need to deal with the things they’re sinful and her then there’s bad attitudes which are different than bad habits. Bad attitudes. Right. There’s respect, potential issues. Right. Which we have a whole podcast and why your kids don’t respect you. Friendships, potentially detoxing. This could be a good thing for people who are like, man, my kids go to school and they hang out with all these kids that are bad influences right now. Praise God that this is a detox time for your kids off a bad influence. Friendships. Yeah, that can be a good thing. But there may also be things about school that you’re starting to realize right now.

Oh, I don’t know if I like that part of their education. As you’re doing school them, you’re like, well, there’s a really strong influence of evolution in this or whoa, this isn’t true. This isn’t how I remember history. I lived through history. That’s not what was true about that president. Maybe you’re starting to see these things. Your eyes are becoming open to what your kids are being indoctrinated with.

And you’re going, whoa, I want to do something I want to get to point for, which is the homeschooling section. But I’m going to skip the parents who mentor program commercial. We usually do, but just go if you want to find out about that. It’s awesome. Go to Courageousparenting.com hit podcast and look at it. OK. We’d love to have you in that. Yeah.

Let’s go to point two. because I want to Spend some good time in point four on the homeschooling stuff. Yeah. So point two is about husbands being home more. OK. So this is.

And wives working from home if they work.

Right. So there’s these dynamics where you’re both together more, you know, these kinds of things. And you might be noticing less respect for each other, starting to creep up. You might not have the right expectations. You have different silent expectations that haven’t talked about. And so it’s rubbing one or the other the wrong way. There might be, you know, a need to remedy this. So here’s our tip for you. You need to have many short marriage meetings, many impromptu here in there. Hey, can I talk to you real quick? Because you dont want to do it in front of the kids. That’s horrible. We make that mistake sometimes but we shouldn’t.

You should go as much as is possible.

You should go and have those conversations where the kids are not around a normally, you know, this is something I take care of when you’re gone. And when you did that, it just made me kind of kind of ruined my rhythm of the day. And so, you know. Oh, I didn’t realize that, you know, just a little.

Here’s a tip. So if the guys are used to working at home, let’s say maybe they have people who work under them, a secretary or maybe they have a receptionist or someone that does or scheduling or just anybody. An intern who knows, right. Anybody that they’re over. Your wife is now not that for you. Like with work, she she actually has a job at home that she has to to run.

And that’s called home managing. And now she’s also educating the kids. Right. And so you guys just have to have a conversation. Maybe she can help in those ways. I mean, we are the help meets. Yeah. And so there’s that element of like, okay, what is really crucial? What do you need help with? What do I need help with? This is an opportunity for you guys to come together as a team.

And maybe you’re not. Maybe nobody’s working because there’s no way to work from home and what you do. And so now there’s just extra time together. Well, definitely. Whoever was working out there, you should be taking on more to be helpful, not just home sitting on the couch watching the news.

I know Ive been cooking more than I usually do, not nearly what you’re doing, but helping.

But it’s been different just because we’ve been having to do more, wiping things down as they get delivered, different things like that. Right. And so there’s just it’s there’s more work that needs to be done. And and so we’re helping each other out more.

And by the way, husbands. It’s super important right here. Here’s the scripture, proverbs 16:32. One of my favorite movies, i probably shouldn’t say this but its Gladiator.

It looks better. Yeah. So but this is you know, we have inside of us that desire to be a hero, to be a warrior. Even some of us. Some of us not, but some of us to be a manly man and to take care of things and so forth. So I’m going to give you the scripture here that is about being that hero, that Maximus that he really like.

That’s it again. Maximus is always on the baby list.

Oh, come on. All our secrets here. they are gonna think I’m crazy.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.

Oh, that’s how you be aware. And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

Ok, your eye right now. You guys are watching YouTube. I love this verse.

That’s such a good verse. And it’s that’s how you be a great hero of your home right there to anger.

Slow to anger is better than the mighty. Who who rules his spirit is in control. Self-disciplined is better than he who takes a city.

So this is a really powerful verse to also teach your kids, right? Because we want them to rule their spirit, to have self-control. We want them to be slow to anger. Yeah. And so this is another good passage to be memorizing. Again, that was Proverbs 16:32.

Now, here’s the deal. We’re gonna go into the point three and then homeschooling here. Point three is we’re doing church from home where we’re streaming it through the TV and things like that’s a spiritual leadership, maybe Bible studies and youth group has been canceled or if you guys do those kinds of things. So, you know, all these things will go into that in a second. But first of all, it’s really, really hard for a man to lead if he has secret sin, if he has challenges that people are unaware of, or even if the marriage is aware of these challenges, it can be very, very challenging. So anyways, let’s dive in to point three, honey.

Point three is church at home.

So as you know, you see a lot of churches livestreaming. And that is one thing that a lot of people are taking advantage of. Isaac, actually, when he was leading us in home church on Sunday, he said, do you guys realize there’s probably more people going to church today than ever before because of the livestreaming.

I remember when you said that and I was like, wait, what?

Oh, yeah, you’re right.

Actually, I’m an optimist. I like looking for what’s positive going on. I’m also a realist and I share with the realities of things.

Yeah.

And so, you know, obviously livestreaming can be helpful for guys in leading their families. Right. However, we have actually been doing home church for four years now. Isaac, what church planted almost a year ago with a couple other couples. And I mean, obviously, we did that together. Yeah. Just you. Right. As a family, we church planted and some other families came with us. And it has been a really growing experience for us, for sure.

But one of the things that we are seeing now, when what do you share about what you’ve been encouraging the guys in our church since we’re not able to meet because there’s like almost 50 of us that meet.

So I just pull a video and I shared it with them and I said, hey, you know, you could easily hit play and listen to incredible professional pastors that have sound biblical doctrine im not saying, don’t do that. That’s awesome. But just make sure that’s not in place of your spiritual leadership. And what a unique opportunity to prepare a sermon. And even if someone out there who is a brand name pastor is more eloquent and puts their words together more in a fancy way and understands the Greek and maybe you don’t and these kinds of things for your family. Every word out of your mouth is more powerful, even if it doesn’t come out with as much eloquence. When you teach scripture, you are the God authorized leader and pastor of your family. It doesn’t mean there can’t be other pastors, but there’s nothing that surpasses your influence.

I mean, I something just came to my mind right now that might be an encouragement to you is the concept of leaving a legacy. The pastor that you are walking under, because when you choose a church, you are choosing to be under the submission of the church government actually. Right. Because there’s three different governments as family, government, government and church government. And when you choose to be a member of a body, a part of a fellowship, a part of a body, you are under the authority of that leadership. That’s biblical. However, your pastor is not going to leave a legacy in your kids. Only you can do that, actually. And so if you have your Bible open and your reading scripture, that’s what your kids are going to remember, not what the pastor preached on Sunday, actually, because relationship is what God is about.

Do you think what the pastor says streamed through is going to impact your family culture more than you teaching scripture that is catered to what you see happening in your family, your specific family? Well, it’s going to be way more powerful from you.

Hey, we have a scripture for you that’s gonna be super encouraging. Its second Timothy 3:16.

So second Timothy, chapter three. Verse 16 says All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for a proof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man. God may be complete.

Thoroughly equipped for every good work we teach us in the parenting mentor program in more detail. But you gotta use scripture. Why wouldn’t we? We tend to parent in our own strength often in the moments that matter, and we don’t even realize it when we could be using God all powerful God, in his words, to help us parent and and to be referencing that. Is it what mom says? They should respect and listen to what mom says.

Yeah, but let’s add in. Yeah, it’s what mom says. But it’s also what God says. You’re disobeying God by disobeying me.

Why wouldn’t we include the scriptures into our parenting.

Yeah. I mean, how many times when you’re in anything, in any instruction or any discipline or any corrects, anything like that, you always want to be pointing your kids to God, not to yourself. We can’t save our kids. We want to point them to the one who can save them. Right.

The worst thing you ever just do it because I said so. Oh, that’s really effective. that is going to totally destroy your trust of your leadership in the teenage years.

Oh. Oh, yeah. And actually beyond that, into adulthood. So I would just encourage you guys that if you’re sitting there thinking, well, I am not. I’m not you, Isaac. What would you say to the guy who is thinking but I don’t know the Bible very well. And we just read this scripture that I’ll be honest.

Guys, I’m still learning a whole lot about the Bible myself. Okay. And secondly, you don’t have to have an online ministry or be a pastor or any of that to do this.

You can literally pick it up. Let’s let’s do it real quick. We’re gonna go to proverbs Okay. And then let’s say I’m sitting with my family real quick and I’m just gonna flip if I can even find proverbs kind of hard for me to find. Maybe it’s hard for you to find sometimes, so. All right. Okay. Proverbs 12 and I’m just going to pick it.

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge. But he who hates correction is stupid.

Now, hey, kids, we don’t use the word stupid, but it is in the Bible. And in this regard it’s a good thing to look at. So when your mom is teaching you during the day, if you hate correction and you don’t like your mom’s instruction and you show that, what is the Bible saying you are? Being stupid, so whoever loves instruction loves knowledge. You need a love.

Knowledge is important and you’re gonna be doing school. So we need to have a love for knowledge. It’s preparing you for the future. So you see how we’re telling the kids, we’re giving them vision, we’re giving them perspective.

So I just gave you an example. I literally didn’t know what Proverbs Twelve was. I literally flipped back here, found it, read it. And that would have been a good thing. Here’s another one right here. Yeah, I just. Well, Proverbs 11:2. When pride comes, then come shame. But with the humble is wisdom. So what is pride look like kids?

And what is humility look like? Well, humility is more like, you know, in.

I think to know it all. No, I mean, the whole point. I mean, if you are literally a parent and you’re thinking to yourself, I don’t know how to teach the Bible, you or I don’t know the Bible well enough like that, that that reality, that word, let’s not have false humility. Yeah, but let’s stay humble always, regardless of if we’re a mighty theologian or not realizing recognizing that, hey, God’s going to frustrate the knowledge of the knowledgeable and the intelligence of the intelligent, because he is the unchanging, omniscient, omnipotent, all knowing God.

That’s who he is.

That’s not who we are. However, we can actually experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, giving us gifts like the gift of knowledge and the gift of wisdom, and the more that we’re in the word. It says that those who have eyes may see in those who have ears may hear. The more you’re in the word, the more you’re gonna see, the more you’re going to hear. You’re gonna make connections. You’re going to remember what you read before. Just like when we’re talking like I’m not planning out these little things that come out of my mouth. You’re not either. As we talk about scripture.

So. So the point was, why did I go to Proverbs? Because that’s wisdom, literature.

And if you don’t know the Bible very well, it’s just a really easy place to start. And easy for kids to understand. It doesn’t have to be long, but you do need to be teaching. And you could wrap a sermon around that.

And how do you write? Did a post the other day with a little intro, you know, pick your scripture first and then think about how this impacts your family. What’s the most important point about it? Read that scripture. Read it again. Study your commentary. Put an intro a couple points as you go through the scripture and then make sure there’s one action item at the end or two and you’ve got a nice little message. And that will be more powerful than listening to anybody online, frankly.

And I will say, like there is going to be stuff that’s exposed in this, just like there’s stuff being exposed by your kids being home 24/7. There’s stuff being exposed about your husband being home more or about you being home, you both being home, working together, whatever your circumstances are.

There’s going to be stuff exposed about doing church at home, right. Like as you’re sitting there and you’re trying to teach your kids. If your kids are not being receptive, they’re not paying attention. There is scrolling through their phone. They’re being disrespectful. That is exposed instead of getting mad.

Then you need to realize and go, wow, this was really needed. Thank you, God, for this opportunity for me to see where their heart towards you actually is and where the heart towards me actually is now. I need to work at that. Do you see? I’m saying that there is going gonna be parents where they sit down and they try to read the Bible and maybe they can’t get that kid to get out of bed. And they’re like, well, we’re gonna meet without them. And you’ve got some of the other kids there and you have to engage those kids. You have to deal with the relational terrors. You have to deal. It’s not just your relational terror. It’s a relational terror between them and God, because that’s what sin does.

So on Sunday, we had worship songs playing from you, had your phone and went through the speaker and we sang along with it. And some of us are better than others. I’m the one that’s not better.

And and, you know, we had a good time, had a great time at a great time. And then I prepared a sermon and we prayed and we prayed. We have a communion together.

You can or not. It’s you know, it’s flex on that, you know. But at least get into the word of God and pray together. And that’s the kids, right?

It’s about discipleship, you know, and meeting together.

You’re the pastor. And to some bracelet will do. Well, I don’t have the gift of teaching. You don’t have to have the gift of teaching to teach what’s in the Bible to just read scripture, because you are regardless your spiritual gifts. You are the teachers of your kids and you are adequate and it’s powerful no matter how it comes out of your mouth. And so super important. Let’s go into the big topic I bet a lot of people want this home home schooling.

Yeah. So first of all, I know that it’s hard. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Probably be what you call a veteran home schooler. If we’d stopped having kids at Four, you realize that I would have all kids either in high school or graduated in like a few months.

You know, it’s crazy, but we have homeschool their kids all the way through. We did put our oldest daughter in first grade at a private Christian elementary school for first grade one year.

Now we’ve pulled her back out again and we’re homeschooling again. And so we’ve done every grade and I never saw myself as a teacher.

So if you are the type of person that’s listening right now going. I never wanted to be a teacher. Hello. I can totally relate to that, because when I was a kid and I was right now when I wanted to do when I got older, teacher was at the very bottom of the list. And so it’s ironic that God uses us in our weakness so that he is glorified and he is strong.

And I just have to say something that if you are a parent, you are a teacher. That is not something that I realized when I was a kid. I thought that teachers had to go to college and get a degree to be a teacher. And then. If authorities to be encouraged, you are a teacher and first of all, you don’t have to be like your kid’s teacher was at school, you need to be yourself. You know, what your kid needs from you is you, not them.

And I get it. This is the situation that we’re in with the Corona virus. And what they’re asking of us. Right. Is not normal.

So as you are experiencing home schooling right now, there’s a couple things that I just want to point out. You have a free trial for home schooling. Right. So if you’ve ever wanted to see what homeschooling was like, that this is a season to experience part of that.

And I’m seeing part of that because our homeschooling has been a little bit derailed. Mm hmm. This has not been completely normal for us. If you are interested in knowing what I’m talking about regarding socialization and activities outside of our home that we are normally a part of, you can listen to that podcast on homeschooling and socialization that we did in Season 1 of this podcast.

But what you’re experiencing is not quite fully homeschooling. And so I mean first say that secondly, you have to get past your own expectations and past experiences, and that’s when I can speak to most profoundly for my own personal experience.

Years ago, when I first started homeschooling Kelsey, she was in preschool and I thought that I needed to recreate the traditional school experience for my kids.

So when one of the local schools that was in our neighborhood decided to buy new desks for the kids and they were giving away all of their little desks, I went over and I grabbed four of them because I was pregnant with my fourth at the time, brought them all home, wiped them down, started creating a school class room type feel right where at the top of the desk.

They have their name written on a little piece of paper. We had, you know, the weather board, how to tell time. The ABC is all plastered on the wall, all these things. Right. And you may be thinking, I don’t have enough room for that in my house.

How did you do that? You’re going right. And I’m just saying, you do not need to recreate the traditional institutional classroom experience to home school. And it took me a year or so to figure that out and that that what I was doing was actually a symptom of me impressing upon imposing upon my kids my experience that I had in the traditional public classroom. And so homeschooling. The cool thing about it is that it can look like how your family wants it to look like. And so not every family needs to look exactly the same. Right. You have some freedom here. Now, if you have been given school work to bring home, which the majority of you have, that is much all that is also very different from what homeschooling is. With homeschooling, you can cater your child’s education based upon their learning styles, delight directed studies so that you’re encouraging a love for learning, reading, good classical literature, literature that has Christian values based, different things like that. And I would just encourage you that you can add that in.

I mean, your kids, like we said, they’re home 24/7 now.

And so school actually does not need to take the six to eight hours a day that it was taking while your kid was at school. So you need to eliminate that expectation from yourself. In fact, one on one teaching is so incredibly much more effective than one on 30 that you can actually take if you were to sit down and really knock it out. You could probably get school done depending on the age of your kid between 2 and 5 hours. And why, say, five hours is because my high schoolers spend about five to six hours a day doing homeschool. And but you guys, they’re also doing Latin and chemistry and debate and logic and like some really tough topics.

Right. If we’re if we’re just doing history reading and we’re reading a biology textbook, we’re answering those questions. We’re doing math. It can take like three hours. Yeah, right.

And so I would just say that, you know, there’s different expectations based upon how old your kid is. You need to. This is the point where you literally have to guard your heart from the comparison trap. Do not look at what other women are doing. And that’s kind of a funny thing for me to be saying, because here I’m teaching it, but I have had to protect myself and look instead to scripture and what I believe God is impressing upon my heart to be focused on with all of my kids. And that means as a whole, as a family, what are we focused on? But then individually, what does each kid need for where they’re at? One of the other aspects about homeschooling is that you can continually be stimulating your kids. So as soon as they master something, you can move on to the next thing. You may get to a place doing one on one school where your kid is flying through their math. Maybe not, but maybe it’s a different topic that they fly through because they just they get it, they enjoy it. And then often they’re done with it and they’re working on their other stuff. Well, guess what? You guys have an opportunity right now to kind of do what homeschool moms do then and look up curriculums online. I highly recommend going to Christianbook.Com, Christianbookdistributors at CBD.com. They have a home schooling tab and they sell all kinds of curriculums. There are hundreds of curriculums that are out there that are Christian based and they are they come with a teacher’s guide. So they give you clear instructions on how to teach the different spelling curriculum or the math curriculum. And so if your kids really you find out, wow, they actually really like history.

You can go there and you can find lists of good history books to read. What if you were to instead of can you know, you finished the history because your kids love it and then you assign them to read some missionary biographies or they read about the bubonic plague.

Right. Or the time of Martin Luther or they they’re reading about different things that actually can relate so that they’re learning from past history that have walked through plagues and how that applies to us today. What lessons did we learn from history and how does that apply to today? That’s when you bring history alive. Right. I’m just using that as an example. Reading the Bible on a daily basis needs to be an absolute. The days that we do not start out as a family doing family bible time day is off, right? Yeah. It makes such a huge difference for us to. And it’s not just you said this last week, you said it’s not just family Bible time. We are meeting together as a family here in each other’s hearts, praying for each other, especially right now.

I did announce that because we just need to come together. I want to know if anybody is a little bit fearful or has questions or things like that. And I want to be able to pray for our family and relatives. Yes. And I want to a coffee and discuss how things are going. And hey, Angie, is there anything everybody needs to know before we break? OK. Let’s read scripture and pray together.

So we’ll just I’ll just go through briefly kind of what our day is looking like. Now, the last few weeks have been a little bit off just because of everything that’s been going on. Obviously, some women are in church, had babies. And so I was there on some days different things. Right. Right. But on a typical day, we will start out. I will get up earlier than some people and start making breakfast. We usually have oatmeal and all the fixings and we’ll sit down at the table and have family Bible time, which you lead us through. But everybody can participate in that. You. Do you want to just share briefly what that looks like for the guys?

I mean, I just kind of said that. But we chitchat at whatever point. I think it’s good to start. I go, okay, guys, listen, we’re gonna read in here. Usually around 8:30. You know, let’s let’s dive in. And this morning is really simple. I just read Psalm 125. There wasn’t a lot of explanation around it. It was just a hopeful, encouraging song about God’s promises. And sometimes I’m digging into longer scripture, multiple scriptures, a little bit more.

It’s whatever the spirit’s leading. As long as I’m reading the word of God, then the spirit leads me into what I should read. Now, I’ll be frank. Sometimes I’m not reading the word of God. And I should pick it up and pick something. So either way, there’s no excuse not to if you leave yourself a way out. You’ll take it. So. Oh, I’m not in the word. Therefore, I can’t teach my family all the enemy. Just one. Oh, you’re gonna let the enemy win. You like the enemy will beating, beating you down and beating your family down? No. You’re gonna read the word of God. So we do that in the morning.

And sometimes it’s quick and brief and then sometimes it takes like an hour and a half, you know? So right now, because we have more time. Right. But usually it’s like 40 minutes. Yeah. It’s about half of that.

Go around, pray. And I always make sure I reinforce anything that helps Angie. And I ask her, is there anything that’s important to talk about before we go into the day? Oh, yeah. We need to talk about our dishes system.

Oh, we need to talk about attitudes to doing chores or whatever it is. Yeah. And so having that support from Isaac in the morning is really powerful for me, because that’s a point where he’s able to say some of the hard things to to the kids, actually, that I’ve kind of been keeping and giving them private intel in the last few days. And he’s able to address things so that mom’s not always the. If there’s if there’s a good cop, bad cop, and I’m the one that’s parenting all day and I’m dealing with sin during the day, it could be viewed that way. And so it’s just helpful to kind of balance things out, to have Dad be starting out the day, going, hey, remember, respect your mom, things like that and that. That’s super, super helpful for me then that by that time, usually the kids are they’re supposed to be ready to be going on the day before we do that. Sometimes some kids are lingering and doing things afterwards for a little while and then they get started on their schoolwork.

We have always trained the kids to do the hardest thing first, which I know that if you’ve been listening to the courageous parenting podcast, you’ve heard us talk about this before.

This is really an important skill slash, habit, slash. What else would you call it? It’s just a cultural driver.

It will transform their results later in life. And if you do the hardest thing first, everything else is easy and you’re more effective with if you save. The hardest thing for later, everything you do is less effective because its still on your mind.

So teaching your kids to pick the hardest subject, the thing that is hardest for them, because if they don’t do that first, it’s gonna be the thing that’s in the back of their head that’s making them agitated, frustrated, maybe anxious, stressed out, and they’re not going to do their best work on their other things. So it’s important to get the hardest thing done first, which is actually going to require you to probably sit down and help them. And so I spend probably, I don’t know, between 3 and 5 hours doing school with various kids. There are certain subjects that just require more help and it’s actually dependent upon how the kid is wired. Our older kids, when they were doing logic, it was like three hours a week just with those. But our fourth son is just like clicks because he’s got that ability. Be good at coding and things like that. And so logic just comes naturally to him. So I did invest, you know, two to three hours during the first semester. And now he’s kind of got it down to where he’s able to really explain it well, even.

And so, you know, each kid is so different. And you are probably finding out right now what subjects are hard for them. Actually, for the first time if you haven’t been homeschooling and that can be kind of hard. This is a point where you need to keep your frustration. This is not about you. This is about your kid. You want to build their confidence. They already know what is hard for them. And so you need to be building them up and encouraging them. You need to have confidence and not go, I don’t know. I’m not the teacher. Don’t ever say that that relinquishes authority. You need to assume authority because you are the authority now. You do need to remain humble. And if you don’t know the answer to something, instead of saying or pretending that you know what you’re talking about and getting agitated because you don’t actually know. Instead, you can go, hey, you know what? I don’t actually know the answer to that, but we can figure this out together. Did you hear me? This is very, very important. When you don’t know the answer to something, you need to show them that you are willing to do the hard work to find the answer, and that models for them how to search for things, how to be an independent learner. And if you do that, especially in their, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, by the time they’re in eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, they are going to be independent learners, which is what you really want. You want to give them the skill of being able to figure out how to learn. Right. And that they would love to seek out learning. But that comes from your attitude and what you model to the kids. Right?

Just don’t over complicate it. I think we’re all this is such sound wisdom that sometimes when we’re insecure about something, we over prepare for something. And then if we think we have to over prepare, we don’t do it as walk’s is a stressful situation, is stressful for you and stressful for the kids.

There’s actually, you know, people different people are different, right? Some people are. There’s the fight or the flight syndrome. And so some people will go towards the home-schooling. Other people are going to be like hands in the air.

I don’t want to do this. We’re just not going to do it. And you can read that.

I’m right in. I’m assuming most people have their curriculum that they’re using because they were in public school. You were given something. Yeah, but you can put in your own stuff. You can make some adjustments, I’m sure. And if you’re not public school kids, your kids aren’t public schooled and you’ve been homeschooling, you have questions about curriculum. We can’t go into it right here, but we definitely do.

In a courageous parenting program, we actually have like lists of what different routines the what a mild moderate and that’s a lot of highly scheduled day looks like. And we teach that in depth in the courageous parenting mentor program is actually one of the whole sessions. Right. It’s about living a disciplined life and being productive and with really the work ethic. Yeah. So I’m not going to necessarily go into the curriculum stuff here, although I will just throw a couple names out. If you have preschoolers and you’re trying to keep your kids busy, look into my father’s world. Look into five in a row. That’s a Charlotte Mason method, which there are different methods of teaching. Charlotte Mason method is particularly known for being literature based education. And the good thing about that is that you are. Then investing in good literature and you’re able to have really good discussions with your kids if you want another resource to look into for just good literature, I would highly recommend Lamplighter. We love their audio books. We love their books that Teddy’s Button or all of these books will lead your kids more to the Lord and it just is helpful. In addition to what you already doing with scripture, right. And so there are many resources out there.

And there are actually, I would say, look up free home schooling resources right now because tons of companies are giving free trials, they’re giving free products away, take advantage of everybody’s generosity during this time online because there’s a ton of it. I would say as far as scheduling goes, you have to have a meeting with your kids and you have to lay out expectations, which means you actually have to develop expectations first. So you need to have a meeting with your husband. You guys need to look at what your kids have to do, what they’ve been brought, what they brought home with them. Evaluate what is the most important or what is potentially the hardest and try to create an expectation of schedule. The great thing about doing school at home is that you can if you have a kid that just likes to plug it all out and get it all done. They can do that. But if it’s better for a kid that maybe has a hard time with attention span, then they can actually do like an hour and then take a break, jump on a trampoline, do a half an hour, take a break, jump. You know, do some push ups, you know, play a game, have a snack, go to the bathroom, come back, do some more work.

And I just want to encourage you, when you’re sitting there, you’re exercising patients. That’s really hard to exercise because you have your own agenda, things you want to get done in your teaching math, you’re teaching something and they have questions. And you literally realize I literally need to sit here for a while.ive seen Angie do this a lot. I need to sit here awhile. Realize it’s not only that you’re teaching them right, then you’re cultivating a relationship that echoes in the future that puts you as the most important teacher in their life. So when they hit the teenage years, they’re going to ask you for advice. Whereas if you don’t establish that teacher learner relationship in a strong way when they’re younger, they won’t want advice from you later. And I’ve seen I think sometimes we have to see forward and see the bigger why to be patient in the moment.

No, that’s very true. And I also think that there is an element where we have to be able to talk about the the student teacher relationship. And if our kids are having a teachable heart and if they are not having a teachable heart, that is a sin attitude issue in the relationship that needs to be dealt with. And I just we want to encourage you guys with Deuteronomy 6 here, which is a this is a chapter that is used at a lot of homeschool conferences.

And earlier on, I mentioned if you’re a parent, you are a teacher. And this is where that comes from.

In Deuteronomy Chapter 6:4-15, you have God here talking to Israel.

In Verse 4, it says here, oh, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house. When you walk, by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as front. Let’s between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. And then it continues down in verse 13 says you shall feel the fear the Lord, your God and serve him. You shall take in his name. You shall not go after any other gods, the God of the peoples who are all around you. So he’s talking about idols for the Lord. Your God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord, your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the Earth. I would just encourage you guys, though, to read through all of chapter six. This is such an encouraging word. Earlier in verse 2, it says that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and commandments which I command you. You and your son and your grandson all the days of your life.

And it continues on. And so this is definitely this is a legacy chapter in scripture. This is an encouragement to us that we are teaching our kids all the time and as we have our kids with us 24/7. This applies like in all things, we need to be humble so that we are confessing ours sin to them because that models for them what it looks like to be humble.

And we need to have teachable hearts also. They need to see us in the word learning. They need to see us trying to figure out the hard thing in the math or in whatever they’re working on so that they also have that same diligence. But we also need to be clear and to have grace as leaders, we need to be full of grace with our kids. I don’t think that it’s irresponsible for us to have expectations of our kids to do chores during the day.

So we actually have certain times during the day when we also expect that so.

Last scripture, and I think this will be helpful to the guys, too.

Paul says this well, and I brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Oh, thank goodness. I know Jesus Christ. I know about the cross and salvation. Well, they at least know that this the foundation of education. Right.

And then he says, I was with you in weakness, in fear and a much trembling woe. In my speech, in my preaching, were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but a demonstration of the spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men.

But in the power of God.

So let that be an encouragement. Whether you’re spiritually leading in the home or whether you’re educating your kids.

So lastly, we just have a few little tips for making your day go a little bit easier. So first, start out the day with God, whether that’s putting worship music on. Doing family Bible time or if your husband is working. You could put on a podcast, even right, but somehow start out the day with God. Start up the day connecting with your family.

And then the next big tip would be having a plan. As a mom for what your food is going to look like for the day. This is a big one for people who are not used to having their kids home 24/7. And so having a meal plan of some kind or at least thinking 8 to 12 hours ahead so that you’re preparing. I love to do oatmeal. That’s a fast thing you can do on the stove, but you can also do it in the crock pot overnight and then it’s ready in the morning so that you can get an earlier start on your day or you can start setting up breakfast and then go get ready. Another thing that is super important is dinner, because homeschooling can be there can be those times where you’re sitting, you’re doing hours of work with a kid and then often you look up and it’s 2 o’clock and you have fed your other kids lunch yet. Or maybe you missed putting the toddler down for a nap or something like that. That has happened to me before. And so you on those days, it’s usually because I haven’t planned ahead.

I haven’t been aware of what was going on during the day. And so I would just encourage you to somehow keep your eye on the time, put different kids in charge of different meals like different lunches. We are rotating who is helping with different lunches and then utilize tools like the crockpot for dinner or putting a roast in the oven that needs four or five hours. Right? You can do that at lunchtime while the kids are making their own sandwiches and do a sandwich bar, taco bar or something like that. But the point is, is that this this lifestyle of homeschooling is not something that you have to do alone. God is actually there ready to lead you, to guide you, to give you the strength that you need to make wise decisions. But also, it’s something you do as a family. So think about shifting. You don’t have to be the only one preparing meals. You don’t have to be the only one doing these things. You can actually teach your kids.

This is an opportunity to teach them life skills, work ethic, character qualities, being part of a team, helping other people. Those are the aspects of homeschooling that you do actually get to do a free trial run of experiencing on day to day basis. That can be a huge blessing during this time. That can actually bring your family closer to one another. When people are serving together and they’re serving one another, their relationships grow stronger. So while you’re in the midst of maybe dealing with more sense than you’re used to. There are good things, right? Growth happens in the valley. We know this and God wants to walk with you through it. And it’s going to be a time where you’re all growing and learning. If you have a humble heart and you’re ready to learn together.

May we all grow closer to Christ during this challenging time And let’s rejoice in our sufferings and know that God is only good. And let’s teach our kids that. Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. 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. Isaac and I release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you and your spouse to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

It’s an incredible program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes. Most Christians are making more than that. It’s an incredible community. You’ll have access to a private online group, live webcast and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send weekly encouragements straight to your phone if you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentorship program, Secure Your Spot now at Courageous Parenting.com.

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