Scripture In This Episode:

2 Timothy 3:1-5 – “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!”

Ephesians 5:15-17 – “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

Proverbs 28:1 – “The wicked flee when no one pursues, But the righteous are bold as a lion.”

John 13:6 – “Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, “Lord, are You washing my feet?”

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting podcast, the 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.

This is a very special episode. We are doing something we’ve never done before, which is announcing that we are strategically relocating. So we wanted to share the ins and outs about it. Some philosophies we have biblical truth and conversations that we’ve been having and the reasons why we were moving. If you don’t know, we live in Oregon. That’s right. So there’s a lot happening in the world right now. And so we’re talking about why we are strategically relocating our family to another state.

That’s right. So just a little back history maybe before we dive into these conversations. Isaac and I have been married for almost 21 years. Yeah, like a week or so. And I know and we have lived in Oregon our entire marriage. On a little side note, you may not know about me. I grew up in Oregon, so I have lived my entire life with the exception of my years in college when I went to college in Canada and did overseas missions. But I’ve been here, the majority of it.

I grew up in Washington State. So were Pacific Northwest.

Yes. Kind of upbringing. That’s right. And we we love the climate.

Yeah, we I mean, mostly I can’t say loved all the rain. Oh yeah, that’s true. The Portland and Washington areas. But yeah, that’s why we that’s why we moved to central Oregon. Right. Then, which we love the climate here.

Right now we have a bunch of smoke because of all the fires.

But it is a beautiful place and event we’ve been to, I don’t know, forty five states in the last three years, something like that.

Yeah. And then even more than that, I think we there’s only been two states that you and I haven’t actually been in.

A band is actually one of the most amazing places to live with. Lakes real close rivers all four seasons, wonderful summers and springs, snowboarding, boarding forty minutes away, just really, you know, tons of sunshine. I mean, it’s sun shining over 250 days a year, some form or fashion.

So it’s we don’t make our decision on where we’re going to be. Right. Based just just on that. And so we thought that we would share this little insider scoop on our life with you guys. But it’s more about the conversation and how we came to the decision to move that we want to share with you guys. And so part of this is that some of you may be thinking the same kind of thing or wondering if this is the time. Right. And so we thought that by sharing our conversation with you, it would be an encouragement to you, maybe a challenge for some of you.

You might have people, friends, people you love who live in places where you really think they should move more to a place like where you live. Maybe you’re totally happy with where you live. Right. And you feel like it matches all the things we’re talking about. So but this might be helpful to share with other people.

Right. So as we’re going through this, we do not want anyone to feel pressure to have to think like we do know on these topics. But we are going to be sharing with you guys this process, because I think a lot of times couples don’t necessarily think and talk through all of the different topics we’re going to cover today. Yeah, and so Isaac and I, our heart is to be transparent with you guys so that you guys know what’s going on in our life. We like to share that with you as well.

And I just want to say there is a big difference between acting and fear and acting in wisdom. And two people can be doing the very same thing and one of them could be acting in fear. And that’s wrong. And one of them could be acting in wisdom, which could be right, right. So it’s really important to understand that. And if you’ve listened to our episodes, I think you already trust and believe that we don’t act in fear. Do we fear sometimes. Yeah, we’re human beings, absolutely. But God has not given us spirit. We never make big decisions in fear. In fact, we believe, and we’ve said this before, that making decisions and fear almost always leads to a bad decision. So we really feel pressing to do this from the spirit and lots of other reasons. And we’ve experienced the open doors upon moving our navigation of this.

So so this is really, really interesting. So you don’t want to listen to this. Just make a decision out of fear, because we will talk about some things that could create fear. We’re not saying them because we’re fearful. We’re just stating facts that we are seeing.

Yeah. So there’s a difference. Like Isaac and I have been talking about the difference between being too optimistic or too pessimistic. Right. And where we always try to land and this is our are we try to hold each other accountable to this is in reality, we really want to be known from our people who know as well as being realists, realistic, not necessarily people who are going too far down, the conspiracy theorist right road, but at the same time not being so optimistic that we’re we’re wearing rose tinted glasses. Right. We want to be realists. And so there is a need for us to find balance, to be grounded in the truth, to filter everything through the word of God, but also take our glasses off and be willing to see the hard, real things that are happening in reality.

And by the way, we are absolutely pro-government. If someone’s not pro-government, you’re not pro United States. Yeah, because the Constitution, the backing of our government is why our country is so amazing. I love our country is it perfect no.

It’s got a bunch of imperfect people in it.

And if you’re in a different country, I hope you love your country. And and we probably love your country, too. So we love the world. We have God’s heart for his people. Absolutely. So there’s a big difference in that. And in uncertain times, you know, we always had this desire to just really dig in deep roots.

And I think that that’s more me than anyone.

Well, I’ve God has shifted me to dig deep roots and to really nurture friendships that are long lasting and forever and be in community with those friendships and just grow old together in the same place. Right. We really desire that. Yeah. And although that was our desire, you know, we’re in a church this is back in the day where we believe, oh, this is where we’re going to grow roots. And then the church disbands after some time. and it’s no longer.

That’s actually happened a couple times, that’s happened a couple of times.

Right. And so sometimes in what increasingly as we move forward into accelerated end times, that’s our opinion from reading the Bible and seeing what’s going on.

But we have come to the conclusion that sometimes you can be more flexible today.

Yeah, I think that there is an importance for teaching your kids loyalty in relationships with people. And you have to do that mainly by modeling it. Right.

But at the same time, being willing to not make an idol out of those relationships or the city you live in or the house that maybe you’ve built, or I mean, that’s not our case. But, you know, being willing to go where God is calling you to go, even if it seems kind of weird to some people.

But also, I would say to that, you know, as we’ve been talking about this, you if you’re a person that is questioning this for yourself, I just want to encourage you don’t look to us for the answer and what God wants for you, because he has a different will for every person, every family, and it’s not cookie cutter in that way. And so as we go through these different points and reasons why we’re moving, we don’t want those to become your reasons. Rather, we want you to evaluate and to prayerfully consider. OK, so if this is an issue, is God called me to either go from this place or has he called me to rise up where I am? Because those are really your only two options as a believer, right? Like in that sense, we aren’t to just be and not be activated. Right. We are all here for the glory of God and we should be activated in different. There are many different roles. You don’t have to be get political. Yeah, right. Like maybe you’re in ministry, maybe you’re serving people practically in the homeless community, whatever it is. But the point is, is like what is God gifted you with and are you activated where you should be, or is God calling you to be activated somewhere else?

And that’s true. God could be activating you to be right where you are, to be the salt and the light and to do the things you’re supposed to do. And you might be calling you do those things elsewhere. And so it’s really good just to look at this. I think a lot of people are right now. There’s more people moving than ever. And I’m not seeing all those moves are right and justified. No, but obviously covid the way the world is right now. Lots of different situations, obviously, job changes, losing jobs, all of that.

There’s some really practical reasons and there’s some spiritual reasons. There are political reasons that for some people become a spiritual thing, right. Where they can’t stand behind the law that’s passed or whatever.

We did an evaluation because we technically. Could move anywhere in the United States. Yeah, and so we’re in that place where there’s an amount of freedom from geography just because of what we do for work and ministry.

And so we we really and this is a relatively new thing for us in our marriage, like in two years. Yeah. So we just really thought, OK, there’s a lot of disruption right now. What is God calling us to do? Where does he want us? And let’s look at every place.

Just be open. Yeah. And I think that for me, I’ll be real honest. You guys like and I know Isaac feels this way, too. We absolutely love the relationships and friendships that we have here. Absolutely. Our church family is amazing. And and we have actually chosen to stay where we were for those people in past circumstances where we were also faced with should we move or not, because this isn’t the first time in the last five or six years. Yeah. And we just really had to listen to the Lord and what was best for our family in that season we were in. And you guys like but at the same time. Well, it’s good to do that. It’s also good to challenge yourself, to think have I am I making all of my decisions based upon that one thing, or am I putting that as a higher priority than, like what’s best for my family or what’s best for our legacy or different things like that?

And so that’s where we go. And we would just want to share with you guys from Second Timothy, chapter three one through five. We’re just going to share some verses that we’ve been thinking about. We’re actually there are some others, too, but this is kind of a big topic. So we’re not going to get to all of them today.

The second Timothy three verse one through five says “but know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come” boy isnt that true. “For men, will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving slanderers without self-control, brutal despisers of good, traitor’s, headstrong Hoddy lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away,” there’s a little more.

Ok, so “for of this there are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins led away by various lusts, Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

That that part is interesting.

Always learning but never come to the knowledge of the truth is there’s a lot of information that is out there today, a lot of false news also. Right. And so when people consume themselves over and over again with things that are untrue, it can be deceptive. And the Bible definitely warns us about wolves in sheep’s clothing, false teachers, false doctrines, doctrines of demons, all kinds of things like we have to be on high alert for these things. We have to be teaching our kids how to recognize them also.

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s it’s this stuff is happening. And you guys know we have a large family and we just came to a question in our minds that as we’re contemplating praying about this, looking at things is.

We have older kids now, would we recommend to our older kids when they get married to raise a family here to raise a family here? Yeah, and then we’re like, no.

And then we looked at each other and went, well, why are we doing it then?

Why are we doing it? You guys know us. We never want to be hypocritical. We never want to be setting the wrong example. And it’s really important. So we’re going to go into the reasons in a second. But first of all, I just want to thank you for being part of the ministry, part of the One Million Legacies movement, the reviews, written reviews we read, every one of them, the stars. I’ll take the tab on iTunes and elsewhere to give us five stars. And that’s not for our ego. That is for the expansion. And more people coming to know the ministry and being impacted. And we received so many messages, all kinds of things on social media. So thank you for sharing. We know when you share your part of that movement, we try to thank you as much as possible. And it’s a really big deal. Also on CourageousParenting.com Is where all the resources are for the podcast and other resources as a free workshop. There’s also the things that you can join, like the Parent Mentor program, which has helped over 600 married couples and single moms as well to really help their parenting. We’ve had a couple. That’s right. And also the home schooling blueprint, which is really inspiration, practical knowledge, to get yourself on the best path for your unique family, not a blueprint of what we’ve done exactly, but more for what’s going to be best for you and to help you make those decisions. So all of that’s there. And there’s also a place to donate on CourageousParenting.com, and that is how we are able to do all this free content and do all the mainstream. Yeah. Anyway, so let’s dive in.

So as we’re talking about these things, so first of all, we wanted to in decision making, we have always tried to be proactive versus reactive in our parenting and that that filters down into the parental decisions that you make. There’s so many lifestyle decisions that you make. Right. And we have been anticipating more and more changes to be occurring here in Oregon where we live because we’re talking about how we’re strategically relocating. We are moving. And so that has caused us to go OK. So when would be a good time for us to move? When does God want us to move? Right. We’ve been praying specifically for doors to open where he wants us to be and for doors to close where he doesn’t want us to be. And wow, that has been a huge there have been huge answers to prayer in both of those regards and unique opportunities for potentially buying a house to, you know, ministry. Yeah, I mean, all kinds of really wowing things. Relationships. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And so but I think that being proactive versus reactive, maybe you want to talk about that for a second.

Well, we in business and in marriage and raising the family, I’ve always tried to look at the trends and where things are going because like in business or in raising your family, if you can know the trends and make decisions earlier, you can benefit from where things are going and you can prevent yourself from dealing with more difficulty that’s undue, not needed. So that’s really important as CEO of a company or a leader in an organisation to be able to do that. And we’ve always done that in our marriage and we’ve done that raising our kids. And so it’s making a decision before you have to make a decision.

So imagine for a second if something like really wild happened near central Oregon and we had to move really quickly, like tomorrow, like we had to move immediately for the safety of our kids. Now it’s just really hard with a big family like, well, it’s hard for any family. Right. And so but yeah, there are ten of us in our family. Right. Mean we have a lot of Kelsi stuff here, even though she’s a college. Yeah. And so the reality is, is we would rather move and let it be something that is a more calm experience versus something that’s a more intense experience.

Right. Yeah. And I think that that for us transition, we’ve always tried to purposefully engage transition in a manner where it’s like everybody’s on board and there’s a plan and we’re moving forward. And obviously we hold that plan flexible for God to move. But, you know, the reality is, is I’d much rather be moving in a climate. Yeah, right. That’s not a bunch of snow, for example. So we want to move before snow, things like that. And so there’s a lot to consider.

Yeah. So we’re going to go into the reasons here in the first one is restrictions on personal freedoms in one way or another. We’re all experiencing that feeling. That’s true. Yeah, in different levels. But in some places there’s a trend of that increasing in a deeper way and in other places is a trend of that, actually decreasing.

Or staying minimized, and I would say that it’s not that there’s it’s it’s been minimized, it’s that people are actually standing up for their rights and what is actually written in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights. And they’re living it out. And so those rights are more protected, actually.

So we want to be around a larger group of people that are standing up for our rights.

Right. And so for us, for example, like this is if you could give this podcast another name, it would be moving somewhere where people are more pro constitution and more pro bill of Rights. Yeah, right. And the reality is, as things here in the Oregon climate, which are very similar but not identical to the rest of the West Coast, but the reality is there is a form of lawlessness that is corrupting the culture. I’m just going to be honest and we’ll get into that.

Yeah. Some of the personal freedoms that we want to talk about is education rights. Right. A lot of people are thinking about that. It’s, you know, just even if it’s not just about home schooling, but do we have the choice to do that?

And and and again, remember, the main question that got us to even be open to moving was, can we recommend that our kids raise their families here?

Now, of course, they’re going to choose to live wherever they go or 10 years from now, five to 10 years from now and going. What’s it going to be like then based on the trends?

Right. But what I’ve seen is that, like, our kids can move anywhere they’re going to rolling. Right. Like they’re their own people. When they’re an adult, we are going to support them wherever they are. But let’s look at the reality. The reality is, is wherever someone goes to college, sometimes there’s a huge percentage of those kids that end up staying where they’re college is. Right. Then there’s the people who most people actually end up living, where they grow up, where their parents lived. And so we have to consider that.

And I would hate to have them not come home or want to live where we’re living just because it’s not a wise place to live.

Right. Even if they wanted to. So that’s that’s important. But they have the freedom to move wherever they want. Yeah. So education rights, forced vaccinations. We’ve had a lot of people ask us, hey, can you talk about vaccinations? And this isn’t an episode on that because that’s a deep and heavy topic that we might tackle someday. Takes a lot of prep work. Yeah, but forced vaccinations of things that are haven’t been well tested and all the challenges. We don’t want to be in a place where there’s a high potential for that.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. She is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. To just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, a CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement for us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done and creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just a really great practical applications. This class has just really rocked my world.

It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids physically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is.

Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it.

One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more.

We’re no longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. Right. And so here we are in September, OK. And during 2020, the year of covid. Right. Knowing that there are people out there that are trying to create a vaccination when the reality is, is doctors don’t even know how to treat it. So how can they create a vaccination when they don’t know how to treat it well. Right. Or prevent it. And so the reality is for us, I mean, we’re also pro health. I like to call it pro health. So that means we haven’t vaccinated our kids. Right. And that’s been a choice that we’ve been growing in over the. He is super healthy and the reality is, is we want to have the right to choose what goes in our body and not be forced to have to be forced to have something put in our bodies. Right. And so and we want our kids to have that same option, that same choice, if they can. Right. So if moving somewhere delays a forced vaccination by even a decade, is it worth it in my mind? Yeah, it sure is. Right. And so that’s just one other reason.

This another interesting thing is rationing of food. There is a high potential of food challenges as we go into the fall and even in the spring.

And we’ve even experienced that with covid.

Yeah, just distribution channels and other reasons for it. And but but we really were made aware of that during the covid when we go to the store and we can only buy one dozen eggs, which actually doesn’t feed our family for one breakfast.

Now we go through almost three or no.

Now, you could say, well, you need to prepare for that. Absolutely.

How do you do that, though? You spend your entire day going from one store to the next door to the next door, buying one dozen eggs at each of the stores.

So as things clamp down and there’s further food shortages, that could happen anywhere for sure. But there are certain places where it’s less likely to happen.

So really, on that note, I miss having our chickens.

Yeah, my chickens are going again and then shutting down the economy. Obviously, that was a nationwide thing for a period of time. But there are certain states that are more prone to shut down the economy. And we are really pro business and believe that there’s a lot of times more harm than good in doing that. We need to be careful about things. But I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years. And you were involved with me in that? Yeah, a lot of ways. And I just think that we still are. I am very sensitive to business owners and how hard it is to build a business and how disruptive it is when government intercedes too much. And so I we are very pro-business and we want to be in a place that’s pro-business. And, you know, I’ve always been sensitive and careful the leadership that I subject myself to in a subject, my family, too. And in a real way, it’s becoming even more intransparent in our lives of how much the governors and politicians actually do influence us. And I’m just not going to stay any longer in a place where I can’t respect leadership.

Right. And I mean, that may not necessarily always be the case where we’re moving either, but we can respect a lot more than where we are currently. We want to be able to obey the scripture that talks about being able to submit to authorities. Absolutely. And if we have a choice of being in a place where submitting to authorities is a lot easier for us than and we have the opportunity to move, then why would we stay somewhere where it’s difficult and where we are? That’s just our perspective. Right. And so trying to be at peace with everyone, that scripture is something that has been on my heart for a long time.

A small thing, just a little thing. But it’s just interesting how businesses have to be closed at 10 p.m. where we live. And it’s not like Angie and I like to go out after 10 p.m. It was like really hard, but it was just interesting. Last night we were at a restaurant. Yeah. Recently. I know. It’s weird. Almost ten o’clock I ordered coffee, but I ordered coffee and I had my first, you know, a cup of coffee wasn’t even fully drank. And they came to the table and said, hey, you can chug that down so I can take it or I can take it. And I’m like, I thought she was kind of joking. And then she wasn’t. And she goes, Are you going to hug it? And I’m like, No. And she took it.

Yeah. And she goes, Thank you, Kate Brown. And she literally took the cup out of your hands.

And I’m like, oh, oh yeah, we’re under curfew. Like we’re children.

Right? So there’s just another freedom. Not that that’s one that we like care so much about. not a reason to move. It’s just it’s a beginning. What’s the trend? Yeah, it’s a beginning sign of control actually, and overstepping their bounds of manipulation. And and so you guys, there are other issues, too, like Isaac talked about the rationing of food. And it’s literally impedes upon my ability as a mom to be really good at multitasking when I have to be going to multiple stores to get things, it’s like not wise for my time to have to be going so many different places just to actually provide for my family. Yeah. So there’s there’s the aspect of masks also, which we’re not going to get into that in depth here on this podcast. I know you all are dying to know what we think about masks. Maybe we will do a podcast on future. And again, it’s not that we are wanting to be super rebellious. We’ve been really keeping our heart attitudes in check about this. I think that if we have a rebellious spirit. That we need to really examine our heart attitudes about that, not to make an idol out of freedoms and so forth, but at the same and to want to love people well, but and respect their immune compromised.

Right. But at the same time, we also believe that there is an element of political control that is being tested with the masks and being practiced, actually. And we don’t like that conditioning in that sense.

And there’s a demoralization of humanity. There is. There is whatever truth you think is true, you can do it no matter how it infringes upon other people. And we just feel strongly that it’s not time for us with young kids to be in a place that is increasing in that direction.

Yeah, I would say, too, that there’s other more liberal states. I’m just going to be really frank here. There are other liberal states that are surrounding us. Yeah, right. A lot of times those states kind of go in alignment with each other on things. And there are laws that are being passed in other states that are frankly just an abomination, disgusting. They’re an abomination. And I cannot just sit and be OK with taxes potentially going. I mean, we’ve been struggling with this for years, you guys. I just have to be honest, this is not something that is a new thought in our mind. I never wanted to live in Oregon, actually, when we met, we had to because of Isaac’s work at first. And then now that we’re in this position where, praise God, we don’t have to be here and we can be open to going anywhere, we look at each other and go, OK, it’s always bothered us that our taxes have gone to support the murder of babies, abortion. Yeah, OK. And that is a big deal to us because we are pro-life.

And whether or not I believe in paying taxes is very important. We pay taxes and I just want those taxes to go to better things.

Right, exactly. Not killing babies. And so, I mean, and there’s other other laws that have been passed in Oregon that were just as devastating to us, to be quite honest. And so we’re definitely not in alignment politically with the people who are running our state. And so that makes submission all that more harder.

Now, some people could be like, well, why don’t you stay and be the change where you are?

Yeah, and some people are called to do that. Would totally that bloom where you’re planted and you guys, we try to do it. We we honestly, we are convicted in the sense of like we haven’t been as involved as we probably should have been so that it wouldn’t get early on earlier on, so that maybe maybe it could have made some change. Right. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad. Because the truth is, is that too many people have been quiet for too long and that’s why we’re in the situation that we are in.

So I think wherever you are and wherever you land or if you stay where you are, we all need to do our civic duty, even beyond voting, and be pro involved and proactive, be in our government and we have an election coming up to be a voice and not be fearful. And you know what? Get ready because we’re going to be more bold.

Yeah. So I think that, you know, so people are going, OK, so you just said this. Why are you leaving? Right. And I will say we have not. Then I mean, you guys know we have eight kids and we’re not willing to sacrifice our family and our legacy for ministry, for work, for anything. And it’s not that we’ve made an idol out of them. It’s that we’ve got our priorities straight and we’re not going to apologize for that. And I still have a two year old and a four year old and we have four other kids in addition. So we have six kids at home right now. It’s not the right season for us to be all gung ho running towards that kind of a thing. Or at least for me, it’s yeah, there are seasons. So we’re going to just dive into the next section, which is policies that have invited crime. Right. So we mentioned a little bit.

Yeah. So literally, politicians are allowing crime. And whenever you allow crime, let’s just use a simple thing even before all this crazy stuff happening. But graffiti, there’s proven fact that wherever city allows graffiti to exist, more graffiti grows and it invites crime. You can do stuff you can read studies on. This is just an example, a simple thing like graffiti and some graffiti is beautiful, by the way, traveling the country, we saw some amazing stuff, murals. I would paint maybe their murals, but if you don’t take it down right away, it invites crime and invites more and invites more bad elements to exist in that area. And wherever that exists, usually graffiti is the beginning of things. And now it’s way beyond that. It’s like they’re allowing, you know, firebombing police stations and taking over police stations.

All right.

They’re allowing the disrespect of people’s businesses in the breaking of it, and they’re allowing this to happen. And I cannot be part of that. And I feel like I am a little bit of part of it. If I’m part of the state, I don’t.

Part of the state, and you’re not able to be on the front lines, right? And so it’s it’s it’s I don’t believe in that leadership.

I can’t even it’s disgusting to me. And so, so antibusiness and so anti humanity. And it’s also anti private property rights. I have relatives that a lot of relatives that lived in Venezuela in the good years of Venezuela. And and then as it started decreasing, our relatives realizing they would start taking away the statues and start renaming streets, they would start defunding. The police tried to resist trying to erase history. And then pretty soon they got rid of property rights. I had relatives that had farms, had squatters on, and they would then squatters would come and then the government would actually enforce their allowance of the squatters to be there and they couldn’t do anything in their farms, get taken away, essentially.

So so you start to see this. I really look at this as an invasion of property rights when property isn’t defended or allowed to be defended by the government.

And when you call on the police and they don’t come to actually help you. Right. Which at the same time, this goes along the lines with a government that is attempting to defend police. Right. Where are different state to state?

This is totally different. Right. Like there’s different things happening all over the country right now. And if you look at the ramifications of the places that have defended police, crime has not decreased is not. Yeah, it’s gotten worse because the Bible even predicts this about lawlessness. We have some scripture we’re going to share with you guys in a minute. But the reality is that when you live in a culture and in a climate, depending on where you are, that is for defending police. Now, I am not going to ever defend anyone, regardless of if there are policemen or not, if they are in sin and they murder someone. Right. Like there’s this element. Right. But at the same time, that is a very small amount of people where there’s a corruption right. In police and we should be supporting the police. We should be supporting the firefighters. Like even right now, I think about if we have family members whose the areas that are living in are on fire, they’ve been on fire for days, and they are some people, many of them friends, that we knew that we went to church, that we walked in life with that are losing their homes, losing their farms.

These are super hard working business owners and a lot of cases or work at employees that employ for years and safety workers and just did all the right things to be good with their money and living an integral life.

And they’re losing their property. Some of them are, ah, their properties are saved. And they’re but then they’re staying in their homes after evacuating their wife and kids and they’re staying in their homes with guns to protect their homes from looters because their neighbors are getting looted.

They see that. They see bad actors. Actually, I’ve we’ve probably had three different people we actually know who have witnessed people trying to start fires, you guys.

And this is part of it. Like we have friends who are police chiefs and we have friends who are fire fighters. We have friends who are police deputies. We have like there we were a part of that community for so long. You guys, people that I went to school with, high school with. Right. Just seen their posts on Facebook and they’re going through. And I’m it’s devastating. But the reality is what happens when lawlessness bounds, when it’s OK, when the governors when the people who are in charge say, oh, we’re not going to have any consequences for that, we’re not pacifists and Christians are not meant to be pacifists.

That’s a whole nother topic. We should do an episode.

Remind me. Why Christians should never be pacifists.

But you guys, I think that there is an element of loving people. Well, when we’re willing to protect things. Right. And when we’re living in a community where people feel safe and they can live in their homes without fear of being burglarized. Right. And that’s just not the reality of today or yesterday or the day before in Oregon in certain areas of Oregon. And so and we don’t know if that is going to move to where we are now.

There is a thing that, you know, we have been renting for a while because we had a business failure many years ago now. But and praise God, God has been restoring us and has been faithful and got out of debt a year ago.

It looks like we’re in a position we are in a position to purchase a home, which is amazing. So partly to thank everybody here for helping the movement and all these things helps us to. And we’re so excited to have a home. We don’t have to have a home, but we’re excited about home. And that’s great. And prices have gone up here everywhere, really. But there is the ability to buy a better opportunity outside of this city that we’re in because it’s very expensive here. But in addition, beyond the money. I don’t want to purchase something in a place where property rights aren’t going to be defended.

Right.

That’s actually a really good point, yeah, I just, you know, and what’s the trend that we’re seeing? Could it be curtailed? Sure, but lawlessness is being allowed. I’m not into that.

Right. And not into investing in that.

You see people sharing on social media about what they’re witnessing. And then you have news telling a totally different story, which is basically calling them all liars. Right. Like, that’s not OK. Yeah. And so for us, you guys, there’s many, many aspects to this, but they probably want to know where we’re moving but lets tell them at the end.

Ok, so Ephesians 5:15-17 is a passage of scripture that’s just been so good, so good. It says see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil. Is that not true? I mean, I feel like that’s literally what we’re walking in right now. There are some there’s some evil happening. Right. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Understand the will of the Lord is in. Guys, this is the thing. What is the will of the Lord? It may be a little bit different for your family than it is for our family, but are these good conversations for us to actually be challenging one another with as iron sharpens iron for us to grow in our convictions? I think that sometimes in order for people to stand up and bloom where they’re at, if that’s the phrase you want to use or be a light where they are, because we’re going to be a light wherever we go, you guys. God is with you. His spirit is in you. You’re going to be a light wherever you are. But to really, like, stand up and stand firm for truth and be willing to protect your neighbor and love your neighbor as yourself if they need protecting or to serve them, sometimes you got to have a conviction. Yeah. And so to know what the will of the Lord is for your family, that should be where your conviction lies and that alone, not what Isaac and Angie are doing, not what that family next door is doing, not what your family member is doing, but you need to be listening to God’s will for your family. And so we are very excited and we’re actually calling this our legacy move.

Absolutely. And so it’s not out of fear. And in John, sixteen thirty three says these things have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace in the world, you have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. We know that. You know that. Yes, no matter it’s not like you can escape tribulation during accelerated end times. not at all. But we want a better place to be able to contribute and to raise up in to be able to pour into our kids with less distraction and more focus and equipping them to launch into the world, to be part of the world and to be a solution in the world for the kingdom of God, for Christ and maybe politics and our daughters super into politics.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, Austin even has a really pretty strong opinion about certain things for sure, which is actually another reason, like we have raised our kids to be courageous and we’re seeing that in our older kids.

And the truth is, is that it’s not the climate that we’re in. They do get massive persecution, even being young. Right. Like our son had a hat in his car that was a conservative hat and he would get flipped off. People would hit the front of his car. If they were on skateboards, he’d get cussed at. Someone broke into his car. Right. There was a bunch of people’s cars in our neighborhood that were broken into. Now, does that mean we fear.

No, we’ve been here for a while. Right. But the reality is, is if you could be in a place where your your kids can be courageous and be growing up so that they are prepared to be strong when they’re older, when they actually can make change, when they can vote. Yeah. When they’re old enough to vote, then why wouldn’t you?

We actually live in a time where you can’t support the president publicly without being destroyed, potentially shot.

I’m just going to say it potentially shot. You don’t know. Yeah. Any more is easy. It’s. Yeah, so this is the thing the as far as a legacy move goes, like we are thinking, we’ve already shared with you guys about the thought of our grandkids and our great grandkids and the parents of those kids just being in a necessarily in a place that allows them to make choices like can they homeschool? Are they going to vaccinate? They get to have the choice verses and stuff being enforced upon them. And that’s really important to us. But there’s also this element of like I kind of you know, if we were older, we probably would have more regret of not being more involved in politics. But we’re in this age right now that we’re in in our 40s where we’re like excited.

You could pray for us because we have no idea what that looks like. I know it looks like being even more bold during the election coming up on our social media platforms, being more bold for causes that matter, these kinds of things. How that plays out, I don’t know. I think God has a strategic reason. He is moving us. And and I think it’s exciting. And we’ll see what that looks like. But definitely we’ve seen doors just opening up as confirmation after confirmation that we’re supposed to move. And sometimes that’s what you do. You start making a decision and you see, you know, where doors open. Now, does that mean challenges aren’t there? No. Sometimes doors are opening and there’s immense challenges at the same time. So don’t read too much into the challenges. Change always involves challenge. It doesn’t necessarily mean God’s doing something against what you’re doing. Right. So you have to look at everything involved and be in the spirit.

And sometimes the enemy will try to stop you too, or create doubts. And so you have to be able to discern those things. And I think that the most important thing for being able to discern those things is to, one, be in the word of God and filtering through it, taking every thought captive and to being in alignment in your marriage, which is the next point like for us, that this is a legacy move. Isaac and I are completely in alignment in this, which praise God. Right. Like neither of us are in this place of no, no. I want to I want to say no, I want to move now. We from the beginning have been like, whoa, you want to move to you’re open to that. You praise God like that wasn’t hard. Total enlightenment, the kids. OK, so this is the thing. Here’s a little tip for you. When it comes to any kind of move, we have discovered that there is a window of time that is open to be able to make moves where it’s less difficult on kids. When they become teenagers, it gets harder.

We had a date night a long time ago, actually, where we’re like, well, yeah, we kind of think we should move. But we missed the window because we already have so many teenagers and they’re building so many good friendships and connections. Yeah. And then when covid happened, there was massive disruption and so many things. Yeah.

And like kind of Mellops getting canceled, being put on zoom.

Sports are canceled.

So we’re like, OK, this is a unique opportunity.

If we were to move it would be now and and the kids were all in alignment, all of that. And so like even some friends, they had just had different views on, like getting together because of just being careful with covid or what not. Right. To where then they weren’t as close to their friends are not even able to spend time with them. Right. So it was all these different things. And really we looked at that as, wow, God actually prepared an open window to where every single person in our family is looking forward to moving. Now, does that mean that they’re not going to miss their friends? No, they’re going to miss their friends. But what’s crazy is that even some of our friends had been thinking of moving to they’re not moving to the same place we are. They’re moving to a totally different state, actually. But that was just another confirmation. It was just like, oh, wow.

Ok, so so so a question might come to mind. Well, what about friendships and things like that? Are you moving with another family or something like that? And the answer is no. We are moving and our families are based on knowing any family or any friends other than we do have some newer connections through courageous parenting, which is cool.

Yeah. And actually some people that we met, we literally just met because we were looking for a house.

Yeah, that’s help we get. Definitely got a warm welcome from the courageous parenting community for sure in the area. And so that’s been amazing. But we have some rich, deep relationships here and friends in the church. We go to people that we love and so forth. So we are going to miss them. But you know what?

They can come visit. They’re going to come visit. You want to come visit. You really do like Bend and we have our RV, so we’ll be coming back. Yeah.

And I have a feeling there’s going to be more more change happening here anyway. So in Proverbs twenty-eight, our last point one, the wicked flee when no one pursues but the righteous are bold as a lion. So what does this mean? The wicked flee when no one pursues, when no one pursues the wicked, they get away and they can keep their corruption going. They can keep causing harm. They can keep bad things happening when no one. Pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion, and this is a message that we need to be even more bold, we talking about you and us need to be more bold than ever in these uncertain times, bold for Christ, boldly loving others, bold for the truth, boldly rallying for the truth.

Right? Yeah. And I feel like that’s part of it. Like some people are maybe are called to stay and some people are called to go and collectively rally or prepare a place or whatever it is. Right. Like God, God has given us this conviction that we should never be like. So we should not be making an idol out of the place that we are, whether that’s our home or our location or any of these things to where we’re not willing to go when God calls us to go somewhere.

So you should go. And we’re moving to Idaho, Idaho. And we had been researching we did an RV trip two weeks recently. You probably saw in our stories we went through all of Idaho, all the most of the different places, and we really settled on a certain place and really felt strong community there. The weather, the seasons, the political climate, all the things that really led to in some favor and potentially getting a house, which is really, really exciting. So then after we made that decision or very close to making that decision, we started reading this book, Strategic Relocation.

The fourth edition, the fourth edition just came out, just came out, which even references covid and things like that, which analyses statistically and with data and history and all these things, all the data about every state and the top two states and score are Utah and Idaho sorry, Utah friends. We have eight kids. And so we just don’t want to be mis categorized as Mormon. Right, by living in Utah. Yes.

And we also fell in love with Idaho because we were I would say, though, there are aspects of Utah that were just amazing when we went on our six week after we love Moab was amazing. And we do know that there are some strong Christian families that are there and we love you guys and are praying for you.

But we definitely. So the crazy thing is, is we felt God placing Idaho on our heart, actually.

Kind of I mean, we only had been to Shoshoni Falls on our three month RV trip, which was like two and a half years ago, and that was beautiful. But that was literally the tiny little bottom part of Idaho. We had hardly been there. We had not seen really anywhere else. We’d gone to Silverwood once, I guess, which is near Coeur da Lane, but we didn’t really see Idaho. And God placed Idaho on our heart way before we even started reading this book, before we even knew who was the people that were there. Right. Because a lot of the community that reached out to us, there were courageous parents that saw us there visiting, looking for a house and said, hey, we’d love to have you over or invited us to church or have a courageous parenting gathering. Right. And so I just it was really beautiful how this is all been panning out, because it’s very obvious that God is moving us in a specific direction. We don’t know all of the reasons.

Yeah, but we’re excited for this new journey in our lives. And we would just ask for you guys to be praying for us and with us.

Yeah. And so you can link to that book if you want to see it. That wasn’t what made us decide to move, but it was a confirmation after kind of making the decision for sure. It was just fun to read about the stats and information.

Yeah, because you guys have also has like global and world like world wide potential threats as well. So it like lists where nuclear targets are in different states. It’s very educational. Yes, because he had like forty years of experience in the government. So you got to look that book up and we’ll put a link in the CourageousParenting.com episode blog post that.

So, again, we are so excited about this change as you be praying for us, we have a lot to do the next 30 days to to make the move. And we appreciate your support and everything in it. We love it. If you shared this episode, I have a feeling this episode will actually help a ton of people and maybe your family and friends. And so if you’re in Idaho, let us know.

That’s right. Look forward to getting to know some new people. All right. Take care. Bye.

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