Scripture In This Episode:

Matthew 24:3 – “Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

1 John 2:15 – “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

1 John 2:26 – “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.”

Malachi 3:6 – “For I am the Lord, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.”

Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Proverbs 3:6 – “In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”

Proverbs 2:1-16 – (Refer to the Bible)

1 Peter 5:6-7 – “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time,  casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

Ephesians 4:13-16 – “Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

1 John 2:15 – “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

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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 I’ve seen the fruit in raising our eight kids biblically based on the wrong tree 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 back to the Courageous Parenting Podcast. Hey, everybody. We’re so excited to see you today. We are.

And we’re getting ready for a big RV trip. Every summer is our goal, at least. Lord willing that we take off for at least four weeks with our family and go somewhere. And so we’re preparing for that. And that means that we have a lineup of podcast episodes for you. These are some interesting topics. You know, we usually prepare them one at a time, but now we have the next five prepared that weave together and are pretty compelling, I think.

I think everyone’s going to gain a lot from them. And you’re going to share what some of them are. Just give them a sneak peak. A taste test.

Yeah. So today we’re talking about critical thinking in an uncertain world. Wow. Is that ever important right now? Yeah. Something we’ve been thinking a lot about and and teaching the kids about, practicing for a long time, talking and trying to give you some of our tips and what we’re teaching our kids and what we do to get outside of the noise and try and figure out what’s real. Yeah. But then next week, take few opinions, but definitely take the right view. That’s right. So what to consider in choosing a mentor or receiving wisdom from somebody. Yes. Like that. OK. The next one is God has a unique plan for your family.

This one is. It might not sound like what you think it is. Yeah. We’re going to be covering a few different topics. One of them is actually family size. Yeah, like family planning. Right. Because a lot of people just assume we’re going to talk about stereotypes in that one. I mean, give me a little little sneak peek.

Just because we you’re excited about because we have eight kids doesn’t mean you necessarily should. God has unique plans for every family. God has unique plan.

So that’s pretty cool. And the next one will be patriarchy versus gender roles or healthy family.

We haven’t decided quite yet.

But those are the topics we’re going to be covering. We’re going to speak against patriarchy.

That’s. But we are also going to talk about the biblical gender roles and how that works. So that’s a tough topic. That’s going to be a two part series. Yeah. Two episodes on that. Mm hmm. So, anyways, a welcome get ready for a string of interesting episodes in us speaking the truth from the bible and our experiences and what we believe is edifying for Christians today.

Ok. So, you guys, we are really excited to cover this one, which is on the critical thinking in an uncertain world. Speaking of uncertain world, you know, biblically, we have a lineup of scripture that we’re going to be weaving in to this talk, as we normally do. So make sure you go to courageousparenting.com and hit that menu and then click on podcasts to get the show notes. All of our podcasts are there at the show notes, the scripture references and the free, courageous parenting workshop, which is totally available for anybody. Yeah. So just wanted to put put a plug in for that. But we are going to start by reading in Matthew Chapter 24. So if you guys have your Bibles and your journals with those open with us and once you drive and unless your driving. That’s right. Don’t don’t get that out. OK. So how about do you want to read this one, Isaac? You got it. You’re already on already. So, Matthew, 24:3.

I’m going to go into the second part of it where the disciples are talking to Jesus at the Mount of Olives.

Ok, it says they say, tell us, when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of age. OK. So it’s asking like when is and time’s coming. Jesus and Jesus answered them and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name saying I am the Christ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, rumors of wars. Are we hearing rumors right now of all kinds of different things? Are we hearing these things or are we seeing them with our eyes? Right. And I would say both in some cases. That’s right. Well, and that’s what it says here. So it says you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled for all these things must come to past. But the end is not yet. It’s not yet. You guys for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Those are two different things, right? And there will be famines and pestilence and earthquakes in various places. All these are beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to a tribulation and kill you and you will be hated by all nations. For my namesake. Persecution is going to be intense. Mm hmm. Right. And then it continues on. And we wanted to share if you skip down, we want to encourage you guys to read all of chapter 24. But verse 21 says for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been seen since the beginning of the world until this time, nor know nor ever shall be.

You know, I was thinking because obviously we’re an online ministry and we get some arrows hit towards us once in a while.

Recently, we’ve had some major ones and I just start really. As you know, we should not be alarmed by that. If we’re doing God’s work, we’re proclaiming his name. That’s going to happen. And so instead of just wishing it didn’t happen, we just have to be prepared for it to happen. And we’re not going to recede.

We’re going to move forward and stand firm. That’s what the whole armor of God is about, right? We don’t like shirk back persecution is going to happen. And, you know, as interesting, we’re talking about this critical thinking in an uncertain world. What is an uncertain world? Well, I just read that verse on tribulation that no one has seen the kind of tribulation that’s going to happen. That is the definition of an uncertain world and an uncertain future.

And so we really felt like that was a very opportune scripture. But then if you flip to 1 John 2:15. There’s actually quite a few. We’re going to just do a few versus here in the way I read some more at the very end of the podcast. But if you go to verse 26, it says these things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.

But the anointing which you have received from him abides you and you do not need that anyone teach you. But at the same anointing teaches you concerning all things and is true and is not a lie and just it has taught you you will abide in him.

So we want to encourage you guys that the first thing in critical thinking is to abide in him.

Absolutely. His word is so important because there are so many things happening right now. And there’s as we speak, there’s riots around the United States. But that’s not just in the United States. There’s been riots in Hong Kong and different parts of the world for various reasons. And there’s also the locus in Africa that are happening. There’s Covid-19 and people being unemployed around the world and struggling with businesses failing.

Right.

All kinds of things. Right. We could go on and on and on. And if you listen to any news, whichever way you do it, you’re hearing of wars and rumors of wars, whether it’s people fighting its people or, you know, official war.

You know, we’re pestilence. You’re hearing a famine, you’re hearing of disease. You’re hearing there’s a lot of things out there all over the meat and the disciples in that scripts.

The first scripts you read were asking, Jesus, what’s going to happen in the end? He’s describing what’s going to happen before he comes back. So we should, of course, try to do the best we can to contribute to society and help people and be a positive contribution. But at the same time, we should not be fearful because we know how things happen.

Right. And it shouldn’t be shocking that we can be sad, you know, that things are happening and we can pray for God’s will to be done. And for him to show us how we can be a light enough time and love people the way he would.

But it doesn’t mean we should be fearful and raising our kids. It doesn’t mean we should be fearful about our marriage or family or I have chosen all of us. Are part of this generation. So be encouraged. And there is right now, because the truth that’s our first point is the word is unchanging. Can we count on very many things in this world? No. To be what can we count on? The word of God is unchanging. And that’s where we can get truth. There is no fake news in the word of God. Yeah. So right here it says in Malikai for I am the Lord. I do not change. Therefore you are not consumed. Whose sons of Jacob. So it does not change. And the Bible is so relevant from the beginning of time to today.

That’s right, Malachi. Those Malachi 3:6 you guys. So if you, you want to meditate on that scripture and just even talking to your kids about this, that the Bible is the same yesterday, today and forever because it’s God’s word it was with him in the beginning and he doesn’t change. That’s what Malachi saying. I am the Lord and I do not change.

You’ll likely be shifty parents, meaning shifting your decisions about things a lot if you’re not grounded in the word of God. We need to be reading the word of God more than ever. OK. Are you in the word daily? Not just out of a discipline and checking off the box, but a deep desire to be closer to God. To have more of his wisdom so that I can impart that wisdom upon my family, make better decisions sometimes that decisions look different than the world around you. And but you can have confidence in them because you’re reading the word of God.

That’s right. And you’re standing for truth. And you’re defending him. Another passage of scripture that’s really encouraging is in Hebrews 13:8. I love this because it’s a it’s similar to Malachi 3:6.

It says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines, for it is good that the heart be established by grace.

And I am so encouraged by that because it’s not you know, we believe in the Trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and we believe that God’s word was with him in the beginning, like it says in John Chapter one and all throughout Scripture. It’s in alignment with it’s with itself now that it’s unchanging. That is relevant to the uncertain world. Yeah. God warns us about what’s going on and how we should respond too Right.

So number two out of our six, keys here. Critical thinking is multiple things can be true at the same time. And when you hear that, you’re like, oh, I totally believe. Yeah, I believe that. Well, I want to challenge you. Is your thinking actually incorporating this principle? Or are we just landing on our biases? We’ll talk about more about biases and point four here. But it’s really important that we stay somewhat objective and take a look at any given problem, whether it’s a business problem, a family problem, marriage problem, something happening in the world, how your family’s going to respond to it, persecution coming against you, whatever the challenge is, multiple things can be true at the same time, because we know that God is at work, but we also know the enemy is our work. That’s right. And both can be working at the same time.

It’s interesting because when you were talking, it just reminded me that for those of you who are listening, and are married. And here’s a little marriage advice that has been encouraging to Isaac and I to be able to step out of things and be objective in the moment helps us to actually communicate fully and not be remaining in our offense, you know, and not be that doesn’t give the enemy a foothold to put thoughts or doubts in our mind that we then have to practice taking every thought captivity because it’s like big exercise. Right. If we able to step away from the disagreement or whatever it is and think objectively and take our rose tinted glasses off. Be willing to see ourselves humbly. That changes everything. And that is true for this. Yeah, because how many people say, like, I’ll just even say one thing. With Covid or with the situation that we’re going through where people are just like, oh yeah, it’s not real. And that’s like the one point that they go on know and they go and they just say one thing.

If you just say it’s not real, you’re discounting the reality that people have died.

And all of the work that the hospital workers are doing on the front lines that are super angry when people say that. Right.

Or you can say, well, OK, let me clarify. Not all of what they’re saying is true. OK, true. But what is causing this? OK. What are decisions are being made. OK, well, what is the enemy also doing?

So there’s some positive decisions but maybe being made maybe there’s an enemy also working in to do some other agendas and you have to have a and at the same multifaceted thinking process that is not just grounded on where other convictions are that you have that give bias towards your view, but instead you have to kind of taken all the data that you can and go, OK. There’s probably some things that don’t understand. Here’s the things I do understand and draw some conclusions from that. But I’m finding myself increasingly, the more I learn, the more I don’t fully understand what’s happening so I can be assertive about certain aspects of it. But if I come in and go, I know everything about this and here’s my here’s my stance.

It’s this. Then they walk away. Right. That is not necessarily only arrogant.

It’s actually arrogant. Right. To think that you could possibly know everything when clearly like, I just even think about people in leadership of the country. Right. They’re not going to necessarily tell all of the people in the country absolutely everything. Because the truth is, I don’t think the country can handle the truth like the full everything. They couldn’t handle that. Right. There would be complete chaos. There is chaos had one.

There’s diplomatic challenges of sharing everything, too. If you share everything you know about maybe another country, their involvement with things. Yeah. That could hurt other plans that are happening to put a danger or different. So we have to we have to be wise. If we understand and educate, I fully educate our family and she does as well.

And it’s superimportant right here in Proverbs 3:6 it says well, right before it says trust in the Lord with all your heart and not on your own understanding. And then it says in all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. So this really is talking about decisions. Well, that’s what decisions do they actually direct your paths every time you make a decision? There’s positive and negative ripple effects because of that decision that is directing a path your family’s going down that you are going down and your family’s following. So that’s really important to have wisdom and understand the multiple things could be true. At the same time, we’re in a fallen world. We are, yeah. It is a fallen world. And you know what? God is not the author of everything that’s happening. Is God sovereign? He’s absolutely sovereign, meaning he has complete control over everything. But it doesn’t mean he’s creating everything.

We have free will and there’s human will, which is oftentimes very fleshly, very selfish.

And when someone acts in human will, they can hurt other people. Yeah, and that is sad. And then there’s that. The truth that we know from scripture, it talks about this in 1 Peter, which we’ll we’ll dig into in a little bit. But we have an enemy constantly going around trying to scheme and do things. And there are fiery arrows definitely being thrown by who? The enemy.

So that’s why I, I really despise the saying and I always have. Everything happens for a reason. And if I am dealing with a challenge and someone tells me that, I will say, get your Pollyanna phrase away from me because here’s the deal, OK? I kind of understand what’s behind that and what they’re probably meaning. So I am pretty polite around it, but inside I feel that way. because here’s the deal. God can redeem anything. I’ve had many challenging things happen and God redeems them.

But it doesn’t mean God was authoring that thing to happen now. Did God allow it to happen? Yes. So there’s some semantics here. God is sovereign. He allows things to happen, but he’s allowing a lot of things to happen as we’re in a fallen world because he fixes it all in the end.

And we know this even from stories like Job, like the devil went Satan, went to God and asked permission to be able to do the things that he did to Job. He did them to Job. God didn’t do them to Job. Yeah. God allowed it because he trusted Job to be faithful and that he trusts us to be faithful when he gives us tasks, when he gives us trials and we have to remember like. That is such an encouragement to me when I’m going through something hard is that wow God has entrusted me with something, what is he entrusted it with me for? Not for my own gain. Although he loves me and there’s probably some I can learn from it, but he’s trusted me with it to bring glory to his name.

So bad things can happen to good people. And God doesn’t always author these things, but he always tries to redeem it for his saints.

But you know what is interesting about redeeming like even think about the word sanctification, which is an ongoing process of refining. Right. That we actually have human will. We have to choose to partner with Christ by surrendering ourselves to be in the learning, teachable heart posture. True. Otherwise, sanctification doesn’t actually happen. It just as a trial and a hard thing that you walk through. And so when it comes to like God redeeming things, yeah, he he actually invites us to participate with him. Yeah. But we have to surrender to that. We have to walk and abiding in him to actually experience the fruit of the sanctification. Right. So it’s it’s like God is doing it. He gets all the glory. But we have to recognize that we have to surrender to it. Yeah. And there are multiple levels. It’s like a spectrum of how much people surrender things. Right, because the human flesh is to come in and in self preserve and control and take things back. And we might be aware of all that. You guys, we got to be aware.

Now, if your doctrine is different than what we’re talking about here, no problem.

We can have some different beliefs about what the Bible says and still love each other. But hopefully this challenges you to read your Bible about these things. That’s right.

so we want to share from James 1:12-13 says, Blessed is the man who endures temptation for when he is a has been approved. He will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted. I am tempted by God, for God can not be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin. When it’s full grown, brings forth death.

There is man’s responsibility and that super important. He doesn’t want robots. We do have free will and we do choose poorly sometimes.

And that is a catalyst for bad things to happen. It doesn’t mean necessarily God authored it. He’s allowing us to experience things.

But he does warn us like the very next verse we didn’t plan on reading says do not be deceived.

We’re talking about critical thinking in an uncertain world. Do not be deceived. That’s our responsibility to not be deceived, to take the thoughts captive. To go through this processes are of abiding in him, going to his word, making sure that we’re in alignment with what God has said. We’re testing things. um realizing many things can be true at the same time and not just finding one thing going “its the devil”. Yeah, right. Like all this persecution up, it’s. Well, yeah, actually that can be true. But it’s there are also many other things true at the exact same time. One being Lord, search my heart. Oh, God. Is there any wayward way in me? Is there a lesson I need to learn? Yeah. That that’s actually the theme and message of redeeming childbirth that I wrote back in 2012 is God what lesson do you have for me to learn? Like what is in my mind, what is in my heart? I want to grow spiritual growth. Right.

And that only happens when we’re asking those hard questions, but do not be deceived. Verse 17. Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of lights, amen.

So point three is critical thinking with the Holy Spirit. Before we dive into that, though, let’s hear from people that have gone through the Parenting Mentor program real quick, which is one of the major ways that funds are ministry and we pour out in that program. And it’s a way to be more personally connected to us, too. We have a great time. Let’s listen.

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

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world.

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

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children who 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. it’s 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 or no longer fearing dark days ahead.

But we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation.

Awesome, so let’s dive into critical thinking with the Holy Spirit. So have you ever wondered when is it OK to follow my gut? My gut instinct? Well, I would say it’s usually good to follow your gut instinct. If you’re walking strong with the Lord. But if you’re not for walking strong with the Lord, I would question your gut instinct. See, the Holy Spirit prompts us and sometimes that’s intuition like what I feel I should do. But God is counter intuitive to the world. So if we’re not walking in the spirit, we’re not reading the word we’re not. Our prayer life isn’t vibrant when we’re not feeling the Holy Spirit walking strong with the Holy Spirit. Then what can happen is we’re trusting our intuition that looks too much like the world. But if we’re walking strong, our intuition will be more counter-intuitive to the things of the world. And we can trust that. And so that’s how, you know, I would be if you’re making important decisions, which you always are as a parent. You’ve got to be walking strong.

Yeah. And I think that, too, we need to encourage our kids and encourage them to you know, some people say, oh, like listen to your gut. Right. Yeah. And actually, that’s the opposite is what’s taught. I believe this is OK. So this is personal opinion. It’s not scripture. But I personally believe that the way kids grow up in the education system and with authority and with doctors actually steals that confidence in knowing yourself and and listening to those. That’s that small voice that sometimes says, don’t go down that road and say no to drugs. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Right. And there’s so much pressure that there’s and there’s so many thoughts and so many voices that children don’t know quite what to listen to. And then they become the adults. And the doctors are like, no, you don’t know what’s wrong with you. I know what’s wrong with you. Right.

And so I think it’s a combo. Right. We down, though. We discern anything and listen to the experts, but at the same time, trust with the spirits telling us.

That’s right. And and that’s the thing is when you are a when you’re a believer and you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave for everybody to have like everybody can have this.

If you’re a believer and you have the Holy Spirit in you and you have you have been given spiritual gifts. You actually and those gifts like spiritual discernment, I even think of. Right. Like, do you trust yourself when you have a bad feeling? Or when you’re like that? That doesn’t sound like right. Teaching. I was just reading scripture and that’s kind of off of what I know is true in the Bible.

And instead of just going with your own thoughts, instead of just going with their thoughts, you actually dig more into the world word to find truth. Right. And and that’s prompted because the Holy Spirit in you that’s going now. I don’t know about this. Right. Yeah. We listen to that as a point.

So there’s several things. First of all, sometimes we have to look at what’s logical. What we’re trying to make a decision. And I have critical thinking about a thing happening in the world or whatever. So first of all, what’s logical? Sometimes we miss we skip the logical part because we’re emotional now. We emotional being emotional is not bad, but we do need to think logically as part of this and then we need to be knowledgeable. So if we don’t want to just jump to conclusions without having enough knowledge, I look at knowledge as the dots, pieces of information. You need enough of the dots so that in wisdom you know how to connect the dots.

That’s right. And I think that this is important, too, even when you’re dealing with, like conflict to recognize that there’s actually two sides to every story. And so when you hear something and and you have to be on alert realizing that there are gossipers, there are manipulators there, you know, like you can’t just take everything for face value. You need to test it, you know, to get knowledge. You need to go seek out the other person and hear their side. And like, that’s our responsibility in the critical thinking process. Whether it’s hearing rumors or being led astray, because the whole thing that we’re talking about is do not be deceived. There are many false teachers. There are many Antichrist, there are many deceivers.

And can I just say, too, that even among the body of Christ, there can be people who are walking in human flesh.

They’re being protective and insane things. Right. And so we just have to be alert and aware. We need to test this. We need a test at all.

So now if you’re if you have the logic and then you have enough knowledge, enough dots. Now with the Holy Spirit, you can use wisdom to try and connect those dots. As long as not we’re not hanging too much on our biases that we have. There are convictions about the way things are.

And I like to sometimes suspend my biases and we’ll go over this next along enough to take in enough of the knowledge and the dots and create some wisdom and then pray to God and ask for help and understanding how to make a decision, whether it’s a siblings that are writing to something more major.

Yeah. And I think that it’s important that we recognize you guys hear us talking constantly about taking the rose tinted glasses off. The rose tinted glasses are your biases. That’s actually a fun way of saying your personal and social biases, your historical biases, your controlling biases. There are many different kinds of biases out there, and it’s important that we evaluate and go. OK. Hold on a second. Am I just being biased? Am I not really seeing the truth here? Because if that’s true, then that’s too painful.

Sometimes we need a positive disruption in our thinking process. What I mean by that is we have a rhythm. A track record that we’re looking through, a lens in deciding things on, and sometimes we need to have a purposeful disruption of that to acknowledge I do have biases and to disrupt that long enough to get to real critical thinking. I need to tell a quick story. There was a time when I was frustrated. I was in the business world I was succeeding at a very high level. A lot of fruitfulness in our family and in business. Everything looked great, but I had a spiritual agitation, meaning that I felt like I wasn’t making the kind of progress that God really wanted me to make. Which isn’t just financial. Right. And so I found myself. I read this book and I started thinking about how to think better. And I sit in, suspended myself from technology for an hour or two every Friday. And I would sit in a coffee shop and and have a journal open and I’d write one sentence or problem at the top. And I would just force myself to suspend all of my experience, what I know long enough. And I pray to let the Holy Spirit to give me new information that wasn’t biased based on how I look at everything or how I do everything in business or these kinds of things. And then new things would come about. That was I would have never thought of unless I suspended my bias. So I call that a positive disruption. You’re thinking process and spending time with God without distraction to really understand and hear from him on things which is important.

So we have a couple other scriptures that we want to share with you. I want to encourage you guys. I mean, in these podcasts, we are definitely like we’re we’re using a lot of different scriptures in the Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And it’s really encouraging. That’s good right now to see that God’s words unchanging. That’s not how our church services are, right.

It’s more expository preaching on Proverbs two. We just don’t have the time to dig into all of the scripture. This is why I’m bringing up and I really encourage you guys to read all of Proverbs two, which has to do with listen to the Holy Spirit. It says here in verse one, My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding like we should our heart, like we need to go search out for understanding.

Yes. If you cry out for discernment. That’s what we all need right now. We need to be crying out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver guys, we should be seeking this more than any kind of success in life or anything. Right. And search for her as hidden treasures. Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk up rightly. He guards the paths of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. We’re all like wondering, OK, what’s the right path? And, you know, he he’s gonna tell us. When wisdom enters your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you. Understanding will keep you to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks his verse, things from those who leave the parts of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversity of the wicked, whose ways are crooked and who are devoured devious in their paths to deliver you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words.

It just continues on and on you guys all throughout scripture we have these these urges. God is urging us.

He’s beseeching us seek me, cry out for discernment, seek for understanding.

And what we’re talking about with Bias’s is we have to set those aside and just seek God, which is point for how to overcome your biases.

We have personal, social, lots of different biases. And often you hear the word these days is that we’re triggered. And a lot of times our past experience hurts, pains. Things like that will trigger us when we see something that’s associated with from our past and that can really steer us in an emotional level to not think right sometimes. And so I think it’s really important to pray and include God in this, because sometimes also our biases can be resistant to change. Like we want to just believe whatever keeps us comfortable, whatever keeps us in not feeling bad about something. We want to just fix that instead of changing something. And we have to really look at that, OK? Are we just. Moving towards staying in the same relationship or moving towards so says it’s a self-preservation or the status quo because it’s easier. Or is there a real problem here and a reason for that relationship to change or reason for something? I think of the path of least resistance. We naturally are looking for that path of least resistance when Angie and I have learned is that sometimes really tough things need to happen that go against the path of least resistance or actually a path of resistance. And it’s not because we want to go on the hard path, never. But what we’ve learned is all the times where we’ve chosen the hard path over the easy path. It has really been fruitful in the long run.

Yeah, it has. We have another scripture here from 1 Peter 5. I just want to read a little bit before he’s talking. It says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble, therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Who who do you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. And then. That he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you to be sober.

Sober mindedness is huge. It’s one of the qualifications of being an elder or even a deacon is crucial for all of us. And you have to think sober mindedness is removing your biases, even maybe removing your experiences and standing in the present about what is happening. Looking through the word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit and asking for discernment and maybe even getting wisdom from others you can trust. Now, right next episodes can be take few opinions. Particular right views will teach you how to accept some. But that’s really, really important so that you can make a decision.

Yeah, I think that too, when I think of sober minded because the same be sober and you mentioned that that’s a qualification of eldership and that particular sober minded is actually time out. Humility like not being High in your own eyes and thinking of yourself in a certain way. But it’s also a quality of being mentally alert. We’re called to be alert, awake, aware of what’s going on in the world and to be self controlled and so sober minded by not making decisions based upon your biases, which sometimes your biases are influenced by your feelings, too. Right Like if you’re angry. For example, you could act out of that anger and so you have to step back. That doesn’t mean that it’s what you just you get can’t allow that to be a motivation or a determining factor. It’s not that you don’t experience that. The Bible says in your anger, it says, be angry and in your anger, do not sin. Right. So that is a human emotion. God is a jealous God. He has a holy anger. Yeah, but we’re not to sin in those things. We have to have self-control, which the Holy Spirit is actually what allows us to have self-control.

And that’s a great Segway into point five, which is we must have humility. Right. Humility is so important. I have experienced being prideful in my life and being humbled in that pride and in the pain that I experienced in that. But on the other side of it, how fruitful was, in retrospect, how thankful I am that even though it was hard, God changed me through that. And that’s super important. I think we all, myself included, need to be aware of the great potentiality of moving to pride right in any given year and actually have a healthy fear of it because it actually becomes a wall in your relationship with God.

Being able to discern and hear him and know what you’re supposed to do in situations.

Right, because it’s a sin to be prideful and to think of yourself more than you ought to, because then you’re not actually seeking God in the same way and willing to do the hard things even. But what’s interesting to this as be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, that’s because, you know, because there is an enemy and he is walking around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. And so when we’re overcoming, we are going to overcome trials. Life happens.

We are going to overcome the consequences and repercussions and ripple effects of other people’s human will, decisions that sometimes causes pain. You know, we are going to overcome tribulation. We are going to overcome because of. But guys, any overcoming is not because of us. It’s because of Christ. Because in Christ, we can do all things right. And because he’s the one who saving us, he may be using us to do something because he does ask us to act and to stand firm as an acting. It’s an action, actually, to stand up, to speak for truth. And we’re going to have to do that in this uncertain time, which is point six.

We. Have to stand firm and it’s hard to know when to stand firm and when not to. That’s this whole episode. That’s what we’re teaching you. How do you know when you stand firm? How do you know when you make hard decisions? How do you know what choices to make that put you down a better path than others? And I’m telling you, it’s not always obvious. It takes looking going through these processes and really looking at God. But what we don’t want to be is like the wave of the sea as it talks about. All right. We don’t want to be shifting constantly and pushed to and fro by opinions of others. In fact, standing firm sometimes will look very different than some of the Christians around you. In fact, some of the Christians around you may even mock you for may even think you’re making a mistake.

Well, things like that that we’ve definitely experienced that a lot over the years, just even in our parenting. And I bet a lot of you can relate to this. Right? Like maybe you have some believers in your family or friends right. In your neighborhood and you make a decision to not do something or to do something that you choose not to homeschool or you choose not to send your kid to camp or whatever. Right. And they start mocking you because they disagree with you. And what you’re doing is you’re you’re you’re trying to follow God and you’re listening to him. You’re seeking you’re praying about it, whereas maybe they don’t even necessarily do those things. They just do what the rest the culture does.

Right. Or maybe they do pray about it. But God tells them it’s okay for them to send their kid a camp. But God tells you it’s not OK for you can teach your kid to camp. That can be true, too. And so it’s not the same for everyone.

We don’t want to tread on each other’s liberties now. So there are there is Christian liberty. There is God telling different people different things for different reasons. And we need to love each other when we respect each other and we need to trust each other. But, you know, sometimes you’re going to make decisions and you’re going to feel it’s going to be hard because everyone around you sometimes or a lot of people around you will think you’re doing the wrong thing. And there will be a few that think you’re doing the right and yourself. And that’s a hard thing to move forward from. But if you crumble every time the opinions around you are awaiting you a certain direction. Well, you’re not going to be as fruitful as you could be as long as you’re in the word.

You know, we always ask ourselves, I mean, she can share something with you when things come up like that. Like the scenarios I was telling you about, like parenting decisions or whatever. One of the things that Isaac and I do, aside from seeking God, aside from prayer, because those are the first things we do. We try to step aside objectively. We go, you know what what what decision will we make if no one was saying anything, you know, like if there was no opinions? And then we come to our conclusion and we’re like, that’s when we need to make. And then the second question we ask is, if we don’t do this and we do that, are we going to regret it in 10 years from now because we don’t want to live with regret. And you have to ask those two questions about every decision instead of everything you really do. You say, if I didn’t have all these opinions, all these voices, all these fears, all these things, what would I do? And am I gonna have regret in future?

But you know, it efficient for Isaac. I found that verse that you were talking about. And it’s really important that we read this because this God has just warned us in all the scriptures that we talked about, about not being deceived. And then he warns us again here, any Ephesians 4:13. So he’s talking in verse eleven and twelve. He’s talking about equipping the Saints. And he’s, you know, giving some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to pastors and teachers, equipping for the saints the work of the ministry for edification of the whole body.

And I says, till we all come to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every kind, every wind of doctrine. That is the verse right there that we should no longer be children.

He is literally saying, if you’re tossed to and fro and you’re believing one person, then then they talk to you. Somebody else talks you and you believe something else. Then someone else talks to you. You believe something else.

You are literally being like a child tossed to and fro, being carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. But speaking the truth and love may grow up in all things into him. Who is the head Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effectiveness working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Amen. And I want to clarify something. Your experience is valuable. So when out earlier when I was talking about, you know, pushing your experience aside to get to clear thinking, sober mindedness, that’s true. But then you need to then rely again back on your experience and test it against your experience also. So that’s definitely an important part of it. And some of that experience is really helpful. But some of it can just keep us comfortable in our safe place and so we need to know when to stand firm.

That’s super, super important in First John to fifteen. It says, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him for all that is in the world. The lust of the flesh lust of eyes and pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world. The world is passing away and lust of it. But he who does the world. God abides forever.

So that’s the ultimate thing to put all this through the lens of. Is this the will of God?

Yeah. And I just want to just before we’re ending here, I’m going to read on a little bit further, because in verse eighteen, it says Little Children. It is the last hour. Now, here’s what we’re talking about.

Uncertain times end times. Little children. It is the last hour. And as you have heard, that the Antichrist is coming. Even now, many antichrists have come by, which we know that it is the last hour they went out from us. But they were not others, for if they had been others. They would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. But you have an anointing from the holy one. And you know all things I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and that no lie is of the truth.

Who is a liar. But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Amen. We have to test everything through that.

And are you willing to even sometimes forego a relationship for doing what God wants you to do? That’s a good question to think about. And you won’t always have to do that. But sometimes that is true sometimes.

And God wants he. He desires for peace. He desires for restoration. For reconciliation in all things. But you guys, we don’t compromise standing for truth. We don’t compromise being courageous Christians in an uncertain world. Right. Like that. We would do that. And it’s like we’re losing part of our identity. You know who we are in Christ.

And so as you’re being fed many different things, whether you watch the news or you’re on social media and you’re hearing of wars and rumors of wars and and all kinds of things, and we would just encourage you to be very careful, be vigilant, abide and him pray hard, be objective, ask yourself, ask your spouse as people closest to you. Am I being biased? Is there anything I’m missing? Because there are usually many things true at one time and then you’ll be able to teach your kids this.

And how important is that? It’s incredibly important for the world. They will be launching into.

All right. 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.

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Scripture In This Episode:

John 15:13 – “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 – “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.”

Romans 13:7 – “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”

Ephesians 6:11 – “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

1 Peter 3:14-16 – “But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.” But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.”

Psalm 44:4-8 – “You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob. Through You we will push down our enemies;
Through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, Nor shall my sword save me. But You have saved us from our enemies, And have put to shame those who hated us. In God we boast all day long, And praise Your name forever. Selah”

Proverbs 6:16-19 – “These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.”

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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.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. If you’ve been with us a long time, we are so glad you’re back. And if you’re new. Welcome. We have, I think, 76 episodes now. If I got there. Right. But a lot of episodes. And we’re so excited to be on this journey today. We’re shifting gears a little bit. It is Memorial Day. That’s right.

And you guys will be getting this the day after Memorial Day. But actually about a month before the Fourth of July. So we thought that this is would be a good topic to cover. And just to honor those who have gone before us and laid down their lives for our freedoms.

But a lot of practical stuff for your kids, too. And he has some amazing resources she wants to mention to be able to teach people about the Constitution, Bill of Rights and so forth. But also it’s important as Christians that we know our rights because if we don’t, we might lose them.

And the reality is, is if we don’t know them and we’re not teaching them, we’re not remembering those who fought and died so that we could have these freedoms. It’s really an insult to them right. It’s an insult to those whose family members are gone and they’re still living and they know they’ve experienced great sacrifice for us, for our freedoms, right? Yeah.

And so we want to teach our kids to give honor where honor is due to be respectful in that kind of way. So we have some scriptures that we decided to share with you guys. And you may see me if you’re watching our youtube version. You may see me holding this tiny little green book. This is the Bill of Rights we’ve reading up on this. We also have other resources that we’ve been using to gather information, of course, some online resources as well.

So you’re going to hear a short summary of the Constitution today. Some of the Bill of Rights. And we’re going to tie this in to relevant things regarding today.

That’s right. But you had a special quote that you wanted to share.

Yeah. Abraham Lincoln. I just remember when we were on our three month RV trip around the country, we went to Gettysburg. Yeah, we were there on 151st anniversary of the Civil War. You guys, there are reenactments going. It was cool.

So this there’s an image on my Instagram resolute man of Abraham Lincoln because there’s a statue there. Interesting fact is that statue is one of the only ones that is there for the purpose of someone giving a speech in the United States. And so there’s the Gettysburg Address, obviously a two minute speech. But here’s just the bottom part of it. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. So important that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. And we’re in a day where we start to see some of the stuff perishing.

That’s right. I love that it says “we resolve that what they died for is not in vain.” Resolve resolute man. Yeah. Posted about how we resolve. So as a parent, as an American citizen, what do you resolve to do on this day, Memorial Day or on Independence Day or any other day where we have the freedom? Right now, we have the ability to get our hands on resources that can help us to teach our children about our nation’s history, about why we have the rights that we have. And I think that that that is just we have to remember, we have to gain resolve. Like that said, we have to have a resolve.

Otherwise, we’re not actually going to fall through any other way and to make wise choices for our family and protecting our family as the darts of will come our way sometimes.

That’s right. So we have some scripture that we wanted to just share with you guys first to kick off this tribute. This is really where we’re titling this podcast Freedom of Speech and the Constitution in an uncertain world.

So we’re going to be covering a lot of different points in this podcast. So you wanted it tip it off.

John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends. And the soldiers are our friends, aren’t they?

I mean, obviously, they lay down their lives for many freedoms. Right. Yeah. And we’re not just talking about one war, we’re not just no, we’re not bringing up you. You read from Abraham Lincoln, right. So some people might think, oh, is this about a certain war like the Civil War or we’re talking about the Constitution. Maybe people are thinking know Revolutionary War. Have been many wars in America’s history. There’ve been many wars in the history, biblical history. All right. And we’re not going to get into all of those, but we want to bring on or we want to share with you guys the things that we’re just sharing with you, the conversations we would be having with our kids that we do have with our kids. And I think shared that quote with our kids this morning. We reflected on what we saw when we went to Gettysburg. And we actually were at where? The 9/11 memorial. Yeah. And got to see the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July when we went on our trip. An amazing impact on our kids to be able to walk around that and talk about living history. Right. And for your kids, those are memories they’ll never forget.

Yeah, we’re not the fearful type taking all our kids in New York City and walking around driving an RV factory around the country. But, you know, I you guys, as we were preparing this time, there were a couple of verses that came to us that we wanted to share with you guys, because some people are very anti-war.

Right. And in the Bible has many examples of loving enemies and praying for your enemies for sure.

And we are to definitely do that. But there are also scriptures that teach us that we need to we need to actually stand up for truth and we need to stand up for what’s right. You know, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is one of those versus it says to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die. And it continues on. A time to kill and a time to heal. And then if you go all the way down, I’m going to go diverse eight, which says A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace. And so obviously, there are times in history for all of these different things. There are more in there. That was Ecclesiastes three, if you want to go and be encouraged by that word.

But one of the things that Isaac and I have tried to teach our kids is that it’s important that we are giving honor to where honor is due. And this is something that I think people are not doing often today. What do you think about that, Isaac?

Absolutely. All the time. Well. Yeah, lots of different scenarios. And then I can think of two people borrowing from other people’s content to slander defamation to all kinds of things happening.

Well, it says, though, to render. So if I go to Romans 13:7 seven, I would encourage you guys to read verses the verses before it where it says it’s talking about the government actually and being subject to authorities. And this is part of why we’re bringing this up, you guys, is because we are living in uncertain times right now. Yeah, there is a lot of uncertainty. There are things happening with the potential election in October. Right. Like you were just teaching us this morning about ballots.

Potentially mail-in ballots and versus going in and voting and how fraud can have potentially more likely, more likely to happen.

And so there’s there’s a lot of things that are going to be coming up that are uncertain. Right. That are there. There is opportunity for the devil to sneak in like a thief to steal, kill and destroy like it says in John ten button Romans 13:7. It says render therefore to all their do taxes to whom taxes are due to other government. Customs to whom customs fear. To whom fear and honor.

To whom honor. And I don’t know about you guys, but people who have died for us to have freedom.

Well, in my mind they are do are honor. Absolutely. Ah, do our honor. And if we don’t teach our children what those families have sacrificed, what current people are sacrificing. Like I have some friends whose husbands are in the military. Yeah. And there’s a great sacrifice for those wives and those kids when their husbands are gone.

So if you run into a veteran or somebody currently serving, let’s all treat them like heroes. Let’s buy their coffee, let’s pay for their lunch. Let’s warm. Have a great smile on her face when we greet them. And we don’t have to agree in all aspects of war and things like that. But there is truth that they are doing what they’re supposed to do. And it does protect our country. There’s a reason our country is one of the freest countries in the entire world. And overall, we have the greatest government that’s ever existed. Are there problems? Absolutely. But if you compare it to other governments, it is absolutely better in the way that it creates more freedom for its citizens. And so let’s not be tarnished by the things we don’t like and not embrace all the goodness that exists in the reason that goodness is allowed to exist because of these incredible people who fought for our freedom.

Yeah. And I you know, we said earlier in the intro when are talking about not if we don’t exercise our freedoms, we can lose them.

And in what you mean by that is that whenever we don’t utilize, people don’t value in over time, people stop valuing it, then it will stop getting passed in favor or something will come against it. It will disappear. Do you see that through history? Whatever we tend to take for granted disappears. And so that’s what you mean there is that we if we’re not knowing our rights, then we’re likely not fully exercising them and when they’re infringed upon, fully standing firm against that infringement.

Right. And you can’t you can’t stand up for your rights if you don’t know them. Yeah. So you have to know what your rights are first, which is why we’re doing this part of this podcast as well. Because you guys, if we if there are people, today is a day when we are honoring those who have died for our freedom and then we’re just living and not exercising the freedoms that they died for. Isn’t that also somewhat of it’s it’s like it’s not really honoring them, actually. And and I keep thinking about legacy. You guys know, Isaac and I were big on legacy. We think vision forward. And so honestly, when we say things like if you don’t exercise your freedom, you’re liable to lose it, you might lose it. Now, we’re actually talking about generations from now. You know, we’re talking about like, OK, I’ll soldiers use homeschooling, for example. Yeah. There have been many attempts to take away the right of parents to be able to homeschool. It’s actually illegal in some countries.

And whether you homeschool or not, I’m sure you agree that we should have the right to do so? Especially in the data is in favor of it, right?

I mean, even people who are not Christians would say this exact same thing. Right. Like, if the government made it a law that all children had to go to a Christian school. Wouldn’t those who were not Christian feel this urge to be like, wait a minute, this is my right to act to protect my kids? Yeah. And so, yeah, it’s not just a Christian thing like this is a right that all parents should have to be able to teach their children and to make that decision and what they’re going to be taught and is just it’s a right that we have right now. And I’m not saying that you all have to exercise that right. By homeschooling. That’s what I’m saying. What I am saying, though, is we should be aware of what our rights are and we should be teaching them to our children. We should be supporting those to have those rights. Otherwise, that could be taken.

And remember, it’s not the government. It’s the people. What is the government? It’s made up of people and who elected the officials, the people. So we should never fear our government. It was set up in a way that we never have to. But we as people have rights and if we don’t use them, we lose them.

Ok. I mean, and that’s actually I even think about the right to bear arms. You guys, I mean, you could literally take any fundamental rights that we have and we could potentially lose any of those if we don’t stand up for them.

Ok. So Ephesians 6:11 put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness and heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand. Of course, there’s a lot of good stuff after that. You should read that.

And wow that has been such a powerful thing in our history, we’ll talk about some of the many situations where God has defended us in our past, which is just remarkable. And that’s it gives us this faith to be able to stand strong.

It’s true because we’ve been in some precarious situations as some that we walked into, some that came upon us, you know, like a thief in the night, in a way. And we our heart is to just glorify God, you guys and him as he totally vindicated us of all of them. Yeah. And he is righteous to do so. He will protect those who are walking in him, at least in our experience.

You know, it was common in all of those. Listen, I’m in a little bit. Yeah. Is it also involve us taking action? That’s true in faith and standing strong.

Do you think we would have the rights that we have today if people didn’t weren’t willing to actually fight for our right to not just die so that we could have the right, but we have people who are serving to protect our rights every day. Yeah, Amen.

And so, yes, you know, we’re really in a bit of a new age that we live in this. The next point I want to talk about. Yes. Is that the Internet is that there’s there’s a lot of sloppiness. And when people don’t know each other’s rights, it causes problems. People. Mistakes, and sometimes they make grave mistakes about hurting other people. And there’s rules and laws in place for a reason. You can’t just say anything you want about somebody. And we’re gonna go into the Constitution in the Bill of Rights and a little bit and talk about freedom of speech. But there is a right to freedom of speech, but there’s not a right to lie. And we’ll talk about that. There’s not a right to lie. There’s there’s there’s other things coming down the pike that I want to share with you. Of course, you hear the term fake news a lot. Part of the reason people say fake news is because you can splice a piece of somebody saying something on video or audio and then splice it was something else or splice a piece, add commentary and splice another piece and radically or completely change the meaning of something. And so a lot of times reporters, not all. There’s some really good reporters out there.

There’s some really bad ones, too. And they will literally have a paradigm in their head or their organization will. And they will go look for the narrative they want to tell and then they will splice dice and cut until they create that narrative. And if you saw the original footage, it would be completely different what they’re putting out there. And so we’re in an age where people are just believing what people put out to fit their own paradigm about something. And that’s really you have to be an independent thinker. Clear thinking is more important today than ever. You have to really be in the spirit and understand what’s true and be able to decipher what’s not true and to really understand it. Whenever I see splices, by the way, in video where jump cuts or something like that, I’m already like, OK, I can’t trust with Covid-19. There was a lot of those videos where people are coming out, doctors are talking, there’s this conspiracy and there’s all these spliced videos together. I immediately just kind of put my hands up and I go, Yeah. A lot of my friends out there were sharing that video. I don’t actually believe it because the spliced, diced and made up in a lot of cases.

Right. It’s interesting, though. So you just said you have to be a critical thinker to be able to test that. And it’s actually our job. We should never just believe what we see on the Internet. We should never just believe what we hear because we are actually called and commanded by God to test the spirits and to be vigilant, to be sober minded, to be wise as serpents, gentle as doves. It reminds me of what you were just sharing about people who do that, the reporters that do that. Right. 1 Peter 5:8. Reminds me of this. Right. Be sober.

Be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. And you know, as interesting about this, in conjunction with John 10, where it says that the thief comes in to only steal, kill and destroy.

That is the truth about the uncertainty, the uncertain world we’re living in right now. We have definitely we’ve been an end times since Jesus left. And things are getting worse. Things are good. There is maliciousness that is growing towards Christianity, persecution that is growing towards those who are living righteously. And so here’s here’s what you can do if you don’t know someone personally. You can judge their fruit. And what I mean is you go and you look at all their other videos or you go and you look at their actual family go. Do I want to follow them? Mm hmm. Do I want to live that way? Is that a person that I want to be like? And if you can’t say that, don’t believe it, because there is there is proof in the pudding, honey.

And so another thing about the age we live in, there’s something coming that you may have heard about, but there’s actually starting to be the ability to take video footage of somebody and then write a script that you want that person to say and then put it into software. And it looks real with mouth movement and everything of them saying that completely fabricated thing. So no cuts. Literally, that person’s image. Clear as day saying whatever someone else wants them to say. And it’s 100 percent false. Yet nobody can tell what’s real and what’s not. That isn’t. That’s what we’re walking into. That’s what that’s what’s coming. They can at least the techno technology is going to be capable of that. Yeah. And so we this is important for everybody, right. We need to know our rights. We need to understand this. And we need to be vigilant to stand for it.

And I would even say not to just look up your belt. The Bill of Rights online own the Bill of Rights. If you’re watching my YouTube, you see me holding a book.

Bill of Rights. I wrote a book for that. Yes, I do.

I have books. I just think that there is such an necessity for us to actually hold the tangible writings in our hands.

It’s one of the reasons why we teach cursive to our kids. They can actually read the forefather’s writings and not just believe what they’ve been told. That’s oftentimes a lie. Yeah. So why don’t we talk about some of these situations before we dive into the Constitution that God has vindicated us from over the years?

Because this is only a few. By the way, we don’t have time to talk about everything, but we’ve lived life. You know, we’ve gone against that. Maybe some of the the normal grains of, you know, the world. And in really stick to what the Bible says about living and things like that. And so, you know, own businesses have had business failures. I’m 44. You’re up 40, 40. And we have eight kids. So we’ve been through a lot of experience and we’ve had some. Before I go through hard situations. We’ve had way more good situation, a hard situation. Wow. Have we lived an amazing life? I love our life.

But I will say, though, that the hard times that we walked through and watching God do some crazy miracles really instilled in us a stronger faith. But but that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have faith. And what we didn’t see first, which is what Jesus says, he says by those who have not seen yet, still believe.

I’m going to give you three examples here. I just cherry picked three that I thought would be interesting and one I’ve never shared before publicly. And that is that we have a thirty nine foot class A RV. We rent out and use we use more than renting. Barely allow people to rent it sometimes. And it’s a renter was driving it and oil companies tanker truck backed into it with a family in it and just rented it for who it rented and destroyed the front of the RV which is a very expensive rig. And and then lied about it and blamed it on the driver. My renter and the oil company believed in the police report was not good, not helpful. And the the oil company said it’s totally not our fault. Our driver didn’t do that and so forth. And God. Totally. Not only paid for that RV to get fixed but also awarded us money.

Yes. All the time that you had to spend doing private investigative work and talking to people and getting testimonies on audio.

but see God partners with us. He totally gave me wisdom and I acted on it from contacting and talking with the leaders of this oil company. I got an Email response from the CEO of the large oil company to the head of H.R. two, eventually having recordings, conversations with witnesses and recording them myself to all of these things and submitting the evidence. And God gave us a victory in that. Praise God.

I mean, even the crazy thing is how many people would have given up? How long did that take? That was took me about six months. Yeah, six months. And so what’s crazy about this, you guys, is that the oil tanker actually backed into the RV twice in a row. And so fortunately, the family that was in there, video recorded some of that. Yeah. And that.

But the video is not really provable because of the way it was shot. Yeah.

Yeah. And so but just knowing your rights and knowing what’s true and the family that rented from us was a lovely family that’s in ministry. And we knew that they in no way could afford to pay for the wreckage. You know, and it wasn’t their fault, just hearing how the so that would have been a huge burden on them and us.

And and so I also talked to the police chief of the officer. Yet I also talked to the officer. You know, did your investigative work, whatever I got to do for for God to get the glory. And he gave me the wisdom on what to do. Because I’d never been in that situation before.

And you learned a lot about our rights and our laws and going through that lawsuit and pursuing that. Right.

Yeah. And so the other thing is, I owned a digital publishing company that we founded, co-founded and built and learned a lot about copyright. Oh, yeah. content, online internet stuff. All of those things. And unfortunately, the hard thing is that was our biggest failure. Right. We’ve had a lot of success, but there’s a big failure. And we went all in and it failed. We had 43 employees and every one of them got paid. We were honorable to our employees as much as we could be. And we were left with no income and 1/2 million in debt following us and praise gone. I diligently pursued because God, I feel told me to the spirit convicted you any harm. That was my big humbling experience because pride is the enemy. And I had pride and he humbled me. And I worked really hard. I proactively called every creditor and worked with them. It was a year and a half process.

I mean that you guys, I was so proud of Isaac. You should’ve seen him spending hours and hours and hours on hold with government. Right? With all kinds of people. Whoever it was, I’m seeking to make our debt right. And he would be honor reason with them. And it was it was for us about our reputation, regardless of if people found out about it or not. And we wanted to be debt free because we knew that was what God’s word was saying. And we didn’t want to be owing any man anything, which is what the Bible says and praise God, any man, anything.

All that debt was gone in a year and a half later. And and we were thriving.

you pursued your creditors and they were oftentimes surprised that you came to them.

I just have learned from scripture, spirit of God. And maybe my entrepreneurial experience, too, is you never run away and you don’t just back down if something’s happening to you. It’s very, very important, at least to me. I want my kids to see this in me, and I want them to be the same way because they’re not watching today’s world. They’re launching to the future uncertain world when things are even more different than today. So the last one is a little softer of an experience, but still an issue. We had a very nice I called almost an estate in Portland at the time when I was an entrepreneur world and with a vineyard. And I rented it because we moved. That was when we lived in Portland, because we’ve only lived in central Oregon for five years, five years now. So that was when we lived all the way over the mountains into Portland. And we had the renter stopped paying a large amount of money monthly and had a tractor there and lots of things that put in trust of this renter to use lightly and so forth. And he ended up renting to other people and painting cars in the garage and sold my tractor.

And said it was stolen, but it didn’t tell me. It was worth like seventeen thousand dollars. It was a Kubota tractor.

So and as I learn more about him, he is into the drug scene and dangerous and lots of things like that stole my washers and dryers and the house in the Bose sound system, the guys, it was trashed. So anyways, God redeemed that and he gave me wisdom when we worked hard. I love the authorities, by the way. They’ve helped me so much. I went. I called the sheriff’s department, I remember Austin was with me, my son. And we met in the parking lot with the sheriff. They had it. And we’re and we’re gonna roll in together to the house. Yeah. And, you know, there’s a lot of things that God just totally worked out to make that work and exit that renter.

And and we were we were kept safe. We were unharmed.

There could have been physical harm because of his background and friends that ended up showing up when my family was there and we were there and he wasn’t looking for drugs and things like that. So anyways, I just I I’m just sharing stories with you because if you’re walking rightly. None of us are perfect. We’re not perfect. But if you’re striving to walk rightly in, do wealth by your family and live well in the marketplace and in public and in be can contribution to the world, then and you have God, what is there to fear?

That’s right. There’s nothing to fear.

So you just keep moving forward and doing the right. The next right thing.

And God will vindicate and help and guide you. It’s when we’re in fear that we shrink back. Now, can there be wisdom in shrinking back? Sometimes there can be as long as God is giving that wisdom to you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It’s not out of fear because, I mean, think about the soldiers. Right. How many of them were fearful on the battlefield?

They are trained to run towards danger. And you know what? Sometimes in this world. And what’s going on? We’re going to have to run towards danger sometimes.

In faith and I would say that all Christians need to run towards suffering. I wrote a post about that awhile ago when we lost our last baby to miscarriage pregnancy loss. I like that term better than miscarriage because I didn’t do anything wrong to miscarriage, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times that can anyways. But when we when we lost mercy. when you walk through trials. You realize who your friends are. You realize a lot of things, right? Those who are going to obey God and weep with those who weep and those who get Fearful and run away and hide and those types of things. And we want our children. We want to be the type of people that God wants us to be there. Obey the scriptures, say mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Right. All all those things love your neighbor as yourself. And I when you’re walking through suffering and you feel alone, you realize that. You’re called to run towards suffering. Mm hmm. And I think that sometimes in wars, that’s what the Warriors were doing, right? They were running towards vindicating those who can’t fight for themselves. All right. You guys know that we are very pro-life because babies can’t fight for themselves and they are just as much any they’re just as human as any of us are. Yeah. And they have rights as well. And we don’t get to choose who’s human and who’s not human. And that’s why we’re pro-life and standing up for the rights like we were called to stand up for those who can’t fight for themselves. And sometimes in wars, that’s what people are doing. They’re going to set the captives free. And we need to honor them. We need to honor all of them. And so you guys today, Memorial Day, it’s not just about those who fought in specific wars for specific freedoms, although that is very important. It’s also about those who fought to set the captives free. It’s also about honoring those who died as a martyr for true freedom.

The only real freedom, the freedom that can save our souls.

And that that’s just always Jesus who died on the cross so that we could be free.

He ran towards he he allowed his accusers to take him. He allowed them, even though he was unjustly accused and he died, so that we could all be free. Real freedom.

We don’t we don’t want to spit on his sacrifice. That’s enough by allowing the enemy to win.

That’s another beautiful thing about being a Christian, is that we have eternity in heaven. So there’s nothing to fear while we’re on earth. People could do the worst thing to you, which is kill you. That’s the worst thing. And that is not good for time on Earth, but it’s what do you get to be? You’re going to be in heaven forever, which is better. And so the sting of death was taken away. So what are we to fear? So when we really have faith, we shouldn’t be fearing at all. So let’s dive in here to the Constitution. Wow, this is good. By the way, I’m not one of those guys that is like studied this extensively and so forth. I’m knowledgeable. We’re smart people. But I did prepare this and then guess who I ran on by? I did run a buy more of an expert than me. That is our Kelsey, who’s our oldest daughter, our oldest daughter, who’s a government major to Liberty University and honor student doing incredible. That’s kind of why it’s so fun to see here that your home schooling skills are things that actually Kelsey gets the credit for the hard work.

Yeah, that’s what it’s like raising independent critical thinkers, you guys. And they get passionate about things you get to watch them just engage in when she comes back from college.

She has some differing opinions about things. And we have these awesome discussions that are fun and so good and that’s good. I want them to be the expression that God wants them to be in the world. I want them to do what God is calling him to do. And that’s up to them. Our daughters, by the way, they have things to do, impact the world. It’s so exciting to see in our sons, too. And they’re all different. Yeah, it’s just fascinating. So let’s dive into this. So. The Constitution. I’m not going to go deep into this. Right. I’m going to give you the basics and I’ll go deep in some areas. But the purpose of the Constitution is to ensure that government is just and protects citizens from internal strife amongst each other and outside attack. And it is proven over a long period of time now to be the best constitution that exists in the world. Now, that’s an opinion. People from other countries tuning in don’t take offense. I do love my country, though, as I hope you love your country if you’re a different country, because people are listening all over the place. But our Constitution has also been adopted in parts in other parts of the world, too. And it’s nothing’s perfect. The only thing that’s perfect is the word of God. Yeah. But so the Constitution, by no stretch of the imagination, is perfect.

But it is a great attempt at creating freedom in a society of the least amount of wrongdoing is possible while keeping people free. And I think that’s really, really cool. So there’s articles in the Constitution, there’s seven articles, and then there’s the Bill of Rights. And the first article, the first three actually are to create the three levels of government, which is the first is the legislature creating laws and so forth. The second is the executive branch, which is the president and the vice president. Involving that in the Article three is the judiciary, which is like the Supreme Court in the lower courts in the process and how the court system works and so forth. Fascinating stuff is great stuff. Talk with your kids about and know yourself. By the way, I didn’t know this stuff until I had kids.

It’s like I didn’t like I had an education and then I had kids and then I had a better education because I had to learn what we teach and redeeming here, education.

And by the way, I graduated college and all that. But yeah, I don’t big I don’t talk about that much because I don’t care about it very much, OK. That’s just me. You can have a different opinion. I loved education. Love you. We’re very different in a lot of things that I respect that a lot. And my daughter loves it too. Yeah. And I love that she loves it. We can be different. So Article four is talking about the states and the states upholding democracy. Can you imagine if one of the states is like, I really don’t like what the federal government’s doing and what the that part of their constitution says? I’m going to create my own constitution. Now, here’s some protection. The states can’t go crazy. They have some freedoms, but they have to align with the federal government.

And then Article five, which is the method to make amendments or changing the Constitution. And that’s important because things change. Different issues come up as technology advances and things like that. There might be some need for change. Our additions or additions. But we have to be very, I believe, very, very careful about the. Very, very careful. And then Article six is about the USA. If they create debt in the world, they’re liable for that debt. Need to back that up. That’s so important for our currency. By the way, because if other people don’t believe we’re going to come through on our debt in the world, then our currency would suffer, which causes harm to our whole economy. So this is incredibly important. And there’s laws it has to with laws and treaties as well.

And also any this kind of cool, you might think there’s cool teach this to your kids. Officers have to take an oath of allegiance to our country only and its constitution. That’s interesting. Yeah, it’s cool. So they should lose their job if they don’t believe in the flag. OK. That might be a little bit of an opinion, but I’m extrapolating that from our analysis.

They have to have an oath of allegiance to the United States. What the flag stands. And that’s what it stands for. So they died. For this to for us to be able to have these freedoms.

So the flag shouldn’t trigger any officers.

You know, it’s interesting that just came to my mind is a lot of times people mix things up and they think that freedom means there are no rules and there are no laws. Right. Right. That’s not freedom because then there’s complete chaos. You know, it’s very dangerous. Just look at any country that has that situation. Definitely don’t want to be living there.

Yeah. And Article seven, the final one is the method of ratification or acceptance of the Constitution. So that’s pretty cool. Signed in 1787 in Philly.

Awesome. Well, let’s dive into the Bill of Rights. So you guys may not realize this, but in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights are actually in the United States Constitution there.

Now, first, 10 amendments to the Constitution. Yes. Do you want to go over those Isaac?

Yeah. Thank you. So we’ll go over the ten and I might give you a couple of the newer ones, but not all of them. I have prepared all of them. There’s 27 total. But you’re right. Ten went right with the Constitution right at the beginning and so. Or close to. So the first one you hear about this a lot. It’s the right to religion and freedom of speech. This is so paramount. You sometimes we take our freedoms, for example. But I have relatives, most of them are gone from Venezuela now. But I used to have lots of relatives in Venezuela and there were successful people there. And it was a vibrant country with the massive oil reserves. And it’s beautiful. I’ve been there. The beaches are gorgeous, like just amazing. And the people are so nice. And when I was there. Awesome place. But then what happened is socialism started taking over. They don’t have a constitution like we do or it’s been altered and changed over time in negative ways. And what happened is now you guys know the story, but it’s a socialist country and things are horrible there. And. And so what was starting to happen in the beginning of that, though, is private property rights were taken away.

We remember relatives that had like land and ranches and they allowed the people would come sleep on it, squatters and the government would force them to be able to do that really strange stuff. So that can happen when you don’t have the law set. Well. In your country. So this is really, really important. So freedom of speech is a big thing. And that freedom of speech doesn’t mean we can say any speech. I don’t know if you knew that there are exceptions to freedom of speech. Obscenities are an exception. Things that are illegal. Child pornography, for example, is an exception to freedom of speech, things that is illegal, that they violate intellectual property is illegal. OK. So very, very important, especially in the Internet age with social media, YouTube and all of the above. It’s very important that you understand that. Not for what? Only what you do, but what potentially might be done to you. That’s right. It’s really, really important. So we can’t you can’t create libel. And under libel is a couple of things. First of all, defamation of character. Is anybody allowed to just go out there and just say what ever they want about anybody in the public? Well, there’s a lot of ability to say what you want about people, but what you can’t do is put people in a bad light knowing it’s not true.

Interesting. OK. So that’s really if there’s public information that certain things are true, that’s much harder. But if if some but you can’t just defame somebody, for example, you can’t take someone’s image that has nothing to do with child pornography and put them with a crime and connect them in any way to child pornography. Mm hmm. That would be defamation. Clearly, it’s really important to understand this. And you can’t defame there’s a couple that there’s another thing, too, that’s falsity. And there’s a malicious intent, too, especially if you’re a public figure, which we are not. But if you’re officially a public figure, you have to prove malicious intent. Yeah. Much easier if you’re not like us. And there’s also false light. You can’t put somebody insinuate them in connection to something else that makes them look bad. That’s called false light. It’s called false light. It’s untrue. Implications is also defamation. And that’s really important. I’m saying this because it’s relevant to the age ran. And we’ve also dealt with this okay.

It’s it’s interesting because this all goes in alignment just even with Proverbs Chapter six, because, you know, the people who wrote the Constitution, some of them were Christians. Yeah. Some were not. Right. And the Constitution is not a Christian work. Yeah. In that sense. Right. Isaac. Yeah.

However, there is inspiration from from Christianity that has inspired some of these freedoms, these protective rights, such as the freedom to religion. Right. Like when the pilgrims came over to America, what were they in search for? They were in search for the freedom to practice religion because they were oppressed where they were.

Yeah. And so there is definitely that that is something that people have died to preserve. Is this freedom of religion reign where just because someone has a different religion or has a different moral right, they can’t impose that upon you and and defame you because you don’t fit their bill. Right.

You don’t fit their way of life. What’s interesting, though, is because you’re talking about like Internet, which is where a lot of media comes from. Like you see Trump always right now saying, what else did I say?

What was the last part of what I said? He’s constantly trying to defend himself. He’s taken off out of context. And that’s why he says “fake news” all the time. Right. And be careful of fake news is because people do what you were saying before was splicing and dicing regardless what you believe about Trump.

This is something that’s a problem and you don’t really understand it until it happens to you. And recently this happened to my wife, Angie, where they took parts of a 20 minute video about one topic. It actually was about homeschooling for homeschoolers and they to fit their narrative. They took a little sentence here, two words here, little I was here and then near their narration and then a couple of words here spliced it. Jump, cut. So it’s right here. And when you watch it, it’s like, well, she looks intense and. Mean, I’ll say, yeah, yeah. And then when you look at the original content and you look at the distortion, the illegal acts, it’s crazy. Yeah.

You know, it reminds me of this verse in Proverbs six that says these six things the Lord hates.

So if the Lord hates something, shall we hate them? Oh, for sure. Like if the Lord hates them, we should hate them. Yes. Seven are an abomination to him. A proud look. A lying tongue. Hands that shed innocent blood. A heart that devises wicked plans. Feet that are swift to running to evil. A false witness who speaks lies. And one who sows discord among brethren.

And that is oftentimes what is happening with people who are purposefully doing defamation. Right. They’re purposefully running into. They’re running swift into evil. They’re actually acting like the devil. We read in First Peter, where he says he roams a war. There there’s a roaring lion. We’re going around looking to see who he can devour.

The qualification here is when somebody is innocent. Yeah, but they’re being accused wrongly. Correct. Yes. Because there are times for justice and to bring things into the light where wrongdoing has happened.

Yeah, for sure. And so it’s that there is scripture in here that that for us as believers, we are believers. So us as believers, we look at this and we go, yeah, we should hate when there are false lies spoken. Yes. And we should teach our kids to hate when there are false lies spoken. Do we hide them? No, we don’t hide them. We actually expose the the lie for what it is. Yeah. And we speak truth.

Well, and there’s freedom of religion, too. And the same thing, which is we have the right to assemble. We have the right to believe what we believe. And we have the right as long as no laws are broken within what we believe.

That’s right. So in relation to like Covid right now, where churches are potentially starting to meet up and do things like that, it’s important that even pastors are familiar with their constitutional rights. It’s important that church goers are familiar with their constitutional rights, because if we all think that we have a freedom that we actually don’t have and then we’re at. I don’t know. We’re fighting for it. That can also make us look foolish.

So we actually need to know what the laws are state to state, but also in our country so we can exercise our right, because some states might, for some states do have the authority in their state constitution to during times of proven emergency, to have periods of time where there’s exceptions.

Our point, is not whether we agree or disagree with them.

Our point is that we all need to know what our rights are. And it’s super important that we teach our kids so that they know what their rights are as well.

And on this day, on Memorial Day or on any day when we are actually honoring those who died for our rights, you guys, there is a direct connection with giving honor to those who would give honor. And part of how we give honor is by remembering and knowing and studying and exercising our rights and teaching our rights to the next generation. Because if we don’t, they literally could be gone by the time we’re 70 or 80.

Yeah, absolutely. So the second one we hit on that because it’s the most relevant thing to all the issues of today. The second one, though, is our right to bear arms, the Second Amendment. You hear it all the time. Yes. It’s over and over and over again. And just it doesn’t matter where you believe. And levels of gun rights, it’s important to know that that is the Second Amendment. And it’s important see in leadership of those learned this where later actually in leadership when as well more seasoned, I used to run a large organization. And what it was I started to notice is when you take one thing out of a system or you make one decision, you start to really reflect on all the positive and negative ripple rippling effects of that decision. And so whether you own a gun or are scared of guns or like guns or whatever the case is, you have to understand that the Second Amendment is not only just that we get to have guns, but then the positive ripple effect is that protects a society against a tyrannical government. And you’re like, oh, wow, that will never happen. Don’t be fearful. I’m not fearful of our government. Why? Because all of these things are in place. Would I be a little more fearful if the Second Amendment was erased? A little bit, because that is one of the first steps towards tyrannical governments in other places. Just you look at history to learn things. Okay, so that’s really important. The third bill of Rights that was originally put in is the army can’t force homes to do to do room and board. They can’t force you to house their soldiers.

That’s crazy because that is something that’s been talked about even just with the potential of what could happen with Covid right. And so it’s important to know what your rights are to teach your kids, because who knows, in 50 years, you could if you want to, they’ll be an amazing thing to help out and in times of challenge.

So what’s interesting about this, you guys, I mean, Invision, back in the days of like and I just think of Braveheart and different, you know, different historical accounts where they took over homes and homesteads and and different things.

And I there was a time where I literally thought to myself what I have been willing to do that I like a lot of times people don’t put themselves in those shoes and that perspective to reflect on where their heart is. I think that you’re talking about the movie Patriot. Oh, yes, Patriot that what it is.

But like, that kind of stuff did happen back in those days when we were on our RV trip, we were going through a lot of the East Coast in the southern states and all of those and seen some of these old colonial homesteads. And they were even doing reenactment tours and things. Right. And teaching. But my point is, it’s those are great ways to teach your kids about human history in conjunction with the third Bill of Rights. Talk about making that right. Real to your kids.

Number four, protects from the government improperly taking property, papers or people unless there’s a warrant because there’s evidence.

So if you’re not doing anything wrong, there is nothing to worry about. It’s in our Constitution. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Number five protects people from being held unless properly indicted of a crime. We see this in the TV shows, right. In the movies and things. Unless there’s due process, proper process and real crime, nobody can be held. That’s right. Number six is the right to a speedy trial. Things can’t be prolonged out. To, to, you know, bleed someone’s bank to try and prove their innocence. No, it is speedy trial and get things done, get to the truth and ask an impartial jury. Right. Was so important, which is people that are more objective and having a lawyer. We all have a right to have a lawyer. Number seven, guaranteed a jury trial in federal civil court cases. That’s cool. Yeah, I like that. Eight guaranteed punishment is fair. Interesting. So it can’t be.

There is a Bill of Rights. Yeah. Right there.

No, thank you. And number nine, other rights aside from listed may exist. So there’s lots of I like how simple this is, because there’s other things where a judge can decide, you know, who did this? Is this hurting their way of being? Is is hurting their reputation in a negative way? Is there restitution as a restitution needed? And they get to decide in an objective way, even if it’s not here. And then 10, any power not granted to the federal government belongs to the states or the people. I like that the people are in there. That’s really cool. Yeah. And then there’s these other ones. I’m not going to go through them all because of time. We spent so much good time. But I’m going to just mention a couple for fun. Number 12 is a hot topic right now. President and the vice president are chosen by electrical electoral college. And that is the Democrats are actually trying to get rid of that. They’re trying to amend the constitution because what happens, what actually happens is big cities, New York states like California and states more they decide more of the election than all of the other places. So I’m not a super expert on it, but I know that it’s to create a voice for all parts of the country in the election process. And that was put in there after the 10 bill writes, but a long time ago, 13 was abolished. Slavery. Praise God. Mm hmm. Wow. That’s so important. All right. I mean, even like women voting is in here, women voting, collecting, income tax, the ability for the government to do that to rules around the presidency. Number twenty. You got to be 18 to vote. There it is. Right. So it’s really cool, but it sets up things for checks and balances and for us to live in the freest country in the world. And you know what? Our armed forces helped to enable this freedom to happen, which is so, so important. Well, we hope this was helpful for you. You have some resources, don’t you?

Oh, yes. So you guys a while back. I put together a blog post that teaches it actually asks a question. The blog post is called “Do Your Kids Know Why We Celebrate the Fourth of July”. And we’ll put a link to that in a courageous parenting show, notes which you can find at courageous parenting dot com. If you just look at this podcast. You’ll see all the show notes there and there’ll be a link to this blog post. And in that blog post, you guys, we share some other really good questions that are just really powerful to ask his parents to reflect upon. Am I teaching this? Why am I not teaching? It is a matter of not knowing it myself, like just really digging in. But then we share a ton of resources. There’s well over 20 different books. There are actual books that we recommend that can you can use to teach your kids the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. There are awesome books that do like a biography where every couple of pages is on a different signer of the Declaration of Independence. Our kids really like that one. There’s also biography’s. I mean, YWAM has put out some amazing biographies that teach you about these heroes of history. So there’s just a lot of resources in that blog post.

So feel free to jump over there. It’ll be in the show notes at CourageousParenting.com, hit podcast and everything’s there. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. We wanted to quickly tell you about a six week online parenting mentor program.

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Scripture In This Episode:

Proverbs 11:2 – “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

James 1:2-4 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Luke 10:27 – “He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Ephesians 4:29 – “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Galatians 5:22 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,”

Philippians 2:4 – “Not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcasts, 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 19 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 a start. An important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, guys. We’re so glad to be here. We really enjoy this weekly process of encouraging, sharing biblical truth in our experiences as courageous parents. Fellow courageous parents with you, right?

That’s right. We are still in the parenting mode. As you guys know. And so we obviously are trying to live out and take our own advice. But also we hope to also share some of our practical experiences with you guys, both the good things and the hard things that and the mistakes that we’ve made. Totally.

Because those are really the biggies sometimes to learn learn more from other people’s mistakes. Yeah, for sure. So we are talking about equipping your kids to be in the world, but not of the world.

That can be a really hard paradox for a lot of people. Right? Because they’re like, okay, what exactly does that mean? They’ve heard that may that’s like a biblical concept, right? Because we all live in the world. We can’t get out of it right now.

But obviously, the Bible’s pretty clear, even like Romans, 12 talks about having your mind renewed and transformed by the renewing of the word, right?

Absolutely. So we’ll go into this. But first of all, thanks for helping with one million Legacy’s movement, all the shares, all the reviews on iTunes and other places just hits it. Tap it, you give us five stars that helps the algorithms. expand the network and reach of the podcast. So all of that is really cool. We read every single one. It’s precious to us and spurs us on. This is one of our ways to give back and to give value to the world from what we’ve learned. So you’re going to say something about the homeschooling blueprint?

Oh, yes. So you guys know that the homeschooling blueprint is a course that we made for homeschooling parents.

I don’t want to say moms or dads. Right. I can I actually. In some of the videos together. Yeah, absolutely. I’m teaching videos and it’s about six hours of curriculum. Right. Isaac, you know, ish. Six enough hours. And yeah.

Because we have that 45 page forty five page download book.

Right. We call it the roadmap. The road map. The road map to home anyways. So a lot of people have been messaging me going, hey, that looks really cool. So is it an actual curriculum for my kids use or is it curriculum for me? And I just want to say, hey, if you’ve ever wanted to, like, go to a homeschooling conference and learn about how to start homeschooling, what is the what are the first things you want to consider laying a good foundation for homeschooling? That’s kind of this course.

That’s part of the course. And if you’re a seasoned homeschooler, we get tons of reviews from seasoned home schoolers, go through it saying this is like a rocket fuel to helping me get more organized, be more efficient, pick better curriculum, learning styles in my kids, all the stuff.

Yeah, we talk about the different approaches. We can go over how to like a basic practical skills that as moms are super handy, like time blocking when you’re creating your own routine and structure, which is always a popular question.

So it’s approaching 400 families already in the course it launched just several weeks ago. So praise God that is having a big impact. We have tons of testimonials coming through. Lots are up at the Website, at courageousparenting.com, and you just hit the tab and then you can hit homeschooling blueprint. Also, all the resources from this episode in all episodes are there scripture references and so forth. So let’s dive in. So first of all, one of the ways to equip your kids is through experiences, but that takes humility.

So one of the biggest questions or most frequently asked questions that I think we get together as a combined together question is do you guys share about, like, your history when you were a teenager and the mistakes you made, maybe the sins that you struggled with. Right. Whether that be like stealing to, talking back to parents, to being disrespectful to even more like sexual sin and things like that. A lot of parents want to know, like, what do you guys do? What do you think about that? Right. Well, and the reality is, I’ll just share, if you like. Isaac and I have been transparent. We’ve also been very we’re very aware of the spiritual maturity of each of our kids. Yeah. And we are careful about what ages are appropriate for each of the kids to hear and have those conversations.

But it’s really a kid by kid basis because, yeah, age isn’t as relevant as to whether maturity’s.

That’s right. And so the. Isn’t it true we all always say like man. Really don’t want my kids to make the same mistakes that I made. And so one of the best ways for them to be in the world, because we’re all in the world, but not of the world, is to hear how we made our of the world mistakes. Yeah, right. And the regrets that we have.

But we did a whole episode on that, I think. Yeah. We did a whole episode on our parenting mistakes. You can look it up.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, we’ve made more than those. But the whole point, though, is that it takes humility in your parenting to actually let your kids in on the truth about where you were. And can I just encourage you for a moment if you’re kind of scared about doing that? So you have some teenagers, right, in your. You’ve been talking to them about purity and different things. And I’m yeah, I’m diving into the hard topic. And you’re cautious. You’re like, I don’t want to tell them because you think to yourself, well, how can I encourage them not to? If I did. Right. A lot of parents feel that way. Yeah. And I would just say, no, you have to be humble and just share, like, obviously, you know, I can share the details, like, you know. But what I’m saying is share with your kids what your feelings of regret are or just share with them the life lessons that you’ve learned, that the things that God has taught you and maybe the things that you regret. Because the reality is, if we want our kids to stand on our shoulders like there’s this model and a good teacher, right. That their kids would be able to stand on their shoulders and do far better than they can. Right. If you’re going to be a good teacher, that’s actually going to require humility. It’s going to require you to be willing to say, yeah, I really screwed up.

But you’ll never get the opportunity to have those conversations if your kids don’t first feel a absolute love from you. And they need to hear from a young age on this need to be over and over again from a very young age all the way up, ideally. But it’s never too late. But they need to hear I love you no matter what you do. And you know what? That’s when they feel comfortable talking to you about the mistakes they make. We want to, of course, as parents, prevent them from making mistakes. But at the same time, they need to learn from their mistakes. And if they’re only learning purely 100 percent from your wisdom until they’re 18, then they don’t have that experiential learning to.

Right. So that actually brings in another topic as it’s important to have like minded biblical community around that’s willing to also share an appropriate time. Right. Like a brother to a brother sharing about their past mistakes in a humble manner to just so they can hear like, wow, yeah, that was big deal.

But there’s also there’s also really positive experiences, like we encourage our kids to play sports, for example, sports teams, which is equipping in the sense that, well, OK, so first, it’s always fun.

It’s always fun to play a game. Right. But our kids have many of our kids have played sports. And for them to be able to be exposed to non homeschoolers, to non Christians, to Christians who are being raised in. all walks of life, nominal homes, or maybe just don’t know. Right. And for them to have to really grapple with some things, like maybe they hear that nine year old cussing up a storm and they’re like, whoa, why do they have such a foul mouth? And then they hear the parent yelling, shut up on the sideline or whatever, you know, and you’re just like kids. It’s amazing what kids come from. Yeah. And when your kids are exposed to that stuff, like, I know some homeschooling parents or just even parents just in general, hold back. Right. And so I think that it’s important that we realize that that could be a teaching opportunity.

Yeah. So whether you homeschool or not, this is for you. I mean, it’s it’s it’s about, you know, helping your kids be in the world, but not of it. And they’re going to have to learn through experience of doing that while we’re protecting them. And as they get older, it’s a gradual process going. Your next point here. It’s gradual as a young and as they get older at your pace that you feel is appropriate to let them go, do more and more things and experience aspects of, you know, playing on a sports team or, you know, doing debate over here or, you know, the kids had so many different kinds of experiences, whether it was doing like a camp. Kelsey went to Stanford for a summer law and trial program and traveled.

Yeah. I mean, and we also did like summer camp one summer and just different thing. We’ve had lots of experiences over the years and we’ve learned a lot from those experiences. Maybe wouldn’t do some of them over again. But you live and you learn.

And can I just say it’s OK as a parent, it’s OK to make a decision and do something and go, you know what? That really wasn’t the best decision. We’ve done that before. Yeah. We’ve seen the fruit. We’ve gone who maybe that was OK for that kid, but maybe not that kid. And I think that’s how you have to approach parenting.

But you also should never sacrifice your kids purity. Walk with God. Yes. Righteousness just to get experiences In the world, right, exactly. There’s a balance there, and that’s where you have to be a discerning parent.

Right. Because a lot of times people will see, like courageous parenting. They’ll be like they’re surprised when they find out that we’re homeschooling and actually have had a few people like that point that out. And and obviously, like, you don’t have to be a homeschooling parent to be courageous parent. There’s lots of courageous parents that don’t. But they go, well, wait. Isn’t that sheltering or whatever? And I, I just think that there’s different aspects. There’s different kinds of homeschoolers.

And if you are purposefully engaged in your parenting in a way where one of your missions is to equip your kids for when they do go out so that they stand strong, then your approach is going to be a bit different than some people, you know. And that’s totally fine. You know, we have a couple of different versus here. The first one we are gonna share was in Proverbs eleven two, which says When pride comes, then comes shame.

But with the humble is wisdom that is so important as parents, because sometimes pride looks like this. It is thinking we’re doing all the right things. And it’s actually prideful to overly control your kids in some ways to think that you can say like that. I think that, oh, we can do everything right. And they’re saved.

Right. That’s exactly what I was going to say. He could tell I doesn’t want in or up, but I like I’ve met people who think, well, if you do X, Y and Z, then everything, or they’ll turn out Christians and this and that. You know, and and then their kids grew up and. And it doesn’t always work that way. Like, you can’t put your faith in what you do. You have to put your faith in God alone. And I think that’s really humbling. And it’s that concept alone. Like, nothing I can do to save can save my kids. But that doesn’t mean that I back off and I don’t do the things God’s calling me to do.

Yeah. And Pride can sometimes be a parent that’s doing more practical right things, but missing the love with their kids and the relationship really what is are what is knowing God about. It’s about relationship with God. It’s about knowing God. How do you know him? You can’t know someone with a relationship. Right. So it’s so important. If if they may struggle to have a relationship with God, if they don’t have that deep relationship with you. It’s very true. It’s not like a requirement its not an equation.

But we’ve talked about this in the parenting mentor program, like a lot with different people, because they all everyone has different stories of their upbringing that comes up often. Yeah. Like a lot of people feel like they weren’t necessarily known. Right. Or maybe their parent was living vicariously through them and pushing them to do sports that they were passionate about versus like what the kid was actually interested was playing drums.

We don’t want to send them down our path subconsciously. We want to know their uniqueness and help them go down the path. They are called to go.

That’s right. While at the same time passing on a legacy of skills that you do have so that they can be more equipped. So I hope you guys are hearing this and going, OK. So it’s that, but it’s also a plus that like it’s not an either or. Sometimes in life we can get so black and white to be what we think. Which one is it. But in reality it’s and. Both can be true. And so. And I’ve learned that from you, Isaac.

Well, there’s a great quote by Jim Collins. He’s in the business world. The book, Good to Great for the Tyranny of the OR or the Genius of the And. And we really in many situations, believe in the genius of the And.

That’s right. Now, at the same time, like big families oftentimes struggle with doing sports. Right. Because they could be literally spending tons of hours of their life driving here and there and to and from and then not getting the other important things done. And so you have to really evaluate for your individual child, but also for your family and what is best in what season. Right. Like most part of moms, it might not be a good idea to be taking your kids to practices constantly. Right. So you have to look at the resources you have if you have friends and family that can help with driving and things like that.

But because we don’t want to be the parents that just tell them what’s right and how the world is and that they don’t ever see it, but they don’t ever see it because over time, especially is again in the teenagers. They’ll lose trust in you if they can’t experience anything. They can’t experience relationships with different kinds of people, if they can’t experience, you know, going places with you. I know. I’ve tried to help that by taking my kids to work with me when I used to do conferences and things like that. Or, you know, they would sit with. Often they sit with me in coffee shops as I’m working on things and we run into people in the community. I mean, it’s just so important that they’re able to and as they get older, letting them go to certain events, of course, you’re going to be careful about things, but certain events where you trust things are gonna be safe.

Yeah, I think that having them exposed especially so I think about equipping your kids to be in the world and not have it. Part of me thinks about like vocation. Right? Equipping your kids for vocation. And I just think about how awesome it is that like our kids have actually been exposed to many different aspects, different types of vocations.

True. God put me down a winding road hasn’t He?

Yeah, he has. But it’s been really educational for the kids because they’ve gotten to be up close and personal to many different things and to see like, OK, well, from an entrepreneur, maybe I do or don’t want employees, for example, or maybe I don’t want to be an entrepreneur and I need someone to tell me what to do. Like, you were wired differently for kids to figure those kinds of things out before they launch from your home, if possible.

And you don’t want to do undue pressure on things that go against the wiring of your kids. And God wired each of your kids uniquely differently. They’re independent human beings created by God. And he put them in your jurisdiction for actually not that long a season, 20 percent of their life, of their life on Earth. And then there’s eternity after that. So very short period time to really equip them, love them and help them see God.

Yes. So let’s share from James one, two, three, four, which says, My brother encounter all joy when you fall into various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces patients. But let patients have it’s perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Yeah. So if they don’t experience trials, how do they know how to handle them?

And what’s cool is we get to help them handle them biblically.

These are the opportunities. Maybe, maybe they have a relational tear with somebody. If a girl, as a friend of hers, that there’s a relational tear, well, now you can take her to the scripture, for example, and you can teach her that and you can go, hey, I tried to share this truth with somebody and they didn’t receive it. Well, we got to learn from that. What did you learn? How could you improve? Not don’t just assume they’re wrong. Right. This is part of equipping them in relationship with different kinds of people to is like, okay, let’s first look at what we can improve. Let’s really be introspective. And then let’s look at where maybe that communication broke down and what you can do to repair their relationship without a requirement of them doing something. Because that’s real grace. Yeah. And then they start by teaching them these things you’re equipping them to be able to do in the future, to do in the future and understand the grace of God through.

Yeah, it’s true. I think that also we want them to be equipped. We’re talking about equipping here. And when I think of the word equipped. Think of tools in the tool box, right? And so what better tools than patience and faith?

Right. Yeah. And that we would have our kids be lacking nothing. Right. But they’re obviously not going to be challenged to grow out of their comfort zones in any way if we don’t allow them to fail at times and walk with them gently through 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 sheet? It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date nights. 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 from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more courageousparenting.com.

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

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

It is giving 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 who have so many answers to the questions that have been in our minds.

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 or no longer fearing dark days ahead.

But we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. Yeah, absolutely.

I think another thing is instilling a love for all people. Yes.

God loves people. Luke 10:27 said you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. Don’t forget the neighbor.

That’s right. And so, I mean, how much? Let’s just let’s ask the hard question. How much do you love yourself? Some people actually don’t really love themselves very much. Which is there’s a whole nother episode potentially there. So we want our kids to be confident and we want them to be courageous. We want them to have strong faith and know what they believed to be willing to stand up for that. All those things are required to be not at the world. Right. The one thing, you know, truth. And believe it, you’re actually right. But at the same time, if they don’t love themselves, like, that’s going to kill the confidence that’s going to kill. Like so much from our lifetimes. People can’t love themselves because they didn’t experience love. And so we have to make sure that we are teaching them how to share love as they are in the world with other people in a way that’s going to be that light, the way that’s going to build the kingdom of God. That’s going to be great commission minded.

And we don’t want our kids to grow up with an elitist attitude of we are Christians. And then there’s everybody else. No, they should grow up loving God’s people. He created all people. Yeah. And so that is super important because you have no relationship and no influence with people unless people since love from you first. Yeah. And that’s important. So how are they going to learn that in your family? They need to learn how to love each other their siblings wouldnt that be helpful. if They loved each other more. Well, that’s an important thing for them, loving others in the future. They need to see a marriage that love and respect each other. And they see that the dad sees the wife as equal in value in every way.

And the wife sees the husband as equal in value in every way, although different biblical roles, but loving and respecting one another in a team that is equipped to is helping them launch into the world.

Yeah. So another thing that is really important for equipping your kids for the uncertain world because that’s part of Our tagline right is to equip confident Christian kids for an uncertain world, but equipping them for this uncertain world.

But to be not of the world, you know, you want them. One of the best ways that they can show love for all people is to believe virtue and others harm.

And I guess this is something that you have brought up multiple times. It’s something I struggled with a long time. I go in a different relationship that I’ve had and I came to Isaac and he is like, are you sure? Honest you are. Sometimes it’s to my detriment, right? Yeah. But, you know, to be honest, like, I have gone to Isaac and gone, oh, I’m struggling.

This is this. This conflict is happening.

And he’s like, well, are you are you expecting virtue from them or are you expecting that they really think that bad thing about you? Yeah, right. And how many of us have thought, oh, they think this bad thought about me. Right.

So there’s plenty of times you come to me and say, hey, I think you’ve been prideful. I think you know this or that. And so we do this with each other. We’re both sharing with it what we need that. Yeah, we need accountability. Right. So important. But assuming virtue. I used to teach that in my younger years in business when I had a lot of young adults working with me. And I would always when they had a conflict with someone, I go, hey, you need to assume virtue. What I mean is you need to assume the best in them and that they’re only thinking the best. Yeah. And part of assuming virtue is maybe we don’t understand everything happening in this situation and we’re so self-absorbed that we’re only thinking about our part of the interaction with that person when they’re much maybe deeper layers of challenge. They’re right.

Maybe they I don’t know, like lost their job that day. And so they weren’t glaring at you. They have a headache because I’ve been trying to figure out what they’re how they’re gonna pay their next month’s mortgage.

You know, like a lot of times I think people will allow the enemy to toy with their minds and thinking that a text comes through with a different tone than it really comes through. Right. Or just different things like that. So we need to expect virtue in others. And this is something that we have to model, need to teach our kids. And that’s something that we started teaching our kids at a very young age. Just in regards to like when they when they tattletale way, did you actually see that? Okay, so why are you saying that? Did that really happen? Are you expecting virtue in your brother so important? So I think that that’s a really key thing in relationships that will literally play into the rest of their life if it’s not happening with the siblings.

So don’t expect it to happen when they launch like every day is practice for launching into the world. You’re equipping them every single day. It’s not like you need. Let’s not make it too complicated. It’s not that we need the special meeting in this special book and these things. We just need to seize the opportunities right in front of us on a daily basis and sometimes get outside of our own agenda and recalibrate to the opportunity right here of a sibling conflict and teach them, hey, are you assuming virtue? It kind of sounds like you’re assuming the worst in them. And so, you know, how does that make him feel? And then here’s Johnny with tears in his eyes, you know, and you’re talking.

He’s like, finally, I didn’t know how to put that in words. And so jot that one down, because that’s a really big key aspect of like just even being in good relationship with other people is to expect virtue in them that what their heart intentions are actually pure and godly. OK. So let’s talk about Ephesians 4:29 which says.

Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification that it may in part grace to the hearers. This is a big deal. So we were talking about like potentially the kids are at soccer practice that here another kid talking with bad language that would be considered corrupt talk, or maybe they are at church and some girls are gossiping or some boys are gossiping because it is not gender specific. You guys, the stuff happens both ways. And you’re just you go. OK. So let’s see what the Bible says. Let’s go to Ephesians four. Let no corrupt word proceed from your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification that it may impart grace to the hearers and teaching your kids to be careful about who they spend a lot of time with because that will be more influence in their life is important.

You also need to teach your kids how to choose wise friends and how to be discerning, actually. Yes. When our kids are younger, obviously, like we we choose the friends, actually. I’ll say that when they’re really young because a two year old and four year old, they can’t really they don’t have discernment in that same kind of way. Maybe they do in some regards. And you need to be watching for that. Right. Like, they just really don’t get along with that one kid. But I think that it’s important that as they’re getting older, you’re constantly from the time that they’re little, you’re teaching them how to share. Right. And then if there’s another little kid that’s not being taught to share or just really is super selfish and doesn’t ever share, then your child will most likely naturally not want to spend time with that other child. Just be on the lookout for that. Right. And they don’t push that relationship. But you don’t close the door on it either, right? You have balance with that because your kid can be a good influence. But at the same time, you want to be sensitive to your child’s, like, obvious outward. I don’t know if you would call them symptoms or like triggers that you can see that will show you. Oh, they’re not really clicking right. And I think that it’s important that we are constantly teaching our kids wisdom and how to choose good friends.

And the best wisdom is found in scripture alone.

It is. And so we also want to teach them. Part of equipping them is how to be wise, but not judgemental of everybody because they don’t align that same example. There can be a multitude of examples. Yeah. But the swearing kid or whatever is let’s not let’s not be judgmental. Right. We’re not to judge people who aren’t believers.

Now when you say judge a lot of people, I mean her. Okay. Sorry guys. This kind of like a little soapbox for me on judgment, but I so I won’t go into a deep depth. But a lot of Christians mess up the word judging, right? I do. And it’s important that you teach your kids that there is a difference between people who are in the church and people who are outside of the church.

And so we’re not to judge people who are outside the church we’re to have compassion on him, actually. So in the circumstance where the kid who’s not a Christian cusses or yells back at his mom or dad. Right. And your kid comes to you. I would hope your kid comes to you noticing that’s different because hopefully that’s different your home.

Yeah, I think, unfortunately, too often parents are so busy and kids just are so used to things that parents aren’t aware they’re used to and don’t even talk to the parents. That’s so true.

So so I would I would hope that your kids would notice that that’s weird because it’s not what they do in their home, but that they would like be like, wow, mom, like that that happened. And they are like coming to you with it.

And that praise God, if they come to you, that stuff that shows that they trust you, if they don’t come to you with that stuff, that shows they don’t trust you or they’re not noticing a difference. So it’s not a big deal to them. Yeah, both things are actually red flags in my mind.

Yes. So you we just talked about that, the nonbelievers. But but then there’s people that do believe the Christians and we are to discern another maybe a better word would be to discern who we spend time with based on their fruit. God says to look at the fruit and there is a great scripture on that in Galatians 5:22

but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering. I love that word. Longsuffering kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control against such. There is no law. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Well, those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the spirit. Let us also walk in the spirit that goes on so powerful.

And so, first of all, we have to model live out living and leading with the fruits of the spirit. Do we show the fruits of the spirit? Are we modeling that for the kids and how we interact with them when they’re being good? And when they’re not being good? Where are we showing the fruits of the spirit? Totally. It is so important to do that. So they feel the love and they understand what. Transformation looks like. And so when God only God can do the salvation. But when he does that, they desire to walk in the fruits of the spirit. And also, they’re looking for Comrads. They have the fruit of the spirit. So we do need to discern amongst other believers who has fruit and who doesn’t and only walk with people with strong fruit, stronger in a deeper, more personal way. But we are to love all people. So that’s super important. So it’s important to teach your kids wisdom by through example, but also teaching the biblical truth of that. And looking for the fruit, you can always tell by the fruit.

So Philippians 2:4 says, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Amen. So this is something that we want to be modeling for our kids. Like if someone in your community, like, guys, here’s a test if you’re living in. In church community, biblical fellowship. Whatever you want to call it. There’s so many different phrases, all means the same thing within the body of Christ. Even your neighbors, like if you’re living with your life open to people, then people should feel welcome to come to you when they have a problem. Yeah. And are you looking into the interests of others? Are you there to help them? Is that modeled in front of your kids or are you just so driven in your own mission that you are literally living life and not even taking consideration for anyone else but yourself?

Amen. And the final thing that goes with that is equipping your kids is teaching them how to be servants to other people, how to serve and have polite manner, to have a place in the world, not be self-seeking, you know, stepping aside for the older lady, holding the door open here, some practical things that you have little kids can do to practice looking into the needs of others, maybe holding the sister’s hand in the parking lot.

Right. To help mom while she’s fumbling with the grocery. Yeah. So she doesn’t get hit by a car or whatever. Very like there’s so many things that it’s like, oh, wait, come here. Your shoes untied, helping a sibling, maybe even just helping out a neighbor. Like maybe you have an elderly neighbor and you see that her weeds are going out of control. Yeah. You know, like it. There are so many ways that we could practically be serving other people. And isn’t that really what we want our kids? We want them to have that as part of their their makeup when they leave and launch from our home. Right. Amen. And if they would be looking to the needs of other people.

Well, hey, thanks so much 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 packet 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 webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone.

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

That’s courageousparenting.com

 

Scripture In This Episode:

1 John 5:14 – “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

Scripture In This Episode:

Proverbs 12:25  – “Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.”

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Deuteronomy 11:19 – “You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

Proverbs 1:5 – “A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,”

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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 I’ve 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 will start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Everyone, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys.

We’re excited to engage with you about homeschooling in a different way this time.

We’re going to talk about eight disciplines that accelerate learning.

We get so many questions. Well, Angie gets so many questions about homeschooling right now as the world has turned to homeschooling.

Well, and, you know, if you’ve listened to any of our podcasts, you’ve heard us acknowledge the truth, that what is happening right now is not truly a good reflection of homeschooling.

It’s more like school at home because it’s lacking the positives of socialization on co-ops and all the good things you can do, all the activities that you can do, the extras.

Yeah. So that’s good to be aware. Yeah. Because it’s important to realize that, you know, what you’re experiencing right now. You may be going, oh wow, there’s some really good things. Like I’m really glad that there are there are some redemptive things happening in our home in the sense of having a courageous parenting attitude, which is, oh, my kid has some sin in some areas. And instead of being frustrated with that, frustrated with their attitudes, you go. Good thing I’m able to see this right now. I’m going to dig in with them, disciple them and lead them to the Lord and help them to grow out of that. Right. Amen. So but but it still can be hard for people because there’s aspects of homeschooling that they don’t realize are missing.

So while we’re gonna dive in in a second, we have eight disciplines, four of which we’re going to talk about in this podcast episode. And next week we’ll cover the other remaining four. That’s two part series. Now, the last time we did a two part series. It went really, really well. So we’re hoping you love this and love the next one to share it, because it really helps with the one million Legacy’s movement, which we’ve been pursuing since the beginning, since I left the work world, the business world, to do full time ministry with Angie. We had this on our hearts to do so. You’re a big part of that, whether you you donate at CourageousParenting.com or you share or give reviews on iTunes or anywhere else or share posts.

guys were just so encouraged because when we started this, part of it was that we wanted and we wanted people to realize they were not alone because there were times when we felt alone. Yeah. It’s not good to be running the race alone. And so if you feel like you are alone in your parenting and in pursuing biblical parenting and being a courageous parenting, making hard decisions, I want to encourage you I’ll just your plug for one of our previous podcasts, which is don’t do the race alone. So go look in season one and you’ll find a lot of encouraging podcasts there, too.

Now, something the spirit prompts us to do this year. Just really, in the last month since Covid 19 and all the things around that are happening, the financial challenges people are having is we started giving some courses away. And what’s been really encouraging to me is that nobody has taken advantage of that meaning. We’ve given almost 100 courses away so far, but only the only people that have gotten them are people in real need, right.

Where like there they’ve lost their jobs or husbands have lost their job.

There’s just no way they can pay for it. And so, obviously, when people buy courses, that is one of the primary ways we make that is the primary is. Yeah. So. So that’s important. But and that’s happening, too. And that’s just been encouraging that people are buying them, even though we put that announcement out. But people in real need messages.

And when we can do that and I think that it’s important that people realize, too, that when they are investing in their in a course, they’re investing in their legacy. But they’re also enabling us to be able to bless another family to it when that happens. Yeah. And so I just wanted you guys to know that that was really huge on our heart.

So when you buy one, likely someone else is getting one. And because you did that and that’s really cool. That’s another way. You’re part of the one million legacies movement and more people can be impacted even if the husband lost the job or something like that right now. So that’s really cool. We’re praying for those who are financially challenged right now. We know full well what it’s like to lose income, lose a business. These kinds of things. There was a time where half a million dollars in debt from a business was following us and no income. And we had a large family and we remember vividly that. But you know what? We clung to the Lord. And so if that’s you, we pray that you cling to the Lord. He will not let you down. Things don’t work out exactly how we always want them to do, but they always work out in the very best. Way that God wants them to happen.

Yeah. And so we just know that we’re lifting you guys up. We’re praying for you. We’ve been in those situations, like Isaac said. And we also want to you know, one thing while Isaac was sharing that, it just hit me. If you have I know that I mentioned a podcast already, but if you haven’t listened to the one that’s raising your kids through life struggles, I really think that that could be a powerful podcast for couples to listen to if you are struggling financially during this time. We have a couple podcasts on how to parent through hard life situations. Yeah, and I. I really think that this is an opportunity. I just really exhort you and encourage you as one sister to another or a sister to a brother. Like we’ve watched of those hard times and we had a choice to make on whether or not we were going to try to shelter our children from experiencing any of the consequences of our sin or bad decision making on things we imposed on us which is happening now. Right. Exactly. And yeah. Or things being imposed upon you. Yeah. We had a choice to make on if we were going to shelter our children completely from that. And what we were going to allow them to experience. And we chose to make ourselves transparent and vulnerable with our kids and sharing things so that they could see a biblical model. We felt really strongly that that was something God was calling us to, to walk in for the first time. Yeah. But also to model for kids what it looks like to walk through trials as believers. So we actually all have an amazing opportunity right now to model what Christian living is supposed to look like in time. Uncertain times.

Absolutely. So and by the way, we recently launched a health workshop that’s free, completely free, has fun 50 minutes because Angie’s 20 years now married and raising eight kids. And she has always pursued since the beginning, helping our family heal naturally and proactively boost our health through natural methods. And while being a full believer in doctors and medicine and so forth, but only when the natural path doesn’t work.

And so we really pursued to have a balanced perspective on that. Not making an idol out of either.

Yeah. So if you want to if you want to check that out, it’s in the show notes a courageous parenting dot.com, along with all the biblical references, any research to talk about a video of this episode and so forth. So let’s dive in. OK, the first of eight is disciplines. The first of eight disciplines. Yes. Thank you. Is to teach to your kids interests.

Yeah. So this is you know, obviously this kind of goes in alignment with more of a delight directed study. Or even Charlotte Mason had the philosophy of education where year in integrating all aspects of a child’s whole life. Yeah. OK. I’m not going to dig really deeply into that approach of homeschooling, although we do cover that all of the approaches of homeschooling in the homeschooling blueprint course that we just launched. But I think that this is an important aspect that all people, regardless of your approach of homeschooling, whether your Montessori homeschooling or your classically educating your kids or you’re doing a literature based curriculum, you can teach to your kids interests. And I think that this is a really important aspect that will accelerate learning, because obviously, don’t you and you learn more if you’re enjoying what you’re learning. Right. Like, if someone was assigning you to read something that you weren’t interested in and then you also had some books on the side that you wanted to read because you knew you were going to apply them to your life immediately, what would you choose and what would you enjoy reading more of and what would call you back to reading it? Of course, the things that you’re interested in. And so I’m not saying that we cater completely to that because obviously, like our not all kids love math, but math is something they need to learn. Right. And so there are those core subjects that we need to be teaching our kids and making sure they’re being stimulated in.

But at the same time, we’re really paying attention to your kids, studying them, seeing what they’re interested in, and finding either a unit study or creating something on your own, depending on the type of person that you are. And diving into those things that your kids are interested in can really accelerate their learning because they want to learn it.

And there’s so many different kinds of people. God made each person unique. And if you’ve ever taken a personality test or something like that, there’s actually truth to those. It comes from two thousand years goes the temperaments and different assessments kind of all say the same thing. Some are more accurate than others. But really, you and your kids have different learning styles and are wired differently. And that really can be a blessing with education and it can wreak havoc in education if we’re not adapting to who people are in the personal interests. That’s right. Which is superimportant. I remember, for example, I was. Lee educated now the very beginning, actually, early years, I was in a alternative school where everybody was in an open room and kind of learned on your own with people helping in more of a disorganized approach. Is the way organic, the way I remember is probably you have it. And I fell through the cracks and was very shy and really didn’t. I needed more structure and direction, but probably in an area of my interests. And so that was really challenging. I remember actually being threatened to hold back a grade or I had to go into the special education class for a little while. And then this wonderful mom volunteer worked with me one on one. Immediately I was back to speed.

It was literally I just was not doing anything and I didn’t have any direction. And and how did that make you feel? Oh, made me feel horrible. And in fact, I remember some kids calling me stupid. And this can have ramifications to somebodies identity. Thankfully, I was very stubborn in a good way in which I was determined never to be stupid and to prove everyone wrong. Absolutely. So not all kids have that determination. But I remember it can be frustrating if we’re not catering a little bit to who someone is, because I remember one day I didn’t realize I was going to share this, but I turned the lights off in the school I was in. That was to get everybody’s attention. And so but usually the teacher that does that and I turned the lights off and I said a very naughty word. I said the F word to everybody. Well, and I walked home. That was in third grade. And so now and I just left I walked home because I just felt totally alienated by the environment. And so I don’t know, that could’ve been my sin for sure, I take responsibility for that. But at the same time it was around not feel I can make in progress, not feeling like, you know, I understood what to do. Yeah.

And I think it’s important that, like, you know, a lot of people have those stories. I have the opposite kind of. Absolutely. Just if I’m not going to go into details. But, you know, a lot of times people think that home schoolers home school because they had a bad experience. And since you just shared a bad experience that you had with education. I just think that to balance our story, it’s important that people understand I had a fantastic educational experience. I mean, there were a couple years that were really hard for me when my parents moved in.

They switch, say you’re like an A student. But yeah, I learned well in the box. I read you later. I was a cheerleader. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, I mean, what I did, I absolutely loved everything.

You were thriving. And but, you know, it’s funny. When we first talked about homeschooling. I was the one for it or no. When I was the one against it and for public school. And you were the one that was more receptive.

I was more receptive. But I also didn’t want to I was looking for reasons for why wouldn’t have to homeschool because I know it’s going to be a lot of work. Yeah. And so I didn’t want my kids and socially awkward were just sharing like true. We’re being really transparent now. We weren’t planning on sharing this stuff, but I think they can be encouraging to you because maybe you relate to something that one of us has shared. But the important thing I think is to think back to that little boy that you were just describing yourself. Thirty five years ago. Yeah. Thirty years ago, right? Yeah. Long time ago. Long ago.

And, you know, today, how many little kids are that little boy, right. Where they are not fitting in to the mold that the government or the education system has set up for them? Yeah. And instead of and the teachers probably I know many awesome, awesome teachers. Their heart goes out to those kids and they try so hard. But you know what? It’s not their fault that they don’t have enough time because they’ve got so many students.

And then later, I remember in my later years, like, you know, wasn’t even high school. I remember sitting there and the teachers in front and they’re just teaching. There’s pontificating, just pouring out information constantly. And I remember sitting there in my knee would start bouncing and then I would grit my teeth. And then pretty soon I had these weird visions. I’m not sure that’s real quick on my hand.

I think I’ve never really I’ve never really felt before.

I used to think, what is the fastest way out of this room? And it wasn’t the door. I know. Yeah, I was like I had this vision of standing up and throwing my desk out the window and jumping out after.

It’s crazy. It was the single level. It wasn’t a suicidal thought.

It was like aggravated, frustrated thought. I’m stuck here, incredibly boring, and I need to be doing something.

Oh, interesting. You guys, these are stories I haven’t even heard and we’ve been married 20 years.

So I just think that because I think it’s important to pay attention to who people are now. I needed to probably be corrected in that thinking. And yes, you know, you need to be obedient. And I did. I sat there. I never did anything like that. No regrets. Oh, but these are thoughts of my life. These are thoughts in my mind because of I don’t think how I was in education was really for how is wired.

Yeah, it’s interesting. So as we’re talking about this first point still, which is teach to kids interests, it’s important to understand that, like, there are kids that actually think that way. Like it’s healthy for me to be challenged in my thinking. Hearing Isaac share his story, because that wasn’t my story. And we all need to be able to put ourselves in other people’s perspectives. We need to be stretched in that kind of way with our kids to study them to go. OK. So is this really a struggle with them? Am I pushing something that’s in my agenda because somebody somewhere said that they have to learn this by the time they’re age five or the time they’re age seven, when in reality maybe they have a strength in a different area where it could actually, like, cultivate a real enjoyment in earnings. Anything. Right. One thing. And hold back that other thing. That’s just super, super hard for even just six months and then try it again and wait. And I had to learn that the hard way with some of our older kids. I mean, you always hear that story from parents of many that are like, I made most of my mistakes with my first born or you know what I mean? There really is truth to that, no matter how hard you try. Because we heard that and I was determined, I am not going to be that parent that says that.

But now, looking back and having had eight, I recognize that there are things that are not even even a temptation to be a struggle for me. Yeah. As far as like I’m not as prone to push in a competitive nature of, oh, my kid has to meet these specific standards on this person. Specific timeline. It’s more like looking at the whole person, seen the interests. Also looking at the things that are required to be learned. Being able to focus on character and knowledge of the word of God and then teaching them the core things. Right. Yeah. But not being so stuck in an agenda.

So you have to know their learning styles. And we talk a lot more about this in the homeschooling blueprint course. Ran out of time to go through everything today. And that’s definitely in there. But you need to study your kids and you need to think about. OK, do they need more breaks or, you know, what do I need to do? Do I need it? You know, why do I need to focus in on an area? And if they’re allowed to study in a delight directed way, then they have to become easier for them, too.

And there are ways to like when you’re homeschooling, you said something like helping them to study in a way that helps them. And it just reminded me of one of our kids does better learning if he’s kind of got some movement going, which was he gets that from you with your whole knee bouncing that you were just describing.

And so we got him one of those large exercise balls that they could just kind of bounce on. And honestly, I’m not kidding you. You guys being able to read longer stints of time doing math, faster, more focused. If he had a little bit of movement and and before we figured that out, we were also able to start doing different things like having him work for 20 minutes and then having him jump on the trampoline for 20 minutes and then bring him back and do another 20 minutes work. And, you know, obviously that got larger as the kids got older and it was a matter of growing. And then this ability to be disciplined at getting things done. But often times, if I would dangle this whole oh, you can have a 20 minute break to jump on the trampoline or whatever it was, if I would say if you do this, you can do this. They were more motivated to get it done so that they could get to the fun time, right? Yeah. And so there are ways that you can figure out those things that your kids are interested in that can actually be a reward for them and getting the hard things done.

Also another thing is that depression’s a big deal today and a lot of kids are feeling alone and depressed and it’s just a sad thing. And I think part of that is wired within all of us is this desire to contribute and and for our fellow human beings around us to acknowledge that we have a reason to be here because we can be here, because we can contribute, because there’s value we can bring to other people’s lives. And maybe kids can’t always articulate it that way, but that is wired in us. And so when we wonder when kids and I remember wondering this, too, when I was an older kid, Mike, why would anybody pay me for anything? I remember having this weird thought and I knew. I wanted to be successful and do things, but I couldn’t pinpoint any skills I had that would be valuable.

And that said, can make you depressed. And I think that that’s a really important word for right now, because finding things that your kids are good at even. Yeah. Maybe it’s not something that they know they’re interested in, but something that might come naturally to them because they are skilled, like physically. Right. Maybe they’re just more athletic, quickly being able to give them a bigger responsibility, like chopping wood or mowing the yard, doing the weed whacker, maybe at a younger age than you actually you think. You know, obviously you’re going to supervise and teach them, but you might be surprised if they’re actually good at that. And that gives them some sense of contribution and a job. And we actually I wrote an article that was all about this was the most important thing that all teenagers need. And it was actually that was the filming of purpose.

Kids grow to the level of responsibility you give them. And so just remember that. But also when we’re teaching, if they’re delighting in what they’re learning, so then they become passionate about it. Now they’re learning outside the scope of requirements, outside the scope of expectation, and they’re feeling smart in an area they’re passionate about. They feel like I. And then they’re excited to talk about what they’re learning. And when people teach what they’re learning, it further ingrains it in their heads. So if kids aren’t passionate about at least some aspects of the things they’re learning, we can never be passionate about every aspect. I mean, there are kids. There’s just stuff that we all have. We all have to do not. But we need to make sure with in the curriculum there is an area of passion so that they’re sharing about they’re excited, they’re feeling valuable of contributing words, of wisdom and smarts to the world.

Yeah, it’s really important. So let’s move on to number two, which is curriculum matters. Yeah. So this is the second discipline that accelerates learning. Obviously, you need to be open minded about the different possibilities that you have for choosing curriculum. You may not be aware of this, but there are hundreds of curriculums available today and all you have to do to find some of these. I wish there was one website I could say go to and you could see them all. But the truth is there are a few different websites we do go more into depth on, like specific curriculums. I actually in the homeschool blueprint, it’s so fun, you guys. The fourth video took me like 20 hours to prepare because I literally went through 16 years worth of curriculums in the garage and I pulled out my favorites and I showed them some of my favorites in the video, the way we kept it, not overwhelming, as we put it, by category in the 45 page workbook.

Since you brought it up, workbook download. Yeah, the roadmap has links literally to the Web sites to look at those curriculums. And so really simplified. So it’s basically Angie’s all this experience and that’s simplified it down to these different areas and it makes it easy for parents to look at that. So you have a curriculum is really important. I mean, that’s a big topic, but yeah, it is.

I mean, the reason I’m bringing up the homeschool blueprint, because I can’t go into obviously, like, oh, if your child is a logical learner, then choose this curriculum. If your child is a kinesthetic learner, then choose.

That was an hour long session with tons of resources.

Automatically. Yeah. And then links for them to continue their education as homeschooling parents and. But I just want to encourage you that choosing a curriculum. You know, I know the pressure and stress that I’ve put on myself over the years to try to pick the right curriculum. And one of the things that I do encourage parents with in that course that I want to encourage you with is that there isn’t a perfect curriculum that’s perfect for every kid. And so you really have to know your child, know yourself, know what areas maybe they’ve struggled in and know what areas they’re really good at and being open minded to trying new things with different kids even and not always just assuming you’re going to use the same thing with each kid down the road, because that’s a different form of cookie cutter.

That is, it’s different than public education, cookie cutter education. But it’s still the same philosophy of like, I’m going to buy this once in music with every kid. And that can work some times when you have certain learning styles that are the same or you know what I mean, like even handwriting curriculums, we haven’t used the exact same workbooks with every kid.

Well, here’s the point. You’re saying, too, is that every family’s different. Yeah, every kid is different. Every teacher is different, you know? And so sometimes it’s about what you like to use to teach to because you need to be excited.

Otherwise, if you’re not. I mean, parents, if we have a bad attitude when we’re teaching something or we’re trying to motivate our kids to do schoolwork, our kids are gonna mimic our bad attitude.

And when we want them to be delighting in learning. So we need to be delighting in teaching. Here’s a scripture Sorry. Anxiety in the heart of. And causes depression. But a good word makes me glad. So let’s not forget, as we’re focusing kids in a direction of passion, passionate learning that they love, as we’re picking curriculums and so forth, that’s going to work better for each kid. Yes, more expensive, but a good investment. And that what surpasses all of that is the words from you. Mm hmm.

There sure is the encouragement. And because we never want a bad identity development or kids associated with academics.

And it’s the good book here that has the real ultimate good word that can help and help you to facilitate and cultivate and encourage your child and having a strong biblical identity because each kid was made on purpose by God.

They need to know this, just regurgitating the sum each kid was made on purpose by God for important works in this world. And you are their coach, their teacher, their mentor, their instructor, you name it. And right here in Ephesians 2:10 We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before him that we should walk in them. That’s you. And that’s your kids. Mm hmm. Very good. So shall we move on to number three?

Yeah. So cultivate and grow a love for learning. And again, I almost feel repetitive in saying this. This is actually a session. Three, we talk about cultivating a love for learning more in depth in that one hour teaching as well as a teachable heart. But I did want to just share with you some basics as far as growing and cultivating a love for learning if you’re a gardener. I’ve been I was a gardener for many years. We lived on a small hobby vineyard that we had cultivated with our family for about a decade. And I had gardens and herb gardens and a small orchard and chickens and wow, what a fun way to live for a decade. I miss it at times. And guys, so many of the ways that I taught my kids lessons were using the analogy of gardens. And so I’m going to use that same analogy with you guys regarding cultivating and growing a love for learning in your kids, because kids do actually naturally. God put in us this desire to know things.

And that’s why Adam and Eve were tempted to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted the knowledge. So this is a thing that is in us that we have this desire for knowledge. And the truth is, though, that sometimes kids lose that initial curiosity, that inquisitiveness in them. They they don’t know if you’ve ever watched a little little kid like a toddler. They’re very imaginative. And as they get older, you might start to sense that their imagination is waning. OK. And so one of the things that I have always tried to do is try to keep that imagination alive, but help the kids to steer it into productiveness as they get older. As far as what is their art, which is one of the things that we talk about in the homeschool blueprint for helping your kids to find out what their art is. And I don’t mean just fine arts.

I don’t mean just painting. Although those can be some of them. Yeah. And so I my encouragement to you is that everyone has this inquisitive nature of wanting to know things, wanting to learn things, being curious. And parents actually have a an intrinsic influence, a sacred influence in their child’s life to cut off that curiosity. Mm hmm.

By, for example, when kids are asking questions and they’re asking a lot of questions, just pushing that away and saying stop asking me questions or being annoyed with the questions. That’s one way you can shut off the curiosity over time in your kids. And so I think that it’s important that we actually encourage the question asking. Now, when I say that I’m not meaning disrespectful question asking, like you tell them to do something and they sassily say why. That’s not the kind of question asking I’m referring to.

I’m talking about why do you why did God make frogs able to have babies the way they do? Why?

Why did God make tadpoles first? And then why did they turn into frogs like that kind of curiosity should be encouraged.

Yeah. And sometimes we just go, oh, because God made it that way. Right. Because you were better with our agenda. Exactly.

Instead of pausing and checking out a book at the library or maybe looking up a video on YouTube channel that talks about the process of how frogs lifecycle goes. Right. Like, there’s so many ways that we can further encourage our child and show them that we actually enjoy learning alongside them, which is one of the ways that you cultivate a love for learning.

You shift your mindset as a parent to see these opportunities to teach versus see the questions as a nuisance because of our agenda and what we’re doing. Yeah, and doesn’t mean you stop whatever you’re doing to not all the time. But, you know, that’s a cue a wait a minute later. I’m going to address this. I’m going to make that part of tomorrow’s curriculum. You can Google something.

Exactly. And so one of the ways that you can cultivate this, I often like to think of it as cultivating vineyards. So we talked about the importance of matching your curriculum to your child’s need. And that’s the first start. When you’re cultivating a garden of a love for learning, you’re going to pick here and pick out what seeds you want to plant. Right. It’s the same thing as picking out your curriculum. So you’re going to choose what you want your kids to grow in the knowledge of. What do you want to grow in your garden? You maybe you and your husband have a date night and you discuss like what are the most important things that we want passed down in our legacy.

And, you know, we’re talking about, you know, what’s interesting about the vineyard is actually when we did the vineyard, we had to do research about the soil. And then we had to figure out what route structure actually would match that soil. Right.

Which is then we had to amend the soil. Yeah. Before we could plant the plants.

Right. So there’s a lot about everything we’ve talked about already. Which curriculum for which kid.

Right. So you’re going to be evaluating, doing research. Then you’re going to pick your seeds. You going to pick your curriculum. Right. But then you don’t just give your kids the curriculum and let them go. The same thing as planting a seed. You have to tend it right. You have to pull the weeds, which could be sin bad attitudes right along the way. You have to pull the weeds so that the kids so they can grow. Right. And they also need watering or those plants are going to wither. Right. It’s the same thing for a love for learning. Like if your kids are set off on a path and they’re really interested in it, but they need help. Let’s say it’s science and they can’t do these lab projects that are in the apologia curriculum of science. Yeah, without mom dad’s help. But Mom and dad never have any time to help. Guess what’s going to happen to that? Love for learning of science. It’s going to wither. Yeah. And so we actually have to recognize that we may be good at cultivating, but we need to be good at watering and tending the garden while our kids are in our home so that they continually have that love for learning. And another good idea just regarding this is to have ways where you’re able to actually encourage or celebrate your kids when they are doing those good things. Right. So true. And so I just think that there’s an element of like you need to appreciate even if you’re not interested in science. Yeah. You need to appreciate their interest in science. Yeah, right. And actually, guys, guess what this is doing. Not only is it cultivating a love for learning. It’s encouraging your relationship with your kid, which is what is the foundation of them even having a teachable heart.

And I think you just created massive fear in this way was which we will address here? Well, I mean, I’m not good at science.

How can I teach my kids saying I’m not good at science? If I can do it, you can do it.

Give it a try.

I mean, no, seriously, you keep one step ahead of your kids or not and learn it with them.

They’re like it’s about humility both and not having to have all of the answers. Gee, you know, like I think that that’s the that is the beautiful part about this, is that if you come across as a parent, always has to have the answers. Right.

Then you’re never going to be an approachable parent. Your kids are not going to come. Well, I’m. Are you. You could choose to create know it all kids. Oh, yeah. That’s not a good idea. So you always know it all. Yeah.

Then they strive to always you guys you know what we’re talking about the know it all kids that would all what they’re the know it alls. They’re the kids that don’t really have friends because nobody wants to be friends with the note. All right.

Yeah. And so you know, you have to be. Can I just also encourage those of you who have a bright, intelligent kids, you been stimulating them. That is a good thing. If they know things. But you also need to have your detector up on pride and you need to be willing to talk to your kids about pride. And just encourage them not to become that type of person. Talk to them about the know it alls. Warn them about it. Right. And I know that we had a there were a couple times where I had that conversation with one or two of our kids was like.

Have you heard of the know it alls before? We would have that conversation of what someone looks like when they’re a know it all. They always have a Mr. and Mrs. know it all in the family.

Yes. So, anyway, I think that it’s really important that we have that discussion with our kids, but that we recognize our responsibility in cultivating, growing and continuing to provide an atmosphere in our homes or in the garden for them to continue learning.

Such a great analogy. And by the way, if you’re interested in the homeschool blueprint, course it is deeply discounted. It’s a brand new course. It’s six and half hours, a curriculum, 45 page workbook, and it’s 63 percent off because of the Covid-19 and what everything is going on right now. So you can go to CourageousParenting.com, hit the top, menu on the left. And it’s the third thing down. You’ll see it or it’s in the show notes for this podcast episode. Also, another thing that was just interesting that came to my mind, we did our vineyard naturally, meaning that we literally pulled each weed in versus doing the roundup. We were encouraged you roundup, where you just spray it and it kills because that’s what all the monuments you have, sir. But we had this hunch that Roundup wasnt good and it was OK and has come out in the last five years that it is really, really not good, actually. Last couple of years. And for you in that reminding me about discipline. Just a quick different subject. Jesus is the hard thing because. Well, actually, yeah, if you’re a parent is pulling the weeds of the heart, they’re actively involved in nurturing the vineyard. But if they’re just doing the easy route of spring on the roundup, yeah. They’re temporarily killing those weeds. But they’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. The roots are the roots are there. And so technically, they say it kills the roots, but that’s not always the case. And that’s like being a parent that disciplines that way, that just disciplines the action, but doesn’t tend to the heart. Yeah, and that is one of the core reasons we made the parenting mentor program. So if you’re interested in the biblical parenting program, you can check that out, too. But those are two different things.

Just to clarify for your new listener. We have two different programs. We have the Courageous Parenting Mentor program, which is a six week, very robust program where we have like three different Facebook lives that are 90 minutes. Yeah, that’s the big, big program.

And then we have the homeschool blueprint, which does do it, do it. Do it at your own pace.

Yeah. We’re not connecting and. Yes. Like that. Yeah. So, so super super good when they’re for the final point of the eight part series here. Okay. Are two. Two parts. But eight session eight.

Eight disciplines. I’m getting courses in my mind. I know we have eight disciplines that accelerate learning.

And the fourth one we’re going to talk about today is X experiential learning, learning. So experience, experience, experience.

Oh, man. For at least how I’m wired. That is everything, right?

Well, in a lot of people are this way. Right. Like how many of you guys learn something? But if you go and do it, you remember it’s so much easier. Oh yeah. I mean, I think everybody kind of does. Right. And this is actually the beautiful aspect of homeschooling. This is where you have a lot of freedom. Yeah. To be creative. And if you’re not the creative type, maybe they’re saying they’re going, I’m not creative. And like I. That’s the part that’s hardest for me is getting now. Right. Like, that’s a lot of work. And can I just share with you guys. I remember. And it is still a lot of work. I have eight children. Obviously, our oldest isn’t going to be going into our third year of college. Although she’s home because I’ve covered. And we have kids all the way down to 20 months old. So in the thick of the, you know, toddler years. And as well as having high schoolers and graduating kids and all in between going out is a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to have snacks is a lot of work to make sure everybody is potty trained. You’ve got enough diapers, you’ve got all the things.

So impressed with you, because back in the early years, I was trying to build the career, build the business. And I was and was doing very well every year, doing better and better financially and making lots of progress, but that there was a cost of that, which I was gone quite a bit in the early years and less as things when as the business built and I had leaders around me and things like that. But it was amazing, like you went to the zoo, which was like a 45 minute drive.

And one way. Yeah, one way with five kids under seven every week. The science place all the time. You know, you would take them all to the grocery store all the time. Well, I had to because you weren’t home during daylight. And what did that force you to do? It forced you to train your kids. Yeah, it’s true.

And it was harder work. And I, I know that some people listening are like, whoa, I just can’t even imagine. I mean, imagine this, right, going to Costco. There was a point where I had a kid in a Kelty backpack, a baby in an Urgo front pack at the same time, and then three kids in the cart and then Kelsi pushing an extra cart to put food in. And that was me at Costco. Oh, for a good couple years, yeah. And it was a lot of work. That’s a lot of work. And so how to make sure that they all had been nursed and fed and napped and all the things before going right to set them up for success. And then, you know, you give them the pep talk.

We’re gonna show people that children are blessing. Right, guys? How do we do that? We smile. We use our manners. We say please and thank you. Excuse me. All the things. Yeah. And we just had to do that all the time. And, you know, if I hadn’t taken them out as often as I did, I think it would have been harder, actually, because they would’ve been out of practice. It’s kind of like having them sit in church with you.

They got so many experiences to learn. And then I think about even more recently, just couple of years ago, we took a three month RV trip around the country, family of ten. I was still working full time from a laptop at least 40 hours a week and pregnant. When were pregnant in like 18 months, seven, seven and eight months. Six, seven and eight months pregnant after. Prior to that, losing a baby. So there’s some risk, you know, at least in our minds, because we’re going through that. Yeah. And we visit 34 states. We went to D.C., New York City, Yellowstone, Yellowstone and Creation Museum. You know, early afternoons I was available again to the evening. Weekends I was available. Other than that, I was at coffee shops working.

So a lot of the time that you spent with us was actually driving us from location to location. Yeah.

Drive was a lot of driving in those things. And I did have a lot of good experiences with the kids. Yeah. Sometimes Fridays would cut out early and I would go do stuff with the family. But the point is, you were eight months pregnant, seven months pregnant, doing lots of major things with a large number of kids. And I just want sometimes it’s hard to imagine yourself doing these kinds of things. And I just wanna encourage you that the more you do, the more your capacity grows and the more your capacity grows because you’re allowing yourself to get uncomfortable for the sake of the benefit of your kids, the better, richer the experiences for your kids growing up.

Yeah, it’s true. And you know, it. It’s you guys. If I can do it, you can do it. I know I already said that a couple times in this podcast, but it’s really true. Like, there’s nothing I’m an ordinary woman with the same man hours in my day that you have. And I have you know, I have an auto immune disease and I have things that I deal with. Right. Like I’m arthritis. I have all the pains, all the aches. You know, I have a million, like, opportunities to give excuses for not doing things is what I’m saying. Right. I mean, I get massively sick when I’m pregnant. Yeah. Six of my pregnancies, I puked 14 to 16 times a day with h.G and was getting Ivey’s to get fluids. Right. And so like and I will say that during those times I wasn’t necessarily going out to the zoo as often when I was pregnant and sick. Those were Little House on the Prairie rerun days.

So sometimes it was okay.

But I’m sharing that with you because I would do want you to have like a full perspective and understanding. But I think that because I had those experiences, that was what kind of pushed me to try harder when I wasn’t sick was like, oh, now’s my time. Now is the season when I actually can do these things. I need to buckle up and I need to do the hard thing. And I’m really thankful looking back, because I do know that that stretched me. Yes, it was hard. Yes, I was tired. Yeah. There were times where I had to bite my tongue because I just want to say, everybody quiet in the car.

We never we had a family motto in our early years that I think really helped us, which is to choose growth. And more importantly, to juice growth in the moment, because in the moments where we feeling capable, feel like we shouldn’t or it’s too hard, we need to rise up and grow. And so that mentality, I think, reaped dividends of fruitfulness in our family.

And I know that it did just in my own growth capacity for sure. One of the things that I always try to encourage other moms with is, listen, hey, I didn’t have all eight kids at one time. Thank the Lord. Yeah. Like, each time God grew my capacity and I walked through certain trials that grew me, but I couldn’t watch those trials and not grow me like it was a choice to actually engage and use that as a boot camp to get me prepared for the next thing. Yeah. And I think that that is a huge theme that we need to pass on to our kids. And part of that is obviously our kids are not going experience learning if we don’t step out of our comfort zones to help them experience learning. Yeah. And so you don’t have to do the three month RV trip like we did. You can go to the local museum and you know what I mean? Like, every season can be different. You can sign up for a co-op and do hikes in your area. There are so many opportunities.

I remember Mount Zion, Grand Canyon, that trip RV trip is a. Shorter trip. Like a month. Oh, yeah. And we had and five kids. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re all younger. And I just remember driving through Mount Zion National Park. All the kids were actually up at the big windows. It was a class a big RV. Yeah. And man, by the way. That was I think if I remember correctly, one of the first times I’ve driven one of those was a was that ah, I think, you know, we rented that one. There was a 40 foot RV. I was even bigger than ours. So we rented it and it was my first time ever driving one. And we drove it all over the place and the kids were up front and we were just looking at the mountains. But where we had playing was what was playing honey.

So we had just found out about answers in Genesis back then. This was about 15, 16 years ago.

And we were listening to the Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park answers in Genesis commentary that teaches you about the fossils in to your ride and look to your left and over there you can see in the Grand Canyon and you know, like so we have these CD’s that were audio books that were teaching us about creation while we were driving through these parks that it was talking about. And it was so powerful.

So it’s an educational experience. It’s a family experience. And some people might be going on the dad’s side. How did you go from not driving a big rig to driving a 40 foot RV? Well, we have to choose growth too, Dad, and kind of ease your way into it.

We had a boat, you guys, for a while. And I did drive, you know, the forerunner with the boat attached for a while.

and I did commercial fishing when I was 15, 16, although boats very different. I did captain the ship at 50 years old. So I have some experiences, but still. And the other side of it is how do you provide? We get this question a lot, too. How do you provide for such a big family? Well, I completely trust God because I don’t think I can provide for a big family in my own strength that has been proven. Actually, it’s when I surrender to God that he provides for my big family. And the other part, though, is I have had to rise up and grow in my faith and in things I’m doing and be willing to break out of my comfort zone to do things that can generate more income to which is experience and which is what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about experiential learning. And actually, this is the thing. If you want your kids to have that kind of mentality of wanting to experience life and learn through experience, you have to model it for them. And so sometimes that means that God is actually going to call you out of your comfort zone to experience new things. And that is really, truly like the story of our whole marriage. All right. Stepping out of your comfort zone and doing hard things.

And I can’t remember very many comfortable parts of my life.

What a miserable life. No. But it’s so good. No, we never run out of things to talk about.

It’s been so good for our marriage and we’ve grown so much. And we still expect each other to continue to grow into a constantly learning. And and that is the legacy we want to pass on to our kids as they would be continuing to grow, continuing to learn.

This is courageous parenting. This is courageous, Mom. This is resolute, man. If you’re attracted to these things, we’re speaking to you with the assumption that you also have a spirit of courageousness, of being resolute as a man, standing firm for what’s true. Trying new things, leading your kids in a new way. So we’re never going to water things down, guys. We do get some feedback sometimes of requests to water things down, and we’re never going to water things down.

I can promise you that. So, hey, thanks for joining us.

It was a fun conversation. Don’t forget to listen in to this next week’s podcast. Recovering.

Don’t be a boring teacher, but it’s going to be a really, really awesome lesson there. And then the next one is going at your kid’s pace and the next one to celebrate their milestones in unique ways to do that. And then how to start your day, right? Oh, so good. We’re going to dive in next week, take care.

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 Webcasts 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 CourageousParenting.com.

That’s CourageousParenting.com

It’s easy to have lots of shallow friendships, but what we really crave are a few close deep ones. These friendships are the ones where you pray for each other, sharpen each other, encourage and correct each other. These are the people whom you have true deep fellowship and the ones who you call when you are feeling lonely. 

Scripture In This Episode:

1 Peter 3:1 – “Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives,”

Matthew 7:3 – “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”

Genesis 2:18 – “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.'”

John 15:5 – “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

Proverbs 13:20 – “He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will be destroyed.”

Proverbs 18:24 – “A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Scripture In This Episode:

Proverbs 17:27 – “He who has knowledge spares his words, And a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.”

Philippians 2:4 – “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

Romans 12:2 – “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Philippians 4:6 – “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Proverbs 17:21-22 – “He who begets a scoffer does so to his sorrow, And the father of a fool has no joy. A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.”

James 3:14-18 – “But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic.  For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

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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 parentingin a fallen world.

So glad to be back here with you on the podcast.

Yeah, we have a lot of interesting updates. Well, we launched the home-school blueprint, you guys.

Wow. We started out thinking that was going to be like three hours of curriculum, 20 page workbook.

What ended up happening on it became six sessions, plus a bonus session on leaving a legacy. So it six and a half hours of curriculum.

Yeah. Very to the point curriculum and a 43 page workbook which is interactive lets you take notes and action steps and so forth. So it’s really to help you create your unique blueprint to homeschooling, whether you’re the most seasoned. We’ve already got reviews for people five, six, seven years homeschooling. They’re loving it to the brand new people, lots of brand new people doing it. So praise God on that. And yeah, is exciting. We kept the price the same and it’s discounted 63 percent because we just want to keep the price low right now with everything going on in the world and the economy and things. So anyways, that’s awesome.

Yeah, but it’s also been exciting to be able to bless some families that couldn’t afford it that really needed the help.

Yes. Well, yeah. So we’re open to giving it. If the. Absolutely. There’s no way somebody can pay for you can always message and let us know. So it’s been working out pretty awesome. So praise God on that. And we’re just really having fun with the ministry. It’s so encouraging when you guys share. Give us five star reviews, the reviews. It’s not us, actually. It’s the it’s the movement. One million legacy’s. And so just thank you for that. And we’d love to you know, we love to keep serving. So anyways.

Let’s dive into this with six keys to healthy attitudes. OK. Why do you think that’s important right now?

Well, if any of you guys have been experiencing having your kids home, I mean, people who have their kids home schooling have their kids at home all the time. Right. And and so we’re used to dealing with sin and attitudes and things like that.

All parents have experienced this at some point or another. Right. But homeschool parents just deal with that like more often because they’re with their kids. More hours in the day. Right. But right now, with the quarantine and the stay at home order because of the coronavirus, everybody is at home. And so the longer that that goes on, the harder it can be to have a good attitude.

Yeah. And sometimes when you’re only with your kids part of the day, you kind of let things slide. You might let things slide because you don’t see it as deeply. But when you’re together all the time, you see things more deeply. I guess that’s the opportunity. Yes. You always say which is, hey, at least you’re seeing it, right?

Right. Exactly. It’s better than the unseen sentence that you don’t know to deal with or to encourage your kids.

So we have six keys for you guys that will help everybody. We believe these are keys. We continued to use ourselves.

That’s right. And we actually I’m you know, I think that we have a resource Isaac and I always like to try to promote or share a new resource with you guys that we have become aware of. Yeah. And so in this podcast, there’s actually something I want to share with them later.

Oh you can share later. Yeah, later. Oh, yeah. OK, let’s go. So. Point number one, it’s so important to start the day right now. I’m not just referring to Bible time. You’ve heard us talk about that many times. There’s many aspects to starting the day, right. That are very, very important in really affect your kids, whether they’re a 2 year old or a 14 year old.

Yeah. And let’s just be honest. They also affect you on your starting your day, right? It affects your attitude. And we all know that attitude reflects leadership. That’s one of our our most favorite quotes from Remember the Titans, right?

Such a good move. It is such a good movie. I have to go into a side note here, because they might not know this, but you guys did. I don’t know if you knew that Isaac’s dad, Henry Castro, was on the original. Remember the Titans team? And so when we first were married, they had the premiere. Right. Because, you know, Denzel Washington, all these guys were in the movie. I’m just letting you in on a little piece of our history here. It’s just kind of a cool little piece. So we flew to to stay with Isaac’s family in Virginia and got to go see the premiere. It was a red carpet event. And meet the whole team. Isaac got to sit with Yost and some of their own coach Boone. Yeah. And they told them stories about his dad because you didn’t actually get to meet your dad.

Yeah. Supercool, actually. One of the players, when they found out I was Henry’s son, he was so excited to meet me. And he said, I got to introduce you to every players who took me around where they rented out the whole ESPN zone. And they took me around one by one. And each of the players told me something about my dad. So that’s pretty cool.

It’s pretty cool. His dad actually represents a unique kind of niche. During that time, because there was a lot of racism back then, if you’ve watched the movie, you know, I’m talking about. But that was primarily between the African-Americans and the white people. But his dad was actually from Venezuela. Yeah. And him and his sisters and his brother were like the only ones.

And he was a starter. He played well and he was friends with Bertier and other guys. But attitude reflects leadership.

That’s right. Yeah.

And so I think that there’s an important element of recognizing the power of influence that we have as parents and being responsible to start our day outright so that we can lead our kids in starting out their day. Right. Otherwise, we’re being hypocrites. Right. We can’t lead people. We can’t lead our kids where we have not gone yet. So if we don’t have a good attitude, we can’t lead our kids to have a good attitude.

Yeah. So one of the keys to starting the day, right. Is really good connection with each of your kids. And good connection involves eye contact. Sometimes we can be so busy where we’re looking at the things we’re focused on while listening to them over here. And I think if you start the day where they feel their love tank is filled with a feel good connection with you, that’s a big deal.

It’s a really big deal. I think that some kids well, first of all, all kids are wired differently. Right. There’s that element of what makes each person feel valued, which is different than love languages. But then there’s also like certain love languages that each person has. It’s just good to study your kids. Be aware of what makes them feel filled up. What does actually fill their love tank? And that’s going to require you not being selfish as a parent and thinking that your kids get filled up the way you do, but recognizing that they’re different people and then trying to connect with them on their level and the way that’s going to make them feel like you love them.

And it’s a bit of an affirmation for them to feel that connection with you. And you might even use words that your kids need to hear based on what you know about them. So you might know some of the things they have going on for the day. You might know some of the challenges they’re dealing with, some of the previous attitudes that haven’t been right. And so you need to be smart and be thinking and have wisdom and think about the words that are going to shift their behavior by making them feel affirmed in the good aspects of who they are, not the negative thing. Sometimes we just focus on the negatives. Yeah, they need that positive out for me. Yeah.

Hey, you guys, you know, if you want a good book to be challenged in the Sam Crabtree has a book called Practicing Affirmations. And it’s it’s I mean, it’s for counsellor’s, but it’s a fantastic book that shows even biblical ways that Jesus affirmed people.

And it’s just really by the way, we’re not saying, you know, look in the mirror and say, you’re great, you’re beautiful. And that’s not what we’re talking about here. So the other thing is real simple and practical. You won’t talk about it.

Food boom.

In all real reality, this is actually a really big topic. We won’t get into it as much as we do in the courageous parenting mentor program. But the reality is, is food, nourishment, nutrition. Sustenance is one of the most basic needs of all people. God made us to actually survive on food. And so in the parenting program, we talk about the basic needs of every person, every human, and how it’s our responsibility as the parents to be fulfilling their needs, providing for their needs. And one of the other aspects is being realistic about, you know, are you setting your kids up for failure or success? You’re not going to take them grocery shopping if they if it’s during naptime and they didn’t eat lunch. Right.

They’ll be too tired and they’ll be hungry. And so, of course, you should expect some kind of meltdown or tiredness because you haven’t set them up for success. You have set them up for failure. There’s actually either or.

So there’s two kinds of feasting, feasting on food. So you’re talking about feasting on the word of God?

That’s right. And so that’s the God’s word is the bread of life.

So any both of those things and you need to lead them in that end, if they’re really little, I’m. So you’re reading for them. They might have they’re older. They may have their own devotion time. Are you doing Bible time or a mix of those things in prayer? Praying together? not only does it activate God in a real way. He hears our prayers. Secondly, we get to hear each other’s hearts.

It is the best way to deepen relationships. Know what’s on people’s hearts. And this is something that I talk about a lot in the biblical Frendship course, because a lot of times people get caught say that their relationship with so-and-so is centered on Christ. Oh, we go to church together. But I would just venture to ask some really hard questions. Do you pray for your friend and then do you pray with them? Like, have you sat folded your hands and prayed together? For people? That’s actually a Christ centered friendship. And so that can actually be played out in your relationships with your kids. And knowing what’s really on someone’s heart comes across when they’re communicating with God, when they’re in a safe space.

I know as a dad, I feel like I’ve already won the day when I’m involved in some of these things with our family. Yeah. It just makes me feel so good. I could have been like, oh, I’m so tired. I couldnt sleep last night, got woke up five times or whatever, which, by the way, did happen to us last night. So. And then, you know, and then I start leading and helping others and I start to feel better, which we’re going to talk about. That’s a principle in here, too. But the second thing we won’t talk about is clear expectations. This is a big deal because nobody likes things sprung on them. And sometimes as parents were absolutely in control. And so we can take that for granted and just move our kids around in the way we want to go. Oh, we’re doing this now. Yeah, with no notice. And sometimes there’s unavoidable. So don’t feel bad about yourself.

You definitely do want to lead. For sure. You know what we’re talking about.

As much as you can be thoughtful about the day, think in advance and just as you would want to kind of know the lay of the land for the day. So do they. Right. I do better.

And that doesn’t matter how old they are. Even the 4 year old can feel empowered and feel more confident when they know what to expect. Right. So like today we even did that after our family Bible time. We’re having a little family meeting. And I just said, hey, you guys, we’re re-instituting. Quiet time today. Solomon, this is gonna be your first time having quiet time. You’re four years old. And so it’s it’s going to happen and then you’re gonna have your nap, because a lot of times we’ve done quiet time, like during the kid’s nap as they’re quiet. Yeah, but he’s at that age now. We’re at 4 years old.

I mean, try to see if he can flip the pages in the word and song Bible and he can do that on his own. I’ll have a little time to turn the page if he can drive an RC car.

He can flip pages. That’s right. So here’s something that’s profound. You just give an example of that I want to talk about. It’s called pre framing. Pre framing is something a lot of times talked about in the business world and leadership.

And it’s used because for the same reason people thrive when they understand the potential challenge or change or something happening way in advance and you teach them in advance about it or how they want to respond to it when it happens. Then when it comes, they expect it and there’s not an emotional drain on them trying to figure it out because the leader already made them aware of it. So that was a perfect example, because if we didn’t pre frame to Solomon, that was really quiet time today, then he would have he might have had been upset about it because he loves to play with his toys and things like that. But because it was mentioned in the morning, it was pre framed around. That’s part of being a big boy. Now he’s looking forward to it where that could have been a challenge.

Right. And so whenever you’re adding in something new, you always want to pre frame givings expectations and make them somehow give them vision that this is actually part of growing up. This is what you had. This is what we’ve been looking forward to. And so we put little, little, I guess, trinkets along the way to go and get them looking forward to growing up to like that’s also a part of pre framing as dreaming with your kids when they’re younger.

What to expect when they’re older.

It reminds me something in business. Some of the guys might find this interesting. I used to run a large organization where we had 32 physical locations across two states and we were going into the recession of 2008. And I asked God for wisdom to lead this through this. And he really gave me supernatural wisdom.

And I started spending part of my Fridays just thinking I’d pray and that I was just thinking I’d have my journal, no electronics on me and outright. And I kept thinking of things that would happen way before they would actually happen. And so my team would run conference calls weekly and meetings and one one calls with them. And I would give them information about what’s going to be happening soon. And as a here’s how we’re going to respond to it. And they were they. It was amazing. We grew to levels that never been seen before. When the economy was crashing and I just give you that, that’s a kind of a bigger example of the same thing of teaching your four year old about something different happening today ahead of time and how we’re going to respond to it. That’s the power of pre framing. It is so important.

Right. But it does take a little bit of vision to pre frame. So you need to think about what you want your family to be doing down the road so that you can actually start sharing those things like, for example, the 9 year old and. Emily knows that when he gets to be twelve years old, then he can stay up a little bit later. Like there’s even those little things where it’s like nobody. You get to do that when you’re older. And so he has something to look forward to. But pre framing can be really important in this season that we’re in right now on a day to day basis trying to plant. But this requires you to kind of plan ahead and have at least something planned for your day. All right.

And that’s actually part of what we’re trying to inspire you to hear, is that you recognize that as parents, your families, your jurisdiction, and you should be living purposefully and giving your kids something that we’re doing today. So like for us, we have like purpose. We are productivity happening.

We have people doing school, but we also have lunch. We have different things going on. Like they know that tonight we’re having salmon and grapes. Like there’s like fun things. And people know who’s going to be helping make the crepes, who’s going to be helping with the dinner. And and the kids actually like that. We put worship music on. We do something fun. So finding something fun that you can have in your day or something that’s like a reward that you can do along with the hard things and giving that vision, it’s only two things.

And by the way, that’s so good. And by the way, husbands, you should follow me on Resolute.Man, because right now I’m giving wisdom on that kind of same thing two weeks ago is saying, hey, in 30 days, what decisions do the media making today that will be required 30 days from now? So I am giving some of that thoughtfulness and wisdom that I’m going through right now and leading my family during these challenging economic times and things like that. So, yeah, and it was just to say no, but clear expectations. So important. And we have a scripture for that.

That’s right. It’s in Proverbs 17:27 says he who has knowledge spares his words.

Interesting. He spares his words.

He doesn’t need to actually be speaking so much because he has knowledge and said and it says in a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Don’t we all want to be calm? We want our homes to be calm. Right. We just want to calm spirit. Well, this tells us that a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. And so if you want your kids to have a calm spirit, give them understanding pre frame, give them clear expectations so they know what is going on that day. It can actually biblically. This is a biblical truth that if you give your kids clear expectations of what to expect and they have understanding of that, they will have a calm spirit.

Otherwise, you might be a bully.

Oh, yeah. I mean, there’s a difference between treating your kid. This is that’s a whole nother thing. We’ve done a podcast on why your kids don’t respect you. You guys have to go listen to it. It’s in Season 1. I think it’s like the fourth or fifth podcast that we ever did. One of the most popular. But one of the key things that goes along with this is that your kids learn how to respect people by how you respect people you know, and how you respect them. And so I think that there’s this element of understanding that if we are pre framing, we’re giving expectations to our kids. That’s actually one way that you’re showing them respect. You’re setting them up for success. You’re you’re understanding that they’ve been created in God’s image and that they’ve been created with this desire to know what’s going on to be purposeful. God has given all of us that desire to be living on purpose. And so if your kid is just a mini, you and they have this desire to be living on purpose, but they just don’t know how to verbalize it or to contribute somehow, because that is part of the human spirit. And you’re not giving them that opportunity to live on purpose, to be looking ahead, to be, you know, potentially going, oh, we did that today.

Oh, and now we’re going to do this like you’re teaching them what it means to live productively, to live on purpose. That’s how they were created. And they can bring so much joy to them.

But if you do that, that’s one way you’re showing them that respect because you’re honoring a part of who they are at there, that the essential part of who God made them to. And so it’s so much easier for kids to respect you when they’ve been respected.

That’s right. So point three is discover the deeper problem before there’s bad attitudes, a deeper problem. Before we go there, though. Would you join us for the parent mentor program? It is an investment. So when you go to courageous parenting.com, you’ll see it is 40 percent off. Well, I guess that changes. But depending on when you’re list, depending on your peers by gas at the very moment, it’s 40 percent off. Yeah, but it is worth it. Hundreds and hundreds of parents have gone through it. The community is powerful. We really love it because these are the people that we can be more real with, actually even more real than on the podcast.

Yeah. So we have a private Facebook community for just and then a direct connection with if they want that. Yeah, they can text us.

So. So that’s been really neat. And like for example, this course we just launched the homeschooling blueprint. They knew about it first. They gave some feedback on it. They, you know, got an opportunity to even get it for free. Yeah.

Some kind of a little shy about saying that, but yeah, that’s true.

And then some. A lot of them decided to pay for it just to help the ministry anyways. But it’s just so cool. I mean they’re the people we really rally with and a deeper level. But the curriculum is incredible. It is the most robust program out there on parenting in a biblical way is the biblical parenting model. We’ve used and seen the fruit from the last 19, almost 20 years. So anyways, it is it is really cool. So I would encourage you go check it out. Even if it’s not for you sharing, it helps. And there’s a lot of resources at courageous parenting.com. It’s also where the homeschooling blueprint is, and it’s also where all the show notes for this episode and all the episodes are with all the resources we mentioned in video.

And Isaac, where else can they find like if they were to share the podcast?

Sharing the i-Tunes link is i-Tunes is where 80 percent of people listens. But we’re also on Google Play in other places sharing this stuff out there in stories, Facebook, even getting reviews and ratings.

So while that’s really encouraging to us, but it also helps the algorithm so that other people can see. Yeah. The podcast and be encouraged in biblical parenting and diving deeper into these issues like what we’re talking about. Let’s do it deeper into the problem of bad attitudes. So there are some some reasons why kids have bad attitude.

Sometimes we see them at face value and I want you to think deeper than that and go what is behind this behavior? And sometimes it’s something you absolutely have no idea about. Sometimes it’s things you wouldn’t expect. Sometimes your kid actually hasn’t fully discovered what it is themselves. And they need you to ask three questions deep to discover it. I’ve said that many times I won’t go into it. But what are some of the deeper problems?

Well, we talked about one of them already a little bit, which was food. Right? So if kids. But this goes even deeper. It’s not just a matter of like, have you fed your kids? Because, you know, obviously, if they’re starving, they’re not going to have a good attitude. You could buy things that are irritating, irritating to them. Right. Exactly. So sometimes with parents, they they discipline. They’re trying to do their best and they’re trying to force. Biblical parenting model.

But they’re not realizing that the reality is, is that sometimes kids are intolerant to certain foods and that can actually affect their attitude. Now, I have to say something. I am not for parents who are making excuses and justifying their kid’s bad behavior and not disciplining it. Kids can learn to have self-control of their attitudes. And I know that that’s a really hard thing for you to hear. But I just have to put that out there, because it takes courageous parenting to do both and to figure out why your kids are for what foods are bugging them, what they’re sensitive to, why their gut is hurting, maybe why they have headaches to have grace with them. But there’s also an element of also talking to your kids. And this is dependent upon their age and their spiritual maturity as well. But being able to say, hey, buddy, I know you’re not feeling well, but that’s not a justifiable reason to be mad at your sister or to have a bad attitude. You need to exercise self-control. You’re being tested right now. Let’s pray about that. And so but you don’t just overlook the food issue and constantly do that. You have to be as a parent. You actually it’s your jurisdiction. It’s your responsibility. You must figure out what’s going on with your kids and understand that there are things that kids are allergic to, intolerant to. Right. I mean, it can even be as simple as like detergents and what kind of laundry soap you’re using or if you’re using bounce sheets. I know that for us we had two people, me and my son Drew, who had massive migraines for the longest time. We were trying all kinds of things, changing diet, detoxing off dairy supplements, magnesium, chiropractors, all physical therapy, all kinds of treatments over the course of three years, glasses, vision therapy, all kinds of things. You guys, you know what? I switch my laundry detergent and now he gets headaches way less, I think you’re saying, huh? And so you’ve just got to look into as many things as possible. Do not give up.

And sleep is a big one, too. That’s the second one. Big.

So it’s a really big deal. OK.

I have to add on something to this, because we’re not just going to fly by it, but a lot of parents don’t realize that their kids need more sleep than they actually do to do a little Google search on how much sleep a child who is 7 needs in a 24 hour period, then do a search on how much sleep a teenager needs in a 24 hour prayer. You’re really shocked. There’s actually statistics out there that show that teenagers need almost almost as much sleep as a newborn infant. That is insane. Newborn infants sleep 18 hours a day. That’s a lot of sleep. And so if your teenagers are staying up till midnight and then they’re getting up at 6:00 or 7:00 and they’re cranky, I can probably bet on why they’re cranky.

Yeah, I remember public school. I would stay up too late and then I’d always have to. What? We just have to be at school 7:30 in class and started at 8:00 or so.

I’m not saying let him sleep 18 hours. That can cause depression. What I’m saying is get educated on how much sleep your kids actually need. And I’m just going to put old. We talk more about this in the courageous parenting mentor program. But I’ll just give you a little piece of my history. My great grandma was super involved in our family’s life when we were growing up, and she was in her 70s. She was born in 1914. And apparently people who are from that generation, they make sure that kids nap until they’re six to seven years old period, because they just need sleep. So guess what I did all growing up? Me and my brother and my sister, we like we all slept and took naps everyday. And she was so awesome she’d take us out. And wear us out, like some people, they hear that they’re like, well, my kid wouldn’t go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 if they if they took a nap. What do you say about that? And I go then put him in the sun and have him run laps and go like maybe they know not get enough exercise.

Kids are sitting in front of t.v.’s with Nintendos. That stuff didn’t exist back then, didn’t exist when I was a little kid digging in the ground, working hard. Like whatever it is, you guys. So that’s just me.

Yes, that’s my opinion. That’s not backed up by scripture. It’s my opinion that kids are not getting enough sleep and that can contribute to their bad attitudes. So here’s another go for it. So in Philippians 2:4, it says, Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

So this is a really, really big one because sometimes we’re selfish and and when we’re selfish, that can be a deeper issue when we’re focused on ourselves, which we’re going to talk more about in a little bit. But that’s that can be a big issue. Another one can be when they’re sad. Yeah, that could be something they’re sad about. We don’t quite understand.

Yeah. This is a whole. Again, another big topic, because when kids are sad, there’s there’s reasons, right, and sometimes it’s it is actually that they are a more emotional because they didn’t get enough sleep or and they’re hungry.

They get hungry going on right now. But then there’s also the element of did they get their feelings hurt? Did. Are they missing friends? Did they? What about your relationship?

Are they feeling like you’re mad at them or that dad was short with me and they didn’t say anything? And they’re wondering if there’s a little bit separation between them and dad?

Do they feel unappreciated? Do they feel like they’re constantly doing things for you and you’re not acknowledging it?

You know, there’s so many things that Ken promises aren’t being followed through with. Right. Yeah.

There’s a lot of things that can be potentially causing sadness. Now, I will say something regarding this. If you haven’t read the book by Timothy Keller, The Legacy of self forgetfulness, highly recommend that tiny little pocket books. One of my top five favorite books of all time. Well, and I don’t. Yeah. It lands in that category. Go. And it’s probably two books. I know. It’s. Yep. Well we’ll put a link in the podcast, show notes. How’s that sound. But the reality is that we as a people human nature, we are self-preserving of our egos.

Were that selfish. That’s how humans are.

And so a lot of times when there’s hurt feelings and if you’ve heard a kid say that hurt my feelings, well, we don’t really hear that in our family very much anymore. But when we are first starting out in the parenting journey, I did hear it a couple of times and then I read this book and then it never happened again. And the reason why is because that is actually a sign of ego feelings. Being hurt is really you hurt my ego. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real thing called emotions and like conflict. But we need to put a proper biblical vocabulary label on things. Is someone sad because there is conflict in a relationship that’s very different than they hurt my feelings, right?

Like if there’s conflict, conflict happens between two people and it needs to be resolved biblically. So they have a choice. They can either overlook the offense because to a man’s glory to overlook an offense or they can go. Matthew, 18, confront the issue and learn a biblical reconciliation. Looks like and that can be a good, healthy thing. And so you see how we need to teach our kids the two. There’s only two options when they’ve been offended and they need to deal with that.

Now, this is the tricky thing you brought up, that maybe they feel like dad was sharp with them and maybe they feel like dad is an approachable to go to and say, hey, dad, you hurt my feelings when you snapped at me today. So that’s going to require you going to your kids and going, hey, I knows you’re kind of sad. Is it because of how I talked to you earlier?

I’m really sorry. You need to humble yourself down below your child. Look at them in the eyes.

Take responsibility for your sin and your lack of self can just be careful not to rationalize it, to apologize, then rationalize it. Hey, I’m really sorry I did that, but. But here’s why I did it. Yeah, okay. Do you want your kids to do that? Well, I hit my sister, but she because she took the toy from me.

You guys, we have to be mimic. We have to be modeling good behavior. And if we want our kids to be taking responsibility for their actions, for their words, for their sin, then we have to.

Yeah. Couple last things. We talked about health and friendships. We’ve kind of already talked about that. Health is really a big deal, though. And you want to make sure, you know, we had a kid where, you know, allergic to something. And once that thing was out of their diet, massive attitude changes. So massive, it really can be just a massive, massive difference. The next one is get them off of themselves. By the way, all of these things could equally be for you as they are for your kids. And when I say you, that’s for us too write all of these points, no matter how old somebody is. These are truths we got to get ourselves off of ourselves. And right now, people in quarantine, things like that. People not around her friends as much in those kinds of things. We can start to get self focused. And there’s two ways we get so focused. I taught this to our kids this morning, actually. One is we’re moving towards depression if we’re self-focused as like the worst thing to think about all the time is yourself. Oh, am I good enough? What do people think of me? I’m not pretty and I’m worried about relationships and how I maybe did something wrong because they haven’t been communicating with me.

You see in this this wormhole that leads towards depression if we think too much about ourselves. So that’s one bad path. The other bad path is pride. So both are bad and both block our communication with award. So if we’re self focused and we’re worried and an anxiety about ourselves because we’re thinking about ourselves too much, if we’re thinking of ourselves too much and we might be boosting our ego and having too much pride in thinking too highly of ourselves, both are very, very, very bad. And so we have to think about is which one of those might be happening with our kids if they’re thinking too much about themselves in the best way to get off of ourselves is to help others. So what could you be doing to nourish the servant hearted efforts? Right now, we’re brainstorming that during the economic challenges. And right now, we’re praying and thinking about what business in our area do we love and want to support and how can it end up bless as we’re supporting them?

How can it bless someone else? So like an example we wanted the kids brought up was buying gift cards from a local restaurant and giving them to the nurses or something like that. So we’re not 100 percent sold on that for our family. We’re praying about it because there are quite a few little ideas.

The other one you had is, is we’re gonna buy Bibles and there’s these little library boxes in neighborhoods. Yeah. And we’re gonna drive around and the kids are gonna jump out and put Bibles in the boxes, kid Bibles, regular Bibles.

And that’s a way they can be physically involved. I don’t know if you guys listened to our previous podcast over a month ago. Now, when we are talking about coronavirus and reaching out and how people are more open to the gospel right now, we notice when these lending libraries in our neighborhood and I put a couple of Bibles here.

Soloman And like that. Where are they the next time I went to check our mail? All three were gone. Both both of the kids Bibles and the regular school. So then I started thinking like, oh, man, I’ve seen these other places, we’ve got to do this. So we wanted to share that with you guys to inspire you to think of other ideas of things that you can do to spread the gospel.

And are we just praying for ourselves or our kids, just praying for themselves? Or are they praying for others with lead in, praying for other people and get ourselves off ourselves, which is important. We have a scripture on that.

Yeah. So Philippians 4, I know that we’ve shared this in multiple contexts when we lost our baby. This was a scripture passage. I was focusing on Isaac and preached on Philippians for literally the week before I lost Mercy. But you guys, it says be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. With Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So sometimes kids, when they’re focused on themselves so much, they can become stressed out and anxious and that can become part of their bad attitude is that they’re full of stress. They’re anxious about things, wanting to control things, that sort of thing. But it’s giving you the actual equation for how to help your kids and to help yourself to come out of that, which is to pray, which is what we were just talking about. But pray with what, Thanksgiving? So maybe doing a whiteboarding exercise with your kids and coming up with the things to be thankful. Or to spend time praying just in Thanksgiving so that your kids are not struggling with an anxious, stressful attitude. This is the other aspect and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. That’s God’s peace, not your peace. And that’s why it surpasses all understanding. It doesn’t make sense to humanity. It will guard your heart and mind through Christ Jesus in another passage of scripture in Romans 12:2. It actually tells us to have our minds renewed by the transforming power of the word. We have to take action. We have to be in the word. So then the word can transform us. But this is different. This is Jesus Christ actually guarding your heart and your mind. So you guard your heart and your mind and godel guard your heart and your mind based upon Philippians 4, which is what needs to happen.

So being the word to have your mind renewed. You know, change your kids attitudes. Be in the word, but then pray so that the peace of God will also guard your heart. There’s two ways you can do this.

Very cool. You know, it’s interesting. It connects with friends. Now, if you have little littles, that’s harder. One of the things we’ve been doing, we’ve been doing Zoom Church for our home church lately. And at the end, all the kids, all the little kids get up to the screen and wave hi to each other. And one thing I noticed is none of them know how to talk to each other. Or at least through zoom, they all wave and smile. And then they don’t really actually engage each other. And that was it. Just a I open eye opening that. Well, I need to teach Solomon at four how to engage conversation. “How are you?” Because conversation is all about focusing on the other person, not yourself. Right. And so let’s let’s connect him with friends. But let’s make sure we’re reminding me of it’s not just that occupy be a vacuum for their sake.

So you guys are getting a little bit of a glimpse into what Isaac and I when we’re just having our normal like conversations because we haven’t had a chance to talk about this. But that was actually one of the things I was thinking, too, on Sunday, because I was literally telling. Solomon Tell ask them how they are. Yeah, ask them how they are. But that’s how you teach your kids. You actually have to put the question in their mind, have them mimic it and practice it. And then they get a response and then you give them another question. You have to teach people how to be good question. Askers. Yeah. And that is definitely something we need to work on with him. Yeah, sure.

But I have another passage of scripture here. Same chapter in Proverbs we were in just earlier. Proverbs 17, verse 21 and 22. The reason why I’m bringing in 21 is because a lot of times people focus on verse 22, which is a Mary Hart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. We’re talking about bad attitudes, broken spirits here in this podcast. So, merry heart, a good attitude is like a sin to a broken spirit. Right. And so we are talking about bad attitudes versus healthy attitudes. But it’s important that you recognize that a bad attitude can actually create a broken spirit. And that’s not what we want in our children. We don’t have to want to have to fix their spirit or try to help their spirit. We can’t do that. thats something God has to do. But you guys, it’s always interesting to read the scripture that’s surrounding it and not just pull out a passage of scripture like I think about this and like, oh, I know a song, a cheerful heart is good medicine. Get old Steve greed and hide him in your heart. But if you look at verse 21, it says he who begets a scoffer does so to his sorrow.

What is begetting it’s giving birth to it’s having so a father here who has a son that is a scoffer. Has sorrow. And then it says in the father of a fool has no joy. We’re talking about bad attitudes, healthy attitudes. We want joy in our homes. And this is a warning to mothers and fathers that you will have no joy if your children are fools.

That’s a huge. And what is it?

Well, they’re not like naturally fools and we’re constantly pulling them out of foolery.

That’s right. Because foolishness is brought up in the heart of a child. That’s also a proverb. But a scholar. What does a scot-free guys look up the definition of scoff? I did a little study on this with my kids. Very good little word study to do with your kids. It’s someone who literally laughs at other people, looks and watches people walking by and makes fun of them. We do not want our kids to be like that. A scoffers is foolish. And if you have a kid, that’s that way. You will have no joy and you will have sorrow in your life. And that is the first verse. That’s right. Before a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. It’s important that we’re reading all the scripture, not realizing that sometimes these little scriptures that we’re singing and we’re thinking about actually have to do with parenting, family life. God’s word is so good, you guys.

So next point number five, help them see their sin. Now, some of you might be going. Wait a minute. Are kids do kids sin? And I don’t know how you could possibly ask that question unless you don’t have kids. That’s right.

Because selfishness is sin and our kids ever selfish. Are they ever one in their own way right now on their schedule?

I mean, at least maybe it’s just our kids, honey. But right when they come out there, they appear to be sinful. Yeah. Give me that milk right now, OK?

Im not gonna tell you who, because they don’t want embarrass my child. But we had one child who my milk hadn’t come in yet. They’re like 24 hours old. They literally had their first temper tantrum at under twenty four hours old. So much so. The trachea collapsed and they went purple and blue. The face and Isaac rose in the hall. My baby’s not breathing. All because my milk come in yet. I’m telling you, kids are sinful from the time they are born.

And so the reality is, is that they don’t know how else to communicate. And that’s true. That’s aspect of babies. And it’s a good thing. God makes babies cute. But the reality is, is it’s still sin to have it. Right now, my way.

Right. But even if you disagree with that, whenever you disagree with something, we believe from a doctrine perspective. Hey, I respect that. As long as you dive into scripture and, you know, one hundred percent only from the Bible. Why? You disagree. OK. And that’s fine. We have another scripture here. OK.

and James, chapter three. We’re actually going to read 14 to 18. It’s four verses. It’s not a ton. But this is super, super important because it’s talking about the issues of being self-seeking, of being selfish. OK. So it says, but if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your heart, do not boast and lie against the truth.

Ok, so like seriously, you have to be introspective. Do you have bitter envy or self-seeking in your heart anywhere? Because it says that this wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual and demonic. Yeah. Yep. That’s what the Bible says. Literally self-seeking in your heart and bitter. And the sensual earthly demonic you guys. That’s a big deal. Verse 16 says, for where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

Does that feel like your house? Sometimes. We’ve had times where that feels like her house in a day.

Oh, my gosh. It’s super convicting you guys. We all have to heed the word of God. Verse 17. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield. OK, can I just pause for a second and just say two things willing to yield? That means you’re willing to give up your will and follow what you are told to do. Submit to authority, which right now you have people actually going against that. Right. And so there’s a lot of this is convicting for adults as well as for young kids. Do your kids obey you or are they willful, not yielding to you?

If you ever resist authority in the world, it better be a really good biblical reason. Because if you do, you’re basically giving a green light to resisting authority to your kids.

Yeah. So it has to be a biblical reason. OK, full of mercy. So this is remember we’re saying wisdom that’s from above is first pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy, which is what you were just talking about. If you do something, you can’t tell your kids, oh, no, you need to obey me, but I’m not going to obey authorities overnight. Me like you can’t be an independent spirit and then expect your kids not to be. You’re going to create the fruit that you are. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Now the fruit. This is interesting now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

So it’s very important that we’re responsive to their sin. A lot of times we let it gooks, retired, hungry, late, whatever. We need to be responsive. The times we need to slow down are when our kids need to be corrected and we need to do it in a loving way. Never in anger. And we talk more about that in the parenting mentor program, because that’s that could be up two full episodes, which has the biblical discipline, but super important a discipline well consistently and do it. And the final thing and it’ll be super quick is they mimic you. And we already said it. Don’t be a hypocrite. You can’t teach or correct what you don’t do. And so it’s so important you should have audit yourself, self-reflection real quick. What of these six things? Do I model poorly?

So good. And what are the six things? Let’s just go through them real quick. Starting your day, right? Having clear expectations. Number three is discover the deeper problem. Right. Like these are food issues, sleep issues, solving for yourself.

What are the deeper problems for you?

The fourth thing is get them or get your self off of yourself and onto God’s purposes for their life. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Number five, help them to see their sin. We’re talking about biblical discipline. We’re talking about consistency here. And number six, six is being responsible for the fact that they mimic you.

So do you start the day? Right. Do you have clear expectations because you’re good at planning? Do you just do you know what your deeper problem is? And are you on yourself or you off yourself and on purpose for God’s purposes? And are you really being introspective and see your own sin? And do you desire to lead well.

Who do you mimic? Like, who are you allowing to lead you?

Oh, that’s a big one, because our kids do mimic us. But we also mimic the people that we’re following. So we have to be careful who we allow to influence us. Right. So the last thing I want to say is actually the resource that I was mentioning. OK, so we mentioned in number three, discovering the deeper problem, are kids getting enough exercise and that they sleep well? Exercise can make you feel good, right. But right now, people are having a hard time getting out. Yeah. Right. And so I have to share with you guys, vagabond fit dot com. They are an awesome Christian couple. They have offered 30 percent off at checkout for their home movement online program. It’s a 10 week program that will give your family get your family moving and meet the physical education needs necessary for any student. This program will give you three workouts a week take containing body weight movements, challenges to build strength, speed, cardio mobility. And they also have included video demonstrations in every workout, healthy recipes and educational terms to help you progress and learn in your physical education. So this is like a 10 week physical education program that you can do in your home with your kids and they have a 30 percent off discount code. This is actually part of our home schooling blueprint. So you can use the code “HSblueprint” to be able to get that. But one thing that I am bringing up as we’re just sharing this with you guys is that this is an example of many discounts that we have in the home school blueprint. And I just want you to see, like this is an example of one of the things that we are we’re collaborating with other curriculums and other resources to be able to give that discount.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. We hope this helps.

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 CourageousParenting.com

Scripture In This Episode:

2 Corinthians 9:6-7 – “But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountiful. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Proverbs 17:17 – “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”

Hebrews 10:24-25 – “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

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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 19 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 back to the podcast. Hey, everybody. So we’re talking about friendships today. What trials reveal about friendships. We thought that be relevant to what we’re all dealing with right now.

Yeah. I mean, as this global pandemic continues around the world, a lot of people are experiencing stay at home orders of some kind or at least just not going out and not being as social as they normally are. And that can reveal a lot of different things.

Specifically, people have commented to us about feelings of isolation and loneliness. And so we’re going to talk a little bit about that today, but also about what it reveals regarding your friendships.

Well, first of all, how are you doing? How are you really doing? So if someone asked you a third time, no, really, we want to know, how you doing?

How would you answer that?

And I think it’s important to think about that, because we need to be edified. We need to be strong so we can lead for families and for others.

God made us social beings because we are made in his image and he’s a social being in community with himself. Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God, the father, three and one. And when we are trying to be obedient to the authorities that have access to stay at home as much as possible, specially for sick, it can be so life altering that we can easily become self-consumed and potentially not even reach out to people that we do love and care about, at least not in the same way that we used to. And that can reveal a lot of things to other people as well. Right.

And so if if you maybe haven’t been getting text messages or phone calls or you haven’t seen somebody from work or someone from church or a friend that you’ve had for a long time, and you’ve literally gone distant in your relationship over the last month or so, it’s time to reconsider and really be introspective and think about what kind of relationship you have sown.

Yeah, maybe it was just a relationship of circumstance, meaning you went to work, you had a good relationship with that other brother right now that you’re not working together. That relationship hasn’t been staying the course.

And as we were we were talking about this session before, we’re especially concerned for the body of Christ because the truth that we know from our personal experience, because we have been married for 20 years. And in those 20 years, we have only been a part of home church for about almost four years now.

But before that, we had thought about doing home church. Maybe we’ll share that story later in another podcast. But we know the difference between being a part of mega churches, large churches that are not mega churches, smaller churches, church plants and home churches, because we’ve experienced all of those and we have experienced firsthand what it can be like to walk into a church, even if you’re super involved in running ministries and walk out and not really connect with anybody. We’ve also experienced not showing up because of sickness or whatever and no one reaching out to us because they just assume that we went to a different service. And so here you have the coronavirus. And people are not able to gather in churches as we have for very long time. And people might potentially be like, wow, I thought I was friends with her or him. Yeah. And I haven’t heard from them at all since this whole thing started. And that might be really hurtful, actually.

You might ask yourself, have they heard from you? And but there’s a lot of things that loneliness can reveal. Trials can reveal periods of time that are unique like this can reveal in us. And instead of focusing on the negative things, we would ask you in this episode to focus on introspection, which is looking at yourself and thinking about what can I learn from this? What does this reveal about where my contribution is or my contribution is lacking in cultivating deep relationships? Where what is this reveal about my communities I am a part of? Yeah. And was it revealing about my own sin that I couldn’t see before? Maybe it’s selfishness. Maybe I’m getting angry because authorities are imposing something on me that’s hurting my relationships. Or maybe, you know, you have a spirit of independence and rebellious in your rebelling against authority when there are stay at home orders or things like that.

You know, it’s interesting as we were discussing this before. The first thing that came to my mind was what are we focusing on?

Like a lot of times, people can become really bitter, angry, sad, frustrated kind of going, wow, I thought I was friends with them and I haven’t even heard from them. And here I am sick and no one’s even reached out or offered a prayer or anything. Right. And it can be easy to focus on that, which is actually a mess. Say, this might seem harsh but im going to be blunt. And it’s actually reveals that we’re focusing on ourself and we have a self focused desire, an attitude and perspective towards our friendships,what are our friendships going to give us versus what can we give our friendships.

It’s funny you say that because I was just talking to a 4 year old this morning, Solomon, and he was lamenting about all the little hurts on his body, which he has a little a tiny little burn on one finger.

which is really is only hurt and it’s way on the mend. Oh, I know. And then he.

But then all of a sudden, his toe was hurting any other hurt here And he pointed out like five areas he’s hurting.

And then he’s like, I want to play with my brother’s toy. And I I really am bored. Create something for me to do, dad. What am I going to do? And I’m talking with him. And then I just look at I’m going to go.

All you’re doing is focusing on yourself. What a miserable existence that is horrible just to focus on yourself. Because now you’re looking for hurts.

Now you’re looking for hurts to complain about. I just talk to my kids like I would talk to clearly, because you use the word lamenting and miserable with a four year old. I love it. It’s like, Solomon, why are you being introspective? I’m not just thinking about myself. Yes, you are about. It’s funny, though.

That’s our human nature. And we need to recognize that we all struggle with that at times. But to be really honest and say, OK, why am I feeling down right now? Wow. OK. So that actually is a reflection of.

Self-focusedness and my desires when I actually haven’t even communicated what I need to my friend. Right. And so there’s a lack of communication on my part, which is sin. Right. Or your spouse. But then also there’s this element of pride potentially where you don’t let people in to know that you have needs or let people know what’s going on in your heart or your desire for a deeper friendship. And then you’re just angry that you don’t have a deeper friendship without having actually gone out on the limb and actually tried. Which is cultivated.

Which is our first point of we need to pay attention to where we’ve sold and where and how we’re reaping. Right.

The principle in the Bible of sowing and reaping and which is not just about money like the scripture that we have for you guys today is in 2 Corinthians 9:6-7.

And this is in regards to money. Yeah, primarily, but it can be applied to other things in our life.

And I think that it’s important that we understand that the spiritual law of sowing and reaping does apply to everything.

But this I say he who spares sorry. He used so sparingly will also reap sparingly. And he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully so let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. But the principle song reaping has to do with the heart in all things.

Well, and the thing that’s interesting is when you read this scripture, there’s one word here that I don’t notice. You know what I don’t notice when you were reading that, it just stood out to me. It says, so let each one give. It doesn’t say so. Let each one take.

Oh, yeah. Interesting. Right. And that it shows the difference between what our perspective is. If it’s self-focus then we’re like, why aren’t they serving me? Why aren’t they calling me? Why aren’t they doing these things for me?

And sometimes we can get in the mode of having just like money accounts in our mind. Mm hmm. Here’s how much of put in those accounts of those friendships and how much of those people put in my account in that friendship. And I think we need to not. There could be sometimes some relevancy to that, but it doesn’t really help you to think of accounts.

Well, see, I echo what you’re saying. That’s a really good perspective because they help you at all. No, it doesn’t. Because if you’re like, well, I’m always the one that’s giving in this relationship. And they’re never giving. They’re just always taking. Well, why were you giving in the first place? What did you have a cheerful heart attitude where you just giving without the expectation of receiving in return? Because that’s what real unconditional love is. Right. And I mean, there is an element of when you’re looking at like a biblical friendship, for example, there should be both people get absolutely right. And so you do need to evaluate your relationships and not be constantly pouring your self out to other people when no one else is.

But sometimes there are two sides to a story where you think you’re giving more or maybe they think the same thing. Right. You just never know. There’s different perspectives. And we should just have a lot of grace for each other, especially in tough times. And I think I think being introspective is what we’ve been talking about. What has your sewing reaped instead of deflecting and go? It’s they should this person hasn’t these things to go, well, what have I reaped in my relationships now that we can’t physically be near each other?

Right. And and I’ll be honest with you guys, the depth of your relationship should not be altered or changed by a stay at home order.

I know that the younger generations, like the millennial generation and even younger than that, they are used to a social world, like with social media texting. We didn’t have that actually for many, many years. Most of our lives actually to where it’s on for us. Getting on the phone and picking up the phone and having a phone conversation is not an awkward new thing. Whereas even with our kids, I know that for them, some of them, it is because they’re used to just texting. And so this is a time to stretch out of your comfort zones is where I’m going with that. Oh, yeah. And that we need to find creative ways to actually connect, because the depth of your relationship should not be changed based upon not being able to see each other face to face for a short period of time. You can utilize zoom calls. We’ve been doing that with our church.

Or maybe you’ve been posting on social media and normally your friends like things. But since you’ve been home, there’s not much to boast about. You’re not getting that dopamine release of people like us, which isn’t real relationships anyways, right?

It does really.

Should dopamine release that? We get addicted to it. And then in addition to that, you’re used to texting and you don’t usually call because I see people and then I text them when I don’t see them. Now you can’t see them, you’re only texting. Maybe that’s not going very well. And maybe there’s like maybe this is revealing this to the poor communication we always have. And it’s just more glaring right now.

Or even it could be like I just want to go back to what you were talking about regarding social. I’m putting posts up and then the dopamine release and how that can be addictive because I think that you’re onto something there. If we were just to continue with that follow even a little bit longer, because a lot of times people will get their satisfaction in that right. They find their contentment, their joy, their happiness is dependent upon accolades from other people. And if they’re at home and they’re not living the life that they normally are living, that’s so glamorous, right? Like we have celebrities that are normally traveling and doing all these big things and they’re at home just like all of us right now. Right. And so the reality is, is if they don’t have something to post and then they feel negative about themselves because they’re not getting accolades, that actually that right there reveals where they’re finding their identity, where they’re finding their joy.

And it’s in a false hope, actually, which is why that would lead to depression and other things like that.

And so I think that it’s important that we are being we’ve been saying it over and over again, being introspective.

But we also need to try harder and we need to step out of our comfort zones. Do face time. Praise God for all the technology we have. Utilize it. Yeah. And there’s another scripture that we were gonna share with them. That’s in Proverbs 17:17. This is a fantastic proverb. You ready? You ready? Listen. Are you ready? He’s good. A friend loves at all times. And a brother is born for adversity.

So you really know who you’re close friends or your deep friendships where you’ve sown deeply with people. When you face trials.

Yeah. And I the thing that’s interesting about this, though, is that you get to know who your real sister or real brother is. Because the reality is, is some people are not a real friend. And I think that that can be the hardest part about what we’re all walking through right now. Right. Is that. I know that for me, I can speak to both having experienced biblical friendship and walking through hard times like miscarriage, where the women in our church were totally there for me.

They wanted to be there with me, actually, and I was able to open up my life and have a couple of them come right after the women’s gathering and they stayed with us while the last few hours of losing our last baby mercy. And that was special. We had worship music going. We listened to worship music together. We prayed together.

They cried with me, kissed my four head, you know, when my company went out of business, people showing up with truckloads of meat to providing for our family money, showing up to just even cancel wise cancel this time helping us rebuild. Yeah.

You know, there we have. We have walked through massive trials where we have seen real sisters and brothers rise up and walk towards us in our suffering. But we’ve also experienced the opposite to where we have walked through trials. And then the people that we thought were our closest friends all of a sudden disappeared and were unheard from. And, you know, part of that I try to always have grace and this is my message to you is that I would encourage you to have grace with them, because maybe they’re just not spiritually mature enough to be able to handle what real trials are like.

Like if they’ve never dealt with death or miscarriage, they and they just don’t know what to say. They’re allowing their. I don’t know what to say to affect their ability to actually have compassion and empathy with someone, which is a lack of spiritual maturity. Actually, I also don’t know what’s going on in their marriage.

Or maybe you do because you’re deeper friends. Yeah.

There are some unknowns, but my point in sharing this with you is that you have to like allow people to be on their own spiritual journey and that doesn’t mean that you ditch those friendships.

It just means that you have a more awareness of what you can expect from them. And it’s not necessarily that they’re gonna be the ones that can walk through the hard times with you. And I’ve had that’s been a reality. Like when we were out, I was on bed rest with our sixth baby and I was puking 14, 16 times a day, threw my back out. I was paralyzed from the waist down in the hospital for a few weeks.

And during that time, people that I would have thought would have come and visited me in the hospital did not. And in fact, we only had one person come visit us. There was an older lady from our church. No other friends showed up at the hospital. I was there three weeks well, so I think there was two older ladies.

There was a wife of a gentleman that we understand came to our home.

I’m time now at the hospital for three weeks. Take care.

In that particular example was really touching because we weren’t super close with them total ages, but we went to church with them and all of a sudden this wife who had young kids herself sacrificed and came in and she was she was cooking food for our family.

And then our pastor’s wife came in and homeschooled our kids for like a month until she got cancer. At the time, I knew that I had literally handed yet for and because I was on bed rest for three months, we had to have people helping us.

But at that time we were I mean, honestly was more like a home church setting because there were only five or six families that were going to that church and we were the youngest family there.

And that was an opportunity to grow friendships in adversity that I would have never thought I would have been close to, which is the point.

And why I’m bringing this story up is that sometimes that’s why that particular passage that we just read in Proverbs that a brother is born for adversity like, that I would have never guessed that I’d be close to some of those women. And they have called such a dear place in my heart because we were in a time of adversity and they became sisters. They served us.

So you might be wondering, oh, I want friends like that. I have had people show up during those times. Some of your like. I have. And I know about that. But I want more of that. Yeah.

And the question we have for you is, are you purpose? Are you considering that as a priority when you decide where you’re going to church? Do you consider that as a priority in the kinds of communities you put yourself into?

So I have to say something about this, too, because this this particular conversation that what you’re bringing up is our perspective on what we’re joining. Whether it’s a community, a church. Right. And you know what?

I do remember Weimaraner RV trip on the way home. You asked all of us in the family. How do you want to re-enter community? Because we had been gone for three months. I think that would be a great question to post to everyone on the podcast, because they’ve been pulled away from all of their communities, all of their activities. How do you want to re-enter your friendships and your community back up for a second?

So the reason for that was more positive than anything. Yeah, and you should look at this positively. So you’ve had a break from physically being around people. So that’s a good time for reflection. Is good time to hear what God’s. Telling you it’s a good time to have introspection about your own areas of improvement and then look at how have I showed up and how am I looked at respected or not respected, loved or not loved. How are you contributing or not contributing?

And look at that and go, is that how I want to contribute? Is that how I want to be loved?

Is that how I want to bring meaning to the community and part of it if it’s not? What a beautiful opportunity to purposely think about it. And then when the time comes to re-insert, you already have a plan. So I asked everyone and family, every single person, except for maybe Solomon, who’s pretty young. Then his two had a little a list.

And you know what? Those things happen. We came back. That was amazing.

Yeah. I mean, everything from one of our daughters wanting to be viewed more as a woman within our biblical community and church. She was at that transitional stage just before the biblical womanhood ceremony that we do.

If you’re interested in that, we have a podcast on those who go look those up in Season 1 and this could be your work, two guys or gals if you work out of the home. So it’s how do I want to re-enter that community? I don’t want these relationships.

how do I want to be respected? Yeah. And I’ll just share like for me, I wanted to be fully who I was. I was holding back. Meaning? So the gift.

The spiritual gift of spiritual discernment and exhortation. So exhortation especially.

I think that people don’t really like that gift. They don’t allow it to exist very much. And what I mean by that is that correcting, admonishing, teaching, instructing gift where it’s like you see sin in somebodies life and you actually call them out on it instead of letting them just continue in the bondage, in the circulation of going over and over and over. Oh, woe is me over and over again. And and I just felt like God was saying, Angie, you need to be this. Because I would constantly see things and I’d bring them my husband. And it was frustrating for me. I’d ask God to take it away from me, but he encouraged me. Isaac did. No, God gave this to you. You need to embrace it. you need to steward it. It’s one of the talents that he’s given you. You need to do something with it. And so that became my thing of this is how I want to re-enter community. I want to be great bringing my gift to the table because the whole body will be better. Edified and I did. it was hard at first.

Here’s the thing.

I want to give a warning, because sometimes the power God gives you, the gifts God gives you are not well received. And it depends on the community. Sometimes there’s insecure leadership around you and sometimes you’re not using the gifts appropriately, too.

So it could be your fault. It could be. The environment you’re in is not welcoming of that. I would always air on the side of introspection, looking at myself, asking God to reveal things to me. But also there might be some conversations, one to one you need to have leading up to this reentry or during this reentry and going, hey, here’s have enjoyed. I really feel like God’s gift to me in the help’s helping more.

Yeah, it’s one of the special gifts if you do that helps. And so I want to find ways to help more people in need at our church.

And that would be really cool. So I think that, you know, ultimately you have it. We we all have a reset button right now actually regarding most of our relationships in the sense that if we’re really introspective and we’re honest, we can go back, start reentering into fellowship with people, pursuing people, you know, communicating.

But we could come in with this different purpose and be more of who we believe God has for us to be. But the reality is, is we actually need communicate with people about that, too, so that there is a different receptiveness, which I think was really important. I know that when we returned home, we had a women’s meeting at our church and I just shared with them about this concept of how do you want to re-enter community? And I shared with them about what I felt like I was holding back and I asked for forgiveness that I had held that back because it actually was preventing further spiritual growth in my sisters. And I knew that and they were all very receptive. And then as I started like sharing things and being more who I wasn’t, just sharing them right away, it there was no like thinking beyond that. It wasn’t this thing that was tempting me to constantly dwell on and and stuff.

And so there I just am sharing that brief little story with you to challenge you and go, what is it that you’re holding back from your friendships? And like we said before, do we have a selfish perspective on the friendships and trying to take versus what can we give and leading those friendships?

A lot of people are not comfortable with deep biblical friendship.

So we’ve kind of gotten into this second point already, but it’s good. It’s how to grow your relationships. And I would say one of the key things is to pray for that relationship. If you’re just pursuing. Relationship with somebody in your own strength.

You’re missing out on the power of God because, you know, it’s cool when you pray. God can literally in that same moment convict the friend. Yeah. That they’re missed. Right.

And I think that also sometimes we don’t know what to pray for, for people in the Bible says that the Holy Spirit can intercede on our behalf with groans and and and different things. And I think that it’s important that when we’re praying under the leadership of the Holy Spirit versus praying under the leadership of our mind and our thoughts, our prayers change to where they. It becomes more of a conversation between you and God, where the Holy Spirit is revealing things to you to pray for and even just praying in silence. And the Lord knows what that other person needs. And I think that there’s an element of like how how committed are you to your friendships can be determined based upon how much time you’re willing to spend praying for your friendships.

And actually, because the reality is, is if we don’t go to God and we’re just like self-focused and it’s about us, then that’s when friendships don’t go well. But I think that prayer is definitely a huge part of it. And I would say if you want to have deeper biblical friendships, you should actually lead or invoke praying together.

Yeah, that’s super powerful. That’s when you actually get to know what’s on someone’s heart when you hear them crying out to God.

Now we have some super compelling tips. We want to give you some pause for a moment, because usually I say this the beginning, but we’re so thankful for everybody. That’s part of the one million legacy movement. Everything we’re doing with you and we’re totally called by God to do this. And it’s been amazing just in times where we’re like, how how’s this going to work out? Another donation shows up or, you know, or courses or purchased. And we’re getting the feedback. So many people jumped into the homeschool blueprint, which is just launching. I find that a courageous parenting.com in the menu where the show notes for this episode, of course, that courageous parenting icon hit podcasts and get all the show notes and info about this podcast episode and also the people that the parenting mentor program. All these things help us go move forward and full time ministry.

It’s a blessing, but we pour our hearts into everything. We feel like God is giving us wisdom as we’re doing these things. And it’s just really encouraging for us more even more than the money. It’s encouraging us to get the feedback and see people sharing it and sharing the movement. So we’re really thankful.

And you guys, I just want you to know that we try to reinvest as well, you know, in you guys, in being able to create different courses like the homeschool blueprint, which is the newest thing that we’ve been working on. And so when you are donating to our ministry, you’re actually furthering the ministry in and helping equip other parents to be courageous parents for this uncertain world and all different kinds of avenues, whether it’s just biblical parenting, parents that are struggling with that and doing the parenting mental program or parents who are like, I don’t know what I’m doing with this homeschooling thing or I need rejuvenation, I need new vision. Something needs to change in order from, you know, attain you know, it’s interesting.

Something fascinating, I’m sure that anybody we haven’t actually talked about this clearly like this, but something been happening this year and God orchestrates things, actually. Is that for every course that someone has bought, we’ve given at least another course away.

And that wasn’t a calculated thing that has just happened. And we didn’t happen like that last year, but it’s been happening this year. And I’m wondering if God’s calling us to just proclaim that then on the Web site, make a promise to people that we’re going to do that. I don’t know for him to do that yet, but that’s what has been happening in my heart is full. I think it is. And it’s full, too, about.

It’s just really neat because right now not everybody can afford it. Some people can’t afford anything, you know? Yeah. And and so that’s been really, really neat. So anytime you’re purchasing a course, just know that probably someone else’s that really needs it and can’t afford it.

It’s probably getting help with that, too. So let’s dive more into this. So invest in initiate. We’ve talked about this a little bit, but as you reflecting on your relationships, you’re realizing where maybe you haven’t invested in the proper ways in initiated. You know, it’s never too late. It’s how can you initiate right now one way? I just told somebody this the other day, why don’t you write them a letter?

Yeah, and an old fashioned letter.

Aren’t, you know, snail mail? Are you addicted to getting your mail right now?

We’re always like going to the mailbox.

You know, it was obvious that I’m like, is that what you say?

But you should think about who would just be so delighted to get a hand written letter from me right now. Yeah, those things are treasured. No, they’re not a commodity. When there was a time where handwritten letters were a commodity, everybody.

You know, people were annoyed by all the mail.

And so now it’s not happen anymore. Somebody wrote a letter. It wasn’t even typed and they signed it. it’s so special.

I think that too, when we actually think about how we can invest like writing a letter.

I just want to encourage you that in biblical friendship, we should never be focused on what we would want. And then giving people that we need to actually think about the other person, think about had their most valued. Think about how they’re wired and try to serve them in the way that they’re going to feel most loved. Because to some person getting no, I think to most people getting a letter would be really beautiful right now, but they would be thankful for that. But the reality is, as some people, their gift is words of affirmation. So getting a letter written to them is going to mean so much. I know that that’s something that’s huge to me. But for other people, it’s quality time. So taking time out and doing a face time call and, you know, spending that time with a person, listening to their heart, encouraging them, even though it’s an investment and it’s hard to get away from the kids and different things that’s going on right now because we’re all at home. It is something that’s necessary. We actually need to purposefully try to invest in our relationships with one another.

So just be the first. If it’s not happening and go for it. And to everybody has this kind of desire to be known. Whether we admit it or not, yeah, we desire to be really known. And sometimes if you don’t feel known, you’re these silent thoughts of desperation. Nobody knows. Nobody understands. Nobody gets me. Nobody’s in the same situation I’m in.

And you know what that might be?

The enemy is definitely a door for the enemy to speak doubts in your head. You take every thought.

Captive, captive. You know what? Do I know others? Because you can’t be known unless you’re trying to know others. That is a catalyst for deeper relationship.

Well, and you have to be what you want. Right. So if you want other people to open up to you, you actually have to be transparent and vulnerable if people first. A lot of times I would say that because our our society and world in general is so busy, they busied themselves out of actually making heart to heart connections with people in such a way to where it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Maybe never really been modeled for them. And so you may actually have to be the leader in trying to develop the deeper relationships.

And I would just encourage you that the best way to do that is actually verbalize what your heart’s desire is to someone else. They may not even know.

That’s right. And as far as church goes, I know your pastors are incredible. They have the hardest leadership leadership job that exists. There’s a lot of reasons for that. And it’s just honorable and admirable what they do. And so you may not agree with everything your pastor is doing, but no, I’m sure he’s being a pastor. His heart is right.

And he would or he would he would be overjoyed.

If you are a new catalyst to deeper relationships in your church. Or even with him. It’s for sure not by design that any church doesn’t want deep relationships. Right. It’s just the way some churches are set up makes it difficult, challenging. But that’s not by design. No, God designed it for deep relationship. Yeah, maybe you need to be the catalyst to bring that right to the culture of the church.

Exactly. I know that for us we have experienced deep relationships with people when we were part of bigger churches. But I’ll tell you one thing right now, it was because we tried really hard. You guys, we were pursuing people, hospitality, all of those things.

And I would say that the art of hospitality is somewhat extinct today, and I would encourage you to bring it back. It does not is not super hard like you. And I know that we’re like I just brought up hospitality.

And here we have the stay at home order right where people are not supposed to be getting together and stuff. But there are things that you can do, like going on a hike and staying far from each other or playing soccer like in an open field, things like that. You could invite another family to do that as long as you are.

You know, that might not work, but the spirit’s there.

Yes. But regardless, like the point is, is when you get out of this, once we’re past the stay at home order, like be purposeful in letting people into your life. That’s one way that you build deeper relationships, is letting people in and maybe already out of it.

And other parts of the country and even some states in our country, too. So here’s a scripture for you guys to help you with this. Hebrews 10:24-25.

Twenty five. And let us consider one another. In order to stir up love and good works, we’re supposed to literally stir up. We’re supposed to proactively engage in relationship to stir up those relationships and in love and good works in other people. And a lot of times we’re just waiting to be stirred up because we want to feel loved. But sometimes you need to be the stir. And then you get losses during back. And so that’s super important in.

Yeah, I just I that you read verse 24 in verse twenty five is kind of a heart goes for me on this. Yes.

It says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much more as you see the day approaching.

What is the day that it’s referring to when Jesus goes back. Right. And are we in the times that this is speaking of? Yes. Yes, we are. And so we need to be exhorting one another. You can’t do that if you’re not communicating.

No time to spare, folks. No. And so at least we should have that hard attitude. We should live like that. Right. Even if it’s another two thousand years till Jesus comes back.

We don’t know, but I think we should live like we believe he’s coming back right away because we live better. Mm hmm. Amen

Now, I would say that before we wrap up, the last thing that we really want to talk about is what this can reveal about you and your relationship with God. Like if you’re experiencing those feelings that we’re talking about the beginning where you’re like, man, I thought I had all these friends and nobody has text to be no one has called me. No one has stopped by. Or maybe you got super sick. Maybe you got the flu, maybe you got the coronavirus, maybe you have allergies. Who knows? And you’re just kind of feeling down.

You’re not sure if you have the virus that everybody’s little whispering about and nervous about. And you’re feeling kind of lonely, kind of sad, and you feel isolated. Now, we need a stop for a moment and we need to go. What is this reveal about my relationship with God?

Because the truth is, is that we should never find our fulfillment and our contentment and our hope, hope in our friendships or in people, because what I’ve always let us down. That’s way too much of a burden on a human being. And it’s not their responsibility. Actually, this this is this is what’s so beautiful.

And I know that this might be hard for you to hear, but if you are struggling with loneliness, you really need to read the Bible. You just really need to read the Bible, because the truth is, is that those times when I experienced the most loneliness in my life regarding friendships were also they turned into the seasons of massive spiritual growth. And it also became an introspective thing for me to have to ask my question, why do I feel lonely? Is this because I’m not finding fulfillment also in my marriage?

Because there really should not be loneliness if you and your husband are one and you should be able to enjoy and delight in having fellowship together. He’s another like women. Your husband is an adult. That’s the same age as you. And you should be able to find fulfillment in that relationship. Actually. She’d be best friends. And so there’s that element that you need to reflect on your marriage, but you also need to reflect on your relationship with God because your relationship with God is really what makes you content. You can’t put that burden of friendship on your husband either because he’s going to fail you. And same goes for husbands. They can’t put that burden of friendship on their wives, expecting them to be like God or fulfilling them like Jesus would. And so it’s.

Aside from relationships outside of the marriage, right? Like friendships, we need to examine our marriages. But remember, not to put burdens on one another that are not realistic spiritually.

And to keep God the priority, a man and an opportunity to teach this to your older kids, they might be missing. Their friends might not be getting text messages back. Might not be comfortable making phone calls.

And so therefore, maybe they’re struggling with FOMO. I mean, imagine like our kids are pretty blessed because we have eight kids. So they’ve got lots of people around all the time. And yet at I just said blessed. But some of them are introverted, so they might not see that as such a blessing. No, I’m just kidding. But the reality is that they have a lot of siblings.

But there are people out there that don’t have any siblings. And so our kids are actually really blessed. And there might be like a single child or a kid that’s like 10 years older than a sibling. And they’re watching our kids post. It’s the stories of hanging out together, whatever they might have FOMO. And so we need as parents, we need to be aware of like the heart attitudes and what’s going on in our kids hearts. And we need to point them to Christ because they can find their fulfillment, they can find their hope, seize the opportunity, folks, seize the opportunity.

When there’s challenge, there’s opportunity to lead and to point your kids to Christ. And that’s a very important thing. And the final thing I want to mention everybody is what is God teaching you? What is the purpose of all this? God is sovereign.

Doesn’t mean he wants everything that happens to happen necessarily, but he allows everything to happen. He wasn’t necessarily the author and he’s not the author necessarily of these challenges.

But he does want to redeem everything. And so what does he want to teach your nation? What does he want to teach the world right now? What does he want to teach your city, your community, your church community? What is he trying to teach you? What are you trying to teach your kids? Because if we focus on why God is allowing this to happen in a good way, then this can be redeemed.

And that introspection is good. There is no reason anybody should be depressed right now because you have Christ.

If you don’t love Christ, then you need Christ and he will fill you.

He’ll give you the Holy Spirit. And if you don’t feel the warmth of the Holy Spirit responding to you, then you need to cry out to God and ask for it, because he gives to all liberally without reproach.

And the reality is that this is what he died for, is for us to have salvation and to not have to live in the bondage of depression, to not live in the bondage of loneliness or isolation. He can fill that place. And the truth is, is that when we are fully sold out for Christ and we recognize that our life is not our own, then we we actually pursue our friendships. From that standpoint, we pursue biblical community. From that standpoint, we’re no longer selfish and an island and not in community with other people and all about ourselves. No, we want to spread the love.

We want to help other people. We want to support people financially when they’re struggling. We want to lift one another up when we’re sick. We want to bring meals.

We want to do it like when we truly are saved. Our heart attitude changes to where it’s all about us and how can I make myself more money and how can I change from. It changes from that to how can I give? How can I serve? And when you are giving and serving, all of a sudden any amount of loneliness or isolation, feelings or lack of hope starts to fall off like shackles that were broken.

And that is the cure, you guys. That’s why it says it’s better to give than to receive.

So sharpen your pencil so you can write that letter. Pick up your phone and learn how to make a phone call again and nourish your relationships.

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.

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Now that courageousparenting.com, that’s courageous Parenting.com.

Scripture In This Episode:

Matthew 24:27 – “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

Luke 21:23 – “But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.”

Psalm 127:3 – “Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

Psalm 118:5-8 – “I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place.  The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? The Lord taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”

James 1:2-8 – “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

1 Corinthians 7:5 – “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

Isaiah 41:10 – “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Romans 8:28 – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Philippians 4:6-9 – “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Proverbs 1:33 – “But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”

1 Peter 2:16 – “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.”

Proverbs 19:23 – “The fear of the Lord tendeth to life: and he that hath it shall abide satisfied; he shall not be visited with evil.”

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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 19 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 this important episode.

Hi, guys. Today, we’re gonna talk about some really very. Interesting times that we’re walking through im trying to Be careful about how I say this. Yeah. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people. Oh, yeah.

Who are pregnant, who are nursing babies, who are thinking about having more kids slash not thinking about having more kids or decided not to. Right. Primarily because of the times that we’re living in these uncertain times.

So we’re going to unpack this. Have a good discussion. Bring some scripture into it. And our hope is that it’s encouraging for everyone. But encouragement doesn’t always keep you in the same place.

That’s not the goal of encouragement. Always, right honey?

Oh, don’t even get me started.

He knows that I led our church women’s retreat through studying the gift of exhortation.

So we’re talking about should we stop having kids in uncertain times? That’s a really good question. And whether you verbalized it was someone you may have thought it.

You may have thought. I know that. I recently wrote an Instagram post regarding this just because I’d been getting so many messages from people. And overwhelmingly, even people who have like three year olds have been thinking this in regards to the three year olds. Their five year olds are 10 year olds going. Wow, this is a crazy time to be a kid, to be growing up in these times. What are we experiencing with a global pandemic and all kinds of other things potentially in the works?

Yeah, we just don’t know. It’s uncertain.

Well, and I’m sure back in 1918, I think it was when there was a huge plague. I’m sure people were also thinking the same thing. Right. So, you know, its human nature. Yeah, it is. And it’s it is crazy times. I think it’s fascinating times. I think it’s really fascinating right now.

Well, as you know, Isaac, he’s always saying it’s the greatest time to be alive. And see it. And by the way, that that’s not being callust.

It is tragic when people die. That is not a good thing. Were you know, we’re praying for people, frankly. Yeah. But in a biblical sense of biblical events, it’s it’s exciting because we have hope for the returning of Christ and we don’t know when that is. But we have hope for that. And, you know, the world’s going to go through labor pains, as the Bible says.

That’s right. And is part of it. Can I also add that, isn’t it?

Aside from tragedy aside, like if you take you set those things aside, isn’t it encouraging when you’re living through things and you’re able to go, the Bible predicts this? Yeah. Just another proof that the Bible is true. Wow. Right. Because think of all the people who are living their lives completely apart from God. Yeah. Who are not walking with the Lord, who don’t know the truth that are in God’s word. Or maybe they have heard some parts of it and they have a hardened heart towards God. And you’re literally like, how can you have a hardened heart towards the Lord? Look at what is happening. This is proof that the Bible is truth. Right.

I also feel for the small business owners and large business owners, frankly. And or if you’ve lost your job, I feel for all that and have experienced those things before. At the worst possible timing. So I understand. And it’s very hard. But the what can be redeemed out of that is just holding fast and trust in God. And we’ll dive into that stuff.

By the way, all is revealed when you’re home all the time with everyone in your family. Isn’t it?

Yeah. It’s funny because for us, we are home with our family often. Yeah.

Because you you work out of the home, but you also work from home. Yeah. And we’ve homeschooled our kids for over 16 years. There was only one year that one kid wasn’t here with us. Right. As far as homeschooling. But I still homeschooling the other kids. So our oldest is almost 20. So this has been our life. We don’t really know anything.

It’s cool. It’s a little different. I mean, you know, our son drives and goes and does stuff and they have kids here every day. Things were not always all together, but lately we have him. But, you know, it is great training for this. Just do a three month RV trip around the country.

That’s true. And that’s what I was getting, too, though, is that this is different than normal home school life.

But it’s also like what we’ve been living for the last 20 years has been a boot camp for preparing us for this sanctifying time. Now, there’s still heart attitudes coming out, conflicts between different people that you have to deal with.

All those things happen in our family, too. Our perspective, though, is oftentimes different than most people’s because we go, hey, we just need to work on this.

Praise God that this has been revealed. And so we would encourage you in that, too.

Well, let’s dive in. Actually, first of all, I want to thank you for just being part of the 1 million legacy movement. five stars on i-Tunes just tapping it. That’s a huge help. Written reviews, read every one. So thankful for the social shares. We we always know that you put your hand up saying, I’m part of the movement. Just really awesome. And we would hope that you would share this episode, because I think it’s going to help a lot of people. Also, if you a courageous printed out come all the show notes, scripture references and any resources you mention are there, too. And if you subscribe to our mailing list you can there or just go to the front of courageousparenting.com and a pop up pop here you’ll get the date night one sheet, which is awesome.

And it really does mean a lot to us because I know Isaac was just mentioning that his heart goes out to the guys who have lost their jobs and different things like that. And you guys know that this ministry supports our family and the coaching and training that Isaac had done on the side that required traveling.

He’s no longer doing. Yes. Right. And so we are experiencing that in the same regard as other people, too.

And so I just wanted to put that out there, that it’s not just that we’ve experienced it in the past. We are currently experiencing that as well. The financial adjustments, if you will. And so we know what you’re going through. And as we’re praying for our family, we’re also praying for you guys. It’s very real and at the forefront of our minds.

You know, it’s been encouraging those there’s been some new donations coming in and some God just always advises just really interesting so we’re thankful. So let’s dive in. So the first thing we’ll talk about is the time we’re living in right now, actually. Yeah. So there’s as there’s signs of leading towards end times and we actually believe some people believe this differently. They believe, you know, we’re in an times and it’s leading up to Jesus coming back. And then some other people believe the end times are when Jesus comes back. And regardless of what you believe, actually, frankly, doesn’t matter. And that’s OK. That would people disagree on that. But what we’ve always understood is believed is that we are an end times since Jesus ascended to heaven. And when he and. And there’s birth pains and these things leading up to Jesus coming back.

And he says that he’ll come like a thief in the night. We’ve already we never know when there’s another passage of scripture in Matthew 24:27 that talks about how he’ll come as fast as lightning coming from the east to the west. That’s fast. you know.

And so I just think that there’s there’s this element of unknowing, which is one of the reasons why you guys know that our motto for courageous parenting is raising confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. Because the truth is, is there are some uncertainties, but we also do have some guidance in scripture.

And so we actually wanted to share a couple of those passages of scripture with you guys. Luke 21. I’m not going to read all of this chapter, but there is a verse in here that pertains to the topic of women who are pregnant, women who are nursing babies. And I just wanted to bring this up to you, because you might not know that the Bible’s actually speaking directly to you in regards to uncertain times to end times, actually. And I would encourage you to read the entire chapter.

And Luke twenty one, but Luke 21:23 says, But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.

And this is in regards to the destruction of Jerusalem, which obviously is something that has to happen before the coming of Jesus.

And so that’s not necessarily pertain to these exact times that we’re in right now. But this is a very interesting scripture talks. Jesus is talking about the second coming. There’ll be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars. If you’re interested in knowing Gurry, then you can go read Chapter 21 of Luke, but also in Matthew, Chapter 24. This is a really important passage of scripture also to be reading regarding end times.

It says, tell us when these things will be and what will be the sign of your coming Lord and the end of age.

You want to say hi, Solomon? Solomon just joined allowed.

Say hi. You’re on the podcast. It’s all right.

We’ve got to finish this. So can you shut the door right here?

You have an hour long, you get down, but you look like you got taken care of.

We had a special guest today. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you later. See you later, buddy. Okay. Thanks for shutting the door. Well, there he goes. First time Solomon has been on the show.

That’s right. You guys, if you’re watching the YouTube channel, you just got to see our little four year old.

So Jesus is talking to the disciples about the signs that will come and the end of age. They’re asking him what those signs will be in Chapter 24. And Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name saying I am the Christ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass. But the end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and pestilence. Another translation says pandemic. Right? And earthquakes in various places. And all these are the beginning of sorrows.

Yeah. So, you know, this is as last. Scripture is good, though. I like it. And I would go reference it, guys. I wouldn’t read that. And your older kids? I would read that to them. I think it’s totally appropriate.

All scripture is appropriate when they’re, you know, a little bit older. And so but we’re in an interesting time. And I think we should reflect on that.

And we should not be stopping our lives trying to guess when things are happening.

That’s the point. And so I also think that it’s important that we show our kids that scripture does talk about end times because it can actually help us to not fear and not be shocked. That’s that’s actually the point is to go like for us. Yes, there is sadness. You guys, we’ve experienced we’ve been experiencing the coronavirus. We have a daughter that is struggling actually with infection in her lungs right now. You could be praying for her. She had lost her sense of smell and sense of taste. And so eating has been extremely hard to get her to eat the last four or five days. She’s had this for 11, 12 days now. And.

And so we are. And and I don’t I don’t say that to compare to like the severity. I know that there is way more severe issues out there.

She is going to be fine, which we’re really thankful for. But we do not have the perspective that this is a little thing now. And by no means would we want to portray that to you guys. What we do want to emphasize, though, is this understanding that because God’s word speaks to these days, because God’s word does tell us that these things are gonna happen. We shouldn’t be shocked. We should be like, oh, wow. So these things do actually have to happen in order for the end to come. So we shouldn’t be like, you know, trying to be against God’s will. This is actually God’s will. This has to happen in order for the second coming of Jesus Christ. And we have that perspective. We actually engage these situations very differently.

Yeah, not in fear, but in hope. Yeah. And when you are in in that hopeful mindset, you don’t make decisions in fear that alter the size of your family or alter, you know, what your family does or.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, and I I’ll just finish up. If you wanted you to read through this passage of scripture in verse 19, it says again, but woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days. And so there’s this is just another one of those scriptures in addition to Luke, 21. And in the last podcast, we actually read about the labor pains and how it relates to end times as well.

And God uses these analogies, if you will, or concepts in scripture because he knows that we can relate to them. And so, moms, I just want to relate to you for a moment. Like God has a special message for us. He is relating to us in his word regarding these days. And I think that it’s really important that we keep our perspective right, that we are reaching out to God, that we keep our eyes on him, that we’re studying his word. And we’re gonna go through a list of suggestions to help you with trusting God during this time and not being overwhelmed with fear.

So the next thing we’re talking about is truly believe what God says, that kids are a blessing.

And if we actually believe that, it will change our actual actions. But a lot of times we think we believe things and then our actions show the opposite of that.

Right. So one thing that I often tell people is if we believe that God’s were God’s blessing is upon. Meaning they are a blessing, they are inheritance. That is not going to change based upon our circumstances or the world’s current state of being, if you will. Right. It’s a truth and a promise that’s in scripture and it’s unchanging. So if we believed yesterday that children were a blessing, then we should believe today that they are still the same blessing.

And some 120 some three says, behold, children are heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb as reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior. So are the children of one’s youth. So that’s really cool. And we should believe in God’s promises versus what the world wants to promise us, which is to be fearful. Worried, concerned and show, you know, challenge. And there are challenging times. But you know what I’ve noticed? I mean, we’ve experienced extreme challenge after having six kids.

Yeah, we had six kids. And then there was a period of five years where we were going through our Job years, you know, and we had lost almost everything.

Right? Everything. Financial, financial, business, failure, turmoil. And in that time, we had two more babies and we lost two babies. We had our first two miscarriage.

And these are our youngest two. So this is not too distant.

Yeah. History for an almost two. So, so many lies.

So when I look at Solomon and Eli, I see hope. That’s right. And because they were during our most challenging times, very, very, very challenging times. We were married 20 years so that the depth of challenge was right there.

Yeah, it was in year 15 was the beginning of that. Yeah, a few years.

And so I you know, for us, I can’t imagine having walked through those hard times without having the joy and blessing that they were. Yeah. And that they are they really brought our family closer together.

They were a promise from God of blessing to us. And our family was brought closer through both the trial, but also through the blessing of having them. And so I would just say and we were brought closer through the the hard trial of losing two babies as well. And so I think that, you know, in our last podcast, we talked about how quarantine reveals a lot of things. You know, in people, if you want to go listen to the last podcast that was on redeeming quarantine. But the truth is, is that in our hard times, that’s when what is really in our heart is revealed and you can’t hide it.

You’re either going to praise God and grow. And rise up. Are you gonna shrink back in fear and you’re going struggle? Yeah. And we have a choice in that. And it’s called faith.

One thing I’ve never done is looked exactly. And I don’t treat this as a math equation, as a as a husband. Like, okay, here’s what I make today and here’s what I might not make in the future because of uncertain times. And then go. So that dictates how many kids I can have. Now, provision is a serious thing. God says you need to provide, but he also says, I’ll help you.

Yeah. I mean, an all provision comes from him. All good things come from him. We even believe that about babies being a blessing, that he’s the one who creates them. Right. Yeah, he’s the one who has a plan for their life. And so.

So I remember when you were pregnant with Solomon and my business was facing that challenge. And we’re about to lose everything financially. And I definitely had those thoughts. I definitely had thoughts of like, how is this going to work out? And I was thinking in my flesh and in those things. And then I’ve been reading the word and I go, oh, God will provide.

I have no idea how that’s going to happen. It’ll have to be several miracles will have to happen for this to work out. But what a blessing. Solomon is. And I’m so excited for him. And I remember God fulfilling that promise. But he wants our faith. He wants our faith. He’s a jealous God. And until he has our our devotion, divine diversion, that goes and that’s point here, which is we should be aware of where we have idols before we go into that.

And we’re gonna go on to seven of God’s promises. And in a good math equation to really handle this and we’re feeling these things, a special word for the pregnant moms. We’ll dive into this in a second.

But first, the parenting mentor program has been something that so many families have been hit from. Here’s a few just mentioning their experiences. Let’s listen.

Steven, I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. what Angie and Isaac had done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

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

It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids 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 minds.

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 or no longer fearing dark days ahead.

But we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation.

Okay, so we’re talking about Idol worship now. A lot of times when the word idol comes up or pastor gives a sermon on Idol worship, we start distancing ourselves because, well, I don’t carve golden calves. I don’t have, you know, special animals carved in worship them and things like that. And I think we’re really missing the point if we relate it to that, because Idol worship, frankly, exists in most everybody. Then that’s why it was such a hard. It was such a difficult thing that God constantly reminded people about.

And really those things that were outward, things like a golden calf was really a symbol of the heart problem that was in people. And that’s what God was heartbroken and grieved over.

And he still grieves over that when we have idols in our own hearts. And I think that this you know, we talk again, we talked about this a lot, much more in depth in the last podcast.

But the truth is, is that it reveals a lot of things, whether it’s we have made an idol out of having control in our life. We’ve encouraged you guys to be more open to sharing the gospel because people who are lost, a lot of times it’s because they think that they don’t have a need for God because they are self-sufficient and they have control over their lives. And this whole thing with a global pandemic has revealed to people that they actually have less control than they think they do. And that’s a good thing for the prosperity of the gospel. If you if you get what I mean for furthering the message of Christ, because the reality is, is when people realize they don’t actually have control over their lives are much more open to hearing the gospel because they start questioning, oh, wow, I don’t control I I don’t have a promise of being alive tomorrow.

And you know, what’s amazing about this is that nothing has really changed. The truth is, is that none of us have a promise of life. Every day of life is a gift from the Lord. And we should look at it as if it was a gift from the Lord, Psalm 118.

Starting with five, I’m going to add scripture. This is so good. Five through eight. I called on the Lord in distress. The Lord answered me and set me in a barren place. The Lord is on my side.

I will not fear. What can a man do to me? The Lord is for me, among those who helped me. Therefore, I shall see my desire and those who hate me. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.

So the real test come when the challenges come. And we may think we’re trusting God, but we’re idolizing our big savings account.

Right. And then that gets wiped out. Right. Or the the facade that I was just talking about, that we actually have some kind of control over whether we live or die tomorrow. Yeah, right. Like that. Our lives are actually in God’s hands in that regard. And that self-sufficiency, whether we have enough food, all those things, we have to do a heart check.

Yeah. God. And say search my heart. O Lord, is there any wayward way in me to have I made an idol out of these things?

And the truth is, is that if we’re discontent, if we are fear fearful, if we are stressed out about any of these things, what that actually reveals is it puts a big old spotlight on what that idol was. So if you’ve been struggling with fear and stress in these different things, like you literally have to go, okay, I have to be honest with myself. This reveals that I’ve made an idol out of this my life.

And I think that you said something super important at church. We did a zoom call and you shared no really profound statements. Good. What was it? Which was that we need to live like live as if we’re gonna see the Lord come back in our lifetime.

Oh, yeah. I’d rather be wrong about that and live that way because then the not lived that way. And you know, so it’s so important because we live differently when we believe Jesus coming back and we’re gonna see him come back and it’s gonna happen our lifetime. We totally do. And I think if you read in the New Testament, you’ll see a sense of urgency and desire and hope and excitement about seeing Jesus coming back in the apostles. Yeah. And I think that’s awesome. We need to be like Paul. We need to be like them and have the energy because otherwise we start to trust too much in the world and it changes how we live. Another thing is there’s a reason Paul said rejoice in all sufferings sometimes. Another reason that we are hesitant to have more kids is because we love our kids so much. We don’t want them to suffer, but and we don’t want to see that in more of our kids.

And I mean, it’s who would want their kids to suffer. Let’s just be honest. Like none of us would want that. No, but the truth. I am so glad you brought that scripture when we didn’t actually have it in on our list of scriptures.

But we do have to just share that, says Count of all Joy. This is James, chapter one. And my brethren cannot all joy when you fall into various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces patients as patients a good thing. Yeah, we all should want patients, but let patients have it’s perfect work that you may be perfect and complete and lacking nothing. Yeah, lacking nothing. You guys, this isn’t a New Testament. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask. And faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like the wave of the seed driven and tossed by the wind for Lent. Not that man. Suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double minded man and stable in all his ways, and this is a really important passage of scripture regarding that concept, that question that we pose in this podcast, which is should we stop having kids in uncertain times?

Right. Yeah.

I mean, every single person needs to read this particular piece of scripture. If anyone of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all liberals. But you have to seek without doubting. And as you seek the word of the Lord, you will find these same truths that God has revealed to us that children are always a blessing.

I think sometimes his parents can feel inadequate, too, about equipping their kids in and changing times in uncertain world. And that is exactly why Courageous Mom and Courageous Parenting exist, because we believe it’s important to teach parents. That’s why this podcast exists. That’s the whole vision. Is because things are changing how we were parenthood is not sufficient to what needs to happen today, even if you had great parents, Christian parents. It is a changing world. And while biblical truth remains the same, the approach in how we apply biblical truth needs to be more vigorous and more intentional and more purposeful. And we need to be teaching kids at the appropriate ages how the world works and ahead of time so that when they launch into it, there’s no surprises and they can lead. You can’t if you don’t understand the challenges, you don’t know how to lead through challenge.

And there there is like a whole sect of Christian people, too, who have sheltered themselves so much that they’re not even aware of what’s happening in the world.

I know that that’s true even in the homeschooling community, too, where they’re not actually able to equip their children for living in an uncertain world and being able to stand against the temptations of the day. And knowing what to believe about these different things that are potentially coming, like world vaccinations are different things. Right. Like we have to be aware and alert, but it takes courage to be able to look at those things and be bold with your kids. And actually, it takes courage because you’re probably going to have to stand apart from the majority of Christians that are even in your community.

And that’s why Resolute Man exists, because it’s to help men reject passivity and lead their families and lead unapologetically because it’s going to look there.

You’re going to be swayed by the world and feel like maybe the way you’re lead, you need to lead isn’t approved by the world sometimes and you need to lead anyways, lead unapologetically biblically. And so, men, we have to step up. We have to lead our families to protect our families. But protecting doesn’t always mean shrinking the size of our family because it was happening in the world.

So, Isaac, what would you say to the man whose wife is scared to have sex or to be intimate because she’s fearful of getting pregnant with all that’s going on with the coronavirus and potentially just the uncertainty of what the next season of the world.

But also, there’s that element like say her husband lost his job. And what are the thoughts that are going through his mind? You know, and this could even speak to a couple that is currently pregnant. And now maybe the man has anxiety that he’s not gonna be able to provide what he thought he was going to be able to provide for this child or the wife has anxiety and she’s going she would go return that stroller because we need the money.

And I have a couple there’s a lot of questions right there. So, they’re good, though. Yeah, I think that, you know, if you just lost your job, it is OK. And that’s her next point to wait for a time to have kids. But then you come back together and do that. And so there is some prudence in like you just lost your job. You may not try to get pregnant in the moment, but you may not try not to, too, because we’re trusting God. So there is some of that. But what I would say is you definitely need to trust God for provision versus yourself. And that is the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that I am a capable person and I can go make money. And we live in in times where there’s good ways to provide and do things all kinds of ways. So I would say trust in God in the test of that is if you are basing your decisions on current income to have more kids, a lot of times that’s trusting in yourself and that control and you might even be idolizing you.

You know what you do or wanting to stay comfortable, you know, you dont want to break out of your comfort zone. And on the other side of it sometimes has nothing to do with that stuff. Sometimes the wife is concerned because of a lack of fathering, a lack of security in the marriage. And these kinds of things can happen to some men need to not be looking at other women. They need to be not looking at pornography.

They need to be walking rightly as believers who desire to be, you know, godly because they don’t want to let their God down. So that’s the the deep faith that men need to have and rise into for women to feel secure in their marriage, too. And if women are feeling scared about the world, that’s also a lack of spiritual leadership, perhaps.

And it’s a lack of the wife also pursuing her own faith, perhaps in reading the bible.

No, I totally agree with that. And I think that we all have to just be honest with ourselves and verbalising with our spouses. I mean, we’re majority of us are all kind of quarantined to a certain degree. We’re spending more time with our spouses and and we’re supposed to be one with one another. I need to remind you of that day. To be one is both in body, soul, mind and spirit. So if you have thoughts in your mind that your spouse doesn’t know about, you need to share those so that you can be one because he is there to hold you accountable, to lead you, to wash you in the word, to pray for you to be that best friend. That’s also going, hey, you know, I really think that we need to read this and to to lead you back to the right kind of thinking. And to be honest, you’re that for him in this case, too. He’s not gonna be going out necessarily meeting with mentors when you’re in quarantine. Right. And so you need to be one.

Right. And that is not just a physical thing. Yeah. Is my point. And you actually have a scripture that was going to idea their questions.

I do.

I thought keep them in line a friend of mine recently ask, hey, are you guys just going to keep trying to have kids? And I said, get that question, all that. I said, I’ve never tried to have kids. I originally wasn’t a kid person. So why would I try to do that?

Of all that changes, your heart is over.

But honestly, I don’t know that I can’t remember ever trying to have kids, but we just never tried not to have kids.

I mean, there were a true. Truthfully, I looked back and immediately I go back to when we were trying to have Austin.

We thought something was wrong with me, of course. No, no. We thought something was wrong. Me. And so anyway, there.

Yeah. There have been times that we thought there was a three year spread where we didn’t. Yeah. Three might not do. And we’re like well I guess we’re having one kid. Yeah. It was okay.

So right here First Corinthians Corinthians 7 5 do not deprive one another except with consent for a time consent amongst the married couple. Right. That you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But I say this as a session, not as a commandment.

So just you guys know this is First Corinthians, Chapter 7. Just before that, it’s actually talking about intimacy and how the wife of the body is a wife’s body is not her own, but her husband’s and vice versa. We should not deprive each other. Yeah. So it’s live. This is literally scripture talking about intimacy in regards to marriage. And so this is this is Paul exhorting us in saying. Do not deprive one another except with consent, meaning you both consented for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and then come together again. And so that is like a specific amount of time. And you’re gonna be praying, you’re gonna be fasting and then you come back together. This in no way is saying, hey, based upon the circumstances that you’re currently in, don’t have kids. Right? The Bible doesn’t say that. Right? Actually, what it’s saying is the only time that it’s okay is in this kind of context.

Now there are health issues. Men you should be loving to your wives. And if there’s health situates serious, serious health situations, you should be considering them.

Right. And I think that that is also talking on that can reveal a lot of idols as well. Like, are you making little things blown up into a bigger thing than they really are? Because because you want to justify the fear of actually having more kids.

What’s the real reason?

Sometimes we say that it’s this is when reality.

It’s less than other things that I hear says it’s a secret fear inside of something else. But you’re looking righteous by, you know, protecting your wife when really that maybe there isn’t as serious of an issue there as you might be making it in. And she’s had many, many serious very issues. And we trusted the Lord and move forward. And that’s our journey. You have to walk your own journey and you have to be in the words. So you know what the spirit’s telling you about all this.

And you have to be willing to be really honest about your fears and verbalizing them and not hiding them. I think that a lot of times. So there’s there’s there’s two different planes, actually, in Christianity. Right. There are those people who don’t want to verbalize things because they don’t want to give that thing power or the enemy power. I’ve heard that said.

And while I am biblically, I believe that we should never borrow troubles. Right. So that would be meditating and focusing on things that have not yet happened, worrying about things that have not yet happened. That’s borrowing troubles. That is biblical. That concept of like not giving power to a thing by verbalizing it.

I actually think that the enemy can deceive Christians there by. Convincing them not to speak of things, not to bring things into the light, actually by that belief. I actually think that’s wrong. The Bible actually says to make things known, to bring sins into the light, to expose fears so that there can be one held, there can be accountability to you, can you’re when you speak. You can give it to the Lord in prayer, like the spoken prayers and crying out to God and saying, this is something I feared. Take this from me. Then there’s freedom and release because you have given it to God. Hiding things is unspoken. That’s that’s what hiding things is. And so I think that if we look at what the Bible actually says, even in Genesis with the Garden of Eden and the fact that Adam and Eve were hiding their sin, they literally physically head. I think that we have so many warnings throughout scripture about what not to do and what will cause freedom is bringing things into the light. And so I would just encourage you to speak and verbalize and give those to God, but also tell your husband, husbands. Tell your wives. Share with a friend. Get accountability. Get prayer. Because the reality is we need to be honest about what were our struggles are in.

Our final point is to trust God. And we’re going to go over promises God made because we should meditate on these things. We should know these things. And this is a good equation to right to to think about.

And so, first of all, we have Isaiah 41 10. The first promise. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed from your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. That is so powerful when you think that.

Well, it’s interesting that you’re bringing up Isaiah 40:1, because in the same scripture, God is also encouraging those who are with young and and saying that he will be gentle with those who are with young.

And here we are talking to moms who have little babies, who are thinking about having babies who are pregnant, about to have little babies.

And so this particular chapter in Isaiah can be a huge encouragement to you, buddy. But but even if you have not had a child yet and you’re considering. Or you are pregnant.

Fear not, for I am with you. Can I just say that things are up in the air for pregnant women? Right. Like they don’t know if they’re having homebirth or they’re having hospital birth. Maybe they had a birth plan.

And those those plans might be up in the air. Can I just say take them back from the air.

They shouldn’t be up in the air and instead hold them open handed before God asking for his will to be done. And don’t have fear about it. It says, for I am with you, God will be with you. Whether you have a homebirth, got to be with you if you go to hospital. God is with you, period. He is with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God, and I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And I I so many times I hear from women who has and this is especially right now in the last month, especially with the postpartum cause, we’ve we’ve got almost a thousand women who’ve been going through that.

And I have been constantly hearing from them going, I just don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Can you please pray for me? I can’t have an attendant at my birth anymore or people who are in California who can’t. Some of them can’t have their husbands even at their birth. People who are had pre premature concerns who are like, should I just schedule as a Syrian or not?

There’s all all of these like triggers are happening right now. And first of all, I’m praying for you. And I just want to encourage you. That God is the same God today that he was yesterday when you didn’t have fear.

And you need to cling to him.

Sometimes, too, it’s like people are overwhelmed. Maybe haven’t been home schooling and other kids or home or home schooling them. There’s a lot of new. Sometimes when there’s new things happening, and new responsibilities. We can’t imagine adding another person to the equation. Yeah. And that’s just based on where God has you right now. But do you want a growing capacity? Do you want God to use you in bigger ways? Well, then that’s like saying, hey, I welcome your blessing, by the way. That’s why we’re coming out with the homeschool course. If you want info about that, it’s not yet for sale, but there’s info in the show, notes at CourageousParenting.com.

Yeah. So that I think could be very equipping for people. But I I do think that there’s this we need to be honest about the fact that God created us as beings that have both physical, spiritual, emotional, mental and hearts. Right. And and holistically, we’ll view those. Right. That’s what God’s word says. Love the Lord, your God with your whole. Heart, mind, soul and strength, strength being your physical strength, right?

And I think that we underestimate that in regards to how that impacts fear. Mm hmm. OK.

And the reason why I’m bringing this up is because we as a people of God, need to remember that God doesn’t want us to be reacting in fear, in our mind or in our heart or in our spirit, like we are all these things.

And we need to actually evaluate all those aspects of ourselves, meaning take our thoughts. Captive. We’ve talked about that many times. We need to verbalize it, pray to God, give it to him. We need to meditate on his promises.

Find those.

Here’s another one that’s in the New Testament in Romans eight twenty eight that says and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purposes.

And it just continues on. That whole chapter is very encouraging. We already read James one to you that talks about the whole purpose behind, you know, when you’re walking through trials and rejoicing in your suffering because it’s creating patience and perseverance. And I know that in Romans 5, it also talks about creating character and and perseverance and hope. There are good things that come out of hard things. Growth happens in those hard times. If you engage, it doesn’t always happen. I’ve known people who struggled right through trials and then they haven’t grown. You know, you actually have to make the choice to grow and to read, to partner with Christ in redeeming this hard thing you’re walking through. You have to be introspective and go, God, where are you teaching me in this? Do you have a lesson for me? Are you trying to humble me? What is it? You have to have that heart attitude in order to actually have the growth on the other side.

And we don’t want to be focusing on ourselves. No, focusing on ourselves is the opposite of focusing on God. And the more you focus on yourself, the more anxieties and fear come into picture and especially of the unknown.

Yeah, because we’re not perfect. We’re flawed. And so we tend to think about that and we think about what we’re capable of. But instead, we should be thinking of what is God capable of through us and through our kids and our future kids.

Like, that’s the thing in my post I just said, you know, when I look at our kids, I have hope because I believe that God created them for this generation for a purpose and purpose. Yes. And so if we withhold that. Where is the world going to be like in ours? In our fear if we make decisions to not have kids. How is that potentially going to impact their generation?

And we’ve wrestled with this. We’ve had times where and she’s like, I don’t know if I can do this again. I’ve had times where I’m like, wow. Does this even make sense? Because I have a half million in debt following me and no income coming in? Yeah. There were those big business failure. You know, these were the health challenges and these things. And we had to pray through it.

We had to have a fear of me potentially dying. You know, guys like I or just even just being depleted. But now we can’t imagine not having one of these eight incredible kids. Like, which one would you choose to not have?

It’s just incredible. In Philippians. Is is super encouraging. Philippians 4:6-9. Be anxious for nothing.

It doesn’t say be anxious for almost nothing except this.

One little thing we think is relevant and super important says be anxious for nothing but in everything. I lived opposite year by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving. So we need to be praying and we now have a heart of Thanksgiving. Let your requests be known to God. Sometimes we go, Is God even listening to me? I pray. And I dont see it. Well, you. Here’s all your prayers. But he loves you so much that he is going to act in what is best long term for you and everybody else around to make him known. And so if we’re not asking in Thanksgiving, if we’re not praying and if we’re asking with an anxious heart, that’s kind of the opposite of what he’s commanding here. So we need to be anxious for nothing but in everything, prayer, supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. That’s how would you pray? And that’s how I would ask ask God for things in the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

So if you don’t have peace, maybe we’re not asking correctly, and maybe we’re not meditating enough on the only truth which is found in the Bible. Maybe we’re allowing other things to be the thing that we’re meditating and focusing on. The whole point is quit focusing on ourselves, quit focusing on the fear of the unknown and look up and look to him, which you know. So I know that this is our last point is talking about trusting God. One of the ways that you can do that best is to have worship music playing in your homes all the time. I know that I have multiple Spotify playlists and I just kind of rotate them to help keep us focused on the Lord to help keep our attitudes right. Another thing, like you said, is to pray. Another thing is to praise God with Thanksgiving. Start focusing on the things that you can be thankful for. Make a thankful board if you need to. But meditate on the truth. On the promises. And when trials come, do you draw near to God or do you blame him? Like we need to ask these hard questions of ourselves. Right. And so just before we wrap up there, I’ve been thinking about the pregnant moms that are out there. Right, that are struggling because their plans are getting thrown and tossed around.

And there’s actually something I want to share with you guys. That is I’m just going to read a little portion of my book, Redeeming Childbirth to you right now, because hopefully this will be an encouragement in regards to fear. This is on the chapter that covers fear, circumstances, fear of people, the importance of fearing God. It’s called the lies and Fears that bind us. Is the chapter in redeeming childbirth page ninety seven if you have my book. But you guys, I can’t encourage you enough to go back and read this particular chapter because as we’re walking through this, even not being pregnant, I’m super encouraged. There are lots of scripture in here. For example, Proverbs 1:33 says Whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm. That’s Proverbs 1:33 and then live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the Brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor first. Peter 2:16. Fear the law. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it resist rests satisfied. He will not be visited by harm. Proverbs 19:23. These are all things that we need to be meditating on you guys. But it says here I was just reminded.

I was at a birth a few weeks ago, and I’m always reminded of what my own births were like whenever I’m at a birth.

And one of the things that was so on my mind was how. Being walking through the times, these uncertain times, there is a potential for women to fear about the unknown circumstances surrounding their pregnancy and birth and to make decisions based upon those fears vs. trusting in God and continuing on with the path that he had for them based upon. Now, I’m not saying that you don’t adjust some things right. Like, for example, we have this virus that’s highly viral. And so is it wise to have a baby at the hospital? Well, I I don’t I’m not going to give you the answer to that. Okay. I think that that’s something that every couple needs to pray about. Every couple needs to seek the Lord on. We don’t want to make a decision based on fear of getting the virus and not going the hospital. That was our plan. But we also don’t want to be foolish and expose ourselves to things either.

And so you have to weigh out both of those and come to a conclusion. And you know it if you just like James, one says if you seek him and you pray with all faith, he will give you the wisdom that you need to make a decision that you can be confident in where you don’t have fear anymore. But it says here that women oftentimes don’t realize this, but their fear and their stress can actually prolong labor. And I’m bringing this up because this is an important point in today’s society where a lot of women do have a lot of fear and stress right now.

You need to relinquish that to the Lord for the sake of having a calm, quick birth.

Now, not all of your births are always determined based upon just fear and stress. Like the amount of time that it takes is not does not equate to just that. OK. However, it has been proven that when women have fears and when they have stresses upon them that they are not dealing with it can bind them up and prolong their labor. And I think that there is a lot of fear that is surrounding birth right now. Our culture is not helping that situation. The Western cultures method of treating pregnancy and birth further exasperates the potential fears. This message it sent is that birth is an ailment or a disease to be treated in the hospital, one with great pain and suffering. Therefore, we should do our best to eliminate as much pain as possible. But as my book, I’m just reading out of my book where most of our culture believes that the lie that women cannot birth their babies safely unless they are in the hospital under the supervision of a medical professional, decisions regarding birth are then usually made based upon those fears. Information perceived through media, culture and friends are education taught by professionals who hold to the belief that keeping medical control over the birth is better. Some even to say not to have a baby and baby in a hospital is irresponsible. These convictions that our culture teaches in the medical field stems from a deeper, misguided belief that our bodies and our minds are not connected. And in mainstream media, most doctors either treat mental illness, which is psychiatrist or physical illness, which is positions the majority. Not all are not raised with a holistic viewpoint that all aspects of our bodies are connected. We as Christian women need to recognize that we have been deceived. We have not been raised in a culture that views birth as a natural normal life experience.

Ok, and I’m bringing this up because there may be lies that you are believing about pregnancy, about birth that you need to bring into the light and you need to take them to God. Birth is a normal aspect of life. It is not an emergency. Sometimes emergencies happen in birth. But they are not an emergency. So let’s have the peace of knowing that God made our bodies to do this. Let’s trust him. Let’s trust him with that with our kids. Our kids are not ours. A lot of times our fear can actually reveal that we think that our kids are ours when they’re actually God’s. And they’re they’re a blessing to us, but they’re his. So when we’re making these decisions, we got to pull ourselves out of the equation.

We need to pull our circumstances out of the equation. We need to pull our fears out of the equation. And we need to just believe what God’s word says.

And we do believe God has a unique plan for each family.

Each family has a different size, different number of kids. And we’re not saying people need to be just like us or anything like that. You need to be just how God wants you to be.

That’s right. So we’re praying for you guys to not make decisions based upon fear, fear of circumstances, but to be walking strong in the Lord and in his might to be seeking him so he can give you the wisdom in this decision. But to be wise and biblical in how you approach that.

So let’s walk in the spirit. Let’s not walk in the flesh as we make decisions. 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.

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Scripture In This Episode:

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 – “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,”

2 Corinthians 5:14-17 – “For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

James 1:2-8 – “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.  But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;  he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Hebrews 10:19-25 – “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,  by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh,  and having a High Priest over the house of God,  let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.  And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,  not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”