God is here ready to lead you, to guide you and to give you the strength that you need to make wise decisions. As we face Covid-19 and the changes caused by it such as quarantine and social distancing, we have the opportunity as parents to teach our children life skills, work ethic, character qualities, being a part of a team and helping others.

You have an opportunity, a free trial to experience homeschooling with your kids. This is an opportunity to bring your family closer together when we serve one another together our relationships grow stronger. So while you’re in the midst of maybe dealing with more than you’re used to, good can come out of it if you make the right decisions. Growth happens in the valley. May we all grow closer to Christ during this challenging time, let’s rejoice in our sufferings and know that God is only good and let’s teach our kids that.

In This Episode We Cover:

1. Kids home 24/7
2. Husbands Being Home More
3. Church At Home
4. Homeschooling

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We aren’t to fear, but we should be wise and exercise having a sound mind. This is a timely message that will likely encourage and practically help families during this difficult time we are living in not just that there’s a virus, but that it is causing havoc on our economy and people’s livelihoods. Now part of what makes us not fear is revering God, and the more we revere God, the less we fear anything in this world. The more we fear things in the world, the less we tend to be focused on what we know to be true.
There’s a real opportunity in times like this to encourage faith in God in your kids. Mostly by your example, but also your proactive efforts to include them in what’s happening versus just sheltering them.
If they don’t understand the challenges, they may miss understanding the realities of how God is working in the midst of them. They may miss seeing your faith in action. Let’s not rob them of experiencing God during challenging times, but it requires good leadership from you.

Coronavirus: Be Wise, But Don’t Fear

1. The Greatest Time To Be Alive
2. No Fear
3. Prepared Does Not Mean Fear
4. What Are We Doing and What Are We Teaching Our Children?

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The key phrase of Courageous Parenting is raising confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. What are confident Christian people going to do? They’re gonna stand for truth and stand against the pressures of the world.

We need to exemplify that in our decision making. Oftentimes we get in a rhythm and we just continue in that rhythm. When there is pressure against us it can be easy to get so comfortable in our path that we don’t make changes early enough and later we suffer the consequences. So are you becoming more like the culture or are you becoming less like the culture? Are the decisions you make increasing Godly fruitfulness in your life or worldly fruitfulness?

Why Positive Disruptions Help Your Marriage:

1. Are You Driven by God?

2. Be Proactive With Change

3. Priority Driven

4. Power of Team

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Everyone wants to feel valued and that they provide a positive contribution. So often we as parents don’t believe kids are capable to the level that they actually are, and because of this wrongful thinking, we don’t give our children enough responsibilities. If you are not empowering your kids to take action and responsibility then they may start acting out because they don’t feel important or valued. 

One of the easiest ways to start giving your kids more responsibilities and to help them feel like they are contributing to the family is to incorporate more home economic type chores. Some of which (depending on the nature of the situation) they may be compensated for and others they may be required to do as a way to contribute to the family team. 

Often, subconsciously people are scared of money or talking about money. Because of this a lot of kids grow up with a poverty mentality, scarcity mentality or a belief that making really good money is a bad thing. This is just not the case. Money in itself is neutral. It is a resource. With the right intentions, it can be used for incredible good. What is atrocious in the eyes of God is the love of money. We just wanted to touch on that because it’s absolutely good and okay to teach your children how to make money and the value of money in relation to their work.

Raising Kids Who Are Resourceful & Take Initiative:

1. Start While Young

2. Create Lots of Experiences

3. How To Do It

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  Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

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 for twenty 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 to the podcast. Hey, guys, this is a great show. We are so excited to talk to you about a really important topic.

Resourcefulness, entrepreneurship and work ethic. Here we go. Raising your kids so that they grow up and are resourceful.

This idea for this episode came from an experience recently as meeting with a business owner in the community, Christian guy that Austin, our son, got, you know, got the chance to work with recently. And he had such raving reviews about our son, which obviously feels good, as parents. Right. And so but one of the things he specifically said is it’s really rare or unusual today to work with somebody that’s young, that is so proactive and takes initiative the entire time and tries to add value every minute of the day. He said it a little differently than that, but that was the meaning. And of course, I’m feeling great. But as great as you know of a person, our son, is that stuff doesn’t happen by accident.

Right. And so we got thinking about how important it is because to talk about this topic of raising kids, to be resourceful, raising them to be initiative takers, if you will, and how to get to that place, because most people listening would probably go. I want my son to be like that. I want my daughter to be like that right when they’re older and and not really knowing like. Okay. So what did you do to get them to that place?

Because there were things we did at a very, very young age. It’s not just like, oh, they’re started. They’re 12 now. I’m gonna start working with them on these things. Now it’s never too late. I always try no matter what your age, kids. But yeah, even if you have little kids right now, this is relevant.

Yeah. So we’re gonna go through three main points on this podcast and we’re gonna talk about starting while they’re young. Creating lots of experiences where I share some of the experiences that our kids have had. We’re also going to talk about how to do it. And we are gonna share four different passages of scripture.

So yeah, before we do that, we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your support. Wow.

Because we have just been so blessed, aren’t we? Like whenever somebody shares, it’s just awesome.

It’s what keeps us going is hearing the feedback and so forth. Because true, you know, here we are in our little studio in our home. And, you know, we’re putting this out there and working hard and all kinds of things with the ministry. And it’s just really encouraging. It keeps us going.

But there’s two things that we get a lot of questions about from people, whereas that date one night, date night questionnaire and how can I go get into the free parenting workshops? So why don’t you tell them where those two things are?

Yeah. So CourageousParenting.com is our home base for the parenting stuff. And so there’s a little menu hamburger icon. They call it with three lines, many in the top left. And you hit that and it says free parenting workshops. You can register for that there. Over a couple thousand parents have gone through it and raving about it, which is pretty good. And then the “Date Night One Sheet” you know, if you go to the podcast episode, there’s a subscribe button to our email list or if you’ve already subscribed, just look below our signature and the emails that go out once a week with the parenting tip. And it says date night one, she and you can get it there if you haven’t yet. Yeah, great.

So that’s really helpful because a lot of people don’t really know how. Now, if you’re having a hard time accessing that date night one sheet, when you go to the Web site, maybe the paper doesn’t happen, right. That’s by going to the blog post and finding that little thing that you can fill out is important. Also, sometimes just refreshing your cash, your computer or doing an incognito window can help it to pop up again. Yeah, because you might have actually closed that little window the first time you came to the web sites. You’re just so excited to listen to the podcast or something. So that’s why we just wanted to just briefly go over that with you so that you can get access to and hey, on i-Tunes just Tap it and it gives us a five star review.

It helps the movement because it helps the algorithms get this to more people. And we love the written reviews to so let’s dive in. Vision for the kind of adults we want to raise is an important start to this as we lead into point one. You really have to be thinking about these things now because you need to do the right things when they are younger to instill these things.

Proverbs 13:4 says the soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing. Yeah, we don’t want our kids to get nothing. We don’t want them to be sluggards. Yeah, but then it says While the soul of the diligent is rish richly supplied. OK. And so we wanted to share that little passage of scripture with you to give you a little bit of vision as to why this is our important conversation that we’re having and that it does take actually starting with your kids at a young age, because we don’t want our kids to be sluggards either, actually. This is a biblical principle, right?

Yeah. And and we did a whole episode on, you know, entitlement and how to raise kids that are aren’t entitled. You can go look, I encourage you to look at that because different content than we’re talking about here. But if you don’t want entitled kids, one of the things that exists with a lot of people in general, not everybody, but as some people is this they become. Yes, people. And what I mean by that is they’re not necessarily proactive when they’re in jobs. They’re reactive, meaning they’re always asking for the next thing and get exactly what they want and having you be trained on every single little detail to do things. They may be micromanage, micromanage and what you want to raise them. What people want brings up even more value to the marketplace or whatever they’re going to be doing is people that are proactive in their initiative because training’s a hard thing. And every company, no matter how good the training is, they’re never going to train on every detail. And the people that stand out are the people that are proactive, resourceful, finding a way, taking action, even if sometimes they make a mistake. Usually business owners and bosses, managers, leaders would rather have somebody that takes initiative and sometimes makes an error than is always waiting for direction.

So as you’re talking about this, it’s just like my mind is blowing up right now with little thoughts about how moms during the day and dads have massive impact on whether or not a child grows up to become the type of person that has to be micromanaged, actually. So, for example, helicopter moms always they’re doing everything, catching everything, directing all the time. No, we’re not going to do that. Right. You’ve seen those moms that are like always there to catch their kids. Always, always, always doing everything for them. If you continue doing that, you could potentially be raising a person that absolutely is dependent upon other people constantly telling them what to do. If that’s all they’ve known their whole childhood is people telling them what to do and then just needing to be a good soldier. They’re not going to have it in them to take initiative, to be proactive, to think out of the box.

Right. And it’s actually those kinds of you’ve talked about this other podcasts and we talk about it more in-depth in parenting program, those soft skills that are going to be things that can’t be replaced by robots later in life. Artificial intelligence, creative thinking, like creative thinking that God created us in his energy where creative beings.

And so we train our kids to just be and do like like a robot, actually, because we’re micromanaging them all the time. It’s not the best thing for them long term.

So we’re far removed from the age of the industrial revolution when there were training factory workers, essentially. And there’s nothing. Every job is honorables honorables anybody else’s job. So I’m not dissing any kind of job. It’s just that to be prepared for the world they’re launching into, we should be preparing them to think, to be proactive, resourceful and take action. The other benefit is there’s so many tools now, like if I had YouTube when I was a kid and I could learn how to do things like change oil on a roll, it’d be amazing. Like there’s so many tools. But sometimes when the tools already exist, we take them for granted. And so you want your kids to realize the power of the tools and to understand how to use them as a growing right.

So two things about you mentioned Google. So I know that there’s a lot of moms going weinerman. Are they advocating for people, kids getting on the Internet? So we just have to put a disclaimer out there that certainly kids should not be getting on the Internet and not being supervised, first of all. Secondly, you are responsible for teaching, training your children in Internet safety. And thirdly, you need to have precautions set up. You have filters. You need teach your kids. If this happens, you. This is how you react. You come to me right away. You close your computer, whatever you need to go through and teach your kids those things. But also setting them up for success with specific Web sites that are safer that they can go to. Maybe you go and you sit with them and you help them look up the science experiment about magnets. Yeah. Right. And you learn together. And that way you’re able to kind of filter things if it’s needed.

The other thing is, is that Google is great, but it doesn’t replace real life learning from other people. And one of the things that I just want to encourage you in is you don’t have to teach everything. Right. Like how many guys in our community have taught Austin things about cars.

So and they need to develop a love for learning, pro-active learning versus waiting to be taught.

Right. Which is the difference between someone who has been raised, being micromanaged, someone who’s raised, micromanaged is gonna be waiting to be taught something. Yeah. Right. And so there is an opportunity that we as moms have to trust and to realize that there’s growth in letting your kids stumble. Sometimes there’s growth and letting them learn things and that you don’t always have to be the one teaching it, actually.

Absolutely. It’s actually a sign of insecure leadership when you have to be the one always teaching it. And let’s go into and we’ll talk about that more. But let’s go into point one, which is start while they are young. This is so, so important. One of the things I did as a young leader in the business world is I used to want to know all the answers and feel like I had no other answers. And when someone call me then managers all over the place, then I would want to have the answer. And even a family kind of knew the answer. I would just say I have the answer. And that was weak, actually. And it created a dependency on me. And so I worked harder and more, whereas my people felt more equipped. When I started challenging them to be resourceful and find their own answers and say, you know what, I have an idea about that. But tell me what you think first. I think this actually I think you’re right. You should do that. And now what are they building within themselves? A trust and confidence that they don’t always have to go. Ask me for the answer.

Right. And kids need that more than anything, right? Like it. And we’re talking about often one of the taglines for courageous parenting is raising confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. The reality is, is, like you said, every job is honorable. But we are moving into a day and age where certain jobs like factory type stuff is actually automated and going to be replacing people with computers and robots. And so that’s true. But then there’s also this element of like needing to raise up our kids to be confident in their ability to contribute to society.

So how do we do that at a young age Angie? And what are the practical home life skills and how do we do that when the young.

So I think that it starts off really young. I mean, I gave you a perfect example of like just double checking, making sure you’re not being a helicopter mom. One good question would be to go to your spouse and say, hey, do you feel like I’m always micromanaging the kids? Now, I’m not talking about not being consistent. You have to be consistent right with your kids. Maybe teaching, training, discipline and all those things. But there is a place of when kids are really little, you have the opportunity to instill in them a love for learning. And that’s first started with just books like Do you have good books that are fun to read? And do you show an exuberant, enthusiastic attitude toward sitting and reading books with your kids? Do your other kids read books with their younger siblings? Are your kids curious and loving books? Like if if there is a love for learning, there will be a love for books, actually. And I think that in this next generation, actually, in the next 10 years, because of how technology has been moving, I can see that there is a temptation for parents to maybe be going more towards media with their little kids and less with books.

And I just have to say like that could be one of the biggest mistakes ever. But loving learning is enjoying, like taking delight in learning new things. And so sometimes as a parent, even though you may know the answer, it’s actually better to just be like, hey, let’s do it together. Hey, let’s learn together. And oh, that’s really good. Good job. You know, and just been encouraging to your 2 year old 3 year old giving them opportunities to contribute to the family and learning new tasks that are valuable, like letting your kids do the dishes, helping letting the little ones unload that. Maybe the stuff that’s non dangerous to carry like the Tupperware or the bottles or whatever they have. Right. And helping them to know where those go, have a drawer. That’s down low so that they can participate in the putting away of those dishes. It’s those kinds of things too. Here’s your here’s your clothes. We just changed you. Go put this in your laundry. Oh, good job. Like there’s so many very simple aspects that you can do with kids the minute that they’re walking. And some kids are walking at 10 months old. So if they are walking, they can carry their dirty clothes to the laundry and try to throw in the laundry basket. And they will be so happy. You know, it will just be so full of joy.

Everybody wants to feel valued and like they’re contributing. And so often we don’t believe kids are capable to the level they actually are capable and they might be acting out if you’re not empowering them to take action and responsibility.

Totally. Right. So one of the easiest ways for them to feel like they’re being resourceful or giving contribution or bringing value and being appreciated for it is with home economic type chores. And now they can’t do everything. You just have to be like. Aware of where the development of your kid is, you have to be proactive about training, making sure that everything’s safe. There are tons of things you have your kids doing alongside you. But you one of the things that you’ve been really good at with the kids is helping them to find opportunities where they can make their first profit.

I really believe learning how to make profit or commission basically earning money from the quality of the work they do versus earning money for an amount of time they work. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just think it’s it’s actually a good experience both, but really understand it. So one of the things when they’re very young is, for example, we had them earn a penny per weed. So the more weeds they pulled, the more money they made, the longer they took the, the less money and they made. It was unlimited to the rate that they could do it. And that was really powerful because then they know, OK. Based on my proactive effort, I make more money. Now, let’s talk about money for a second. In the Christian world, a lot of times people are subconsciously scared of money or talking about money. And so a lot of kids grow up with a poverty mentality or a scarcity mentality or a belief that making really good money is a bad thing. And that’s not the case, actually. Money in itself is neutral. It’s a resource. It can be used for incredible good. You know, if you’re generous, you can give it to things that help people. Right. But the love of money, is what’s wrong. And I think most people know that. But we don’t want to make money in idle. And so I just want to say that real quick, because it’s absolutely good and okay to teach them how to make money and then understand the value of money in relation to their work. And let me give you an example of a quick, because they need to understand the value of a dollar. A lot of people grow up not understanding that and they getting themselves into trouble. And so let’s say they’re in five dollars. Let’s say a five year old earns five dollars for pulling weeds.

How long would it take a day or days? Yeah, a couple days for you to take a few days.

And they’re they’re not working.

They’re not working all day long, obviously. But it takes some some effort. Now, let’s say you’re at the store with mom or dad and they get they want to buy something for $4. And now you can simply in the moment they don’t think about the work because they just want the thing. Right. And part of teaching kids is teaching them how to think longer term, because the longer term, someone thinks the more delayed gratification exists. And the person that done studies with adults, the more actually successful they are, the more they contribute to society and that the longer they think. And so it can have delayed gratification for a bigger reward later. And so one of the things you can do is you go, well, okay, let’s think about this for a second. So I want you to remember how long it took you to earn the five dollars you have. And that’s the five dollars you have. And so now I want you to think about, OK. $4 is like 90 percent of your net worth when net worth means the total amount of money you have. And so now what you think, is that thing worth all of that effort?

Right. It gives them perspective, which is a really important thing. But the reality is, is parents can’t teach proper biblical perspective on money if they don’t have it themselves. So where you have to start on this conversation is you and your wife or husband on a date having the conversation of what you truly believe about money and making sure that your perspective is biblical. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is because I actually struggled with a poverty mentality for a really long time. And. And there I’ve known people who have the opposite. Right. Who are prosperity gospel. Right. And both are two extremes of the spectrum. Right. There’s a pendulum. And as Bible believing believers, we want to have balance. And we don’t want to make an idol lot of money. We also don’t want to attribute like success, financial success with thinking that we deserve it and that it’s because we’re doing good with God and all this. Now, God is the one who gives the blessing.

But it’s not indicative of our relationship, meaning like you can still have a lot of money and be in sin. Yeah. And so it’s important, though, that you actually teach your kids these things and that we have a responsibility not to sin with our money and to do what God calls us to with our money, which we talk about that in a different podcast. I think we’re talking about tithing on this stuff.

So so that’s super important. So the value of hard work and the value of money is really important. You have to give all opportunities to do that. Now, point two is you want to create lots of experiences. I’m going to give you another story really quick. When the kids were a little bit older, Austin was running the RV business with me and part of running that is cleaning the RV, prepping it for the next renter. And so we would get a cleaning fee of several hundred dollars. And I would tell Austin, OK, that that three dollars is yours. But I want you to empower the other your younger brothers and sisters if they want to work with you to clean it, and then you’re going to decide how much money they get based on effort. Everybody does not get the equal pay.

So you absolutely experience project management as well.

So in this is you must have been when he started doing that. Thirteen. Yeah. Yeah. 12 or 13 and he had a relationship. Lead them, keep them all working. I was not out there having work well and then assess how much money they get of the money that’s available while also thinking about how much money he’s going to get to keep and not be greedy about it. Right.

And be generous but then give according to the amount of productivity that was created in addition to attitude in doing it and actually had something that was an effect also because we also know that in the real world someone could be a really good worker. But if they have a stinky attitude and they’re grumbling, combining their pain, not going to get to keep that job very long. Yeah. And so we have always had that as like a side note thing, too.

And what’s amazing is nobody complained. They got different amounts of money. They all understood it. Never had to deal with it. And it was really, really a cool experience. That’s an example. But you want to create lots of experiences and different kinds of experiences because this when they’re young, you need to help them discover what they like versus following the things you like.

Oh, that’s really big. But what that takes, though, is a humble parent realizing that it’s actually stealing from their child. Right. To try to live vicariously through them or relive if you. Well, yeah. Right. Something that maybe they didn’t get to do or whatnot. And that takes really being honest as a parent and re-evaluating constantly like why am I doing this? Why am I pushing them to do this. Yeah. And I think that that’s important regarding everything. Sports, jobs, all the things. Music, whatever it is.

Yeah, I was. Now, this is an a great example. Probably wouldn’t use this example with your kids anymore because Tiger Woods had some fallout, some things. But you can’t deny he’s a great golfer. I’m not a golfer myself. I just know the story because I know the story of him and his dad reading about it. And one of the things his dad did when he was young is he had him try lots of different things. And when he found something that was really challenging for Tiger, he would encourage doing that even more. And I thought that was good, because a lot of times a weakness I’ve seen. I used to work with thousands of young adults in a previous thing I did. And I would always see these really smart. A lot of times. Well, mostly, well, parenting kids. But if something became challenging and they didn’t know for sure if they would be good at it, they would quit.

Right. It’s like I can go do the thing I know I’m good at.

And so that is how they been parents. Not a good thing. Right. OK. So that narrows what they do. And they only tend to do things they they can think in their mind are going to look good because the probability of success is really high because that’s where my experience is.

So therefore, when they’re young, you want to have lots of experiences. And you want them to experience, challenge, failure. All of these things while they’re young. Right. So that they’re one, learning, discovering what they like, learning how to overcome obstacles in following through and finishing things even when they’re hard and exploring all of that stuff and then developing thick skin. So when they’re older, they don’t just do things they know they’re going to get at. They’re willing to do all kinds of things.

Yeah, that can be a really hard thing to learn. And some kids are more prone to being more risk-taking in that regard than others. And so there’s different personalities that are actually impacted by that as well. But it is important, though, that we help our kids to discover what they like and that they own that, too. Right. And so. And I think that it can be really empowering. However, one of the key things, as a biblical parent, you always have to make sure that your kids do not do two things. They do not allow the things that they’re good at to attach themselves to their identity because our identity is in Christ, not in what we do or don’t do. And the second thing you need to be on the lookout for when you’re teaching them the value of money is that their identity is not affected by how much money they make or not. Yeah. Right. And so that’s those are two very key trigger things for me is that my kids recognize their value and who they are in Christ, not because of what they do, not because of what they have earned. Any of that.

Now, it’s also this day and age where nobody tends to keep a career for very long, like the old days where someone would get a career and keep it forever. Most likely your kids are going to do a whole bunch of different things over the years to provide for their families. And so what you want then is multiple rock solid skills to fall back on. But if they’re not trying lots of things when they’re younger on a micro-level, then when the middle school and as again, the teenagers can be resistant to trying lots of things in school, be harder and they’re going to launch into adulthood with less skills. You want to do experience and develop a lot of things like recently, we encourage one of our sons to go do construction with somebody that we trust. And he’s also learning all these other things, using his mind with video editing and creative activity side of things. So. So that’s really cool. He’s trying lots of different things and we encourage that. I would. We’re gonna give you some examples of how to create lots of experiences for me. Lots of examples. And just a second. But first, hey, join us for the Parenting Mentor program. It is so awesome to engage with people that are part of the program. And we have an new one coming up soon. So let’s listen to people who’ve been through it.

Stephen and 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 has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents 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 the heart.

We now have a game trend 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. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year. And I could not recommend it more. We are no longer fearing dark days ahead.

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

Awesome. So let’s go through those examples. You want to start?

Sure. So selling different things. Oh, okay. So our kids, we’ve had multiple different little side businesses. I wouldn’t call em like big businesses, but that’s why this is such a perfect example. So our oldest daughter, when she was really young, she loved sewing. She learned how to sew on the sewing machine. Both grandmas gave her a little lessons and she started making these little wallets. You remember the little wallets that Kelsey used to make and she would sell them. And then just to people in family and church and things like that.

And she sold them for about $9. She made about a $5 profit on them after all of her expenses, but she had to learn what it meant to go and purchase and make an investment in something, which is what you have to do in your starting a business. Right. You have to putting your initial money back. You’re going to invest in your business. So she had to do this. She had saved money and she did this. And then she got her fabric. She. And her times kept track of how much time she spent. And then she sold the end product, took out the expenses she had, and then she was able to divide what was left to see how much money she was making per hour. Yeah. And to see what it was worth, it was a really great math problem. It showed her the importance of understanding why we learn math. But it also was something that she really loved. She loved sewing. So it was like a fun thing for her selling eggs. That’s another thing she started doing when she was five years old. She was in charge of all the chickens profit, you know.

And that was remarkable that she was actually doing that at such a young age. I look at that. I go, whoa!

But she fully took care of the chickens. She even nursed a few back to health because we had a puppy that got a hold of them at one point. Even in the rain and it was way in the back of the property.

So she had to run, a little ways to get out there.

We called her the chicken dancer because she would dance with the chickens on her arms, which was hilarious. The chicken whisper. But. So they’re there. Those are just some examples that we did with her when she was like five years old to eight or nine years old. We’ve also done things like growing herbs, drying them, making teas. And then her selling those. Right. Yeah. We’ve also done different projects with the boys. Yeah. And so Isaac gave you an example of Austen doing the RV business, which has now been passed down to Drew, and he’s going to be taking that over. Other skills, too, like soft skills like Austin does our video podcast editing. Does the transcript. He does the blog. He does so much. He’s learned so many different skills doing those things. Kelsey used to edit for us. Regarding book editing and blog post editing.

Obviously, there’s kind of some of these traditional things like mowing yards kids can do when they get older.

But those are kind of obvious. I’m not bringing those things. Just because those are kind of more traditional.

There’s babysitting. Yeah. You know, all kinds of stuff. There’s hard labor. yard work.

You know, like with our that’s tends to be one of the easiest things for kids to do, especially in summer months and being paid to help elderly people too, you know, and not to be paid to help them.

Just so just be creative, thinking about ways they can do that. Whether you’re providing low commission jobs, as simple as we’d be doing. Right over. Yes. And in those kinds of things. So super, super important point three is how to do this. OK. First of all, a lot of times people will go, wait a minute. I don’t know enough or have enough things going on for my kids to do. Well, that’s where community comes in.

Right. And what we mean by that is in your community and we’re not just talking about your family, but your friends. Do you even know what your friends do for work? Right. And if you do, do you feel comfortable and trust them to have a child when they’re a teenager, be an apprentice for a day, go to work with them, you know, or even just interviewing them and learning from them. And there can be some really huge benefits to that. You know, we’ve had friends that had skills like being a photographer where our kids would actually learn from them by going and watching them do photography. Austin does that with Jackson now, he’s done it with Aaron in the past. And, you know, so there’s so many different skills out there that are really different from each other. That can be super interesting. I also think about like just even Austin because I gave a bunch of girl examples before. But now, like Austin has his first car. Right. And a lot of the guys at church have been like, hey, Austin, come on over. You can help us change the oil on our old 4Runner and we’ll teach you how to do it, you know?

And so he goes over and he hangs out with the two Jordans or whatever, and they teach him how to do this. Or Cody, I’ll bring them over and teach him how to change out. I don’t know, a transfer case. I mean, I don’t even know, they do all kinds of things. Right. And that’s a lot of those things are not necessarily things that you knew or you grew up. Right. And so a lot of dads out there might be thinking why I didn’t learn that, because I maybe I didn’t have a dad around or I wasn’t into cars.

You don’t need to know everything, but you can find ways to help your kids get equipped in different ways. So there’s really no excuses and excuses. Just give you acceptance of a reality. It doesn’t need to be a certain way. And so what you want to do is find ways. What can you do? You don’t want to argue for reasons why can’t you want to argue for reasons where you can? Because that frame of mind then helps you find things to do and help your kids with. But you want to equip them to be safe when they’re doing whatever they’re doing. Safety is super important. Totally. Which is key. Couple other things came to my mind that the girls did. I remember Kelsey got commissioned to make cupcakes once for a party. Right. And then I also Megan got commissioned to create art for products to the art world. To products. Right. For a blogger. Yeah. So that’s yeah. That’s pretty cool. And just. Watching their self-esteem and confidence about themselves that, wow, I created something that didn’t exist and somebody valued it enough to give me a real and good money for it.

Yeah, it’s so empowering for young people to experience that because then they can start to dream and have vision and they get interested in things and they start trying harder now. And it’s exciting for them. Right. And isn’t that what we all like want for our kids? We want them to experience those kinds of experiences while they’re living with us. Yeah, right. But we also want them to experience what it means to have a job too at times, because having that contrast can actually really be powerful for them. I remember when Kelsey got a job and she was like, I am working this many hours and I’m making this much money like too. I mean, it was very eye-opening. Even though we had told her many times, all right. Sometimes kids need to feel the pain actually in that regard. And it can be a very positive experience for them.

So we talked a little about learning before, but I think it’s such a heavy point under how to do it, which is teaching them how to learn. I think even people, you know, we homeschool and not everyone needs to homeschool necessarily. But part of the way this has worked so well for us is you’ve been so good at teaching them how to learn. So you do do a lot of work. But as they get older, they’re starting to become more and more.

Automated and independent is the word I like to use.

This is actually a really important key part because in the biblical sense, we don’t want our kids to have an independent spirit, a rebellious spirit. That is not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is when they take value in their own education to where they realize it’s their responsibility.

So they’re no longer codependent upon mom or dad for their education, but they are independent, realizing that they need take initiative and that grows more and more. in a child, as they get older, you start giving them more responsibility. You start trusting them to do things. That doesn’t mean you’re not checking it you for sure checking their work. You’re grading their work. You’re helping them with new things. You’re teaching them things. However, there comes a point where the kids are becoming more independent, but you can’t trust them if you don’t see them actually doing that. Right. And so there’s an element of integrity and character there that has to be developed. But it’s when you start them at a young age with these little things like trusting them with chores, that makes such a huge difference for kids when they’re in high school and knowing that they’re going to have integrity with finishing their pre-algebra.

Yeah, I like it. They actually coincide with each other because it’s an integrity with themselves, which we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast with in regards to other things. Right. Like having integrity with yourself, not telling a half truth, telling a full truth, because a half truth is actually a lie. Things like that. So when you ask your kids, hey, did you get your school work done? I know that I can trust my kids. Yeah, actually, because they have developed a track record of telling me the truth and telling me before I even come, ask them if they aren’t getting it done.

Here’s a scripture in Exodus, Exodus 4:10. I like this because if you ever feel doubtful they know what to do or whatever. You can also ask God and God gives to those who ask if it’s in his will and why wouldn’t it be in his will to help you with parenting. But Moses said to the Lord to. To the Lord. Oh, my Lord. I’m not eloquent either in the past or since you’ve spoken to your servant, but I am slow speech in tone. So Moses had tons of excuses and was sharing them with God. And then the Lord said to him, who has made man’s mouth? Who makes a mute or deaf or seeing or blind, basically God saying, I am powerful. I can do what I want with you. Is it? Is it not I? The Lord. Now, therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. But he said, oh, my lord, please send someone else. Make sure, though. Yeah. Send someone else. When? Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.

And he said, is there not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he’ll be glad in his heart you shall speak to him. But the words in his mouth, and I’ll be with you, with you, with your mouth and with his mouth. And we’ll teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth. And you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand, this staff, which I shall do it, which you shall do the signs. So you know what? God wants to use us.

Let’s not make excuses. Let’s not walk in the flesh. Rely on the Holy Spirit to help us in our parenting. And to do that which is super, super important in a last few thoughts, are you’ve got to value their ideas. So really important to get your kids to be thinking about things and to value the ideas you have to teach them to be proactive with their effort. And so notice when they’re being reactive and talk to them just point blank about this. It’s super, super important.

And I’m going to leave you with Colossians 3:23 here, which is a great by the way, these scriptures you can use with your kids, too. They’re not just for you. We always put scriptures in, but they’re also for you to use with your kids, too. So says whatever you do work hardily. As for the Lord and not for men knowing that from the Lord you receive inheritance as your reward.

So as they’re doing these small jobs, it’s also an opportunity to help equip them and realize who they’re actually doing it for. They’re doing it for God. And what does that look like? Maybe you pray before it. If their challenged was something you pray with them to so that they’re not relying on their own strength, but relying on the strength of God and then praise God when they get paid and they do well. And maybe you praise God for that. But work unto the Lord. And we should be doing that, too, and showing that by example. So, 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 released 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. But more than that. It’s an incredible community. You’ll have access to a private online group, wide 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.

That’s CourageousParenting.com.

Scripture In This Episode:

Romans 12:15 – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

Philippians 4:4-7 – “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.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.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13 – “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.”

Isaiah 26:3 – “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You Because he trusts in You.”

Romans 12:1 – “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

Psalm 86:15 – “But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious,
Longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.”

Psalm 34:18 – “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.”

James 1:2 – “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 – “A good name is better than precious ointment, And the day of death than the day of one’s birth; Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, For that is the end of all men; And the living will take it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, For by a sad countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

Book Recommendations for Miscarriage:

• “Grieving the Child I Never Knew” by Kathe Wunnenberg https://amzn.to/2HQvxAG
• “Pain Redeemed” by Natasha Metzler https://amzn.to/37Xg8td
• “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis https://amzn.to/3905jrq
• “Safe in the Arms of God” by John MacArthur https://amzn.to/2STTRIk
• “I Will Carry You” by Angie Smith https://amzn.to/38UIzJq
• “Suffering Is Never for Nothing” by Elizabeth Elliot https://amzn.to/2HU8kO5

Angie teaches which Oils to use during Pregnancy Loss. If you are interested in learning more about joining Angie’s Courageous Mom Essentials Young Living Team and learning from her how to incorporate clean toxin-free products into your lifestyle and how to use oils with your family. Find out more here: http://courageousmom.com/oils

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 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.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast.

Isaac and Angie here. We’re so glad to see you guys again.

Yeah, absolutely. One of our favorite things to do, although it is about 11:00pm, isn’t it?

Oh, yeah. You guys we are shooting this podcast pretty late because as you know, we have many children and life goes on. And this is a good time to do it because it’s quiet right now. We are actually talking about a really sensitive topic here. And we didn’t want to re upset our children either by talking about the things we’re going to talk about again, because we’ve already discussed this with them.

Yeah. Unfortunately, most of you know, Angie just recently had a miscarriage. So that was tough. But there’s always a lot to learn.

There really is. And God is always faithful. And he was very present in my time of need. And the way that the body just surrounded me and, you know, and you guys were part of that.

I mean, the prayers, the messages that both I received, I received the emails and the texts, all of it just really, really overwhelming, actually. And cool to see how the body of Christ around the world kind of came together.

Yeah. People probably want to know, how old are you Angie?

I’m forty. How old are you, Isaac?

44 I still have four years on you.

That’s right. Yeah. So I’m considered where they call geriatric age or advanced maternal age, elderly, maternal. Those are real terms that I have been called before.

So what are the things people are gonna get out of this episode?

Well, if you have ever had a miscarriage, I would hope that this would be encouraging to you. We’re gonna share probably eight or nine different passages of scripture. So, of course, there’s always biblical encouragement in this. But we’re gonna share our story of miscarriage that we just walked through in the last couple weeks. What we decided to name our baby.

So maybe some people have gone through miscarriage and they haven’t had full closure yet with their baby or maybe it’s something they haven’t healed from. And so I would hope that just by sharing what we’re going to share today, maybe they would be motivated to pursue real healing from that trauma.

Also, if anyone has ever known anybody who’s had a miscarriage, I think it could be really helpful just to be able to hear from somebody who’s gone through it, maybe get some tips on how to comfort people who’ve gone through it.

Isn’t it true? A lot of times people become inward about their miscarriage versus sharing a lot about it?

Oh, for sure. I mean, it’s a very intimate thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just very intimate. I don’t. This honestly, this is not me. I can’t take credit for any of that. It really is just the vision that God has given me to just want to glorify him, you know, in all things.

So we’ll dive into it. But just as a reminder, we put on episode every week, we haven’t stopped for over a year now, every single week, no matter what.

And the purpose is to impact one million families and their legacies. And that is a way we can help impact the kingdom of God. So one of the ways to do that is give five stars on i-Tunes. by just tapping. It’s that simple. Written reviews are amazing. We read every one. Often we even share them. And when we see you share a post on social media where the podcast, we are so encouraging. But we also know that you’re raising your hand up and saying, I’m a courageous parent too and I believe in this movement and I want to help it. So we really appreciate that. By the way, all the notes are at CourageousParenting.com video of the episode Scripture’s and resources we mention, including signing up for the date night one sheet and the free courageous parenting workshop, which people are loving. so lets dive in.

Yeah. So I would also say that, you know, if you’re also going i havent had a miscarriage or maybe I know a couple people.

We’re also gonna talk a little bit about advice for someone who’s going through a miscarriage, some tips on that and then how to let your kids or help your kids to grieve. Because that’s something that’s not really talked about very often. We’re just gonna touch on that one. We may have to do a whole podcast on that because this could take a long time if we were to get into all those topics. So I first wanted to just say.

A lot of people have asked me how far along I was. Oh, yeah. And we were about well, when the miscarriage happened, we were eight weeks along. And so we had announced the pregnancy two weeks before.

Yeah. And so some people were probably wondering, you know, why announce it so soon? Like right away, like that versus wait. Make sure you know everything’s going well before you announce it.

Yeah. You always like to ask me the hard questions. Actually, no. I mean, I’ve we’ve talked about this. We’ve I’ve I wrote an actual blog post on this topic many years ago, back when we had Solomon and he’s now four and a half. Part of it is that I have learned because of having h.g and being very sick with morning sickness that I need prayer. I have just been humbled a lot in my mothering and in the last 20 years. And I will be honest. It’s a dying unto myself anytime I’m willing to receive another baby. Kids are a blessing. They really are. But getting to the place of having a child for me is not as easy as it is for other people. And so I have to die to myself before. And being willing to receive the gift, which a lot of people don’t experience the need for that. For example, I’m like sometimes even I have they’ve had times where I’ve been crying on the floor of the shower, asking God, Lord, if it’s your will that we have another baby 

I just pray that you would help me not to be sick. This one time I’m giving you my body as a vessel. Would you please bless me? Right.

And I have asked humbly for prayers from sisters in Christ, from the body. And so when we find out we are pregnant, I ask. I tell people because I need prayer. Yeah, right. And it wasn’t until our eighth pregnancy that when we lost Selah three years ago that I was even more under the conviction and opinion. I mean, this is an opinion this isn’t a biblical like perspective, although I do think that it’s good to be transparent with one another and to want to be living in a way where people are praying for you and your needs. That part is biblical. But when we lost Selah, I was really thankful that we had all of those people to walk through that with us and to be praying for us and lifting us up because we needed it. Yeah, we did. You know, and so I think that there’s an element of when people hold back and then they lose a baby and no one knows that isolation that occurs. I don’t think that that’s biblical. Right, that unknowing that. And it doesn’t allow. OK. So this is the part where I do believe firmly that biblically it does not allow the body to actually practice what God has commanded the body to do, which is to weep with those who weep in rejoice with those who rejoice. And if we truly believe the babies are a blessing, then we should be able to announce it in the body of Christ should rejoice with us, believing that the baby’s a blessing. And if we lose a baby because the baby dies, then they should be obeying scripture to weep with those who weep. And so we hold it back. We actually prevent the church from being able to be obedient to God in either way.

And your kids, if you don’t let your kids know they’re not experiencing God with you. We don’t just experience God when He comes through with huge blessings. We also experience God in the suffering. And sometimes a lot of times it’s good to include your kids in that. So that they experientially understand the full measure of God.

That’s right. And I think that if more people were willing to open up their lives in that way, there might be less kids growing up and then having wavering faith. Right. Because they understand the hard things more than most, you know. But you know that the rejoicing with those who rejoice. We’ve been with those who weep. That’s Romans 12:15. If you want to look it up, that’s just kind of been the theme verse. That has been something that’s been on my heart since I wrote Redeeming Childbirth. I wrote about that regarding this concept of rejoicing with moms when they have an awesome godly experience in birth versus being jealous or competitive that you didn’t do it that way. Right. And it’s the same thing with when you lose a baby being able to weep with those who weep rather than, oh, that makes me uncomfortable. I’m going to I’m going to run from that. Right. Yeah. And so there is a call for all Christians to obey that scripture. And I would just maybe even ask you if here’s here’s an exhortation. Ask yourself, “is it easier for me to rejoice with other people or is it easier for me to weep with people” and then ask yourself why? And because reality is we’re supposed be good at both. We’re supposed to do both. So there you go.

Now, I preached on Philippians 4:6-7. Actually, I read the whole chapter of Philippians 4. And that was just prior to that first ultrasound visit.

I believe that was the week after we announced and God is so good because He tees up the scripture and messages we need in perfect timing, doesn’t He?

Really? Yeah.

And so that became kind of Philippians 4 became the key verse for you, right. You want share with us?

Yeah. So Philippians, for those of you who aren’t aware, this is what it says in verse 4. It says Rejoice in the Lord always again.

I say rejoice. And then if you skip to verse 6, it says, Do not be anxious about anything.

So and I had shared I had shared in the podcast where we actually made the announcement for our baby. This was actually a scripture verse that we used in that podcast. Funny because I was anxious about potentially losing baby and I shared that in that. If you want to hear about that part of the story, you can go back. That’s I think it’s labeled we’re making a big announcement or something like that. Right. And obedience to God. And so in that that journey, I I was I was anxious. I’ll be honest. And this scripture was really ministering to me. It says Button everything by prayer and supplication. With Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God. Peace of God. So a lot of times people actually say the peace, which surpasses all understanding. And I’ve even quoted it that way before because it is.

But it’s the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So that’s chapter four versus four through seven. And then it continues on to it’s finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable.

You know, it’s a really encouraging passage of scripture. And I had been working on memorizing that. And I I just was meditating on on Thanksgiving and being thankful for things and looking for the things to be thankful for. And. And you led me on that, too, even when we were in the ultrasound room, because the doctor wasn’t very hopeful. Mm hmm. And you said, well, there’s hope because there’s a heartbeat. Yeah. And so in that moment, it was like, yeah. Okay. Be thankful for the heartbeat. Just be thankful for the heartbeat. Because when we when we went in, we didn’t have any suspicion of anything being off you guys. Everything seemed to be normal. And we went in for our first ultrasound and practically the doctor was super skeptical and kind of nagative. I think probably because of my age, right? Isaac Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They see a lot of challenge. Yeah. And right away I was like, well do you want to get this over with? And we will either have the good news or the bad news? It was just very cynical. Like what? And I looked at the ultrasound. And of course, for a mom who’s had 10 pregnancies, I know when an ultrasound looks good and when it doesn’t look good. And this was the first time I’d ever seen an ultrasound like this, because we saw the gestation sac with the yolk sac not on the inside. The heartbeat was on the outside of the gestation sac, which turns to the amniotic. And she was pointing out the heartbeat and how it looked different. And it just didn’t look right. And I could have become anxious and fearful. But right away, I just wanted to know what was going on, what to expect, and was thankful for that heartbeat. And she didn’t really give us a lot of information, but tried to kind of backpedal as soon as Isaac said, well, there’s hope, there’s a heartbeat. And she said, okay, well, let’s make an appointment for next week for another ultrasound and see what happens.

And so many people joined us in prayer right there. We were hopeful. And that next doctor visit came around.

And yeah, it was hard. I would say that when we got to that next doctor’s appointment, well, first to backup during that week I got the flu, which was insane.

no one else in the family got it but our whole church did. It  was so strange. And that never happens. first of all. I hardly ever get sick. Secondly, sickness doesn’t happen and then not hit everybody in a family a family of 10. And so I got really sick. And I remember when I was sick and I was vomiting just insanely, I thought, there’s no way the baby’s going to make it through this. I just kind of like was already starting to prepare my heart for that, starting to kind of grieve a little bit and was very prayerful.

But I focused on this passage of scripture and tried to take my thoughts captive and preach to myself the truth. And I shared that with a lot of people on our Instagram. Right. So on that courage, mom, Instagram, I shared the Bible verses I was meditating on stories and all those things. But this is the thing. When I look at this scripture, it says but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

That to me was like, it’s okay for me to be requesting of God and praying to him to save the baby. Mm hmm. And so that was what we were praying for. We’re praying for a miracle. We’re praying for the yolk sac to move to the gestational sac. Daily with the kids. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, did guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus because I was able to go on throughout that week and it was fine, really. Like it was a very odd peace, actually. I mean, not odd. It was God’s peace. But then we got to the next doctor’s appointment and they showed us that my body had already started the process. They called it fading. Right. And so there was no heartbeat. And just about 10 minutes before the doctor even came in to do the ultrasound, I had this massive migraine headache hit me. I looked at Isaac and I said, my hormones are crashing and I know this is not going to be good and we need to brace ourselves. And for sure, we got the bad news right. The baby had died. And then we shift to the what can we expect physically? Because if you guys don’t know my story from previous, before we lost our first baby, I had hemorrhaged with two births, one pretty severely.

Our sixth child was a really severe hemorrhage where I was in and out of consciousness and great, amazing birth. An hour a couple hours later, I I lost a lot of blood, too much blood. And thank goodness I was able to be nursed back to health. Naturally, that was awesome. But I’ve had a lot of close calls. And then when we lost Selah, I lost 67 percent of my blood had to have emergency surgery and two blood transfusions and was even closer to death. You know, after nine hours of hemorrhaging, it was super, super close. Yeah. And so I shared the story more in depth on my blog. You can go look it up at courageousmom.com and just click on the miscarriage tab. But after having walked through those kinds of things, you become high risk automatically, especially when you’re older and you’ve had those experiences. But also for us, we like we go, okay. We’re not gonna have fear, but we need to be wise. We need set a plan. And the doctor started trying to give us some ideas of the plan. And it felt much more safe in that regard. And I experienced a few things that I wasn’t anticipating.

Yeah, well, we had the doctor’s visit, too, and then he dropped me off the airport. I had a trip that was. There was no way not to do this trip.

And so, yeah, I had to

fly out and do that. And unfortunately, when I was gone. You started?

Yes. So the miscarriage started pretty much. I mean, when the headaches started, I started bleeding more on Tuesday. And you were out of town till Wednesday night. And our church body was just amazing. they were really there for me. Available, helpful and wanting to care for the kids. Yeah. I was just gonna get to that. So. Our daughter Megan’s fifteen and she slept in our room while Isaac was gone. In case there is an emergency in the middle of the night. I mean she has just such a precious heart. You guys. She loves babies. I mean I’m super close to her. We have a really close relationship and I have a close relationship with both of our daughters. But our oldest daughter was at college, which was really hard for both her and I for all of us through this. And it was a different experience this time all around. So Megan. Before Isaac left, was up crying for that whole week before we started the grieving process, before I actually lost the baby and was really, really hard for her and cried into the night, lay in our arms. Right. And then when Isaac was gone, she and I would watch movies to try to, you know, kill the time and spend time together. And one night we were watching a superhero movie and I’m watching these superheroes go running towards danger and they’re running towards pain and suffering and all that thing.

And what hit me was that that is what Christians are supposed to do. Well, first it hit me like as an elder’s wife, like that is what I’m supposed to do. Right. And that’s what leaders should be doing. But then it hit me. I’m like, no, that’s what all Christians should do. We should all run towards those who are suffering in a not away from them. And that that’s what God did. Yeah, that’s what Jesus did when he was in our ministry.

And if you don’t know what to say, just rely on the Holy Spirit to guide you and be there.

That’s right. You don’t always have to say something. You know, that’s the thing is that God sometimes just wants people to sit and listen. And so Megan and I talked about that concept in depth and we went through scripture. we had a really good time talking about that. And so there are already lessons happening, is my point. Right. So as we’re preparing for this and then that night, I’ll just share briefly that. And this, you know, im trying not to make it graphic. But I lost a clot. And when I saw that I was okay, I was like emotionally fine in my mind and in my spirit. And I took a picture of it because I knew I needed to keep track because of my previous haemorrhages, went to wash my hands, and immediately my body started going into shock. And I had never experienced anything like that before because in my mind im like “get self-control”. What is going on? And I told Megan, I am freezing like I am really cold. And I got into the bed, put the covers on, and I start my teeth started chattering, my body started shaking and I could not stop. And her instincts immediately kicked in. She grabbed all the blankets, put them on top of me, grabbed a stress away oil and rubbed it on my neck and had me smelling it. And then she put her body weight on me and held me and started praying.

And within thirty five seconds, it stopped. Wow. And she was steady. She was not traumatized. She was not affected by it. And then she came and she sat down and we talked about it a little bit. We prayed together. And then we finished our movie that we had been watching right where we talked about suffering. And I. But what hit me is I’ve been looking back on that and going, OK. So I know that I processed my previous traumatic experience with the first miscarriage for sure. I wrote a ton about it. I shared about it all. Like there’s not. There was nothing left to do. We had a memorial service. We named the baby. There’s nothing left to do. Right. But yeah, I do think that there was an element of when my eyes saw the clot. There was some kind of trauma or scarring in my subconscious that kicked in and my body reacted. And there was no I couldn’t have control of it. Right. And so I do think that there is an element there where God still has healing to do in me. And so that’s why I’m sharing this with you guys, because if you don’t if I hadn’t done the work I had done, I can’t imagine what the reaction could have been this time.

Yeah, a lot of times it’s just not talked about. Couples don’t talk about it. And then it just long term hurts.

Yeah. And and I just think of the spiritual growth that would have been missed out on because during our first miscarriages when God was showing me and I was writing about giving thanks in the midst of grieving and weeping while we worship and. And it’s okay to grieve your baby because of First Thessalonians 4:13, which we will read next. And and that there were just so many huge lessons. And so having gone through that had actually prepared us for this trial, which is kind of like what we shared in a different podcast about the growth cycle. Right. And how when you walk through something, if you engage in it and you embrace it and you walk to God and you search scripture and you’re going after him, He grows you.

So you’re ready for the next potential trial that could come.

Yeah, amen. And then you had some amazing women come from church. Yeah. And help you.

Right. So Tuesday I just lost that one clot. We slept. And then Wednesday was the next day. And well, it wasn’t just the people in our church like that first night after I dropped you off, a dear friend, Lisa Jacobson. She was our elders wife from our previous home church. She called me up and said, I am taking you out to get you some dinner and we’re going to go out. And that was exactly what I needed. And so it wasn’t just the women in our church. It was women in our community that really reached out. I had Veronica Partridge was texting me prayers and checking on me and calling Megan, texting Megan, making sure I was OK. And, you know, and then Jen and Stacy, they I invited them to come and be with us on Wednesday night. Well, when the miscarriage started, because you weren’t home yet.

I was trying to get home. Yes, enroute. But it was going to take several long.

Right. And that night, I was actually supposed to lead a women’s meeting.

And I had felt like God was saying, you know, we need to talk about the language of empathy and these different things. Right. So I had this like study prepared. And it was interesting because the ladies met together, all of them, and they prayed for me like our body prayed for me. And they worked talked about how they have empathized with people, how they’ve dealt with loss and everything. Whatever it was, and had some really deep discussion and I guess and prayer time. And then they came. Jen and Stacy came to be with me and they stayed with Megan and me in my room and Austin. You know, of course, he was home in case there was an emergency as well. And so I just felt the love I felt care because they weren’t with their families. They were with me. And we the they came and I started bawling because, you know, it just was really a loving gesture that they were there with me in a really hard time. And they didn’t say anything. They just hugged me, kissed my four head and sat with me. And we had the worship while weeping playlist going, which we had been listening to for two weeks straight already, which is free. It’s my Spotify playlist. You can find that on courageous mom.

They all prayed that everything would stop so that I could be home, right?

And it did. It did. And that was the crazy part, is that that was it was really interesting because here I was like miscarrying the baby.

And it was like three hours straight. And they arrived and I’m still going to the bathroom and we’re worshipping. We have worse music playing. We’re laughing together, crying together, you know, all the things. And all the sudden at a nowhere., my body just stops. It’s like it obeyed God’s command to stop. And it just stopped. And then you got home two hours later. Yeah. And so this is the thing is that I wasn’t sure if it was over or not because that did not seem like a miscarriage to me, not compared to what we experienced with Selah. And it’s interesting because I’ve been at other women’s miscarriages serving them as a dula. All right. And even what I experienced this time was not like what they experienced either. And so and it’s just so what I have come to the conclusion through experience of serving others and walking through two different experiences is just like I I’ve written about this with birth. No pregnancy and birth is the same. Well, guess what? No miscarriage is the same. It’s just something no one talks about. Yes. And I think that a lot of people who go through a traumatic experience think that if they have a miscarriage, it can it’s gonna be the same. And I just have to say, it’s not necessarily going be that way.

It’s not a.. Take a moment. We’re going to go into the lessons learned in the second. But I just want to take a real quick moment and invite you if you haven’t joined us yet into the courageous parenting mentor program, the six week self-paced program with live interaction with us, even text messaging with us and being part of the community with all the other courageous parents that have been through the program. We’re currently going through the program with you. We would love to have you. We’d talk. There’s the six sessions are titled Theology, 37 Scriptures and then the heart so important. And then you got purity in discipline, 10 steps to have local discipline, discipline. Then you get discipleship and then you get equipping and that courage lesson. So it’s really, really powerful. Praise God. God is doing amazing things with it. It’s also one of the key things that helps support our ministry so that we can keep doing podcasts. So if you’re interested in that, there’s now even payment plans on the site and opportunities for small groups and churches and people to lead small groups and better pricing for small groups. So you go to CourageousParenting.com and check that out. But let’s talk about the lessons learned.

Yeah. So I would say, like I was mentioning before, that still it’s it’s always. A lesson. It’s like preaching to yourself and practicing and choosing. You have to make a choice to walk in what you know is right. Even if you know it already. Right. And so worshipping while we weeping was something that I desired to do to bring glory to God and to also because I personally know that when your eyes are kept on the Lord, then it’s hard to focus on what you’re going through. And it’s just it’s actually God’s way of blessing us.

And in fact, there’s a scripture in my I mentioned it in redeeming childbirth in my book is you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. That’s Isaiah 26:3.

I actually it was interesting because I started reading through redeeming childbirth. I was going through it with a couple of moms that were pregnant at our church, a couple of them are reading it and I became pregnant again. So I started reading through this again because we want to also do another edition of it. And as reading through the worship aspect, which is worship is not about us, it’s all about God, it’s about adoring him. And you can read more about what that means in redeeming childbirth in that chapter. Ultrasound of worship and crowning him in worship.

But I when I went through my first miscarriage with Selah. I wanted to have the same heart posture that I had in birth because frankly, I don’t like the word miscarriage. It is a loss of a baby. You’re pregnant. So pregnancy losses one. It’s I think it’s a better terminology because it wasn’t something I did not carrying the baby. Right. You know, it’s like I didn’t drop my baby. Miscarriage is such a bad word for it, actually. Words are powerful. Yeah. And I. So when it comes to worshipping God in a time of weeping and keeping my eyes on him, I wanted to be birthing my baby even though it was prematurely because the baby had died in the same way that I had birthed my other babies.

Right. Because I want to.

I don’t want it to be me, I want my only memory of or some of my strongest memories of my children that I don’t get to have with me here on Earth to be this traumatic experience when I have this like beautiful experience with these other kids. And so one way of doing that is to be able to worship through miscarriage. And people might be listening, going, that is insane. Right, to worship through that. But I have to tell you guys that God’s word is true. And when you keep your mind state on him, he does pour perfect peace over you. Yeah. And.

You know, with Selah, we were worshipping the whole time that we were miscarrying. But God allowed me to walk through what I walked through in that trial. And a dear friend of ours who we go to church with now, Holy,had, said to me back then, Wow, God really trusts you with this trial. And I never thought of that before. And but my heart was always to bring him glory because my life’s not about me.

Your life’s not about you. We believe in the great commission. We believe in every ounce of God’s grace and that we are nobody’s actually in that regard.

Right. And so why? Why wouldn’t I think that way? Right. Yeah. And God in his goodness. This time, as I was worshipping him, God really had mercy on me because that experience that I had for those two hours was the majority of the miscarriage. And I did end up losing more tissue on the next Monday. And then it was over. But it was not the cramping and contractions and birthing experience that I had for those three hours before you got home on Wednesday night, which were much more peaceful. And so I look at that and I’m like, wow, God had mercy on me.

And there are a couple scriptures that I want to just share with you briefly. One is Romans 12:1. Which says, I appeal to you. Therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship, and to me, that’s what I was doing, is offering my body as a living sacrifice.

Right, to be able to have another baby come into the world. That was my spiritual worship, in a sense.

But God was presenting his mercy over me as I was doing that. And so I Isaac and I as we had been praying about what we were gonna name the baby. Yeah, we landed on Mercy. So we named the baby Mercy. And then there’s one other scripture that was well, there’s actually quite a few scriptures, but I don’t enough time to share them all here. But Psalm 86:15, But you, O Lord, are a God, merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness.

And I definitely felt God’s mercy and graciousness over me in the miscarriage. And so it just seemed like the perfect name for the baby.

And so every time that we’ve walked through loss, there have been certain scriptures that we’ve kind of clung to. And as we’ve been studying mercy and scripture and reading more and more scriptures about it, it kind of helps us to feel like we’re learning about our baby that we don’t get to actually have here with us on Earth. One of the things that I was washing or reminding myself over and over again was Lord gird me with gladness and wanting to be glad, not wanting to be depressed. And I think that that was really helpful. But during the week when you were home, when we were waiting to find out, you read Ecclesiastes 7 to the kids.

And in there there’s a passage of scripture that says that it is better to be in the House of the morning than the house of the laughter.

Very counter-intuitive. God is right.

And then it goes on to say that a sad countenance makes a heart better.

And you went over and you preached through this whole chapter. This was the first 18 verses of Ecclesiastes 7 and went through it with the kids. It took us a couple of hours. It was so powerful for me to where I realized, okay, it’s good for me to say outloud. Gird me with gladness, right. But also it’s okay for me to have a sad countenance because then people will be praying for me. They will ask me what’s going on. I have an opportunity to be transparent and be encouraged, you know, and real fellowship can happen. But if somebody is being fake and they don’t, they’re pretending. So they don’t look like they have a sad countenance. Is their heart actually made better even if they’re they can be going through something horrible and putting a mask on? Yeah, their hearts are going to be made better. Right. And so there was just there was a lot of that kind of conversation.

You’re like, wow, you preach for two hours. To just your family.

Yeah. Yeah.

We had no church that particular Sunday because everybody was everybody was sick. And so. Yeah. I led the family in that. But you know, what’s interesting is that the Holy Spirit can totally work through you if you have faith. And so I didn’t prepare anything to talk to my family. Yeah, that scripture came to me and I just started going through it in the spirit led. So I just thought that might be edifying. Sometimes you know how you know, I’m not used to preaching or doing these things. Well, are you trusting the Holy Spirit and are you doing it? And if you do it, it’ll get better and better. But also the spirit will help you. So, yeah, super, super cool to bathe your family in the word of God. What advice do you have for people? I know it’s important not to isolate and rush in to being busy and all these kinds of things. Yeah. What advice do you.

So for sure you don’t want to isolate yourself. A lot of women feel isolated without purposefully isolating themselves simply because they haven’t shared that they were pregnant and then all of sudden they found that they have loss. Right. But there is also that initial I think it’s a human reaction to to just withdraw and be to isolate really and to want to mourn alone and want to not feel like you’re a burden to other people or make other people feel uncomfortable or. But the Bible says in the word to carry one another’s burdens. Yeah. And we are actually stealing the blessing from our brothers and sisters in Christ if we’re not letting People in, so don’t isolate yourself.

Next thing would be to not rush into business. One of the things that I think women often struggle with. I know I do is that I will make myself busy so that I don’t have to actually deal with the grief that I’m going through. Like to kind of to go around it. Right. And so I would just encourage you to rest. And to not get busy. God and I have this interesting relationship. I feel like he knows well, obviously. He knows me better than myself. So I just feel like sometimes that’s why he allows me to go through such traumatic experiences where literally, like, he’s sitting me down and he’s saying, rest, you’re not capable physically of doing anything. And it’s been the best thing for me because it’s made me seek him out and get into the word. The third thing which kind of went with don’t isolate is be transparent because you could be with people and not be transparent, which can be isolating or lonely.

Like it’s kind of a paradox, right, to be with people all the time, but still feel lonely.

And if we feel that way, it’s because we’re not being real. That’s actually on us. It’s our fault if we’re with people and we still feel lonely, it’s because we are not being transparent. The fourth thing I would say is spend as much time in scripture, prayer and worship as possible because grief is disorienting. It is a peculiar thing to walk through and our culture does not allow people to grieve biblically. And so you gotta be in scripture to fight for yourself, to advocate really for yourself, to be able to grieve biblically. The next thing would be to be patient with yourself because there isn’t like a timeline of when you’re gonna be healed. Right. Like especially if you go through something like losing a child or losing a baby, you just.

You’re never going to forget? Right.

That doesn’t mean that life doesn’t go on. Yeah, it does. But healing looks different. So you be patient with yourself. And then the last two are very practical pieces of advice. Naming your baby is kind of a really special thing. Of cours, this isnt a must do but the Bible does say that God knows us before he created us in our mother’s womb. OK. Look up Psalm 139. And so if he knew us before he created us in our mother’s womb and you had a baby that was in your womb, then that means God knew them and he knew them by name. Actually, when you look at the scriptures. And so your baby has a name. What is it? Seek the Lord for what your baby’s name should be and then have a memorial of some kind.

We had a memorial for Selah where we went on an RV trip with all kids and we did worship on the beach and shared a little scripture with some quiet. You gave a rose to each of the kids that they could either throw the whole rose in the ocean or they could take the petals off and just pray. And it was that you let them all kind of span out and they had quiet time. I remember seeing Austin standing in the ocean and holding his guitar, singing worship music because he led worship on the sand. I’d given him a couple of songs to practice and bring in. And then you took the kids back to the RV and let me have a couple more hours on beach by myself. And we needed that as a family. We needed that closure together in an intimate way.

Talk about teaching your kids the value of life and to be pro-life and to to be patient with those who grieve

And that it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to weep. It’s okay. And it’s good to worship God in the midst of hard times and to be thankful to look for those things. And they learned all the hard things that that we didn’t even learn till we were older, you know, at a young age.

And so I would say that those are my top like things that are must dos if you need help. There’s another website called Stillbirthday.com highly recommended. They have a lot of great resources. I also have some books. My favorite one is called Grieving the Child I Never Knew by Kathy Wunnenberg. pain redeemed by Natasha Metzler is for people who struggle with infertility. Then there’s the problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis Safe in the Arms of God by John MacArthur and I Will Carry You by Angie Smith.

So again, all those will be at CourageousParenting.com hit podcasts and you can see the list.

Yeah. So I would say, you know, to wrap up, I would I would say that we definitely experienced some new lessons this time. But I think that what I also saw that was super encouraging was that God really had grown all of us.

Even our family, we did grieve. We had to deal with fears that we didn’t really know were there again, like the kids. And you were really scared for me. Yeah. Right. I’m fearful that maybe I would bleed out again and potentially die. And so we had to face those fears.

We had to deal with them, which is a healthy thing to deal with. Hard, but good. Right. And I had to deal with that. Right. And so the Lord is near to those who are brokenhearted. That’s Psalm 34:18. And we definitely experienced that. But through this all I just wanted to just share with you guys, like the thing that I’ve been wanting to say the most, which is we must never glorify the suffering, but only the lamb who was slain.

And that is my heart. That’s why I want to keep sharing scripture. Right. Like it’s okay if you’re grieving to ask God to take the cup from you. Jesus did that in the garden of Gethsemane.

What do you mean by glorifying the suffering?

By focusing so much on it and maybe even praising it instead of giving worship to God right. And going, oh, look at what I walked through. Right. And focusing so much on that, like God is close to those who are brokenhearted. There is. It’s better to be in the house of the morning than those in the house of laughter. Right. There are so many scriptures. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall see God. And there there’s so many encouraging passages of scripture.

And yet, if you don’t walk through suffering, you can definitely miss out on a lot.

It’s hard to relate and empathize with people at first. But I do believe that there’s a lie that the enemy tries to divide or not divide, but prevent people from actually being in close, intimate biblical friendship, which the lie is, if I’ve gone through exactly what that person’s gone through, then I can’t possibly relate and I can’t possibly minister to them. And that’s a lie from the enemy, because the reality is you don’t need to relate. You don’t need to say anything. The Bible says weep with those who weep. Does it say exhort them, correct them, have the right passage of scripture to preach at them? Share your experience with them. Know when someone is going through suffering, they just want someone to love them as Jesus would love them. And what would Jesus do? He prayed for people, he walked with people, he was long suffering with people. And that’s what we’re called to be for one another.

And I really think that there’s this element of. You know, where sometimes we can accidentally bring too much attention to the suffering when really what we’re supposed to be doing is glorifying God. And so. You know, James 1:2 says count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and less steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And then says If any of you lacks wisdom, Let him ask God who gives generously to all without approach, and it will be given to him. And I think if you’re struggling with knowing how to say something, you don’t have wisdom in how to help somebody. This is go God. He gives generously. And that we have. We do need accountant joy when we meet trials because we can trust that God is going to work a good fruitiness.

And so if you have gone through any struggling grief, miscarriage or loss. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to.

Just connect on social media and you can find out that we have a lot of blog posts written on courageousmom.com. We have a whole list of worship songs that are to lead your heart in times when you can’t lead your heart right. To lead your heart to God. Focus on him and to be thankful to God because he is good always. He doesn’t change. And thank you guys for being there with us.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And thanks for joining us in this episode. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.

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This is a very special episode, we are going to share four key points that have to do with your kids’ relationships with God and how your testimony and growing story can make a massive difference in their relationship with God!

If you are hiding your story from your kids or not opening up about your life and history to your kids and sharing it with them that could be a detriment as well. 

We cannot save our kids. Only God through the grace of Jesus can give eternal salvation, but we as parents have such an amazing opportunity to invite our kids into those special places where they get to experience God by watching us experience God. This is the core of the point we are making in this episode and that can look different for everyone in different stages of life and circumstances. 

We are going to get really practical in this episode and dive into a lot of scripture. 

Every Christian parent wants their kids to be saved and the reality is that most Christian parents are fearful that their kids are going to have to rebel in order to come back to the lord, or they are scared that they are going to rebel and not come back. There are a lot of myths out there that parents believe. A lot of parents don’t want their kids to suffer, they want them to be successful, there are a lot of things that parents desire for their children but the longer you walk with the lord the more you realize truths such as growth happens in the valley and recognizing that if you want your kids to be growing in the Lord they are probably going to have to walk through some hard times in their lives. 

We as parents want what is best for our kids but if we have a biblical perspective we no longer focus on materialistic things but our heart’s desire becomes more eternal

So we have four key points for you in this episode 

Your Kids Will Never Learn From What You Hide From Them

1. The Power of  Your Testimony

2. Your Story Keeps Growing

3. Share Your experiences with God 

4. Pride = Religious, Humility = Relationship

1. The Power of Your Testimony

• With this point immediately what comes to mind is what your testimony is. How you came to know Jesus and what caused you to come to that place. Some of you may know exactly what your testimony is, maybe you were not raised knowing Jesus and through the circumstances of life came to know him and it was a very powerful experience. Or some of you may have been raised in a Christian home and there is not one day that you remember not loving Jesus and so you struggle with the lie that your testimony is not powerful because you didn’t have an incredibly exciting conversion. Don’t you want your kids to have a testimony of faithfulness? Because if you grew up knowing God and have loved him ever since that is a testimony of faithfulness and that is a great testimony! Just because you didn’t have a crazy conversation does not mean that you are naive. All testimonies of knowing Jesus Christ as our savior are equally valid and equally powerful!
• Luke 8:39 says “Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.”
• Your children look up to you and they should know your testimony, it is an incredible act of humility to share your testimony with your kids. Humility is really the key thing that we want to drive home in this podcast because the character attribute of humility is something that everyone should have but if you are a parent and you don’t have humility then you are going to have major problems in your parenting journey. If you ever get to a point where you don’t have humility then you probably have pride because it takes a humble heart not to be prideful.
• ( Isaac shares his radical conversion and testimony of coming to know Christ, click the link to hear it!)
• We as parents need to tell our kids that we would be drastically different people if we didn’t have Jesus in our lives. We all know how Jesus has personally transformed our lives, but we have to make that known to our kids so that they have an appreciation and thankfulness towards God that their parents are saved and living biblically. If your kids are not thankful for your testimonies and how God has transformed your lives then they will probably take for granted being raised in a Christian home. 
• You need to share with your kids so that they don’t take things for granted, and you need to show them contrast because if they don’t understand how different their lives would be if they weren’t raised in a Christian home then they will not be thankful, they will not have appreciation, and they will not respect you for how you are choosing to raise them. 
• As parents, we should be sharing our current and past struggles with our kids and share with them the truth that through Jesus we are made new and all of our sins are forgiven so that they know that there is hope in their life when they are struggling with sin. 
• Psalm 119:1-5 says “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; They walk in His ways. You have commanded us To keep Your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed To keep Your statutes!”
• Psalm 119:24 says “Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.”
• Throughout Psalm 119 is scripture proving the importance of testimony!

2. Your Story Keeps Growing

• Point number two is that your story keeps growing, at least it should.
• Is your life about pursuing what is comfortable or pursuing God’s will? If your life is about pursuing God’s will then your story will keep growing because there are always more experiences to be had and to share when your walk with God is growing. 
• If we don’t have anything to share with our kids about what we are learning in the Lord then we really need to ask ourselves a hard question, and that question is “why? Why do we not have anything to share? Is it because we are not growing?” Because if that is the truth then how can we expect our kids to grow in the Lord if we are not modeling that? Modeling this for your children is not just having the bible open, it’s sharing the things that God is teaching us.
• You don’t want to overprotect your kids either. A lot of the time parents won’t share the hardships, they won’t share the tough stuff and they won’t share their struggles with their kids because they don’t want to overwhelm them or burden them but sometimes it’s because of pride and they don’t want their kids to see their struggles and sins. If you don’t share the struggle then you can’t share God’s miraculous work in your life. Now, of course, everything your kids hear should be age-appropriate so if you are not sharing something then it better be for the protection of your kids but again, don’t overprotect your kids!
• You may be struggling in your marriage, now, we are not saying that you go to your kids and say “your dad/mother and I are having a hard time” because in their mind they may be thinking that their parents are on the edge of divorce when that is not the reality. You have to use wisdom in what you are sharing, but let’s say your business is failing. Why wouldn’t you share that with your children? Is it because of pride? Do you not want your family pa\rayoing and asking God to save the business? Maybe you don’t want to tell your kids something because you don’t want them to be scared, well if they are fearful what would that cause them to do? Would they pray? Is that such a bad thing? Would it cause them to be more thankful for what they have? 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet!

3. Share Your Experiences With God

• Matthew 5:16 says “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
• There are a lot of different ways that you can experience God, there are good experiences: successes, joys, prayers answered, having a baby there are all kinds of good experiences that you can share with your kids and then sometimes there are hard experiences whether it be a business failure, a relative passes away or someone gets seriously hurt. A lot of the time parents may not want to share difficult things with their children because they don’t want to mare or scare their childhood when in reality these things could potentially be character-building things their kids that would help them become more compassionate for people and maybe even lead them down the path that God has for them!
• You need to be inviting your kids to be a part of the experiences that you are having with God. even if you are in a season of your life where you are not experiencing God you need to invite your children to be a part of that because they need to see how you react, they need to be able to follow your example because they are going to feel the same thing one day and they need to be prepared to know how to deal with it good or bad. 
• Some parents feel like they can’t have deep conversations with their children, they feel like they don’t have a good enough relationship or that they don’t know what to talk about but if that is you then you need to ask yourself why. Why is it that you don’t have a testimony to share? Why don’t you have something to share with your kids that you learned from god this week? If you are having a hard time inviting your kids to be a part of experiencing God with you is it because you are not inviting God to be a part of every aspect of your life? 
• Sharing what you are learning, showing your kids that you have a humble heart posture towards God, showing them that you don’t know it all and that your heart is to be constantly growing and increasing in the faith, doing these things will drastically benefit your relationship with your kids and it will strengthen their relationship ship with God. if you come across as if you know it all and you’re this perfect christian and they sense that you expect that same thing from them then they are not going to have the same teachable heart towards God. 

4. Pride = Religious, Humility = Relationship

• Proverbs 11:2 says “When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”
• So, when pride comes in parents and their parenting when you don’t want to tell your kids something because you are too busy or you say it’s none of their business what comes later is shame. Your kids can tell when you are being prideful. No parent is perfect and there are gonna be times when you screw up, and in those moments if u are humble you will apologize right away and if you are prideful you won’t.
• Proverbs 29:23 says “A man’s pride will bring him low, But the humble in spirit will retain honor.”
• Being humble is something that every human needs accountability with because it is our human nature to be prideful and selfish. If you have a humble spirit in your community then you will retain honor but if you have a prideful spirit you will retain shame and your kids will see that! 
• Often in religious centered homes, kids are required to be perfect and everything is rule-based and set in order and they don’t know the reasons behind any of it. In a religious centered home often children will feel like they are walking on eggshells and they are not allowed to make mistakes. In a religious centered home it is very clear how you are not supposed to act but unclear on how you should act. You do not want this to be the atmosphere of your home. You should be striving for a God-centered home that is more focused on relationships instead of religion and rules. 
• There is a need for obeying God’s word and not backing down on that and having biblical truth in your home for sure, sin is sin. What we are saying is that we should care about what that sin in is a symptom of in someone’s heart and how having that be the focus of conversation during discipline. 
• You do not want a home that has high expectations and a lack of relationship. God is about relationships and high expectations. Often when you have a religious centered home with high expectations and a lack of relationship those kids will walk away later on because what happens is you have kids who grow up doing what they are told was right and what they thought their parents wanted for them and then when they grow up and start thinking for themselves they turn away because there was never a real relationship with God and they were never told the why behind what they were doing. 
• Another point we want to touch on is church. If your kids don’t know the why behind going to church then they are most likely not going to continue going to church later on in their adult years. Your kids should not be going to church just because they are told, you as the leaders of your family should know why you go to church and you should , make sure your kids understand why too. We go to church because we love God and when we go to church we get to experience God and his spirit and we get to be a part of a fellowship of people who love God and encourage each other in that love for God. In your church you must have strong biblical relationships. The bible is very cl;ear on the importance of accountability, carrying each other’s burdens and walking through life with true brothers and sisters in Christ. If you don’t have that at your church then maybe you need to try harder to develop those relationships, and if you have tried and people just don’t want to go deep then maybe you need to find a new church. 
• Your kids will never learn from what you hide from them. Remember that. It is important that we live transparent lives in our homes and our kids should be experiencing and learning from the ups and downs in our relationship with God. They should be able to look at us and use our lives as a model for how they should live their lives and we should be teaching them the why behind what we do and not have high expectations without healthy relationships.

Scripture In This Episode:

Luke 8:39 – “Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.”

Psalm 119:1-5 – “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; They walk in His ways. You have commanded us To keep Your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed To keep Your statutes!”

Psalm 119:24 – “Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.”

Matthew 5:16 – “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Proverbs 11:2 – “When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”

Proverbs 29:23 – “A man’s pride will bring him low, But the humble in spirit will retain honor.”

• All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

  

  Social Media For Christians – BE COURAGEOUS app

  • Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
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  • Powerful Biblically minded community.
  • Topic-based discussion groups.
  • You get your own profile and can connect with others.
  • Resources on marriage, parenting, homeschooling, pregnancy/birth, and more.

  We look forward to engaging with you on the inside!

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  Relevant Resource Links:

  • The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

  • Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

  • Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

  • FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

  If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

  • Financial Giving, is important to support our family and expand the impact of the ministry. We aim to impact 10 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 9 at home, so everything makes a difference. 

  Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

This episode of the courageous parenting podcast is part two of the last episode in which we shared the first five of the ten tips for parenting six to eleven-year-olds biblically! 

In this episode, we will be sharing the other five tips for parenting six to eleven-year-olds biblically! If you haven’t listened to part one that is okay! You can jump on part two without needing to hear part one first but part one does discuss the first five tips which are very important for you to hear if you are a parent. 

In part one we discussed character development, discipleship, responsibilities, living a disciplined life and friendships! So those were the first five topics that we talked about and in this episode which is part two we will discuss the other five, so stay tuned!

These ten things that we discuss in this series are things that you as a parent need to be navigating well with you six to eleven-year-olds so that they go into their teenage years yielded to you and your authority but more importantly, yielded to God!

There are a lot of changes that happen from ages six to eleven both physically, mentally and emotionally and our approach to parenting must change as they are changing otherwise you will find parenting more difficult than it needs to be. A large part of getting this one point down is your relationship with your kids because you can’t know how to best parent your kids if you don’t have a good relationship and a solid understanding of where they are in their walk through life. 

Even if your kids are not in this age bracket that we are focusing on all of this is still relevant and can be of great help to your parenting if you approach it correctly. Understanding your children and having healthy relationships is essential to parenting children of any age!

So let’s dive in!

5 Tips For Parenting 6-11 Year-Olds Biblically:

1. Your Relationship

2. Their Thing

3. Purity

4. Education

5. Identity In Christ

1. Your Relationship

• This first tip impacts all the rest, and that is your relationship with your child or children. This applies to any age, but right now we are specifically focusing on children ages six through eleven, and this is the age when children start having opinions and start to create preferences and categories of things that they like and things that they don’t like. We as parents have the responsibility to delight in our kids as they are doing new things, and as they are becoming better at things that may have been more difficult for them in the past and as they are making new friends. All of the things that our children go through during the ages of six through eleven (and they go through a lot) changes our relationship with them. 
• As your kids grow they begin to desire deeper relationships and conversations with you but as parents, it is our job to proactively invite it they probably won’t try to bring it up themselves because they don’t know how to. A lot of the time what happens is parents don’t catch on soon enough when their kids are desiring a deeper relationship and they miss out and potentially mar the relationship. 
• Just think about how much you have grown and changed over the years. Think about how much better you know your spouse, and how much you both have changed over the years you have known each other. The same thing is happening with your kids! We are all humans, we all grow and change and you as the parent need to invite and anticipate that change, you need to encourage it, call it out in your child and be excited about it.
• If you were your child, would you want to be communicated to the way you communicate with your child? Would you want to be coached by you? These are really important questions that you need to be asking yourself because it’s not just about you liking your child. After all, you would like your kids all day long but what if they don’t like you back? This relationship, this two-way appreciation from child to parent is built in the six to eleven-year-old age range. 
• Do you know what is in the hearts and minds of your kids? The assumption is yes, but if you are assuming then you are probably wrong. You need to have deep conversations, and you should be initiating the conversations! A lot of the time even though your kids desire deeper relationships they don’t know how to start deep conversations. The key to having a deep conversation is this, and we’ve said it before but we are saying it again. The key to having a deep conversation is asking three deep questions. If you ask your child how their walk with God is they might say it’s “good” but then you can ask “what does good mean?” and then they answer and you have the opportunity if needed to ask a third question about something specific they said. If your child answers your first question with a simple answer, don’t think that means they don’t want to talk. Sometimes they need to be nudged to go deep and sometimes they might actually be testing you to see if you actually care, because if you actually care you won’t be satisfied with a simple answer. 
• If you don’t pursue God are you going to know him? No. if you don’t pursue your spouse, then you are not going to know your spouse. If you don’t pursue your kids, then you are not going to know your kids.
• The point we are making is that if you get the relationship part right then these next four tips that we are going to talk about are going to go so much better because if you don’t have trust in your relationship there are certain things that you just won’t be able to really talk about with your kids. 
• Ephesians 6:1-3 says “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
• This is a key scripture to teach your children. It’s important that we explain to them the why behind obeying their parents, yes they should obey because God said so and that should be enough but don’t we all want to know the why behind things? It says to obey your parents because if you do it will go well with you and you will live a long life! You were given parents as a blessing! And you should treat them as such.

2. Their Thing

• Ephesians 2:10 says  “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
• We were all created for good works. We all have a God-given purpose and it is our job as parents to guide and help our children to understand and find their purpose. 
• It is so important that your kids know that they are valuable and that they contribute in a specific and unique way to the family perhaps at church, in other relationships or in their education but they have specific things that are called out in them so that they can know that they are valuable and that they have “their thing”. 
• It’s one thing to read about being valuable in the bible and another totally different thing to have it actually called out in you. So many children from ages six to eleven are so depressed and it carries into their teenage years and only gets worse. 
• We are wired by God to make progress, to contribute, to be needed by other people and have a purpose and if your kids don’t feel like they are valuable then it will be a problem for you. 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet!

3. Purity

• 1 Corinthians 6:18 says “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”
• So there is a distinction here with sexual sin, purity is very important. During these years, six through eleven and so on, you have to be the initiator of conversations about purity issues. But guess what, open conversations with your kids about purity cannot happen unless point number one is accomplished, and that is having a good, healthy relationship with your kids. They need to feel comfortable with you and they need to trust you, otherwise, you can be sure that your kids will not be open with you about their purity walk. 
• 1 Corinthians 10:12 says “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
• The world sells the idea that you will give into temptation. Christianity often sells the idea that you will give into temptation. We are all still sinning and there is no sinless person in the world, but this truth right here in 1 Corinthians and throughout the word of God says that we always have a way out. When we sin we are making a choice to sin and we do not have to make that choice, we can choose God. We have the choice to walk in the spirit or walk in the flesh. It is important that we teach our children these things. Ages six through eleven is the time when we need to start the conversation of purity and what it looks like practically to be walking as a Christian. 
• Statistically, most kids are exposed to pornography by age eight. If you want to be the first person to talk to your kids about what sex is and purity then you’ve got to do it early, earlier than you probably think is necessary. You are probably wondering what age exactly but there is no age. We are not going to give you an age. The reality is that you are the parent, you know your kids, we don’t know your kids and everyone has a different environment and kids are exposed to different things at all different ages. 
• Romans 13:14 says “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
• The number one thing that you need to make sure happens during the ages of six through eleven regarding purity is that your kids feel comfortable talking to you about anything and everything. Your kids are going to be exposed to things. They are going to hear things and they are going to see things, do you want them to talk to you about it? Because if you want your kids to feel comfortable and confident about bringing these kinds of things to your attention then they need to be able to trust you. 
• By the time our kids are six years old they should already be trained in how to cover their eyes even if there is a kissing scene among animated characters in a movie. Your children by the ages of six through eleven should have enough integrity that you can trust that they are turning their eyes or looking away or whatever they need to do so that they are guarding their hearts and minds!  
• We are parenting our kids for today’s world and tomorrow’s world and if you are falling asleep at the wheel your kids will be exposed to things that they don’t have answers to and they will find answers from all the wrong sources if you are not proactively teaching them. 
• Have standards, communicate with your kids, and make sure that you are not looking to the world for your standards but that you are looking to scripture only.

4. Education

• The fourth topic that we need to cover is education. If you think that your kids are going to come to you for advice just because you are their parents then you are wildly mistaken. You have to live the way that they would want to live so that you are the type of person that they want to get advice from and they need to trust you and feel valued by you. The older kids get the less titles matter to them and in today’s world titles don’t really matter at all. You can no longer earn respect because of your title at work or whatever it may be. Now, of course, kids should obey and respect their parents because God says to but are you worthy of their respect and obedience? 
• If we as parents have a selfless heart attitude, if we have God’s heart then our desire should be to make it easy for our kids to want to honor us. 
• You need to be educating your kids about the world they will be living in. courageous parenting is about equipping kids for an uncertain world. What is there that you need to teach your children so that when they go out into the world on their own they are strong in their faith and ready to be a light for Jesus? 
• The goal for education during the ages of six through eleven should be to cultivate a love for learning. If your kids do not love learning it will stifle the rest of their life. 

5. Identity In Christ

• 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
• We are a new creation when we become believers, now your kids may accept christ when they are really young let’s just say five years old but in the ages of six through eleven what tends to happen is they go through a season of questioning their faith and having doubts which are totally normal. What you need to do is be there for them, encourage them, wash them in the word of God and through that they will find where they truly stand with God and their faith will be made sure. 
• Between the ages of six and eleven kids are prone to start comparing themselves with others and struggle with contentment. If a kid is struggling in the comparison trap that could be a symptom of not having a strong identity in Christ. 
• The enemy hates your kids, he hates that they believe in Christ and that they are being raised by you. The enemy wants your kids to have their identity in the world, God wants your kids to have their identity in Christ and you are the God authorized leaders to help navigate that, protect your children, pray for your children and have open communication and healthy relationships with your kids. 
• This is the age when you should be teaching your children what it means to be born again and have a relationship with God. 
• Make sure your spouse is listening to this too so that you can have these conversations together and get a date night to really evaluate where you guys are at with these ten tips for Parenting six to eleven-year-olds biblically.

Scripture In This Episode:

Ephesians 6:1-3 – “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

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.”

1 Corinthians 6:18 – “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”

1 Corinthians 10:12 – “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

Romans 13:14 –“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

• All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

  

  Social Media For Christians – BE COURAGEOUS app

  • Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
  • Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
  • Powerful Biblically minded community.
  • Topic-based discussion groups.
  • You get your own profile and can connect with others.
  • Resources on marriage, parenting, homeschooling, pregnancy/birth, and more.

  We look forward to engaging with you on the inside!

  FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

  

  Relevant Resource Links:

  • The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

  • Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

  • Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

  • FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

  If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

  • Financial Giving, is important to support our family and expand the impact of the ministry. We aim to impact 10 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 9 at home, so everything makes a difference. 

  Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Because there is so much content and practical information that we want to give you, for the next two episodes of courageous parenting we will be doing a two-part series. This is part one of the series and it is about biblical parenting must-dos with your six to eleven-year-old kids!

As we were thinking and brainstorming topics of discussion for courageous parenting and future episodes God laid it on our hearts to talk about the six to eleven-year-old age category. We have done many episodes on young adults, teenagers, and really little kids but we feel that we have not given you an equal amount of practical tips and biblical wisdom in regards to this particular age category. 

We are in the midst of it ourselves. Ethan is our nine years old and he is in the category that we are discussing in the episode. Ethan is the only one of our children that is in this category actually but we have had five kids go through this stage and so we have some tips that we have learned over the last twenty years because we have been in this season of life many times.

This topic is so important and even if your kids are not in this age range yet you’ve got to be thinking about this stuff ahead of time, and if your kids are in this stage already it’s not too late, even if your children are beyond this season of life, the things that we are going to discuss will be of much benefit. 

If you get your relationships right with your children and you train your children right in the six to eleven-year-old age range then they will be properly equipped for the teenage years. It is never too late but it is way easier if you do these things early on. 

You probably often hear us on social media say that we love our teenagers and we actually like them too, and we don’t just love them because they are our kids. After all, every parent loves their child. We like our kids and desire to be around them and they are cool people. We want this for you guys and are sure that you want it too! 

In this series, we have ten parenting must-dos for the six to eleven-year-old age range but in this episode, we will be covering five of them. 

5 Tips For Parenting 6-11 Year-Olds Biblically

1. Character Development 

2. Disciple + Teach

3. Responsibility + Contributions 

4. Disciplined Life 

5. Friendships

Next week we will be talking about Identity, purity, skills, education and your relationship so be sure to stay tuned for the next episode!

So let’s dive in!

1. Character Development

• So the first biblical parenting must-do is character development. Remember we are talking about age six to eleven ish and we say “ish” because maybe your kid is a little bit less spiritually mature and so this might be a conversation that you have to start with your child at a different age but that is something that you get to decide based upon your knowledge and understanding of where you child is at both on a spiritual level and emotional and mental maturity level. For our kids and what we have seen is that the age range is six to eleven but they are also raised in the Tolpin culture which might be different than the culture you have set in your home. 
• The first thing that you need to do is get together with your spouse and write out a list of the things that you would like to see in your kids, and then you evaluate which kids have these things and which don’t. This allows you to discover areas of improvement. Generosity could be one, or kindness, self-control, honesty, work ethic, loyalty. An example of not having loyalty would be ditching your sibling when a friend comes over. Another thing you should desire to see in your kids is having a teachable heart or humility. Another one that is important for this particular age category is contentment. At this particular age in a child’s life, between ages six and eleven you want them to hear you say the word content. You should be teaching your children what being content means and you should be praying for them and with them to have a content heart. You should be praying that they do not allow themselves to fall into the comparison trap. 
• Between ages six and eleven girls start paying more attention to how other girls dress and often start comparing themselves to other peers and boys do the same thing! We as parents should not want this heart attitude in our children. We should influence contentment and thankfulness in our children. Our children should be content with what they have and also how they were created. 
• Some of you might be skeptical of the word contentment because you have seen it acted out falsely. Some people use contentment as an excuse not to pursue growth. The difference is are you being content which is a good thing or complacent which is not a good thing. You should be content and thankful for what God has given you but you should not be complacent and stagnant in your walk with God and overall growth. 
• 2 Peter 1:5-9 says “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”
• This is a passage of scripture that you should read to your children and you can use it to help them focus on these specific character qualities that God desires us to have. 
• It is vital to instill work ethic in your kids at a very young age otherwise it will be harder when they are older, so find ways to instill that in your children. Instilling a teachable heart is another one of the most important characteristics that you should desire to have in your child, and that also should be happening at a very young age and to do that you need to emphasize to your children that you and your spouse are the most important teachers in their life even if they have other coaches, teachers, etc. if you don’t, then they won’t come to you for wisdom and answers in the teenage years. And if they aren’t coming to you then you better be praying that they are going to someone that is like-minded but odds are that if they aren’t getting advice from you, then they probably aren’t getting advice that you would approve of and if you are having relational tears with your kids that might be why. 
• Galatians 5:22-23 says “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
• These are things that you should see in your children if they are truly saved.

2. Disciple + Teach

• As parents, it is our God-given responsibility to teach and discipline our children in the Lord. it can be easy to let time go by and not even realize that you haven’t been teaching your kids anything. You’ve been around them, you’ve been in car rides with them, you’ve taken them to sports events, you may have eaten dinner together and talked to each other but still have been teaching them and discipling them. 
• Discipling is teaching, we meet with our children throughout the week and talk about life and teach them things about the bible and God and how they apply to life. Between the age of six and eleven is when you get to start discipling your kids in that way which is exciting! But we are also discipling our kids by the way we live and interact with each other. 
• Luke 6:40 says “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.”
• So, do you want your kids to be like you? This is an interesting question that we get to ask ourselves because it is super convicting! This is a question that we as parents should be asking ourselves regularly because our children will mimic us. 
• James 3:1 says “My brothers, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.”
• As parents, we teach and influence our children by our example and as teachers, we will be held accountable to God for what we teach our children. 
• An exercise that we have done with our kids is having them give five-minute sermons. We are to teach our children but we should also be teaching them how to teach because just like us, when they are parents they are going to be held responsible for how they raise their kids and we must prepare them for that. 
• The second point under discipline and teaching your children is equipping your kids with scriptural knowledge. You should be reading the bible to your kids when they are under the age of six but a lot of the time children under six have a much harder time sitting still and truly grasping what you are teaching them. As your child gets older the more mature they will get, the longer attention span they will have and the more they will understand and so that is why we have set the age of six and up as the general age where you can begin to equip your children.
• It is between the age of six and eleven when children begin to understand why they believe what they believe and can begin to have their own faith and walk with the Lord, instead of just believing in God because mommy and daddy do. 
• Worldview is huge. Between the age of six and eleven is when you need to start introducing conversations about what is going on in the world and the ways of the world, now, obviously you’re not going to go into certain details with younger kids as you would with teenagers. You should be pre-framing things for your kids so that they are properly equipped. What that means is telling them things that are important to know before they are introduced to them in the wrong way. Many parents are overprotective of their children and don’t educate them on certain things and while their heart is in the right place they are causing more harm than they would if they were to properly equip them for the things to come. 
• The last thing you should want for your children is for them to be alarmed when they are exposed to certain things because if they are alarmed and don’t know what is happening they will not know how to respond correctly. 
• When do you want to train your kids? When they are out of your home or when they are in your home? Well, guess what, you can’t train your kids once they move out. Your kids are going to make their own decisions when they are out of your home. Some parents won’t ever let their kids have social media because they want to protect them. But what happens when they move out and make the decision for themselves? What happens when they discover the evil side of social media? They don’t know what to do because you didn’t prepare them! And that’s not to say that social media is bad, but it can be used wisely or foolishly.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet!

3. Responsibility + Contributions

• There comes a time when your kids begin to want more responsibility and it is your job to believe in them and give them responsibility. Sometimes when your kids are acting wrong it is just plain your fault, sometimes they just need to be believed in. Everyone wants to feel important and that they contribute but kids don’t know how to articulate that, they don’t have the experience to communicate those kinds of things. 
• Between the age of six and eleven, you can start including them in the family team and teaching them to contribute. Chores are a big thing.

4. Disciplined Life 

• The fourth thing that we are going to talk about is teaching your children to have a disciplined life. We are not talking about correction or consequences. We are talking about a disciplined life, meaning are your children people of habits and purposefulness. This is so important before the teenage years because if you don’t instill discipline in your kids during these ages then how can you expect them to successfully pick them up in the teenage years? You do not want to be reminding your sixteen-year-old to brush their teeth! Hygiene is a huge thing for kids between the age of six and eleven! By the time they are six, seven years old they should be able to brush their teeth, floss at least twice a day by themselves without having to be reminded!
• Philippians 2:14-25 says “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,”
• It is a crooked and perverse generation, a lot of kids are disrespectful and don’t want to listen to their parents. You have a responsibility to teach your kids to do their chores and follow through on their responsibilities without grumbling and complaining. Your child could do their chores and be disciplined but at the same time have a horrible attitude but God cares about the heart.
• One very important and fruitful thing that you should instill in your home and in your kids is the discipline of delayed gratification, and what that means is doing the hard things first so that you can reap the benefit later. Instead of procrastinating on your homework or whatever it may be and indulging in what you want in the moment you choose to do the hard thing so that you can rightly enjoy the benefit of your discipline and wisdom. 
• Colossians 3:23 says “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”
• So when it comes to a disciplined life we have to remind our kids when they are having a grumpy attitude that in everything they do they need to do it unto the Lord. 
• Spiritual disciplines are also very important. Are your kids reading the bible on their own when no one is looking? What are their disciplines with their prayer life and having a real relationship with God? These are the kinds of things that are indicators of whether or not they are growing in relationship with God and developing habits that will continue into their teenage years and their adult life.

5. Friendships

• The fifth and final topic that we are covering in this episode is friendships. 
• Between the ages of six to eleven is when friendships start having more influence in our children’s lives. We have always recommended that with kids under six years old, you decide who their friends are one hundred percent! Children are super impressionable, easily influenced and don’t know how to make wise decisions. Now, that goes for kids under the age of six. Once your kids are in the age range of six to eleven that is when you start to teach them to make good friendship choices, but you do that by modeling and pursuing like-minded families that have kids you would want your kids to be friends with. 
• 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 says “Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits. Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”
• The bible clearly warns us about being careful with who we choose to hang out with, but as parents when our children are young and still learning how to make wise choices it is our job to look out for them and guide them. 
• Some other things that are important to teach your children are ageism, the importance of being able to have the courage to speak up when things are unbiblical, making wise choices, being a peace peacemaker, gossip, selfishness, sharing, hospitality and many more. 
• We hope that you are encouraged by this episode and hope that you will stay tuned for next week’s podcast where we will finish our series with part two of 10 tips for parenting 6-11 year-olds biblically!

Scripture In This Episode:

2 Peter 1:5-9 – “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”

Galatians 5:22-23 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Luke 6:40 – “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.”

James 3:1 – “My brothers, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.”

Philippians 2:14-25 – “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,”

Colossians 3:23 – “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”

1 Corinthians 15:33-34 – “Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits. Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”

• All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

  

  Social Media For Christians – BE COURAGEOUS app

  • Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
  • Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
  • Powerful Biblically minded community.
  • Topic-based discussion groups.
  • You get your own profile and can connect with others.
  • Resources on marriage, parenting, homeschooling, pregnancy/birth, and more.

  We look forward to engaging with you on the inside!

  FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

  

  Relevant Resource Links:

  • The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

  • Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

  • Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

  • FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

  If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

  • Financial Giving, is important to support our family and expand the impact of the ministry. We aim to impact 10 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 9 at home, so everything makes a difference. 

  Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

In this episode, we are going to touch on marriage and having a “We Vs. Me Culture”! We want to first ask you a few questions to challenge you in your thinking. 

What mission does God have for your marriage? Now, there are some collective missions that God has purposed for all marriages but there are also unique and personal missions based upon our gifts and characters. So while we share about our purpose, our experiences and how we have changed through marriage just be thinking about what mission God has for you and your marriage. 

If you are married then this episode is for you and could potentially have a massive impact on your marriage. 

The main question of today’s episode is “have you ever thought about how your spiritual gifts affect your marriage?” 

We are called to desire spiritual gifts and to pray and ask God for them but if we approach this topic of spiritual gifts in an individualistic type of way and we are not approaching it in unity with our spouse then it could cause division. 

We have been married now for 20 years and it has been wonderful but before we were married we were very independent and strong-minded people. One of us was determined never to get married and the other didn’t even believe in marriage. We both had to die to our flesh in many ways to make our marriage work biblically.  

In this episode, we are going to go over six main points

Being One In Marriage Is About More Than Sex

1. Our Story

2. Spiritual Gifts

3. The Mission Of Marriage

4. In Our Weakness He Is Strong

5. The Mission God Has For Your Marriage

6. Division Or Unity In Marriage

As we have been reflecting on our last twenty years of marriage we have been observing how we have grown both individually and together as a married couple and how we are becoming one with each other more and more. 

Mark 10:7-8 says “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Genesis 1:26-27 says ”Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

There are two elements of becoming one in marriage, there is the physical element of becoming one flesh and there is also the spiritual element of becoming one flesh. This is so important to understand and to be striving after because in your marriage do you feel like you are both running the race together or do you feel like you are running the race alone? You need to take a second and reflect on your marriage and ask yourself these hard questions because this episode could help you and your marriage but if you don’t recognize the areas in your marriage that need growth then you won’t think anything applies to you and you won’t get anything out of this podcast. You must have a strong unified marriage because you are the image-bearers of Christ and the stronger your marriage is and the more it is aligned with God’s will the greater impact your marriage will have and the more useful it will be for the great commission. 

1. Our Story

• (Angie shares her story about God changing her heart about marriage. Tune in to episode 59 to hear the full story)
• It takes effort and continual love to become one with your spouse. You don’t get married and then all of a sudden you’re of the same mind and spirit. There are shackles of independence and selfishness and fleshly desires that God through the holy spirit relinquish over time.
• Just like every individual has their own walk with God and they are on a different growth trajectory is the same with every single marriage. Every single married couple has that same kind of journey of becoming more and more one with each other and one with God. 
• (Isaac shares his story about God changing his heart about marriage and bringing him to the Lord. Tune in to episode 59 to hear the full story)
• A lot of time within a marriage the husband or the wife is thinking independently with their spiritual gifts like “oh, I wonder what my spiritual gift is so that I can so that I can be so that I can have” instead of “God what Gift do you want me to be walking in and stewarding so that I can help my spouse?” because our marriage should be our first ministry and our first priority second to God. 
• (Isaac and Angie share about how each other’s gifts and differences inspired and helped each other grow and have an impact on the world for the kingdom of God. Tune in to episode 59 to hear the full story)

Free Wheelchair Mission

2. Spiritual Gifts 

• We should all desire spiritual gifts but we should desire them in a way and use them in a way that creates more unity in our marriages versus less unity. 
• Romans 12:3-5 says “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”
• So we are to think of ourselves with sober judgment and not think too highly of ourselves. 
• It is important when it comes to spiritual gifts to have the perspective of priorities of ministry. Often people can be so focused on growing spiritually in their spiritual gift or exercising their spiritual gift that it’s a haughty thought. it becomes a selfish, prideful thought of “I need to exercise my spiritual gift.” yes, God has given each individual gifts but he has dispersed them among all so that none can become prideful. 
• Your marriage should be your first ministry, and if God has blessed you with children then your children are your second ministry and that is also disciple-making. So, if your first ministry is your marriage and your second ministry is your family or children then you need to ask yourself, “Do I steward my gifts for the edification of my spouse, of my children, or do I do it so that I can be glorified?” when we use our God-given gifts to edify our spouse our marriages become that much more powerful for the kingdom of God. 
• So our first ministry is our marriage, our second ministry is our kids and our third ministry should be being a part of the body of Christ. 
• If a wife is pursuing gifts that are taking her in a different direction then her husband it is probably going to demotivate most husbands from actually leading their families. Sometimes you need to become less in your marriage, not so that your spouse can become more but so that God can become more. 
• There are even worship songs that we sing in church that encourage less of us and more of Jesus but if we were to apply that in our lives and more specifically in our marriages then “less of me and more of you Jesus” what that means is sometimes as a wife you need to wait and sit back and pray and encourage our husbands. But that does not mean that you don’t study your bible or keep growing in your faith that is not what we are talking about in fact you should one hundred percent be growing spiritually regardless of your spouse. Sometimes you stepping back is exactly the kind of push your husband needs to step up and be the spiritual leader in the home. 
• Passivity in the husband started a long time ago in the garden of Eden and if a man is being passive in the home and in his role as spiritual leader that is on him but the wife can also have a negative impact on a husband’s efforts to lead if she is trying to rule over the family. 
• Do your children want to get married and leave a legacy? Do they see parents who work together as a team to raise up their children in the Lord or do they see a passive husband and an over-controlling wife? As a wife there are a lot of things that sometimes you may not realize discourage and demotivate a man in his role, there are things that make a man feel less than or feel like they can’t lead their wives. 
• You and your spouse should have these discussions and talk about these things because God made you very very different so that when you’re combined and on the same page you can be more powerful for the kingdom of God. if you are not communicating about these things, then that means there are probably unspoken demotivators that are creating a blockage between you and your spouse and preventing you from being a magnificent team that is in unity, and out of true unity in marriage comes great fruit in your children. 
• Genesis 2:18 says “And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”
• God made Eve for Adam. God made the woman perfect for the man, together they are stronger. They are equal in value but with different roles. Eve was made for Adam to be a helper as genesis 2:18 says and Adam was made to be the leader. 
• God made you and your spouse perfect for each other. There is a grand design, there is a plan there is a mission and God gave us as a couple of different gifts to steward together for his glory. When you believe that there leaves no room for the enemy to convince you of the lie that you could have been with someone else. If you ever start thinking that way, if you ever start thinking of other people you could have married that is totally of the devil. You cannot believe those lies. You need to believe the truth and the truth is that God made you to be married to the person you are married to right now. He made you to be perfectly compatible together and to be image-bearers of Christ’s church. 
• You should never look at another marriage and go “we should become like them” no. you need to ask God to reveal to you how he wants you and your spouse to grow together and glorify him. 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet!

3. The Mission Of Marriage

• Marriage is our first ministry, and if you are married then it should be your number one ministry as well. Marriage is the image-bearer of Christ’s church and when two people in marriage become one physically and spiritually they reflect even better the glory of God.
• As a couple, you are equal in value but different in roles and God says this very clearly in the bible. Think of any sports team that is successful, think of any company or business that is successful. In every organization, business, company, or team there are roles to be played and there is authority and there is submission and that is what makes them successful. Committees with equal power hardly ever get things done. We must understand that we are equal in value but that we embrace our God-given roles. Men, too often do they not fully or at all embrace their role in leadership, and leadership is not lording over it isn’t controlling. Leadership, true leadership is encouraging, it is empowering, its truth-telling it’s teaching, praying for and serving others. 
• 1 corinthians 11:3 says “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”
• There are so many scriptures that talk about the roles of men and women in the home and you cannot ignore it. If you don’t agree with this part of the bible you would have to take a black marker and blackout a whole lot of scriptures. Biblical roles are real and they are clear, they are not confusing and it is beautiful when it is happening correctly. When husbands are leading with love and sacrifice and when wives are allowing the husband to lead even when they know they can do it better. Does that mean that the wives aren’t leading when the husband isn’t home? no, you should be leading your children and reading the bible to them and discipling them.

4. In Our Weakness He Is Strong

• Your marriage should glorify Christ. It should look so different from the world, and your love should be so noticeable that people want what you have. Your kids should be excited to get married! And they should want a marriage that looks like your marriage. And if you don’t have that then something needs to change and you should be praying for that change. 
• Here is a tip for you wives. When you want to understand something better about the bible, instead of googling it or asking your pastor or elder, ask your husband. This will create urgency in your husband to research it himself if he doesn’t understand or excitement when he does have an answer for you! 

5. The Mission God Has For Your Marriage

• Your marriage is your first mission, your second mission, if you have kids, is disciple-making and your third mission should be to edify the body of Christ as a team with the gifts God has given you. 
• When you are thinking about what mission you have together you have to take inventory and figure out what gifts you and your spouse have. Is it the gift of wisdom, knowledge, spiritual discernment, prophesy, service, teaching, faith, healing, miracles, tongues, interpretation, etc. 
• There are so many ways that you and your spouse can be working together as a team for the glory of God. you cannot underestimate the power of the marriage team. If you are dissatisfied and you don’t know what your spiritual gift is then the first person you should go to is your spouse. Your spouse knows you best! They can encourage you and build you up and remind you of who you are in Christ and what your gifts are. 

6. Division Or Unity In Marriage

• Is your marriage reflecting unity in your mission or is it reflecting division in your mission? And you just need to look back on the three main missions. Your marriage, your family and the body of Christ. Those are the most important missions for your marriage. 
• God is the reason why we do ministry and we need to be honest and take the rose-tinted glasses off and ask the Lord to search our hearts and evaluate if our marriage is becoming more and more unified or if we are potentially growing apart. 
• Ephesians 5:31 says “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
• Are you pursuing division or are you pursuing unity? 

Scripture In This Episode:

Mark 10:7-8 – “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Genesis 1:26-27 – ”Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Romans 12:3-5 – “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”

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.” Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”

1 corinthians 11:3 – “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”

Ephesians 5:31 – “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Resources

• Become part of our friends Steve & Julianne Folin’s efforts to bring mobility to God’s people

• All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

  

  Social Media For Christians – BE COURAGEOUS app

  • Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
  • Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
  • Powerful Biblically minded community.
  • Topic-based discussion groups.
  • You get your own profile and can connect with others.
  • Resources on marriage, parenting, homeschooling, pregnancy/birth, and more.

  We look forward to engaging with you on the inside!

  FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

  

  Relevant Resource Links:

  • The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

  • Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

  • Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

  • FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

  If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

  • Financial Giving, is important to support our family and expand the impact of the ministry. We aim to impact 10 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 9 at home, so everything makes a difference. 

  Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

In this episode, we are sharing a lot of intimate and raw topics that we have walked through in our life along with a life-changing announcement! 

One year ago we launched the very first courageous parenting mentor program and at the same time, we started the podcast. So this last year has been an exciting move into full-time ministry with courageous parenting, courageous mom and resolute man. God has been blessing the ministry and it has been awesome hearing your testimonies. We love getting messages from you guys and reading reviews because it encourages us to keep going. 

There are so many people that are being helped by the content but also are behind the one million legacies movement which can have an incredible impact on society and bring more people to Jesus. This is a kingdom-focused ministry and we have a kingdom-focused legacy because it’s not about leaving our legacy it is about leaving God’s legacy. Because of our focus on leaving God’s legacy and building his kingdom we have made many decisions that to the world seemed insane. Like planting a vineyard to teach our children to work ethic or the number of kids we have which a lot of people still don’t understand. In this last year, we have also moved the family we moved from a house on thirty acres to a neighborhood which has been an amazing blessing and the kids have loved it. In the last year, we have also planted a home church with a couple of other awesome families. 

So this last year has been full of a lot of life-changing events and we have gone through massive trials and massive blessings are given to us by God. sometimes God wants us right at the edge of where we think things are going to fall apart to test our faith and to see if we are going to be obedient.

So let’s dive in! 

We have a really big announcement to make, we are pregnant with another baby Tolpin! We are so blessed by God and joyful for this new life that God has entrusted us with! We are now going from a family of ten to a family of eleven! 

So, we thought that this would just be a special time to share with you all, we are going to go over three topics in this episode! We wanted to first share with you that we are pregnant, and we are going to go more in-depth about some hardships with pregnancy and our testimony with that. Secondly, we wanted to talk about loss because we suffered a miscarriage in between Solomon and Eli. so this is actually our tenth pregnancy and how Angie almost didn’t make it. Then lastly we are going to share about rejoicing in God’s blessings but we are also going to talk about what happens when we are in the flesh even when God wants to give us blessings.

Major Announcement & Obeying God Even When It’s Counter-Cultural

1. Announcement

2. Loss

3. Rejoicing In God’s Blessings

1. Announcement

• We wanted to first talk to about the quiver full movement because a lot of people could easily stereotype us as being a part of the quiver full movement. This movement is a dogmatic movement that believes that everybody should have as many kids as they possibly can, and you are rebuked if you don’t. What we believe is that God has a unique plan for every single family, but we should all look at children as a blessing because that is what scripture says. 
• So for us, we do allow the bible to influence how we live our lives, and we believe what the bible says. For the sake of this conversation and what we are going to share we just want you to know that we don’t want anyone to look at us and think that we expect everybody to be like us and have a lot of kids because that is not true about us. We do believe that each of our kids is a blessing, and we do believe that all children are a blessing from the Lord because the bible says that they are an eternal inheritance. 
• We also want you to know that we are not naturally kid people, and what we mean by that is that when we got married we didn’t have a dream of having a big family, we didn’t even talk about how big our family would be. We thought we were done having kids after the first two!
• If that is where you are right now, and you don’t think you want any more kids, we don’t want you to be discouraged and tempted to think that you could never get to this place where we are right now, because we remember having one and being overwhelmed, we remember having one on the way and being overwhelmed, we remember feeling like we didn’t know how to be parents and that’s okay.
• Every time you have another child there will be sacrifices that you have to make. And in those moments of making a sacrifice for your family or your newborn, there is a moment where it can be so easy to meditate on the sacrifices you have to make instead of the blessings you have been given. 
• Proverbs 19:21 says “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel, that will stand.”
• So when we get the Lord’s counsel, his plans are best. And we can circumvent God’s plans, like if you do something permanent and say “well God can still do a miracle” that is testing God. 
• This scripture has been key over the years and serves as a reminder that we are not the ones creating the babies, God creates the babies
• Psalm 139:13-16 says “For You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me When as yet there were none of them.”
• A lot of times people use this scripture as a pro-life scripture, that God is the one who creates children and they are humans in the mother’s womb from the time that they are conceived. 
• (Angie shares testimony and personal connection to Psalms 139, tune in to episode 58!)

2. Loss

• About two and a half years ago we were in a very challenging season in our lives, the hardest season we ever experienced and we got pregnant and it was like beauty amid ashes and everyone in our family was just clinging onto that joy of having a new baby because we needed joy, and our whole church was so exciting for us. At the same time, we were trying to sell our home in Portland because we had moved to bend but we had a renter who stopped paying rent, stole our tractor and sold it and did some weird things to the house. So the stress of getting the renter out, cleaning the property and selling it ourselves took a toll on the pregnancy and we lost the baby and all of that was after a recent company failure and massive debt with no income. 
• Losing selah (the baby) was a struggle. The whole family took a hit, and we struggled with finding something or someone to blame because that is our natural inclination as humans but God is sovereign and if it was her time to go then it was her time to go and God’s plans are better than ours. God taught us many powerful things through our loss, he taught us about giving thanks in the middle of grieving.
• Philippians 4:6-7 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.”
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 says “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.”
• Focusing on our baby being in heaven with Jesus instead of being angry that she is not here with us was a big thing. 
• 2 Corinthians 10:5 says “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”
• So, even though we have had a lot of experience we still have to hold our thoughts captive, even with this pregnancy, from the moment we found out we have had to exercise that spiritual muscle. 
• So the thing about losing a baby and you have been blessed to get pregnant again, the natural tendency that most women struggle with is the fear of losing that baby as well. This is a very real struggle that does not go away. Even if you have a rainbow baby after suffering a loss you still struggle with this fear. 
• (Angie shares her struggle with fear, tune in to episode 58 to hear!)
• One of the most powerful things you can do to overcome this fear is to preach to yourself, have key scriptures that you go to whenever you start feeling afraid and filling yourself with the godly truth versus the worldly pressure. The only way you can do that is by having studied God’s word over and over and remaining in that faithfulness. You can’t preach to yourself the truth unless you read it and you know it. 
• Nine months of sacrifice even if you are puking sixteen times a day is worth another person’s entire life, their legacy, and their eternal life. 
• Psalm 34:17-19 says “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
• That is a promise. God gives so many promises in the Bible and we should anchor our lives on his promises, not on the fears of the world.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet!

3. Rejoicing In God’s Blessings

• So, when you are a mom and maybe you have had a miscarriage and you are struggling with the fleshly selfishness where you are just not super excited about the pregnancy
• Romans 12:15 says “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”
• Choosing to do the hard thing when your flesh is crying out to do the opposite is where the most growth happens in your life. One of the things that we have come to realize is that children are the only thing that is an eternal inheritance, they are the true treasures in heaven because we can’t take anything earthly with us to heaven, but if our children know the Lord they get to come to heaven with us!
• It’s a lot more work to have another child and having children, in general, is a life of servanthood and we wouldn’t want to be doing anything else because we know that it’s the great commission and it is part of how we get to contribute to the great commission and partner with christ in raising his children.  
• After we had our first two kids we thought we were done having kids and we thought “ok, in eighteen years when we are in our forties we will be empty nesters and be able to do whatever we want.” that’s just how we thought back then. Now, it’s eighteen years later and we are blessed with another baby so when we are in our sixties we will be empty nesters. The world would say that it’s crazy and wonder “how will you have enough energy to be around them?” but why not make sure we have enough energy to be around them? And if we don’t then God is sovereign and he will take care of us, and it snot like God made a mistake giving us another kid it’s a blessing and it’s on purpose and it’s about their life, our lives are not just about us they are about partnering with God to create more life and more disciples who proclaim his name. 
• If children were a blessing in our twenties and children were a blessing in our thirties then children are still a blessing in our forties.
• This podcast is a safe place. We have never been judgmental of other people and their families, this is between you and your spouse, and your marriage and God. you need to walk your race that God has set before you, and it’s going to look different, God has a special plan for your family but what we encourage is that you trust God and live out the truth that children are a blessing.
• We have had times where one of us was done having kids and the other was not and then times when it was flipped the other way. We decided that we would never stop if it was for selfish reasons and we felt like it would be disobedient to God. 
• So here is the key point. God wants our obedience. He says “abide in me and I in you” so we need to abide in Christ and that means to be obedient to what he wants for us. 
• Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”
• We are so excited to share with you guys that we are having another baby! This will be our tenth pregnancy, and we just ask that you would please remember us in your prayers. 
• We would love to hear from you and we are here for you guys, if you have struggled with a miscarriage or if you want encouragement in your pregnancy you can us on social media and reach out!

Scripture In This Episode:

Proverbs 19:21 – “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel, that will stand.”

Psalm 139:13-16 – “For You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me When as yet there were none of them.”

Philippians 4:6-7 – “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.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 – “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.”

2 Corinthians 10:5 – “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”

Psalm 34:17-19 – “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all.”

Romans 12:15 – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”

Resources

• My Miscarriage Story
• Giving Thanks In The Midst Of Grieving
• We Will worship While Weeping
• It’s Good And Healthy To Grieve Your Baby

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