You will be pumped to lead change in your family after this episode! January is too late to lead a family in setting real intentions for change, it’s best to start in November or early December. Isaac and Angie share exactly what their plan is over the next 60 days as they lead their family to reflect on what everyone is thankful for around thanksgiving time, then forge ahead in thinking about changes they want to make in 2022, presentations to the family, and launching family culture initiatives.

Main Points in This Episode:

• Brainstorm all the things everyone is thankful for this year. All the ways God showed up too.
• Get people thinking about the different areas of their life by having them rate them.
• Come back together after everyone has set a few intentions for each area of their life.
• Meet as a married couple and discuss aspects of the family culture you would like to improve.
• Launch a few simple phrases or words that are an area of focus as a family.
• Create a time for each person to present their ideas for change and get feedback.

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Scripture in This Episode:

Psalm 100 – “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

Psalm 37:3-4 – “Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

Luke 14:28 – “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?”

Proverbs 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

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

Hi, guys. That was a new intro, you know?

You know, we’re coming close to season three. Season four starts in January, and I thought I’d just change it up, you know? Welcome everybody. We’re talking about preparing your family for change in the new year.

This is your like most exciting topic.

Well, I think it’s pretty exciting. I just I love change. I’m one of those weird ones, but it’s OK. If you don’t love change, that’s OK. God wired you that way to be this stable, steadfast, keep things working the way they are. And we all need to rub against each other a little bit, and this is going to have some steadfastness to it, and it’s going to have some change to it.

That’s right. So you guys were were very close to the Thanksgiving holiday in two thousand and twenty one. Yeah. And whether you have taken a moment to just reflect on the things that you’re thankful for or not, we have some great practical tips, ideas, things that we’ve done with our family over the years that we’re going to share with you guys in today’s podcast that, honestly, I really think is important for preparing our hearts for the Christmas season. Yeah. And for the new year, when a lot of times people are thinking over the previous year and figuring out what they want to do with their life if they have older kids like, there’s just so many things, right? But to really reflect on what you’re thankful for is a good place to start. I was just thinking one of the ways that Jesus teaches us to pray is our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name thy kingdom. Come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven and it’s all about God. Yeah, it’s all about remembering who he is, what his character is about and declaring it, proclaiming it, acknowledging it. And that’s kind of what we do during Thanksgiving. It’s part of what we do during Thanksgiving. It’s not just about what he’s done for us or what he’s doing, but it’s also like, can we just say thank you, Jesus for being a good god?

Amen. And you know, depending where you are in the world, there may not even be something called Thanksgiving and there is in the states, and it’s a little different date in some other places. And so just around these weeks, it’s important to a good time actually to think about what we’re thankful for. So that’s the beginning part of these steps. We’re going to teach you to really prepare your family and everybody in your family is wired differently. Some of them are more willing to change, and some of them, you know, like keeping things the same. But what we know if you look over the last few years is the speed of change happening around us is accelerating more faster every single year.

You can’t fight against that change in a lot of regards. I mean, you can stand firm and fight against tyranny or what, you know, different things like that. You have to, based upon the convictions of the Holy Spirit, puts on your heart and the whys behind those things. You really need to evaluate if they’re godly or if they’re prideful, right? But the truth is, is life is going to continue changing and we shouldn’t be against that. We should be fighting against that. Instead, we should actually try get in front of

It, get in front of it and be proactive in leading your family. And you know, we don’t want to be the kind of people that proclaim things we’re going to do in the new year around January and our kids hear us and then they see us, not do them. So we have to our yes has to be yes or no has to be no. And our word, it needs to be as good as gold in front of our kids and what we say in our marriage and what you say to yourself. Your identity could be compromised. If you tell yourself, even yourself, you’re going to do things and then you don’t do them. What happens the next time you say, I’m going to do something, you’re building an identity within yourself that even though I say things, I don’t usually do them. So the chances of you following through on your initiatives are very low. And I think it’s really important there are some intentions set as a family and individually within your family, and that you are somewhat of a coach helping your family members create good change for the new year.

So that really happens way before the new year if you’re going to do it effectively. And I think Thanksgiving is the time around Thanksgiving and in November beginning December is just a perfect spot to do that. So, hey, we’re going to dive into it in a second. And Angie’s got this killer song for you guys, but we want to thank you guys for being part of the one million legacies movement. Every time you share written review, share social media, all the things, it makes a massive difference and we appreciate it. We could not do it without you. In fact, the algorithms are often working against us on social. The media and elsewhere, and we’ve refused to pay for advertising on Facebook and Instagram, although it used to work for the courses and things like that and the podcast because we don’t want to give money to that. So, you know, we count on you. So every time you share it, it’s how we’re able to put so much free content out there that praise God is blessing people.

That’s right. So let’s dive in. I want to encourage you guys with Psalm. One hundred. It’s a song of praise for the Lord’s faithfulness to his people, and he has been so faithful to all of us. I think that if we start our days focused more on the things to thank him for than we are on the things that are potentially going wrong or the things that we could worry about. We will have a better day. There will be a more biblical joy of the Lord atmosphere in our homes. This is something this is the best way to lead your families is to have a joyous spirit, right? So this says make a joyful shout to the Lord. All you lands. This applies to everyone geographically, everywhere. Yeah. All you lands make a joyful shout to the Lord. All you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Sure, come before his presence with singing Isaac worship going to be singing

I’m going to be.

You are know that the Lord. He is God. Who is he? He is God. And it is he who has made us and not we ourselves. I mean, that just just totally shut down the new age teachings that are all over social media that are like, If you dream, you can be it. I’m sorry that says it is he who made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and we are says and the sheep of his pasture. We are the sheep of his pasture. That’s what the Bible says. We are his sheep enter into his gates with Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and his truth endures to all generations.

His truth endures. We have so much to be thankful for and I was looking up scriptures on thankfulness and it’s like unending go. Look it up. It’s awesome. I think Thanksgiving the word Thanksgiving, unending or thankful, put that in. It’s just a zillion scriptures. It’s so cool to see, and it has to do with being thankful for God and what God has given us. What God has blessed us for who God is for. You know, the hope we have in God, all of these things. And sometimes we can get occupied by the challenges in our in front of us. But we need to be thankful, and that’s a very, very important message.

You know, I think when I read this last verse in his truth, endures to all generations. That’s also a message that is all throughout the old and New Testament. His truth endures forever. His truth endures to all generations. I think that we all need to remember in the midst of these days where evil is trying to censor things even on social media, right? The reality is, is God’s word is going. His is his truth, and it will endure to all generations, regardless of social media, how many generations have had without social media? Amen. I know it seems like it can be so all encompassing and like, everyone’s world is there and businesses rely on it a lot and all these different things. Sure. The truth is is that it didn’t exist and his truth still endured to all generations. But it was passed on by purposeful parents that were reading the commandments to their children over and over when they rose, when they laid down. When were they at a moment along the way? And guys, if they can do it, if those generations who were busy working hard with they were shepherds in the hillside and coming down late at night and and eating, and they were working physically toiling the land to provide food for their families. If they had the time to teach their kids the scriptures, the holy scriptures, then we have no excuse. None of us

Do.

We don’t have such an easy life compared to.

So here we’re going to knock it out here. So around this time, the Thanksgiving time, at least in the U.S., you can look in a calendar when that is if you’re listening some other time. This is a really good time to kind of have a meeting with your kids somewhere around it and just whiteboard or write in a journal as a parent, as you’re leading this and write down all the things the kids and you say you’re thankful for. Keeping in mind, like really all the things, what is God done this year? And people might say some things and you go, Well, what did God do on our trip to, you know, here? You know, how did God provide for this or what happened with this? And you’re stirring up things to be thankful for

Stories really

Testimonies of God because it’s so easy over the course of a year to forget those. And how beautiful I like the journal idea, actually, I use Evernote and I take pictures of whiteboards and I create slideshows for the family. I’m just, I guess that’s the business hat, but having them in a journal and keeping track every year of all the things you’re

Thankful for, but you know, that would be really cool. And I have over the years with home schooling, I’ve had home school journals that were for each year and in the first, like 10 years before we were doing like big meetings as a family, dry erase boards and focusing on it, I would have the kids right. We would cut out little leaves and the kids would write down what they were thankful for and we would tape them along the top of the windows and the dining room area so that we had all these little things that we were thankful for. One year we had a it wasn’t a dry erase board, but it was one of those glass boards that was on the wall. And at the time I had been reading and and Ann Voss camp book was called a thousand gifts, and it was about all the things that you’re thankful for. And I read like three or four chapters to the kids, and we started making a list the whole month of November on the board. And then it ended up being like on paper, on the wall, and then I should have took pictures.

I love that I was such a good example.

We put it in the home school journal.

So another thing I remember a story when we did our three month RV trip, we did a whiteboard exercise right after that one thing and there was over 100. Whether they’re miracles or things we’re thankful for. Yeah, over 100 just from that trip, just from that three. And obviously, it’s harder. The more distance there is to remember things, but you know, there should be a big list like if you really, really think about it, there’s a lot to be thankful for what in the spiritual walk with God or we think before what are in our learning and knowledge are we think before what are skill development or we think of what are we in relationships or we think for financial projects, service generosity, miracles, ways, safety, all the things that we could be provisioned thankful for?

You know, it’s interesting because this has been an exercise that we have done throughout the year, not just around Thanksgiving, although we do try to do it around Thanksgiving every year. But one of the things that I think is really helpful, like Isaac said, because sometimes it’s harder to remember when you’re farther away from something where maybe there were a lot of miracles. It’s a good practice to just be into multiple times throughout the year to just pull up the dry erase board or chalkboard or whatever and have a family meeting and go, You know what? We’re going to focus on the good things. You know what? I find there is one time that we did this, actually. It was like a couple of weeks after I lost a baby, and I don’t know if it was a purposeful thing that you did or not, but I remember us like I remember that things were down. Hmm. We were just kind of down in the dumps. It was a very tough season. We were grieving, but it was affecting the atmosphere on a daily basis and we needed to be reminded that God was good. And so are you in a place where you need to be reminded that God is good? Maybe you should pull out a journal and a piece of paper pen and start writing down all the ways that you saw him work in your life in this last year. All the the things that you can be thankful for for him. And as you do that, I tell you once you when you start worshiping the next thing you guys, when I read Psalm one hundred, it said, also to sing to the Lord. It was saying, Thank the Lord. It was saying Thank the Lord. And then it said, Sing to the Lord. When you move into that that time of worship, your worship is so much sweeter because you just had your heart and your mind filled and focused on all the things you’re thankful for.

And right along with that, here’s what the Bible says and Psalm. Thirty seven, three or four? So good, by the way, these scriptures make a note of them. You could use them when you’re doing this with your family, trust in the Lord and do good dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. He’s a good god. He didn’t have to make grapes taste so good. He did because he loves us. And that’s a great little example of some kind of food your family likes. Tell them that you didn’t have to make steak tastes so good. Whatever it is. What if your family loves? He doesn’t because he loves us and he’s a good god, and he wants us to have the desires of our heart that are in his will right? And that could be a whole topic with your kids, and this is important around what we’re talking about. So review all the things, get all the things, discuss them. Pray together to God. He wants to actually hear us verbalize what we’re thankful for. That’s what scripture says.

Yeah, because it’s about relationship. And I think that a lot of times when we’re teaching our kids about the ways of the Lord like we were just talking about, sometimes what can get conveyed to kids is to just do what the Bible says, right? Obey what the Bible says. Listen to what the Bible says, and that is true. That is part of what we want to teach our kids. Kids, but we also want them to know God and we want them to have relationship with him and in knowing God, part of knowing God is acknowledging his character qualities and acknowledging who he is, not just what he’s done. Yeah, right. And loving him for who he is and being thankful for what he’s done, actually. And so we need to make sure that we’re when we’re teaching our kids about God, that it’s in this context of God is a real. He he came in the flesh as a real person. Father God was a spirit that he created us, and he’s the creator of all things that are tangible that we can be thankful for, right? Amen. Like Isaac was saying, the grapes like, talk to your kids at their level, like the things that they enjoy and delight in. We need to bring it back to God so that they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m thankful to God. Like, Do our kids think I’m thankful to God multiple times throughout the day? Because if they don’t, it’s likely because that’s not something that’s been either taught to them or impressed upon them enough to recognize this is a gift.

And if we’re not thankful, things fall apart, right? For example, I see the chickens roaming out here as we’re doing this podcast, and I’m like, Wow, it’s so important that we verbalize that we’re thankful that God gave us chickens and has been protecting the chickens. We haven’t lost a single one out of twenty two and they’re out roaming and there’s wildlife and, you know, thankful for the eggs. They provide all these things. So how much more delight now do the kids have in going and taking care of those chickens when they’re bringing it back to God and and God’s provision? So I just think that’s important. It helps with you, parent as well. But why do we start with thankfulness as we’re preparing family for change in the new year? Because we need to be content with what God has given us before we start planning for bigger or different desires of our heart. Because if we don’t have contentedness, then we might be pursuing new things from a discontent heart and that would not be good and God would not be for it. And so we want to be content content, by the way, that gets misused. I’ve heard it misused in church before where it’s like, be content with what you have. Yes, but it doesn’t mean we’re complacent not trying to do new things, try new things, make things better. That doesn’t mean that’s not what continues.

Same thing with the lack of purpose or intention and growing right. That would be a place of complacency, not contentment. So we should be discontent with in a sense, or I don’t like that,

And we should be content

To be content with what we have, but be humble enough to recognize that there’s always room to grow. Yes, right? And be motivated to grow.

This is the next part, which is maybe a week or two later, sometime in December is great is to have a meeting where you’re having the kids literally think about the areas of their life that they want to improve. In twenty twenty two things, they want to change things. They want to get better at how they want to grow and mature as people. And we individually and collectively as a marriage should be thinking about those things too. So I’m going to give you this list again. How about spiritual in the areas of health, learning, skills, relationships, financial products, service or generosity? You know where, what areas in? I would literally tell everybody to rate themselves on these areas from one to 10 10 being highest.

Yeah, it’s interesting because when you start bringing up these different areas in your kids lives, you’re going to notice that some of them are going to rate higher in certain areas than they do others, right? And so you also want to kind of remind your kids at the beginning of the session, listen, we’re not going to compare. This is an individual thing. You’re not rating your sister or your brother. You’re rating yourself your own heart. Be really focused on that. Be introspective. And you know what? This is a time for us to be able to encourage each other as we’re sharing those ratings. That’s one of the things that I think I was so encouraged by. The first time we did this with our family was sometimes someone would rate themselves really low on a certain category, and then the brothers and sisters would all go, Well, actually, I would. I think you’re being too hard on yourself because I saw this and this and this and this growth, and then somebody else would pipe in and somebody else and ended up being a really encouraging session.

It’s also encouraging better relationships with each other with siblings because maybe one of the siblings feels like there’s a struggle with another sibling. And when that sibling gets up there and says, I think I can improve in this area, they’re demonstrating humility and it enables that other sibling having a relational challenge in an area with another one to have more compassion for them, more grace for them all. They’re trying to improve

In that right, right? And you know, I don’t know. To be more specific, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way before with somebody in relationship, but if you have had a a hard, harder relationship and you’re not quite sure how to bring it up to the person and you think maybe they wouldn’t really respond or you think maybe they’re so prideful that they don’t ask? Actually recognize that there is a problem when you do a session like this and the kids are being introspective and they’re thinking and then they’re sharing about the areas that they think they could work on. It helps everybody else who’s sitting there going, Oh, they don’t have a blind spot in that area. They actually do see that they need to improve. Now I can. I is. I can let up. I don’t need to be so like in their face about that issue.

It creates a space for grace, and I think that’s super important encouragement, recognition of these things. And it’s done so. So rate themselves and you have a meeting where everybody and I would separate these individuals because some of the kids, you’re going to need to help the younger kids. And we have the five year old Solomon do this. And you know, it takes mom or dad sitting with them and thinking about it, not putting words

In their mouth. But it’s making

A little bit more simplified, but making a little thing. And and then they might, you know, give some present a presentation on areas they want to grow. In addition to that, you can add this in if you’d like, but they make goals based on specific goals on spiritual like, Hey, you know, I want to read through the Bible this year, maybe the older kid or I would really want to study the book of job or whatever. Right? Right. Health, you know, I’m really committed to this and that now I would give a little lesson to people on setting out to do things their identifiable and doable with the Lord’s help, right? If every single area of our life, we’re going to the max of possibility. The chances of all of it not happening are high. So while I believe in seeing things big, especially if this is new for your family, you might want to start with smaller objectives as they work the muscle of following through. So in the coming years, that as that muscle gets stronger than it’s easier to shoot for bigger things. And because what you wouldn’t want to do is at the end of the year to review them, and none of them happen. But you know what? I have even had a kid write down all these things and admit to me they never looked at it after this exercise. But at the end of the year, when we did it again and reviewed, they looked at it in 90 percent of them happened.

There’s some power in verbalizing to other people what your goals are and writing them down because we tend to remember better what we have thought of written down and then shared with somebody else. It’s it’s a matter of actually. Yeah. In fact, including God, that’s a really important passage. So in sum, thirty seven, where we just were a few verses down in verse seven or in verse five, it says, commit your way to the Lord and trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. And I think that when we’re getting ready to start setting the goals, the first place that we start after the kids have evaluated is we remind them now, listen, before you start writing your goals, commit your way to the Lord. Like, Is this as you’re coming up with your goal? Is that something that you think would be God’s will for your life? Yeah. And commit it to him. Give it to him. Trust in the Lord. And I think that that’s part of why a lot of times they’ll see 90 percent of what they wrote, even if they didn’t check it was actually accomplished because we spent that time committing it to the Lord.

And who else knows siblings?

No right parents now.

And so there’s encouragement, there’s accountability. There’s a knowledge about each other that sometimes seems nebulous in families. We don’t quite know what everybody’s intentions are, and if they’re different from each other, they can create conflict with each other as there’s a certain amount of resource and things like that. And so it just really enriches the marriage conversation to seeing what kids really want. It enriches the educational experience you provide for them and all of the different things in how to allocate resources. I think it’s just a wonderful thing to do, and you’re creating a muscle in them that will last a lifetime and you’re launching these kids out. Eventually, they’ve done this year after year after year, leading their own families. Now, what is the impact of that into the future? It’s just really, really powerful. So it’s setting intentions is key. The next part is your marriage. At some point along the line you’ve got has several marriage meetings on dates or at your in your bedroom or whatever were your analyte you’re bringing to the table after you’ve done this individually and then marriage is one of your things. I didn’t say that for the kids, but add that on, you know, that be under relationships. But the marriage relationship

Is super important. We do on a date night too. And so I mean, you can do a date night in yeah, but like having a time alone where you and your spouse are talking about like, how is your marriage, how or is your marriage regarding finances spiritually? Do you pray together? What goals would you? What things did you set the year before that you really wished were a thing that were more consistent and evaluate like, where do we need to improve? Have that productive Congress?

Station super important, this equips you to and you’re preparing for after you’ve done these things for this other family meeting where you’re kind of launching the family initiatives and we’re not going to go deep into culture right now. There’s a whole episode on that. Our second episode, very cool episode, but culture is the ethos is the unwritten rules. It’s the actual real behaviors when nobody’s looking. It’s actually what happens within a team, not what people say is happening or what we say we stand for. It’s what the group actually stands for by their actions and behavior. And so you need to think about as a married couple, what are the actions and behaviors? The real actions and behaviors. That need improvement. And then distill it down to a couple of key words or key statements for some rhythms and initiatives that orientate your marriage towards those, I can think in past eagles, not sea eagles. You know, we’re going to be eagles. We’re going to lead and not just squabble and fight each other for scarce resources. That’s what seagulls do. But eagles lead

Producers versus consumers, right?

Yeah. So you can tell we’ve spent some time thinking of catchy phrases they remember. What does it mean to be a dolphin? They’d probably say eagles, not seagulls.

Yeah, I mean, that actually has come up a couple of times. Yeah. I mean, Kelsey, we even got her when she was at college. We got her a necklace at an eagle on it. Yeah. To remind her to be an eagle, not to stand firm. And you know, I think there’s an element too of, you know, you want your kids identity to be firmly founded in Christ. That actually is what Megan’s last podcast was on when she said Kids Podcast for Friday. And you want your kids to want that, like they have to pursue that themselves. Yeah. But there’s also this element of like identity as a family as well that you do want to instill in your kids and a family culture, which Isaac was talking about and having some kind of healthy, catchy phrase can be helpful, but it’s not completely necessary to have a catchy phrase to have one word to focus on. For one year, we focused on the word generosity, which was transformational, you know, so like my point in it, I mean, sometimes people are like, Oh my word for the year, well, then I wonder sometimes if people ever go back and really like focus on being that word, right? Like, you see it all begin a year, but then you never hear anything about it. The rest of

The year is hard. And so the key is, here you are in January, you should have a regroup. Or maybe that’s when you launch the initiatives and they’ve already done this. Other things and you recognize and you kind of talk about what everybody’s trying to do and then, you know, every few months kind of putting it out there. I’ve I’ve texted pictures of people’s goals to them halfway through the year and things like that, the older kids and just kind of keeping it in front of them, asking them about it, How’s this going? How’s that going? Yeah. You know, some of this comes in the business world. I read a book called Dream Manager, and when I shifted from what I was doing before, which was very much visionary and stuff to specifically knowing the people that I lead what they care about, even beyond what they’re doing with me in business and what we’re doing together. It was transformational. It was wild how that changes things. If you want your kids to be focused and not bored and and driven towards good things and these kinds of things, what are you doing as a leader to help them with that? We’re all wired to desire progress, but if we’re not helping them focus on godly, good progress and

We’re not giving them the opportunities, we might

Be letting them

Down. Yeah, I mean, that’s part of it, too, is that we need to give our kids the opportunities to do more than just a workbook at the table, right? Like, I see the kids coming alive as they’re learning a new, new skill of guitar, for example, or whatever the new skill is like. Luke came alive when he started doing more woodworking stuff. Drew came alive when he was doing more work. Construction on the building big

Project readdressed lead worship with the family the other day. It was amazing.

It’s just really cool to see them be excited and to hear them practicing. And anyway, my point is, though, is that took some work on our part to give them that opportunity. It took investment, right? Sometimes you have tools, you have expensive driving

Them, driving them.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so sometimes there is a little bit of a cost, but the point is is, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be worth it regardless of the cost to see your kids come alive?

Amen. Amen. So this scripture right here is so good. Proverbs three, five three six Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean on on your own understanding and all your ways. Acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. That scripture should be said when you’re talking about this to your family because we don’t want to direct our paths, we want God to direct our paths. Well, how does that work? Well, if we’re in prayer and we’re giving these things up to the Lord and things come to our mind, let’s just trust the Lord’s giving them to us. Let’s not have this kind of walk with God where we’re questioning, Oh, what were my thoughts in his thoughts and things like that and second guessing, so we’re not sure what to step forward in? I don’t want to second guess things in life.

I mean, if you just start moving forward, one of the things we’ve taught our kids is if if you have a heart’s desire for something and that’s something as it is in alignment with God’s word, it’s righteous. It’s a good thing. Then God probably put it there. And so you need to start moving forward. And if it’s not his will, he can pray for him to close the door and direct your path into the path that he wants it to be in. But don’t just sit there idle doing nothing. No, we need to take action. And so sometimes the best way to know where God’s path is is just in faith. Trust him and start moving forward and let him lead you. But a huge part of this verse, says Trust and Lord with all your heart like do your do your kids actually love the Lord with their whole hearts because they’re not going to be able to trust God with their whole heart if they don’t love him with their whole heart? And so talking to your kids, evangelizing them, discipling them, this is an important conversation we own. It’s more than one conversation discipleship as a daily thing. It’s not one event, it’s not one conversation. And then it says, and lean not on your own understanding. And so what is that? That is humility. Leaning, not on our own understanding is the in my mind is the epitome of humility of being able to say, I actually don’t understand. I actually don’t know. God, you tell me seeking him in his word, but also seeking wise counsel, taking more scripture into this approach towards what are we to do? What should our goals be? Would be to seek wise counsel, ask other people if you don’t know what your gifts are. Sometimes kids don’t know, and they need the parents to speak life into them to tell them what their gifts are, to give them ideas of what they should try so that they find out, Oh, I really do love that.

And just remember, if the change you want is probably possible in your marriage and your parenting and your relationships financial, but it usually means that there’s something you have to change, and someone once said change is the price of progress. And if we want real progress, we have to include God. We have to set intentions. And if you want your kids to be vibrant and alive and energy towards what they’re doing, their education and all the things, then they need to be participating in setting those intentions and you helping them move forward in the directions that God has put wiring in them to delight for because they may not delight in the things you delight in, but they may delight in different things because God made them different. So let’s not force people into a box for what we delight in. Yeah, let’s move people in the box towards God’s. What God has put in passions in the heart.

And if we understand that truly, our kids are going to be the most. Vibrant and thriving, if they’re doing what God made them to do versus what we think they should do, then wouldn’t that change our perspective to want them to be walking in God’s ways? And so we need to really be careful. I’ve seen a lot of parents over the years, unintentionally and sometimes intentionally live vicariously through their kids, right? Repeat history over again. Maybe they they always had a dream of doing something growing up. And so they work really hard, and they put their kids in lessons for many years or one sport for many, many years. And they’re putting the pressure on and all because it was their dream and not their kid’s dream. And so as parents, when we’re guiding our kids through this and our kids are evaluating what are their projects, what are their service, what are their sports, what is their health, what is what are they good at? What are they learning? What do they want to be when they grow up? We have to take our previous dreams from our childhood out of the equation. It cannot exist there. It has to be fully understanding that God created our child, and he has a purpose that is unique to them. Yes, for their generation. And it’s an exciting journey to help our kids learn and lead them in figuring out what those purposes are now and when they’re in their teens and when they’re young adults and when they’re older, as we guide them in God’s truth and back to him over and over and over again.

Amen. And if one of your things is parenting, join us in January for the Parenting Mentor program because you have to make real investments, real change to create change, and I promise you it will. So thanks so much

For joining us, everybody. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Isaac and Angie share their personal stories of the challenge to stay healthy and the different approaches they have taken to get back in shape amongst the busy life of having littles, teenagers, and kids in between. Angie’s story is still developing as she has lost over 24 pounds recently and continues to press forward. Be encouraged as they get real about it all.

Main Tips From This Episode:

1. Define what healthy means to you.
2. Pursue your health goals for the right reasons.
3. Let’s not make an idol out of health, but let’s steward our bodies well.

 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18, and it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the fall. Hey, welcome to the podcast, we have a great topic today, and it’s live in true to Angie here lately.

That’s true. We are talking about the importance of staying healthy while raising a family, but this is actually a challenge for people, so we’re titling this one. Overcoming the challenge to stay healthy,

Raising family because it’s not easy. Well, it’s not easy whether you have a family or not, but adding a family and all those obligations and extra people in your home and all that stuff definitely makes it more tricky sometimes, especially for the ladies who are experiencing pregnancy, birth and postpartum and all those things.

Right. And I would say that I mean, there’s different challenges to different seasons, obviously, when it comes to like working out. There comes a point in your pregnancy for everybody. Sometimes for some people, it’s the first trimester. For me, it’s definitely a first trimester when I’m vomiting and I have HCG and I’m so sick and I’m puking a ton don’t really feel like working out, you know what I mean? But then of course, there’s like the third trimester when you’re hardly sleeping at night and you’re tossing and turning at times and you’re just like awkwardly big at at the last month, right? And so same again where it can be difficult to want to work out. And then there’s postpartum when you’re breastfeeding.

Yeah. And I know you recently did a post and you’ve been several posts. You’ve been very, very candid on your Insta stories and so forth about the experience you’ve been going through. And I’m just really proud of you. I just it’s just amazing you. You made a decision and you made multiple decisions at the same time that have made a big difference on your health.

Yeah. And we’ll get into sharing some of those in this podcast. I think that sometimes it’s hard when you’re limited to like one hundred and fifty words in an Instagram post or whatever the limit is. I don’t even know to really get everything in which is part of why, like some of my posts have like, overflowed into the comments and then into another post and then into the comments. But you guys are such good question anchors that it keeps on bringing up more and more things that I keep posting about. Yeah, and so we thought that it would be awesome to do a podcast that kind of answers some of those questions that I’ve gotten. But also like, obviously, you can’t share everything in a tiny post like that. And Isaac and I have a really cool story. Even he has a journey in a story, too of becoming more healthy, and this is something that we’re still working at. And still like forming better habits like constantly learning new things like, here’s an example sprouting grains and, you know, glassing eggs and fermenting foods so that we have better gut health. Like, that’s all stuff I’m learning how to do now. And I wasn’t raised eating that way. And so the reality is there’s two kinds of people in the world. There are those that go, I don’t know how to do that or I don’t have a habit of doing that, so I can’t do that. And then there’s the type of people that are like, I may not know how to do it, but I’m going to learn, Hey, man.

So let’s kick it off with key scripture. And before you do, we’re getting that ready. You know, thanks for being part of the one million legacies movement. Every time you share, it makes a difference with the algorithms and everything. The written comments on iTunes, all of it is a massive difference and we’re as motivated as ever. We have lots of new, exciting things coming out and nothing that we’re currently doing is disappearing. Some of it just changes slightly, but it’ll be for the betterment of everybody’s experience, whether it’s the parenting mentor program or you know where you can gather with us to get the deepest, best content and interaction and really join the tribe. One of the things that I think has been missing because of the challenges of social media and being Christians on social media these days, we’re all there. Most of us, but it’s it’s challenging to really be mobilized as a group and really develop those deep connections with people. So we aim to solve that and that’ll be out in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, we’re very excited about the new well, tools that we’re launching. Really, they’re tools. Yeah. And so please stay tuned. Pay attention to your emails. I know that some people are courageous. Parenting emails will wind up in their spam box. So if you could just like double check your spam box

To train your inbox so that it says this is not spam and then forever more, they’ll come

In. That’s right, because we get a lot of messages from people saying, Hey, how do I get on your email list? I thought I was on it and I’m not getting them well. It’s probably because it’s

It’s hard to communicate as a Christian these days.

So that’s right. All right. So the first verse that we’re going to go to is First Timothy Chapter four, verse eight, and this is a really

So powerful scripture. Paul’s talking here for a while bottle. Training is of some value, godliness is a value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. So basically what he’s saying is it is good. There is value in bodily training, exercise, fitness to be able to be effective while we’re on this Earth, right? But what’s even more important is the spiritual because that

Affects spiritually fit while

You’re here and eternity with God. And so that’s even more important. So I think that this brings up a question of we got to keep things in balance, don’t we?

Yeah. And that’s something that like before we dive into like our story and the mission behind why we want to stay healthy and encourage you guys in those things Isaac and I were talking about like the temptation that there is in humanity, but I think especially, well, it doesn’t matter what gender you are. Actually, the temptation is there to make an idol out of health or to make an idol out of your your quiet time working out even or to make an idol out of the time you have when you’re away at the gym. If you go to the gym to work out and we just want to warn you. We want to warn you guys, because we have seen the massive impact, detrimental impact that that has had on many people’s families. Listen, when you’re a parent, this is courageous parenting. When you’re a parent, you are a leader. Yeah, you are to lead your family. And that means that when it comes to all things spiritual fitness, physical fitness, you want to lead by example to your children. You want to set a foundation that they can. Then this is like a habit that they grew up with. Doing right, working out, get working out their mind in the word of God is another spiritual habit.

There shouldn’t be one that is like the physical fitness should not be a greater habit that’s easier for your kids to take from your home than being in the word. But we need to have our priorities straight. And oftentimes when when people start going away to the gym, for example, it becomes this like fun hobby, too. And sometimes it can even be escapism right to where people maybe start feeling overwhelmed by their home and all the things that they have to do there. Maybe they don’t even enjoy necessarily some of the things that they are committed to, and they’re committed to doing them because they know this is just a mundane thing that I have to do. Everybody has those things and I’m committed to doing it, but I really don’t enjoy it. And so they want to escape to the gym and then they want to stay there longer. And the problem is is if you allow that to take root in your heart, that’s when it can become very dangerous for your marriage and for your family, and it can start becoming an idol in your life.

However, she’s not saying that going to the gym is a bad idea. It’s a fantastic idea, she’s saying. The intentions behind it are what matter and do check yourself so they don’t become the wrong intentions, for sure.

So we’ll get into some of our journey and what we’ve done over the years because we’ve done a lot of different things. Yeah, there have been long seasons where I’ve used the gym and where I’ve gone swimming or different things like that for physical therapy and all useful. But definitely what Isaac just said. I want to reiterate. You have to evaluate where is my heart and this and my yearning to go, be there. Why is that and deal with that? Like, be honest about that before God and recognize that, you know, when it comes to taking care of your body, it is something that we’re all called to do. Mm hmm.

Right.

So as we’re diving in, the first thing that we wanted to talk about and challenge you guys with is this idea that there are different definitions of healthy.

Oh, that’s a good point.

So when we’re talking about being healthy, like we don’t want you guys to mistake what we’re saying here, like when we say healthy, we’re not saying like that. You have to be a bodybuilder that’s able to be competing and doing these huge triathlons and different things like that, although maybe that’s something that you do, and that would be fine if you did do that. But that’s not like everybody has a different idea of healthy in their brains

Or their goals. It sounds like you know what you’re trying to do it for and what level you’re trying to get to and so forth. I know for me it was to be, you know, a little kids and I’m an older man now. So it’s to be able to be around for the grandkids and for my own kids while they’re still in my home because, you know, I’m forty six and I’ve got a five month old.

That’s right. So when he’s 20, you’ll be sixty six.

Yeah, yeah, be sweet. So I hope to be in really good shape when I’m sixty six.

That’s right. No. But in all seriousness, we talk about that kind of stuff a lot. Isaac and I, because we we want to be wise when we make wise decisions and we want our kids to have respect for us too. Like there’s this element of like not being a hypocrite. We’ve talked about that so much over the years. Yeah, like in podcasts and parenting programs.

Yeah. Do we want our kids to find a way to make exercise a priority when they’re super busy in the future? Or are they going to fall to making the same reasons or excuses that maybe we are? And so we got to do a gut check on that. It’s not to make anybody feel bad or anything like that. Self-discipline is a key ingredient to all this, but I think your point is on this is pay attention to what your goals are and make them reachable and make sure the the reason behind those goals is a healthy reason. Yeah.

So for us, we’ll just share briefly like what ours are to maybe that inspires you to have this. You can totally share our reasons. They’re not ours. So Isaac mentioned one, which is that we want to be around when our kids are, when our youngest kids are still young. I mean, in their 20s, I

Still want to be playing spike ball, on the beach, on the river with my kids

Right in my sixties with Zander. Yeah, totally. And fishing in our seventies.

Canoeing and kayaking and RV, which I don’t kayak, but I’d

Like to get, but we want to get

Into that even tennis and I don’t play tennis, but I’d love to. Yeah, you know, I still have things I want to do.

Dreams and goals, you know,

I’m still going to snowboard.

Hopefully, you snowboard. He just sometimes now that we have Solomons snowboarding, sometimes when he takes Solomon up on the mountain, he has to go a little slower.

It’s really nice, actually, because I have older kids now and they’re really intense.

I heard some stories about how intense you get at times on the mountain. Anyway, so you guys, you know, obviously, like if you don’t take care of yourself and then you go get on a mountain and snowboard and it’s been how many years, 20 years you get up there. You’re going to be kind of sore if you don’t pace yourself, right? And so that was one of the things that, like Isaac and I started thinking about and really wanting to be more intentional with when our kids were younger, we definitely had P.E. physical education as part of our home schooling. So you guys know that we’ve homeschooled our kids forever. If you don’t home school, you can still do this in your family. And that’s what’s so beautiful about it is think about your family culture and what do you want to be passed down to your kids? What kind of habits? What do you want to model for your kids to do with their kids when they’re younger? And so remember when we lived in Damascus and we had that side guestroom? Yeah. And we had a bunch of different

Workout equipment and we had kids size workout equipment.

Oh, it was so cool. I don’t know if the company one step ahead is around anymore, but they used to have these like four year old sized treadmill for four year olds size. Part of it was

Because it rained almost every day of the year in Portland, Oregon.

So yeah, it was like 10 months of rain. So we have like outdoor bikes and we had so much fun playing outside and in the rain too. But sometimes you know you don’t want to deal with all the mud, and not everybody wants to go outside. And when you have a lot of little kids, you can’t. You have to be outside together or inside together. You can’t split up. So I would rotate the kids on these different pieces of workout equipment, and they would do 20 minutes on and then 20 minutes off. And we even put like a mat down on. The kids would do somersaults and then I’d rotate them to who was doing piano, who was doing guitar, who was doing violin. That was super fun. And we did this for like an hour where the four oldest would all do that. And then, of course, the baby toddler would just be like playing on the ground. And so just imagine what that was like.

Well, and it’s so important to for obedience reasons, you know, can’t expect kids to be obedient and respectful if God gave them lots of energy and they can’t get that energy out during the day, right? It’s really, oh, they

Offer so much better. And it was honestly like, we didn’t do it first thing in the morning, we would wake up doing chores, take care of the chicken, get the laundry going. All those things eat breakfast, get ready for the day, do our devotions, and then we would start doing our first subject in school, which was usually the hardest. So I would have them do math and then we would do our P.E. for the day. And so that was like a really fun morning routine when we had four or five kids that were under 10 years old. And so we go more into depth in that kind of stuff and what our routines and schedules look like and the parenting mentor program, which you can find out about at courageous parenting. But that’s just like one season of our life where we tried to incorporate some kind of physical education, not just for us, but for our kids. And I’ll I’ll say, like, there are seasons when I was really good about getting on the Tread climber and being healthy. And then there were seasons where I was really not good at it where like, if I was on bed rest or just came off of bed rest, which was two of my pregnancies, right? And then having to cook for the family and feeling like I was so far behind on other things that I would put my health back on the back burner. I don’t know if you can relate as a mom, but that is really unhealthy. Yeah, like we have to be. Isaac’s brought up the word self-discipline multiple times so far. And I think that when it comes to self-discipline, we as parents have to understand that if we want our kids to have good habits, we have to model that by what we do. And it may be hard to incorporate the kids, depending on their age, but you can. You can do little things like I remember when you started really getting serious about working out and the kids joined you.

They did. It was amazing. And prior to that, Austin was a big motivation because he was already taking action. My oldest son and, you know, getting fit, and he was interested in using the random things that we had. It’s not like we had this elaborate gym or anything, but we had a few things and he was using them. And I’m like, Wow, you know, that’s really motivating. And but I needed help. Honestly, I needed somebody to kick my butt. And so I had a friend who reached out and he decided to help me, Joseph Hunt. And it was amazing. And he’s he’s a Chris. And he’s younger than me, and he is a coach, and he I just needed someone to go. Here’s exactly what to do because I’ve never had the working out habit in my whole life, and I still would say I don’t fully have the habit, but I can get into a rhythm of having the habit. But I did a 90 day, you know, custom diet, custom workout plan and went from the heaviest in my life. I think I was actually a little heavier, but I waited a few days and, you know, drank water and did some things before. So when I took, I had to take up picture. I had to take a picture with my shirt off in the mirror and send it to my coach. And it was so before now I just looked at him recently, so embarrassing. I actually gave them to him and gave him permission to use them the before and after. But it was wild how bad I in heavy and unhealthy I was and getting unhealthy.

I think that that would be an important thing for other people to hear because they may be in the midst of the journey of becoming unhealthy and not realize that they are, because maybe they’re only a year or two

Incrementally happens over time. I was up to, you know, two, 30 or something, two hundred and thirty pounds. And, you know, I’m just shy. I’m basically just shy of six feet. So, you know,

That’s on the heavy side and the heavy side of things. Yeah, huge. But on the heavy side

And and then I lost. I went down to 195 and gained lots of muscle at the same time. Like, you know, muscle weighs more than fat. So I lost like thirty four pounds and then I gained muscle at the same time in 90, 90 days and it was wild. But there’s a beauty and discipline once you embrace it. Once you have a program and a plan and you follow through, you’re like developing a new identity with yourself. If I’m a person that follows through every time you do that, and I was so particular about following precisely what he told me, and I gained great joy in the precision. It was really weird. Actually, that’s where it was. It was really wild. And to the point where it was too much to ask Angie to continue making my custom three meals a day, plus all the family’s meals. And so I stopped what I’m doing and I find myself cooking. I’ve never enjoyed cooking. I don’t know how to cook. And here I am, cooking fish and making this horrible salad I absolutely hate hated it. Every single day.

It was a quinoa salad, the same garbanzo beans.

Three meals, like every day for 90 days, had

Many ingredients

And it was this horrible, horrible salad and I just would stuff it down. I’d just go, It’s fuel, it doesn’t matter. It’s fuel doesn’t matter. The taste doesn’t matter. It’s just fuel. And I just convinced myself and repeat it over and over again as I ate this horrible salad. But I was cooking and it was beautiful. It was like, I’m not working right now. I’m paying attention to my holy temple. God will take care of the work. I’m taking a break, I’m cooking. Everybody has different work circumstances. I know not everybody works at home

And we worked. We worked early in the morning and late at night as well. And I think that one of the things that you know. So when Isaac first started his journey, I was actually pregnant with Eli because that was right before our RV trip and I was pregnant with Eli during the RV trip, which is why I had to stop cooking because I got super sick with him in the first trimester. But the first like month and a half ish, I was cooking the three meals a day and I still continue getting him what he needed like for supplies. But I literally could not cook the fish because it would send me running.

So you were super helpful, very helpful and it was amazing. Like, I literally stopped drinking coffee. I went from, you know, six cups a day kind of situation to no coffee for 90 days. And it wasn’t that coffee was bad is I always put Creamer in my coffee. And then he said I could have coffee, but no creamer. And then I didn’t like it. So then I just bailed on the coffee. Yeah. Anyways, just interesting things that you can let go of and not let anything on you and how beautiful my energy just surged. It was so wild and the good news I’ve kept within 10 pounds of that, and

It’s been four

Years, it’s been four years. And you know, I don’t I’m not like this big exercise person, but I go, do things. I go, do things with my kids.

I you go down to the beach and play spike ball. You go snowboarding. I think that you do really active things for being forty six years old.

I’m proud of you. Yeah. Anyways, I want to hear your story, though, Angie, because yours is recent and it’s really remarkable because you’ve had 11 pregnancies, nine kids. You know,

When you put it that way

And and you’re not a young chicken.

So that’s true. You know, the reality is that it’s at first it was easy. So before when I met Isaac, I actually was teaching aqua aerobics, and I continued doing that until I got pregnant with Austin. He was our second baby, and so I always loved being in the water. I was a swimmer for a long time. I was an athlete through high school. I I loved working out. But when Isaac and I got married, that was not something that he got grew up doing. So that wasn’t something that he and I did together, per say. She had

This dream. So. Is going to the gym together. We tried it a couple times. This is unbelievable, inefficient use of time. I mean, it takes you have to drive there. You have to drive back out. You have to drive back. You have to change your clothes a couple of times. Shower in the daytime. Stuff I got to do.

Ok, so back then, though, Isaac had a kind of an unhealthy view of work though, too, because there was an element of workaholic that was that was there

Was at the beginning I had to build, you know, build it.

That’s right. But you even shared this in the parenting program that, you know, because we had just to

Lose it all anyway.

Yeah, we we got humbled us and taught us some things. And you used to think, Well, if I work super hard when the kids are little, they’re not going to really miss me that much because they don’t remember it’s a baby. And so but I think it’s good to verbalize those because a lot of men have those same beliefs.

Oh yeah. Listening. I thought I’d be retired at thirty five and that if I work hard now, then I would work hard later and all this stuff. And while that does happen for some people, usually it doesn’t. The reason is they might get the money, but usually what happens is whatever habits you cultivate. Men tend to continue, right? So even when they get the money and they could retire if that was the case, if that happened, which it’s never enough, it’s never enough and they just continue to work hard. And so I, you know, obviously tapered off of that. You know, that didn’t happen too long. And I learned a lot and then God took everything away from us anyways for other reasons.

But and that’s a different story. Yeah. But you know, in reality, though, looking back on those years, you know, there was this this lesson that we had to learn that maybe you’ve learned or maybe you’re walking through. And hopefully if you’re listening to us, you can learn from our mistakes. Yeah. And so one of the things that we realized is that, you know, you can’t put your health on the back burner. You definitely can’t. Otherwise, things will start to creep up on you, whether it’s weight, autoimmune diseases, different things like that. And that’s also important for women in regards to taking care of yourself in between pregnancies. One of the things I tried hard to take care of myself. I was very disciplined. I was going to the gym during certain seasons. Other seasons I would work out at home, but I would say it was probably at my most consistent. I was like three to four days a week was probably the most that I got away to work out when we had between two and six kids, OK? And then when we moved, that kind of tapered off into nothingness for about five six years in in my mid, my mid to late thirties early forties, which was not the best timing, actually. That’s when I should have been more faithful at working out.

But, you know, life was starting to get busy as it was running a building, a different business at the time, and we had high schoolers for the first time. I could give you a million excuses, but here’s the thing none of them matter. Yeah, because any anybody can say, Oh, I can’t work out because I home school or I have this many kids or I work outside of the home too. Or what? You know what the reality is like? I could give you a million excuses as to why I should. I can’t work out now. But I had to realize that my health, if I don’t take care of myself, then I might not be able to do any of those other things in five or 10 years because I might not be here or I might be ill, right with my autoimmune diseases started flaring up different things like that. And so we had some I had some warning signs in between my fifth and sixth pregnancy when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis. That was about 12, 13 years ago now. And that was a wake up call for me, and I got serious again about health and started eating juicing. We started doing smoothies. This was back when BPA was a thing that everybody was getting out of their kitchen and buying glass again.

I mean, like, we were doing all kinds of things right. Oil started being more introduced into our family. Homeopathy, I learned how to use natural remedies more, which is part of the health process. It’s part of the journey. And I would say that the biggest aspect for me, looking back on in between the babies is recognizing now I look back and I go, You know, what would have helped me the most is if I actually got more sleep, like if I went to bed just even a half an hour to forty five minutes earlier because that’s a big deal. Sleep has been, I would say, when I look at everything that I did. Yes, getting your body active. Mm hmm. Even going on a walk, it doesn’t have to be going to a gym, going on a walk. For me, I’ve been doing the Tread climber three to four days a week since. August, right, since Austin got engaged August 7th, and when we got home from that trip, it was like mom was serious and I was getting on the Tread climber and I was working hard and then I would do some weights, do some stretches, do some plotting.

I’m only sharing this because I’ve had a lot of people asking me what I did and yes, I was breastfeeding. This was when Zander was like eight weeks postpartum, nine weeks after having him. And you know, I’ve had those seasons where I’ve worked out after having a baby. You know, after I get to the six week mark and then something happens to my milk and the lactic acid, it makes them more spit up. And so that kind of in my was in the back of my head as like, Oh, I can’t work out because this happens to my babies. And so I need a nurse them and they’ll spit it up. So I’m not going to do it. And again, another excuse. And so I had to go, You know what? My I’m literally having a hard time holding him like, I’m getting older, carrying him, even wrapping him onto me, putting him in an infant carrier and going to the grocery store. My lower back was killing me. Yeah. So it was those realizations of I have not been taking care of myself for far too long. It’s been six seven years. And if I want to be around and active when he’s a little older but still young, I really have to be serious about that.

And the whole family was super supportive and helpful. Valjean is a quote that someone once said, I don’t know who is. Are you arguing for your excuses or are you arguing for reasons why you can? And so it’s really important to ask yourself, what am I subconsciously arguing for, right? Ok? Are you arguing for reasons why you can or for a reasons why you can’t? You have to argue with yourself in one direction or another, and the natural direction we do is we argue for reasons why we can’t, right?

And you know, another aspect of this is blame shifting. Like, when you start giving excuses, another human tendency is to blame shift and to say, I can’t do this because you or I can’t do this because of them. So, all right. And so I would just warn you, like, don’t allow the devil to have a foothold in your marriage. Don’t blame your husband for you not working out. Don’t blame your kids for you not working out that that would be giving the devil a foothold. And I know that for myself, it wasn’t that I would like necessarily blame them, but I would. I would. I would look at it and go, No, I’ve got a home school like, I have to do this with them. I don’t do this. Yeah, and I struggled with so much mommy guilt. Maybe you guys can relate. But I just had to say I had to tell that guilt. Like Satan, you have no power here. Go away, like and remind myself of what the real goal is. And the real goal is not to be like this a supermodel or to get to a specific size pants or a specific size shirt. The goal was I want to be able to do fun things with my kids and not be in pain. The goal was I want to be able to fulfill the purposes that God has me here for and not be sick and not be, you know, disabled or or less energetic and unable to travel, to speak at a conference in 10 or 15 years or or travel with my kids. Or or here’s one be the kind of grandma that I want to be right.

And let’s face it, the is coming out are going to be more weird. I have a feeling as time goes on and we’ve all learned that to stay out of the hospital is important. If you can and to stay out of the hospital, you have to have a strong immune system. You have to be

Healthy, right? Because these different viruses that are coming out are definitely most dangerous for people who are immune compromised, right? People who are older. And so as we grow older, we have to be proactive about our health. But how much better off are you if you’re listening and you’re 20 years younger than us or you’re 10 years younger and maybe you haven’t been proactive about getting outside and taking a walk for half an hour, you guys, you’re getting so much good vitamin D. In addition to working your heart and building a habit and taking your kids on that walk with you or letting them ride bikes while you’re kind of jogging or, you know, there’s so many ideas that I could give you. The important thing, though, is that you recognize your Y so that when you get into those pitfall moments where you’re fighting for your excuses or your blame shifting, you remind yourself of your why my why was I want to obey God and take care of my holy temple, which is the next verse that we have for you guys, which is in, let’s see, Colossians three twenty three, which says. Oh, well, actually, this this is a different verse, but says whatever you do work heartily. As for the Lord and not for men knowing that from the Lord, you will receive an inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. And so one of the reasons why I wanted to share that scripture is because there are so many times when I’m like, distracted even in the moment of working out and I’m thinking about the other things that I need to be doing that I potentially think are more important, like homeschooling or cleaning or whatever.

And I’m going to tell you a little secret. When you’re working out, if you are a one hundred percent there where you are and you’re thinking about how you’re taking care of your body because you want to do it to steward the Holy Temple, that God has given you, that you want to be taking care of this fleshly embodiment that he gave you to take care of so that you can do his works when you are thinking that way while you’re working now, I really believe that God blesses your efforts while you’re working out. And I I will also say that there is an element there, too. It’s very worshipful. Yeah, right. It’s I think of Romans 12 to which we’ve quoted so many times do not be conformed of this world, but be transformed, transformed by the renewing of your mind when you’re working out. You can also be listening to podcasts and your mind can be being renewed. Your eyes can be on the Lord. And he also talks about in that same passage of scripture, not allowing your your body to to be defiled, right, but to be a living sacrifice unto the Lord that’s in Romans 12 also. And so when we’re taking care of our bodies, you guys, we are stewarding our bodies as a holy temple. But we’re also giving our bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord so that we can obey him to do the things that he has called us to do. But Isaac has the scripture in First Corinthians that talks about, you know, treating your body as a holy temple. It’s Chapter six verse 19 through 20.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You are not your own for you or bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

Now, this particular passage of scripture before that is talking about not defiling your body, and it’s talking about it’s warning us against sexual sin, actually. But I think that it fully applies to taking care of your body and recognizing that God does view our bodies as a holy temple. We should view them that way.

I have a couple of thoughts at self-discipline because really discipline is important and you’ve got to teach it to your kids and they’ve got to see it modeled. And this is one area. There’s many areas you can see it modeled. But sometimes we have to just decide the definition of the word decide means to to take away from it means it means to cut away from the previous. So it’s a whole new thing. Unfortunately, in this world, decide doesn’t seem to mean that in our culture. I mean, I decided to do this. Then I decided to do that. I decided to do what I feel in this moment than the next and all these distractions coming at me. I forgot what I decided to do five minutes ago. And so it’s really important to make real concrete decisions that you move forward with and whatever works for you to make a real decision, you’ve got to do that. You probably know about yourself in this. You know what doesn’t work and what does work? Think back to the times where you made a real decision. You follow through on something really hard but worthy and made a difference in your life. Think back to the things you did then, so you can repeat those now because we’re all very different and how I’m disciplined and motivated is going to be different than how you are.

You need to know yourself in that way. You need to think back. You need to pray to God and have them tell you how you are best disciplined, but you decide is to cut away for me. Like when we did the vineyard and no idea how to do a vineyard, I told a thousand people on stage we were creating a vineyard. For me, the accountability of lots of people knowing something makes me do things. That’s one of the things that does it. I did that on purpose because it was important thing I felt we were supposed to do, and it ended up being very important. That’s a whole nother topic, but discipline, what is what? And Angie talked about your whys. You got to know those crystal clear the whys behind it and then you’ve got to have plan of action. And sometimes we’re too ambitious in the beginning. We make our steps too big in the beginning, make some small, consistent steps forward and develop a track record of yourself and start to see the results of what you’re doing.

So on the plan, Isaac is totally leading us into what you’re probably wondering the most. This is one of the biggest questions that I was getting after my very first post that I shared on Instagram. I’m just going to share with you guys the few things that I made, the few changes I made and implemented that helped me. But before I share those with you, I’m just going to. How are you the numbers I’m going to share with you that the real deal, raw truth of how heavy I got so in the Isaac mentioned that I’ve had 11 pregnancies in the last six years because Solomon is almost six. I’ve had five pregnancies. Those were all from the age thirty seven to forty two. So in those five or six years, I have had five pregnancies. Two of them were losses and the two losses. Definitely there was an element of grieving, which I think that that grief, I am certain that I gained weight during the stress of of losing a baby for sure. That was really hard for me and then getting pregnant after that very within like six months, especially after Sela. When we lost Kayla, I was in my second trimester. I I hemorrhaged 67 percent of my blood and almost died, had to have emergency surgery and blood transfusions to stay alive. God saved me in that that whole testimony is in another podcast and YouTube video. And so if you guys can go find it, but my point is is I’ve been through some really hard things physically on my body in the last five years that I think really helped helped put on the way, if you will.

Yeah, stress is a big deal for sure. But I think that, you know, pregnancy postpartum losing babies it in in middle age is different than when you’re having babies in your twenties and thirties. I know because I’ve done it in my 20s, my thirties and my forties. And so I for sure gained a lot of weight. The highest that I got was around one hundred and ninety seven that I’m aware of. I might have gotten over two hundred because I’ll be honest with you, once I got on this scale and I was 190 seven while I was pregnant with Zander, I made a decision not to get on the scale again. I’m not really a big scale person. I’m not one of those people that really looks at numbers. I’m more think about how I’m feeling and I’m honest with myself. And if I can’t do certain things or I’m in pain, that’s my motivator for getting healthy, which I think is actually really healthy. However, I needed to for my for just my care, my midwife needed me to get on scale. And so when I saw that, I was very embarrassed. I for the first time in my life, I struggled with body image stuff and we went on a trip to Arizona as a family. It was our vacation before the baby was born and of course it was in the hundreds while we were there. So swimsuit

Time got to 100, but it was there was some 80s, not

Days too. Yeah, but it was. It was hot. Yeah. And for me, being, you know, eight, I was actually almost nine months pregnant because we went just before my due date. We went the beginning of May and I was due May. Twenty first and swimsuits were an everyday occurrence for this woman who had a body image issue. And I but but obviously that body image like I would preach to myself most women, I think when they’re in that predicament would hesitate, getting in a swimsuit and getting in the pool. But I told myself many years ago that I would never be that mom. That would be the sideline

Where you would have cancelled the trip and you could have easily just said, I’m too far along pregnant. I don’t think it’s a good idea. We go with maybe something behind the scenes of going, I just don’t want to wear a bathing suit.

Right? I wouldn’t

Do that, but I know that that’s something that happens

To me. That could have been me, though that could have. I mean, I and no one would have thought anything of it because we literally went two weeks. Gilmore didn’t go on the trip. Yeah, I mean, and that was part of it was a surprise, too, because we thought I was doing June and then we found out I was due five weeks earlier, which is another story also in a different way.

And you didn’t have the baby. You’re on the road. Nope, great.

And I swam every single day and it felt so good. And I think that, you know, for me, I’ve been on RV three month RV trips, pregnant with my eighth with Eli and hiking all over in the Great Smoky Mountains and New York. And I mean, we went all over. We were visited thirty four states and it was good for me during that part of my pregnancy. I actually came back from that three month RV trip and only had gained two pounds. Wow. And it was during my third trimester and he was a nine pound,

Five lbs baby. And then everywhere else on, you got smaller.

That’s right. And so I think my point is is sometimes working out doesn’t always have to look the same. Sometimes it’s doing hard things like for us going on an RV trip when I was seven, six, seven and eight months pregnant with Eli while I was doing hard things and and it was good for me, though it got my body moving. So this time around, being postpartum, my son gets engaged and I’m like, Oh man, I’m going to have a nursing baby at the wedding. Now I get that. That’s probably like three percent of the population, right? Like if you try to. Google nursing friendly mother of the groom dresses, you’re not going to find a niche for that.

All right, what but what are the tips on?

That’s right. So what I did was I started working out three to five times a week. That was something you were super helpful with because obviously I need somebody to help me with Zander and the kids like we had a family meeting. Isaac actually led the family meeting after I shared with him that I was really feeling low, that I needed to have a regiment of working out. I really needed a boot camp myself into gear so that I would have the energy for all the things that I knew were coming up with the wedding, right? Because honestly, I was getting tired. It was hard for me to go down to the beach with you when you wanted to play, you know, that was a bummer for you. And so we had a family meeting. The whole family was behind me and so supportive and was on gear to help with the baby and help with the other toddlers so that I could work out three to five days a week. In addition, I started really cutting down my portion size. So aside from doing, you know, up to 30 minutes of cardio and doing some weights and stretching, I started paying attention to the portion size of every meal. Now when you’re breastfeeding, I get this question a lot.

How many calories did you take in Angie? So I tried to take in between 20 and twenty two hundred calories every day because that’s what’s recommended for breastfeeding moms. But I would calculate how many calories I was taking, and I would count in that. When you’re breastfeeding, fully breastfeeding because he wasn’t on baby food yet. You’re burning about 500 calories a day, just breastfeeding. And so it’s a give and take, obviously based upon your kid and how much they’re nursing. But that was in my mind. And then working out, I would I would spend about 200 calories. I didn’t really know for sure regarding the weights and the different exercises, but I could calculate as far as the cardio goes. And so on average I was I was spending burning between seven hundred and eight hundred calories a day, maybe more if I was going out in grocery shopping and different things like that. One way to keep track is using like an Apple Watch or something like that that helps you keep track of your steps as well. And I have to tell you, like it was super encouraging, like the days where I could calculate, Wow, I’ve burned like thirteen hundred calories or fourteen hundred calories. That’s exciting.

Yeah. And so I did start losing weight pretty quickly. So the caloric deficit is definitely a way to go. But I found that getting sleep was also a huge thing because when I don’t get sleep, it puts stress on my body and then I hang on to weight. And so I kind of made this like rule for myself, and I asked a few people on my young living team actually to hold me accountable, feel free to hold me accountable because I want to be in bed by this time. And I told them and they would text me every now and again and say, Hey, how’s that going? And so having accountability partners is another huge benefit. Obviously had family, but having people outside family is good too. But also telling people, you mentioned that you shared with a thousand people, I did that by sharing my Insta stories like, Hey, I’m doing this, and some of you joined me in in this effort. And that motivated me like the fact that I was somehow being able to inspire you to do something like that held me accountable because I was like, if I work out them, they’re going to work out and then we’re both going to be doing better. And so that was a huge blessing to me to be doing it with community and with people.

And so there was food like portion size, sleep becoming active, drinking lots of water and electrolytes. Isaac wanted me to put this down on the ground because it’s not part of the brand. But if you’re watching the video, I don’t know if it’s still going or not, but I have this huge bottle that I’m. I drink this at least four times a day to make sure that I am drinking enough water and I make sure I get electrolytes so I don’t get over hydrated because that was a problem that I was experiencing as well. Super important to have sodium based electrolyte drinks. So that and then prayer. I invited God into this journey with me, and I really do think that he blessed me because I was doing it for the right reasons not to, like, get skinny for the wedding because that would have been like impossible. But I did it because I I wanted to be healthy and I wanted to make it to the all the events and I wanted to not be too tired and I wanted to. I wanted to feel good. I didn’t want to be sore and achy and in pain.

Yeah, at the wedding. Well, what’s really cool too is you’ve continued, nothing’s changed since the wedding. If you make a goal, there’s a warning. If you make a goal for a short term event after the event’s over, you’re going to go back to your old habits, right? So this needs to be a permanent long term. Don’t don’t make a deadline on the end of your effort, right? Ok. Like, Oh, I’m going on this vacation and then but then after the vacation, you just go back to your old. No. You don’t want that. You can. You can have that in your sights, but it really needs to be a life change. And and I’ve seen that in you, and I was joking with you the other day that your skinny jeans are baggy and true, and she laughs at me. But I think it’s really cool because you’ve got to give them the numbers. So one ninety seven is probably over two hundred, actually. I better one ninety seven. And then you’re down

To right now I’m at one sixty two. It’s amazing. And it’s been since the third week of August actually is when I started. Yeah, so and right now, it’s the first week of November.

So it’s so amazing and so encouraging to so many people. And I think all of you who have encouraged Angie because I know you’ve made a difference. Yeah, even if you’ve never met her before, but you’ve connected on social media and stuff, it makes a difference. We pay attention to everything.

You know, one of the things that was a huge motivation to me, too is Proverbs. Thirty 17, it says she dresses herself with strength. What does that mean to dress yourself with strength? And then it gets really clear and makes her arms strong. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. And this is again, Proverbs 31. If you go and you read the entire chapter, it’s talking about all the different things that she’s doing an excellent life wife who can find she’s far more precious than jewels. It’s this passage of scripture where she’s going out and she’s seeking warm flax and she’s buying the vineyard and she’s doing all these things right. And then it says she makes herself dresses. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arm strong. Why does she do that? She does it so she can do her work that God has given her to do. And that was my whole motivation is like, I want to be able to take care of my kids. I want to go be able to pick up my azure order by myself with my toddlers and not be like, Oh man, I can’t lift this 50 pound bag of chicken people.

By the way, she’s such good food. Thank you.

Yeah, but you guys, when I did that, like when I went and I picked up our Azure order and I had like a 50 pound bag of chicken feed and a 50 pound bag of diatomaceous earth, I was like, I did this and it felt good because I used to do that in my 20s and my 30s. But then I like had to start taking a teenager to help me every time because it was too heavy for me. And like now, I can do that again. And I like it’s not about like, Oh, look at me. Hear me roar. It’s no like, these are jurisdictions that God has given me, and it’s feels good to be able to do the jobs that God’s giving you to do. And so like, I am super motivated to try to stay, to try to stay going at the habits that I’ve been developing. I think that, you know, adding in a protein shake when I get tired versus snacking, like one of the other things that I just have to add to the list of things that I did, I stopped eating after dinner like and I didn’t realize that just even like eating one almond or eating one thing at like 10 or 11 o’clock at night was going to put on the weight. But it really actually does. Because when I cut doing that, I that’s when I saw the inches start falling off was like the little sneaky snack over here and there and like going, Why am I even buying those silly goldfish crackers? They’re so bad for me and the kids,

And it messes with your metabolism. You’re trying to train your body, to burn fat and to use their nutrients. It’s taking in the right timings of the day and things, and you’re kind of confusing it. The best way I can say you can look it up. You’re confusing your body when you have that little snack later, right?

So starting your day off and getting your metabolism going earlier in the morning is super important, but then ending it at an earlier hour and then going to bed early. I just think that those are the hugest game changers, but, you know, doing all in the name of Lord.

Amen. Well, we hope this was helpful for you. I’m so glad you wanted to do this, Angie. I think it’s really important, more important than ever. And how can you, you know, equip confident Christian kids for an uncertain world if we don’t have the energy to be active and involved and we need to be and we need to help with those grandkids down the road. So I think it’s a really relevant message and I appreciate you being so transparent as usual with everybody and sharing because I know it helps a lot of people. So yeah. Anyways, courageous parenting, get all the show notes and everything, and we hope you love the episode and it was helpful.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

If you do this well, it makes parenting so much easier but more importantly it equips your kids to be able to become good at whatever they need to. Isaac and Angie cover five tips to help your kids become good at taking their own initiative towards learning.

Main Points in This Episode:

• Consistently encourage your kids.
• Model it well for them in your own life.
• Honor their interests.
• Practical tips on how to do it. (listen to the episode)
• Create opportunities for experiential learning.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Scripture in This Episode:

1 Thessalonians 5:11 – “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.”

Luke 6:40 – “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Full Transcript:

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

It’s hard to be consistent as a parent, but it really is an essential part of parenting. We cover seven reasons why parents struggle with this with tips and motivation to overcome these pitfalls. If you feel like you’re doing everything you can, you will be encouraged in this episode as you will likely realize, you just need to follow through every time with your current parenting initiatives. Consistency really is a difference-maker in parenting.

The Seven Reasons Parents Lack Consistency Are:

• Time constraints; feeling too busy to follow through.
• You are too tired.
• You have a wrong view of your relationship with your kids.
• You have rose-tinted glasses.
• You cave to pressure (Three kinds of pressure).
• You want tranquility and peace.
• Inconvenience and/or embarrassment.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Scripture in This Episode:

Deuteronomy 6:7-9 – “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

Deuteronomy 31:6 – “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

Psalm 85:10 – “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

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

Hey, everybody.

We’ve got a good topic today.

We are actually shooting this podcast in the middle of the night.

Why do you tell people that

I’m telling them that because I want them to know how

Committed we are?

Ok, we’re super committed and we’re very excited about this.

Actually, this is a really good one. Overcoming five reasons parents lack consistency.

Ok, let’s just be honest, we’ve all been there. Yeah, we’ve all we could. Well, if we’re honest, we’ve all been there, right? I mean, there’s a lot of people who are not really being honest. And so today, when we go through these different reasons, you may go, Oh yeah, that’s me.

And the reason this is so important is that consistency is such an incredibly important part of parenting. You could have the best principal to do something or.

But if I were the most intentional heart,

But if you don’t implement consistently, it just doesn’t work with kids. See, as Angie always says, parenting is a long game. Mm hmm. So it takes consistently doing the right things over and over again for a long period of time, which takes

I mean, it’s a stretch, right? Like it’s a boot camp that parents are in. Everyone says, I mean, well, not everyone. Christians who are honest about the journey of parenting will say that parenting is sanctifying. Mm hmm. It’s like a sanctification boot camp. Always every season, right? Yeah. But the reality is, is that consistency is one of those things that is a boot camp for us because it takes endurance to be consistent

And it takes to overcoming these five or seven things five to seven. We’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see. There might be seven, actually. So thank you for being part of this incredible movement we’re all a part of. It’s incredible. It feels like we’re running a race with thousands and thousands of other intentional parents, other courageous parents, and we’re so enthused. In fact, lately we’ve been just reinvesting in some things that are going to happen soon. We can’t really talk about them yet. They’re super top secret, super exciting, but have been taking some wee hours of the night to do and get things done and get things ready. So I can’t wait to unveil some of these things soon. Yep.

So it’s got some tools for you guys coming. Yeah.

So anyways, it’s time to take it up a notch. Don’t you guys feel that it’s like, OK, the enemy is trying to take over the world? It seems like right now, doesn’t it feel like that sometimes? No, God is bigger, and he’s going to use you to parent your kids to make a difference in this world, right? Absolutely. By the way, I just felt so encouraged the last two weeks. I’m like, I’m way more optimistic about the world. I feel like at least in the United States, things are going to turn around and it’s amazing. I just I just have this gut feeling right now.

Do you remember that time? We did a podcast interview with Ken Ham and we were talking to him about what’s going on in the world and parenting. He said something in that podcast that just like was super optimistic since you’re bringing it up, which is at least now when people are parenting, their kids are being parented in reality, because all of this stuff that’s been uncovered about like CRT and the different agendas that are being pushed, the indoctrination, the attack, really that is coming on after our kids, right? Like, we’re all aware of what’s going on now, but that attack was always there. It just was hidden before and now it’s just not hidden. And so that’s actually like, I’m I’m thankful for that. Are you thankful for that when you’re praying and you feel overwhelmed at times? Last week we did a podcast on overcoming discouragement. And so can I just ask you this question before we jump into the main topic? When you’re feeling overwhelmed by the realities of what’s going on in the world and you’re praying to God, do you come to him with your prayers and supplication? With Thanksgiving, like Philippians, Chapter four tells us that we need to because the reality is we all know that we need to preach to ourselves, remind one another to take our thoughts captive. But that passage of scripture has a promise that is Jesus Christ himself will guard your heart and mind. But it’s it’s the consequence. It’s what happens after you pray with supplication, with Thanksgiving.

Amen. Amen. So we’re going to dive in every time you share something on social media, write reviews. All this stuff helps the movement get out there. And when you donate, when you buy products and courses and books and things like that, it helps us tremendously

Helps us to keep doing this. This is our

Full time gig, and right now we’re putting an outflow of our investment, you know, money investing back into the. Street for the benefit of everybody, so anything helps, and we just appreciate your encouragement and prayers, most importantly. So yeah. In the financial side is a big deal too.

Ok, so let’s jump into this topic. But but as we’re doing this, you guys, you might even want to take some notes because these are going to be like, I know that for me, these are going to be things that are like on my my prayer request list, in my prayer journal, like I’m going to pull out my prayer journal, go look at our dry erase board. That because Isaac and I always use a dry erase board when we’re doing our brainstorming session for these podcasts, and I’m literally going to write these points down and I’m going to evaluate myself, probably on a weekly basis. I just decided that. So maybe you want to do that too? Well, maybe you

Want to just need a big

Well, because I’ll be honest, I struggle with being consistent sometimes.

Yeah, I do with a tired one. We’re going to get to that.

Yeah. And OK, so what time? So here is a good question to start with if you’re evaluating yourself. Let’s talk about why we talk about time first.

Ok, time

Is one of the biggest hurdles, right?

Like, it takes time to be consistent and it’s inconvenient. And often the need to follow through comes at the worst possible time.

Right? Like for moms who have many littles, it’s usually when you’re like nursing the baby that the toddler starts acting out and you need to be consistent in reminding them and getting down to their level and making eye contact, which requires putting the baby down.

So what’s your quick solution for that?

You had just have to do it. You have to do it. If you are consistent for two weeks or so, you the toddler will learn that that’s a boundary that he doesn’t get to cross or she doesn’t get to cross. And that mom. Moms, yes means yes and no means no. Just the same as it did before the baby was there. But again, like consistency is actually the thing that helps with that scenario, right?

I’ve said this so many times. Oftentimes, kids remember the two times he didn’t versus the eight times you did follow through on this particular thing to correct them or to follow through what you said.

Yes. And on the same note, we’ve also said that not only is it that they remember, but it’s like when you you could be consistent six or seven times in a row, eight times in a row. But that one time that you choose not to, it’s like you’re starting all over again.

It certainly feels like it when you were really honest with yourself because it kind of anchors, they kind of forget all the times you did fall through and they they remember they’re like a more immediate in their behavior, right?

So well, the reality is is we’re all like building reputations with one another in all relationships. Friend to friend, parent to parent, husband to wife, parent to child. We’re all building reputations with one another. And so here’s a perfect example when a kid knows, oh, mom’s more lenient, so I’m going to go ask her if I can have a snack because dad always says no or vice versa. Maybe it’s the other way around, right? Like they you build a reputation with your kids. And then a lot of times when they are being really selfish and they want their way, they’ll like, choose to go to the parent that is weaker. That is more likely to give them what they want. Yeah. And so the reality is the same when it comes to consistency, like in their heads weave. It may be a subconscious thing, but the reality is is they know which parent is easier on different things, and that’s where division can be created in the marriage, too. And so it’s an important thing to realize that we’re all building a reputation with our kids. And so is your reputation that you are consistent, that your yes is yes and your no is no. And are you building a reputation where you have a good enough relationship with your kid? You’re pouring into your relationship so that when you are consistent, like or you say something, they don’t challenge it.

Yeah, yeah. You can’t allow a divided front and you can’t allow kids to do that back each other up as parents and follow through if they asked a different parent after one parent already said no. So these things are very, very important. Let’s move to being too tired. That one is hard because you feel drained, you feel exhausted. You’re like, well, following through this one time probably won’t make a difference. You rationalize it in your head.

Oh, and how many times? So, you know, guys, I just have to say we talked about this in your Instagram Live that we just did tonight. We just brought this one up. This one, I would say, like, there are probably certain seasons like we’ve been parenting for a long time. Our oldest is twenty one. Obviously, we’re not parenting her. We’re in a friendship with her. But when I look over the last twenty one years, like there are certain specific seasons like age categories, when our kids are certain ages where I’m like, Oh, I was more tired then. And that made consistency hardest for that season. Or like would go to the time constraint one, right? Like I feel like right now. Time is my biggest obstacle because we have so much going on with nine kids, even though to live out of the home. And so it’s like different seasons. That’s why it’s important to be honest, transparent, introspective and evaluate. That’s why I want to evaluate, like on a weekly or monthly basis, these different categories and go, What is my hurdle?

So do you get tired and do you let up? Just be honest. And you know what? If you do, you have to be more principled about it. I find what motivates me is the principle of it. If I’m not principled, then I do what I feel. If I feel tired, I don’t take action. But if I see the bigger picture of why, it’s important to always follow through and if I don’t right now, it makes everything harder, everything harder. You know, all the work I’ve already done, it kind of hurts that work we’ve already done. So you have to kind of see the bigger picture of it so that you get yourself to get up and do it, even though you don’t feel like it.

Like, OK, so let’s just be real transparent. People are always asking us what our day looks like, OK, and we were just talking about time, and now we’re talking about being too tired. And so the two kind of go together for us on certain seasons, like when we have toddlers, like those two to three to four year olds, I don’t know what it is about Tobin’s, but they all wake up crazy early, like so early in the morning that we are just both like, Oh, we’re so tired. But we are also in this season where we’re up late at night with teenagers, which we love because that’s when the best conversations happen with them, because the young girls are in bed. But you know, we’re trying. We have to try different things like going on date nights or taking them to coffee, to work with you and stuff like that so that we can get more sleep. And so that would be like, my challenge to you is if you’re too tired, like evaluate why you’re too tired. Is it because you’re burning the candle at both ends like we are? Or is it that maybe you have adrenal fatigue and you need to have some supplements to help you? Do you need to take a nap when the kids are napping in the afternoon? Are you not having time with the Lord because he really gives us the energy and sustains us for this long game of parenting?

Maybe there needs to be more teamwork in the marriage too, and a good one. Really important, but we’ve got to move on to the next point, which is the wrong view of your relationship with your kids. And so that can really lead to a lack of consistency.

So what we mean by this wrong view, like evaluate what your role is as a parent, how you would define that, like what are the expectations that you have of yourself as the parent in your relationship with your child? The reality is, is that too many people have the wrong expectations of themselves. They are so concerned about being a friend, for example, that maybe they’re not being a parent and they’re not taking the authority that God is given them in the appropriate way. Not overbearing, mind you, but in a way of like owning it and going, You know what? I’m an adult and I’m going to adult, and I’m going to have emotional self-control like an adult, and I’m going to be the more mature one here because I’m the parent and they own that. And they have they own those expectations, understanding that God gave them a biblical jurisdiction to actually tell their child no once in a while. Like, there’s a whole movement of people who are completely inconsistent parents. They probably confuse their kids because they’re so wishy washy. And sometimes they say yes, and sometimes they say no. And sometimes they say maybe or maybe they just say maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Let me ask you this when you think back to high school, who’s the teacher that you really respected the most? It wasn’t the easy teacher. There wasn’t the teacher that tried to be your friend and cool and

Put it

On. It was actually the teacher that sometimes really frustrated you, but expected the most out of you and you got the most out of the class. Well, you want to be that kind of leader for your kids, not a friend, but a parent, a leader, someone that kids respect and and want to become like. That’s right.

Amen. So do you have the wrong view of your relationship and that and and can I just ask you, have you allowed society, media, maybe your upbringing, maybe the way things your, your brother or your sister parent, or the way that your friend’s parent to influence your expectations of yourself and to influence the jurisdiction? Like your view of the jurisdiction that God has given you. Or have you allowed Jesus? By the transforming of your mind, by the reading of the word, to renew your expectations of yourself. And when I say expectations, I think sometimes people go like, Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. Well, you know, that’s that’s right. We need to have grace with ourselves regarding time being tired. But when it comes to like our view of our relationship with our kids, that is something where there is right and there is wrong and we need to have a biblical worldview. So to do that, we wanted to share with you guys from Deuteronomy six and these words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart. Verse seven You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as front. Let’s between your eyes, you shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates. And you guys, this is Deuteronomy Chapter six versus seven through nine. This is the first time I read this scripture. While I was a parent, it like hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m a teacher,

Always be teaching. There’s always ways to be teaching your kids, and

I’m a teacher and I get to teach all day long because I’m modeling for my kids, even if I’m not speaking, you know. There are so many amazing quotes out there, you know, that talk about, I hope that my life preaches a stronger gospel than my words do things like that, you know, and that is a huge thing that we need to evaluate. Like what is our view of our relationship with our kids?

Ok, so the next one and this one is super important and this one, usually people don’t admit to it’s if you have rose tinted glasses. So these glasses, when you have them on, they just make your kids look perfect, perfect all the time. And so parents need to take those off and look accurately at what’s happening

In their children’s hearts. Yeah. And I think that there’s an element here, too, where when we take the rose tinted glasses off. It will. You can test if you have them on or not based upon if if you have friends or family members who come to you to point out like character flaws in your kids, if you get defensive and you don’t want to hear it, you might have rose tinted glasses on if or you or you might not have rose tinted glasses on, but you just don’t have a teachable heart, and you’re certainly with pride, too. And so the reality is, as we can’t correct our kids, if we’re struggling with that, it’s that whole Matthew six thing, right? We’ve got to take the plank out of our own eye before we can take the spec out of our brothers eye or our son’s eye. Right? And so I just for me, I this is something that I personally like I’m super passionate about because I think that it’s easy for parents, especially if they’re not with their kids all day long. Right to like, we want to think the best of our kids, and that’s great. But you guys, like we have to be honest about the character issues or the unteachable heart or the competitive nature that’s potentially ruining friendships or the the sassiness or the disrespectful attitude or whatever it is like. We have to be honest about that, and it’s our job to correct it in our kids, to go to our kids in love and say, I love you enough, I got to tell you the truth.

And sometimes it’s just that we have this thought in our heads that this is what kids do or let kids be kids, or these kinds of things which create a weird kind of rose tinted glasses of just acceptance of sin, which shouldn’t be there. And it it it makes it to where you don’t follow through. You don’t you you don’t have high enough expectations for for for where you can help your kids grow to be not perfection, but to to be pursuing God and to to recognizing their sin and apologizing for it quickly. And, you know,

In obeying the first time, having the

Fruits of the

Spirit. Like, it’s interesting because a lot of parents, I think, don’t recognize that the thing that’s holding them back is that they think kids aren’t capable. Hmm. And so their kids aren’t capable, right? Like they? And the reality is, is like, can I just ask a really solid Christian question? Do you believe in that resurrection power of Jesus Christ? Because if we really believe in all of the power that is in the spirit of God? Then we then that means that there is literally no cap on what our kids can learn. There is no cap on the capacity or the spiritual maturity. They don’t have to be a certain age to hit a certain milestone in spiritual maturity. That is the role of the Holy Spirit in their life. And you’re not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. But do you believe that Jesus can literally transform your kid’s life and that they can have a personal relationship that pushes them? That spirit pushes them, motivates them, convicts them? Like, if you are a Christian and you experience the Holy Spirit conviction that leads you to a place of like, Hey, I need to apologize for X, Y and Z, like do you believe that the Holy Spirit can do that in your kid’s heart? Because if you don’t, then you’re not believing in the resurrection power of Jesus. And if you if you don’t see that in your kids lives one, I would say, do you believe that what you’re doing as a mom or a dad is is part of the great commission? Are you purposefully disciplining your kids? Because if you’re purposefully disciplining your kids, you’re going to start seeing these awesome fruits start to grow and they may be a tiny little berry, but as they grow older, it’s going to become this big, luscious.

And it’s a bigger picture. It’s a more dynamic mission than just parenting or just trying to get through the day or just trying to get them to behave. You’re not trying to get your kids to behave today. No, you’re trying to help them chase after God

And live the way his word not only commands but guides, right? Like there’s commandments in the Bible. And then there’s like wisdom literature and there’s like, it’s a guidebook for life, right? And so when we’re trying to obey that as parents and we’re leading our kids to walk in it and to learn it, then they start to see that this is really a guide, a lamp onto their feet, if you will.

Next point next reason that you need to overcome the parents aren’t consistent is that they cave to pressure. And there’s several different kinds of pressure. They cave to pressure from their kids. They cave to pressure from society. They cave to pressure from peers.

Right. So we call it parental peer pressure. That last one, which I think is probably the most powerful one, actually, because people care what other people think and they don’t want to be the uncool parent in the group, right? Like, let’s say you have a 12 year old son that plays soccer or basketball, and there’s a whole bunch of other parents there, and they’re all letting their kids do something. I don’t know what it is a sleepover or ride a bus together, and you just have this like bad gut feeling about it. Do you cave to the peer pressure of just doing what everyone else does to go along to get along? Or do you stand to your convictions? Go, you know what? No, we don’t do that because your dad and I have prayed about it and we’re in alignment and we’ve always said no, and we’re not changing our mind like. Are you a consistent person, so let me just share a little story with that when it comes to certain convictions that your family has, if you are consistent, which is exactly what we’re talking about, if you are consistent and years and years and years past and you’re consistent on that one conviction, just pick one. When you have kids, you’re younger. Kids watch you being consistent with the older ones. They won’t even bug you about that thing because they know my family doesn’t do that.

That’s not a thing.

That’s not a thing that happens. Do so I’m not even going to bring it up because I already know their answer. And there’s no conflict because it’s just that’s what we don’t. We don’t do that and we do do that. And I have to tell you, that’s a beautiful thing. That’s a that’s a family culture.

We need to reject passivity. We need you to stand for truth. We need to lead unapologetically. And you cannot let what other people think deter you from what’s right and what’s best to do in the moment, because it’s in the moment that you choose to do the right thing that makes all the difference. And it’s in the moment when you choose to do the lesser thing that you mess up all the effort you’ve already put in. So don’t cave to pressure, don’t cave to pressure from your kids. It helps. It makes them too manipulative about what they want. So here we go in Deuteronomy thirty one six, be strong and have good courage. Do not fear nor be afraid of them. For the Lord, your god, he is the one who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. So be courageous.

This is one of our courageous parenting verses, but some this is the thing is that when we’re talking about parental peer pressure or pressure from your kids, it takes courage sometimes to be consistent to say no when you need to say no or to say yes, when you need to say yes, right? So the next one we’re going to talk about, we only have a couple left. Actually, one of the biggest reasons that people struggle with consistency and parenting is that they want tranquility and peace, and they think that if they confront a sin, for example, that it’s going to cause friction, it’s going to cause emotional outbursts, potentially, or they just don’t want to deal with it. They’re like, Oh, man, that’s going to be a long conversation or I’m just so tired of dealing with this. So I don’t want to deal with it again. I just want it to be peaceful in my home. But can I just tell you something? You’re actually living a lie if you’re choosing not to be consistent in the name of? I don’t want confrontation in my home because confrontation is the opposite of tranquility and peace, because the reality is is what you’re doing is creating a bigger problem later because you’re not dealing with the character quality or whatever the sin was, and it’s just going to fester and grow and get bigger and harder.

And what you do is you overlook a little bit bigger things, a little bit bigger things over time because you want peace and you’ve got used to overlooking little things. Now you’re overlooking medium sized things, and pretty soon you’re scared to talk to them about the big things in the teenage years, and you kind of blew it. So really important. Psalm, 85 10, says mercy and truth have met together. Here’s the key. Righteousness and peace have kissed, so you can’t have peace without righteousness. Mm hmm.

And I think that it’s an important thing that we realize that. Righteousness is righteous, living right, living. And we, as Christians, can’t have the peace without that righteous living and righteous living cannot exist unless we’re living in truth.

So you might have a fake peace home because you believe it’s peaceful because it’s quieter. But it’s really fake peace, because, right, it’s not real peace in your home, real peace is it would be a home that’s striving towards righteousness, that’s that’s correcting the kid so they they can be right with God or right

With you, right? And there’s like continued interactions. There’s forgiveness. There’s, you know, dealing with it, being honest about being offended and then more forgiveness and love. And like that is actually where peace, where peace and righteousness kiss actually right. But if there’s just, oh, I’m not going to bring it up because I don’t want to offend them. And even though I’m hurt here and oh, they oh, they broke trust again. And so now I’m going to step a little further away and oh, they sinned against me again. And because sin separates people just like it separates us from God, right? Like over time, when trust has been broken, for example, you start, your relationship starts spreading further and further, and that could happen between your kids and each other or you and your kids,

By the way. Go listen to blessed be the peacemakers. I interviewed Dr. Steve Crane, and he made us aware of this amazing verse right here in Psalm 85. 10. Make sure you write that down. Make sure you look at it. She’s studied. I think about it. Listen to that podcast because it’s so, so powerful. Ok, we have a final one, don’t we?

So, yeah, sometimes people are inconsistent in their parenting because it’s inconvenient or embarrassing. Yep. So I don’t know if you’ve ever been the parent that was like at the grocery store and your kid starts having a meltdown and you’re not consistent in how you deal with it. Meaning you don’t deal with it the way you would deal with it if you were at home. You don’t take the time to get down to their level. Help them calm down. Talk to them. All the things right? Potentially put them in timeout or whatever because you’re in the middle of the grocery store and you’re thinking about what other people are thinking about you. And so you don’t handle it the same way you’re inconsistent. Has that ever happened? If that has happened, you have just fallen into the category of this is inconvenient or this is embarrassing, and so you literally change how your parenting based upon your environment and the fact that you’re worried more about what perfect strangers think about you and your parenting rather than doing what you know is right and true and best for your child.

Or stopping the playdate, which Angie’s referenced before because the kids aren’t behaving. You were looking forward to that playdate because maybe your friends are there and so forth.

Yeah, and it feels like a punishment for you as a mom.

Yeah, go home because you’re principled about it. You’re like, What is it teaching my kids if I follow through on what they want, even though it’s also what I want and I’m looking forward to? So I punish myself because the long term is they need to learn a lesson. So these things are just hard. Parenting is a refining thing that takes courageous parenting to be consistent, to do it, and it takes being resolute, which resolute means unwavering and determined in means being principled about things. Yeah, so it’s super important. So we appreciate you being part of this ministry. We appreciate you listening. If you love this, would you share it and go check things out at courageous parenting Gqom courageous mom dot com? And we hope you were blessed by this episode.

Thanks so much for listening today. See you next time! Hey, thanks for listening to this episode! For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

If you’re not careful, your discouragement can become very disruptive to yourself and your family. This episode dives into how to overcome discouragement so that you can lead your family well.  

Main tips from this episode:

• Identify what is causing you to be discouraged
• Focus on God’s truth about who you are, what He can do, and that He’s in control.

 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

 

Scripture In This Episode:

Romans 15:13 – “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Psalm 37:7 – “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”

1 Corinthians 15:58 – “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

Galatians 6:7-9 – “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

 

FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

Resources:

• Join Angie’s Young Living Team & Get access to her 15 video Essential Oils Course and More
• FREE! Healthy Home Mom Hacks Workshop: Herbs, Oils, Supplements, & Clean Homes

• 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!

Support The Ministry

• DONATE, to become a bigger part of shifting the culture of future generations through impacting 1 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 10, everything makes a difference.

Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 1 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

 

Many of the reasons for moving have already been validated just a year later after watching the further deterioration of freedoms in Oregon. While raising children we believe it’s best to live where people will stand strong for freedom. We reflect on our move a year ago and share insights into how it has blessed our family.

Main tips from this episode:

• A list of ways God has blessed this move
• How we are becoming informed on local politics
• Update on our experience building community

 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

 

Scripture In This Episode:

James 1:2-4 – “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 let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Matthew 6:33 – “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Philippians 4:6 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

 

FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

Resources:

• Join Angie’s Young Living Team & Get access to her 15 video Essential Oils Course and More
• FREE! Healthy Home Mom Hacks Workshop: Herbs, Oils, Supplements, & Clean Homes

• 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!

Support The Ministry

• DONATE, to become a bigger part of shifting the culture of future generations through impacting 1 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 10, everything makes a difference.

Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 1 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Too many kids raised in Christian homes are falling away from the faith when they leave their parents’ homes. Part of the problem is that too many assumptions are made by parents that actually put performance pressure on kids. That’s the opposite of creating trust and comfort for your kids to ask deep spiritual questions, wrestle with scripture, and be candid about their struggles. If we don’t create this kind of relationship, our kids will conform to the family Christianity, but when they depart from the family unit, their faith falls flat because it wasn’t based on their own real relationship with Christ.

Main Tips From This Episode:

1. Is your family culture religious or relationship-driven?
2. How a religious culture can be harmful.
3. Make sure your kids are comfortable asking spiritual questions even if they express unbelief.
4. Faith isn’t a family thing, it’s an individual relationship with God thing.
5. What you do when no one is looking says a lot about your walk with God.
6. Make sure your kids understand their need for Jesus.

 

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Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18, and it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the fall. Hey, welcome everybody to the podcast. Hey, guys, how are you doing? I hope you’re well.

We are excited to talk to you about another very important parenting topic. So, you know, when when people have kids, what is one of the most common things you hear when especially parents of many kids, they take them out to, you know, Costco or somewhere? I’ve had this happen to me. People go, Hey, you know, they’re all going to be teenagers at the same time. And they they they think of it as a bad thing. And so let’s think about that for a second. Go, why would it be a bad thing? Maybe if your kids don’t talk to you and they don’t trust you and you don’t have a good relationship with them. So we’re going to talk about how to cultivate that today.

So whether you have little kids are about to have your first or you have middle schoolers or teenagers. This is going to be helpful for you, and it’s never too late to capture your kid’s heart. Listen to the last episode and to cultivate a trusting relationship where your kids feel comfortable talking to you about anything.

So it’s actually the question. This podcast is a question title, OK? You say so will your kids trust you to talk to you about the hard things now?

You might instantly go, Yeah, I think we’re pretty good on that, and I would just caution you to pause for a second because I caution myself to pause on this often because you might be taking something for granted. You might not fully realize that your kids don’t feel comfortable talking to you about certain things, so they may have doubts in their belief in God. They may have some real serious spiritual questions that they want to ask, but they don’t feel comfortable asking you because there’s a religious culture in your family that we all believe in Jesus

Or they could. You know, another thing that comes to my mind is I think of the reputation that Peaks and MKs get. If you’re not familiar with those acronyms, pastor’s kids and missionary kids, right? Where parents are in ministry and kids, a lot of times in those situations are raised with really high expectations and standards. And they they yes, they have expectations impressed upon them by maybe their parents, maybe their church, maybe the culture in their church, maybe people like elders in their church. But there’s also something I mean, the Bible says, take every thought captive for a reason, because maybe they have impressed upon themselves expectations that are unrealistic, that were never impressed upon them by their parents regarding their spiritual maturity or their belief and things like that. So we need to be aware that, yes, we have influence on this. But just as you need to take thoughts captive and you need to have realistic expectations of yourself and other people, your kids also need to be taught those two things that they need to take their thoughts captive, and they need to know the truth about what your expectations are and are not.

So we’re going to dive in in a second, but thanks for being part of the one million legacies movement when you write a review. Share on social media. Give five stars on iTunes or write a review. There it is. One. It’s super encouraging. It does propel us forward because there is negative stuff out there too, so it combats that. It’s like, OK, people are along this race with us. This is totally worth it. It’s impacting people. If you know anything about us, we believe something’s worthwhile. If it’s having a growing impact on for the Kingdom of God, on numbers of people. And that is just how we’re wired. We’ve always been that way together, and it really is encouraging to us to press on and do the hard work in putting the truth out there in in a way that people can receive it.

Yeah. And you know, I just have to be really transparent. I feel like a lot of times I’m a salmon swimming upstream regarding things like social media because I have struggled with being censored for many years, actually, and I’ve had proof of that. Craig’s mom has definitely experienced that. And so like a lot of times, while I see other people’s platforms growing, there’s like this temptation for me to struggle with Oh, is it worth it if I don’t? You know what I mean? Just because I’m like, I don’t. I don’t even know if I’m reaching the people who have clicked a button and said, Yeah, I want to learn from this person or I want to do life following this person. I want to like, you know what I’m saying? And so like for me, I have my life. I am raising my kids. I have my first jurisdiction’s, my second jurisdictions. I have my priorities in order. And so when I get on social media, it’s very purposeful. I’m not like scrolling around dinking around. I’m like on there as a missionary to be a light and then I’m gone.

It’s a way to impact, so we really appreciate feedback and being part of that. Yeah. So we are going to dive into this. And I think the first point is maybe the most important point, but there’s a lot of important ones here, which is, are you creating a religious culture in your home or a relationship driven culture in your home?

I think that cultures and families can oftentimes change over the years, also based upon where the mom and dad are at spiritually. Yeah, because they lead it. But also, if you have a strong spirited kid in your home, every person in your family is going to contribute to the culture in your home, right in your family. And so as kids get older, sometimes they start to have more influence if the parents allow. That to happen. And so if they cater to children, if it’s a child centric home, go listen to that other podcast that’s in the first season. Do you have a child centric home? This is a really important thing to think about because that can actually negatively input impact if there is a legalistic religious culture or a relationship.

And sometimes we don’t realize it, but this is so prevalent that. There’s so many pharmaceutical parents. And sometimes all of us can even fall into that category, that’s what Jesus warned us not to be like the

Pharisees, not to be hypocrites,

Not to be hypocrites. And but there’s other dynamics to the Pharisees too, and I thought we’d kick it off by reading about them. Ok, Matthew, twenty three.

All right. So this is verse one through seven in Chapter twenty three says. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe that observe and do but do not do according to their works for they say and do not do for they bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their their factories broad and enlarge their borders of their garments. They love the best, the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogue. Greetings in the marketplaces. And to be called by men. Rabbi. Rabbi. So, yeah, I mean, these are the people that are like at a conference and they’re like running up front to sit in the front because they want attention and they want to seem like they’re.

Or the motivation for the church you go to is to be seen and known and to, you know, dress a certain way to show the wealth or to, you know, have a heart posture of, you know, showing your best Christian foot forward on Sundays. But all during the week. There’s very little Christian foot forward. There’s very little spiritual strength in the home. And what is that showing your kids? It’s showing your kids a religious way of being. And then another way to look at this, too, is if there’s no ability for your kids to share their doubts and spiritual questions and things like that. Because no, this is we’re all Christians, but there’s very little spiritual dialogue during the week, but we’re expecting our kids to act like Christians

When maybe they don’t.

Maybe they’re not. They don’t have the Holy Spirit. They’re literally not saved. That’s like burdens. That’s burden the burden on their shoulders. The Pharisees put heavy burdens on their shoulders, so as parents, we don’t want to put heavy spiritual burdens on our kids shoulders. We don’t have the Holy Spirit in the heart change to actually desire doing that. That can be very hard.

And one of the key things here, too, is that it says for they bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. And so there’s not just this element of laying on high expectations of like the way they behave or act or who they are, right? Like if there’s pressure to always get straight A’s, for example, that might not even be in like a a Christian church setting like that. There’s this performance based acceptance that is spouted off or expected within the family without it actually being a verbalized culture. It just is a culture that is based upon other expectations that are heavy, that are laid on kids. Now, of course, we all want our kids to to succeed. We all want our kids to do their best. We want to see them thrive, right? And a lot of times when we think about that, some people might actually say that that would equal getting A’s or that would equal X, Y and Z right. But the reality is, is that it’s not like a kid can be thriving and be doing well spiritually, which is most important and not get straight A’s right? Like, let’s just say it. And so I think that this aspect of like a report card, right, for example, is one example when kids are raised with a focus on the report card versus what’s in their heart and what they’re doing and if they’re doing their best. That is the difference between religious legalistic culture within a family and relationship, because if you have a relationship, you’ll know if your kid is doing their best and they’re still getting a B. Do you see him saying you’re going to celebrate with them?

So relationship to a relationship with God, real relationship and real relationship with kids and kids with parents? Not just this is the way we are, but we don’t really talk about it, right? If you’re a 2LP and you’re a Christian, I would never say that to my kids. I would never propel them to believe that our faith in God is just part of our family culture, although it is. But the reason it is because there’s real relationship with us and God and our kids in God, and that is cultivated, different ages with different kids and God gets a hold of their heart and something God is doing. We’re nurturing. God is doing it. And it’s

Amazing. It’s real relationships between us and our kids. You just you mentioned, you know, the real relationship between us and God, real relationship between our kids and God. But then there’s also this element of real relationship between us and our kids to where it is a place where they can say, Hey, I’m really struggling with this and that we’ve had a couple of kids who’ve done that in the past that have come to us actually more than a couple that have had certain things that they read in the Bible or they heard, preached at a church and they go, Did that really happen like doubts, right? Or different things that they’ve struggled with? And that is oftentimes the season where they’re they are questioning, they’re trying to make their faith their own. They’re trying to get to know God, but also the enemy is attacking them as well because he knows that they’re growing. Asking good questions,

You’re most crucial period of time is like age six to 11. Yep, and younger on that spectrum is usually it. So it’s younger than you think of where they actually have some doubts. Like is God real

Listening to my prayers?

Hear my prayers. Am I just speaking to the air? Or am I really speaking to God? And is he really showing up in my life? Do my parents really believe this stuff? Is this real? You know, if that is real, what is heaven and hell? What is heaven like? Do I even want to go to heaven? Because all I see up there is white clouds, and it doesn’t look like fun in heaven

Because heaven up there. And I mean, there’s literally all kinds of questions we could rattle off a zillion different ones. You guys have kids, you know the questions that we’re talking about. Hopefully, you know the questions, and I would just encourage you that like them asking you what you believe about these things is going to come from them, caring what you think and having a tender enough relationship, a trusting enough relationship where they feel like it’s safe and they’re not going to be in trouble, which is super important. Yeah, they’re not going to be in trouble for asking these questions that you’re not going to reprimand them or scold them or like, look at them weird and be like, Why did you ask that? No, don’t look at them that way. Don’t say that.

They need to be comfortable asking spiritual questions. And although your heart is probably right with this, of course, I want to make him feel comfortable asking me spiritual questions. But is your way of being actually creating comfort, proactively cultivating comfort? In fact, I’ve gone to the level and Angie and I have of saying in a group and one on one with our kids. If you ever have doubts about God, it is one a normal thing. And it’s something we love talking about, because your relationship with God is your relationship. Just because we believe in God, it doesn’t mean you’re a believer. That’s between you and God. But we’re here as to disciple you, to help you, to answer questions you evangelize.

Really. I mean, we wouldn’t say that to our kids, but they all know like what evangelism is and discipleship is. But this is where the rubber meets the road and parents understand their immense responsibility in the great commission regarding their children and understanding that you are a teacher. The moment you give birth to a baby, you are now a teacher. You are a teacher. And so teachers are held to a higher accountability. There is an important, necessary realization that every parent needs to understand that they are going to be held accountable by what they teach. And what you teach is both in your word, your verbal words, but even more so in what you live out on a daily life, what you model for your kids. And part of what you teach is also when you screw up and you’re humble enough to say that you screwed up.

So tell your kids, Hey, if you ever have questions, you ever have doubts. Please come to me. I love you, no matter what forever. Totally. And so they it’s really important that they don’t think your love for them is dependent on them loving God. That’s kind of hard to say and think about, but it’s true. We want them to love God, but that’s God working on their heart. Mm hmm. Your coach, you’re encouraging. You’re teaching your discipline, but you love them no matter what. If your kids love God or not, aren’t you going to love them the same? But do they really feel that and know that? And potentially do they know that based on how you talk about other people who are not Christians that you all know? So it’s really important, what do they see on how you love non-believers?

Mm hmm. So the next one is clarity, yes, right? Clarity. That faith isn’t a family thing. It’s an individual thing kind of talked about that briefly regarding, like, you know, saying, Oh, just because you’re hoping you’re a Christian, it’s kind of like logic when you teach your kids logic. We do this when the kids are like 12, 13, 14 years old, they start learning logic, which is if a plus B equals C, then B plus A equals C. You might be going, Angie, I don’t even know what you’re talking about right now. The reality is, is that not all things added to one another equate to the same thing. Ok, so just because you’re a open in, you’re a Christian. This is who you are doesn’t mean that if you’re a autopen and you’re not a Christian, you’re not who you are. Does that make sense? And so we have to teach our kids that it’s their personal responsibility to pursue God. Like, Yes, our family is Christian Toppin. The Tobin family is a Christian family, right? But and we we spend time in the world and we worship him. And that is part of like when our family thinks about who we are, we want our kids to choose to say, first, I’m a Christian. We would all hope and pray that that would be the first thing if they were asked, Who are you? Go, Well, I’m a Christian, right? But the reality is is they have to individually choose that to be the most high priority thing in their mind that that would come to their mind. It’s like when you when your kids get on social media. I’ll say this because our older kids do write and people write bios like are they? Are they claiming Christianity in their bio? Like, is it that? Is that part of who they want the world to know them as? And that they’re claiming that and that their understand that their their branding Christianity by how they live as well?

Now, hey, real quick, just want to talk about the parenting mentor program? It is so amazing to be on this journey. Really, the catalyst tip of the spear of the movement is these two thousand parents that have gone through the program and are in a group together and just really encouraging and spurring each other on an ongoing basis. It’s 10 hours of curriculum, self-paced. You get personal attention live with us and even text messaging access, and it’s really been a special thing, and I really encourage you to go to courageous parenting and check it out. There’s so many good reviews on it and so many people benefiting from it. God really inspired it. It’s got scripture all throughout, so I encourage you guys to do that. Well, let’s dive back in. Angie, you have a scripture for us, right?

Mm hmm. So John 15:05 says, I am the vine and you are the branches he who abides in me and I and him bears much fruit for without me. You can do nothing. I love this. I would love to continue on because it actually gives us a warning. It says if anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they are gathered and throw them into the fire and they are burned. So there’s a really strong contrast about the the reaping and sowing the consequences of if you choose to abide in him or if you choose not to. Yeah. And that is a warning that we not only as parents need to be aware of because the fruit that is produced in our children is largely consequential to if we are abiding in the fruit, right? Because how we are living our lives is often mimicked in our children and they are our fruit. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. And so there is this element of children being a fruit. That’s why, even with elders right, the qualification for leadership is based largely on how children are acting their behavior, the things that are that they are if they’re professing believers of Christ. And it’s obviously the kids are at least old enough to choose that. And so there is a reality that is a something that we, as parents, need to take that to heart and recognize. Oh, this is a reflection of my parenting to to at least to a certain degree.

But at the same time, the same thing is true that it’s also a reflection of that child’s personal responsibility in their walk with God and the depth of their relationship with them, which is not fully reflective of you. And so I say that because a lot of times parents get really hung up on in two ways they either have immense guilt because they feel this incredible burden that they screwed up when their kids are not walking strong with the Lord when they’re older. And I just want to say, you have to give that to the Lord. You have to repent of anything that you are responsible for. But just as Jesus forgives the repentant heart, you have to receive the forgiveness yourself. You have to be able to let that go and pray for your children and serve them and love them and be continue to be the evangelist in their life, that disciple or in their life. The other aspect of this is sometimes parents take too much pride in what their children are doing. They live vicariously through them. Or they’re like, Oh yeah, that’s because of me. I’m sorry. No, no, no. That’s because of the Lord. Because the Lord is the one who transformed your life and therefore blessed your womb. He created your child and praise God that his Holy Spirit is working and active and alive in that child’s life. You can’t take credit for that. Amen. You may be doing what the Bible tells you to do to disciple them, and that is something that God will say, Hey, well done, good and faithful servant, but we can’t boast and things

In our own strength. It’s parasitical, actually. It’s like being a Pharisee. It’s also taking credit for things that God deserves. The credit for other things too. Like maybe you prayed for something as a family, but then when it came about, you either didn’t even mention anything about God coming through or you literally took credit for it. Oh, look what we did, or you took credit for it as a family, but led that. Look what we did. Oh, look at this amazing thing that happened, but you’re not giving credit back to God. Be careful of that. It’s it’s this problem that’s happening of Sunday Christians.

Yeah, that that

There they believe the parents believe they go to church. But there’s this big disconnect in how they actually live in verbalize things in their life. There’s an indicative of how little they’re thinking about God’s activity in their lives and forgetting to share what God is doing in the regular activities of life to your kids that is creating a relationship with God, culture, home versus a religion culture home of just the Sun. Christian.

Well, and it’s also this element of like, there are so many questions that we could potentially ask, right? Not any one of them is going to be like, Oh, how do you know if you’re a real Christian or you’re a Pharisee? Like, No, only God knows what’s in a man’s heart, right? But there are questions that like we need to be aware of if we’re not opening our Bible during the week, except for when we’re going to church. And it’s just because everybody else has their Bibles, then we maybe need to spend some time in introspection there, right? But at the same time, it’s like the same. Maybe you’re the person that not just only brings your Bible to church and opens your Bible at church, but maybe you open your Bible with your family once in a while, but you’re not seeking God and you’re not in a personal walk with him. You don’t have personal convictions that are biblical that you’re willing to like, you know, be willing to suffer for Christ. Right? That’s a real that’s the real in my mind. The real marker of if someone is truly a believer in Christ as if they’re willing to suffer for his name.

Well, it’s the next point. What do you what you do when no one is looking says a lot about your walk with God. And I proactively tell the kids that I know kids, we’re reading the Bible around. This is awesome. We’re doing it together. But your faith isn’t always together as a family thing. Your faith is a personal thing between you and God. And so what you’re doing when no one’s looking matters, are you praying one on one with God? I encourage you to do so. He’s listening. Here’s every one of your prayers. Are you reading the scriptures? I encourage you to do so. So it’s not a religious thing of you need to. I’m not prescribing something for them to do. It’s an encouragement. It’s showing them making them aware of if they’re growing their relationship with God or if it’s stagnant. Don’t we all need that reminder?

Oh, yeah, I mean, we just read John 15- scripture about abiding in him. Like, How do your kids know that scripture? Have they been taught that to where they’re like, Oh, if I’m abiding in him, this is a fruit that will come out of me, and if I’m not, then this is the fruit that will come out of me. And these are the consequences of when I’m living my life this way versus that way and an understanding you guys like originally we were talking about, will your kids trust you to talk about the hard things? It’s also like, do they? I see this in legalistic religious homes where kids see their parents being so judgmental, and I’m not talking about like the importance of judging the fruit of a church. When you decide if you’re going to go there, that is an important thing. Yeah, right? You’ve got to make a decision like, is this someone that I’m willing to have as a spiritual authority over my family when you’re choosing a church? Ok, that’s a big deal. I’m not saying that that is wrong, but what I am saying is if you’re constantly like critical, having a critical spirit all the time and judgy of all the things and all the people all the time, then your kids are going to be like nervous and feeling like they can’t come to you with the things that they’re struggling with because they think they already know what you’re going to think. Hmm. And so I just I want to warn you because what you talk about, who you talk about.

Let’s just stay away from that. The tongue is a danger. It’s a dangerous fire who can tame the tongue, it says in the Bible. We need to ask the Holy Spirit, especially as moms. We need to really ask the Holy Spirit to help us to model what it looks like to expect virtue in other people to not talk about other people, things like that, because that’s actually one of the biggest things. Proverbs six Eden says this is one of the seven things that Lord hates is one who brings discord among the brethren, right? And so or speaks flat blasphemy or different things like that. And in so many times, like women can hear something or you see something on social media and you just repeat it without like verifying that it’s true. And if your kids catch you and see you doing that, then they’re going to be like more closed off, less trusting of you, which is a really big thing. And so what you do when no one’s looking like, if you’re if you’re just scrolling through social media and you’re allowing that to influence, that’s something you’re doing when no one’s looking. That says a lot about your walk with God, and it actually impacts your walk with God because an impact. Your walk in life and your fruit and your kids are going to see your fruit and they’re going to either trust you or not.

James, for seven and eight, says therefore submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Your kids know these things. If you draw near to God, he will draw near to you. So use that scripture when you’re talking about praying or reading the Bible on your own and things like that. Don’t just let it be your words. Let it be God’s words. And do they know, resist the devil? Do they know there is evil? If they don’t know there is evil, they will not understand the need for Jesus. They don’t understand that their sin. They won’t understand the need for Jesus.

Super important. Romans five eight actually says, but God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, understanding that in the midst of when we were sinners, God sent his son and his son died for us. Our kids need to know that like. Jesus did that for them, too, and that we’re not going to judge them so harshly because we’re trying to be like Jesus, and if Jesus did that, shouldn’t we expect that also? And that is transformative in relationships with kids. I know that there are times when you know kids need to take thoughts captive, they need to be encouraged, they need to be encouraged, not to borrow troubles. The Bible talks about not borrowing troubles. And one of the things that’s really important is like understanding that kids are going to struggle with taking their thoughts captive and knowing what’s right and knowing the truth about things and not believing lies. And you know, really, those are the hard things in my mind. It’s not just like the political perspective on X, Y and Z and what’s being taught in schools, and all those are those are very hard things and those are conversations you need to be having. But I even think like the hard questions are the or the hard conversations, the hard things that the kids might not be talking about is their own body image they might not be talking about. Like the potential temptations to send that they themselves are struggling with that are on a totally different playing field. And those are the things that they need encouragement and they need love through. And if if we’re not there for our kids on a relational level, enough so where they feel like they’re going to be able to have a listening ear, they’re not going to talk to us about it.

So it’s really important that we’re not distracted parents. What I mean by that is we tend to put attention on things. Sometimes they’re easier in terms of evangelism. So if you’re getting good feedback out there in the world, maybe at work or on social media sharing good seeds about Christ and so forth, that might be where you give your attention. And sometimes our families are the heart evangelizing to our children, disciplining our children, training our children in the Lord is the harder thing to do. And sometimes we neglect that for the easier thing that releases endorphins in our brain, like social media to get good feedback from others. And I just want to warn you that if you aren’t doing it right in your home, what gives you the right to teach others right? You are not qualified. Well, you’re not qualified to be an elder. But are you really qualified to be teaching? If you’re not doing it with the people that God is entrusted you with the most to disciple, to evangelize, to, to build relationship with and point them to Jesus. So let’s stop pointing other people to Jesus if we’re not doing that right, if the sacrifice is our kids, our kids should never be the sacrifice. And I believe in the genius of the man versus the tyranny of the war, meaning that we should be able to do both. But the warning here is not to sacrifice your home for what’s easier out there, and we might get better feedback from it makes us feel better in the short term. But you know what, if you give too much to that and you sacrifice the family and the kids in the long run, all you’re left with is regret

And you’ll be disqualified from ministry. I think that that’s one of the things that is super important. I was just talking to a young mom in ministry the other day, and she she just said, How do you find the time to do everything that you do? And I shared about how when I was younger, how much time I spent preparing for things, when I would lead the moms group, how I would read all these different books. And I would like prepare messages. And it would take me hours to prepare and be in the word and write them down and all the things. And now it’s literally just out of the overflow of what we’ve been living out. And so there isn’t as much preparation needed because it’s literally like, Hey, let’s sit down and have a conversation about what we’ve been doing regarding this particular topic. That’s what every podcast is, right? And so we don’t have the time because we are living the life with our kids. These are things that we are actually doing. And so I just encourage you that literally, if you are to do things by the equation that Isaac really just gave you, which is to keep your first jurisdictions first ministry is actually easier. You can actually point people to Jesus better. If you are in the word and you’re pursuing God and then you’re you’re focused on your marriage first and then your family. Guess what? When people come to you with questions, they need counseling. You’re shooting that next podcast. You’re writing that next blog post. Whatever it is you do, you’re you’re you’re working at church leading worship. You can stand there without thinking in your head. Oh, I wish I would have done this with my kid this week or, oh, there was this argument that I never reconciled and I should have done that. But here I am on stage leading worship. Like, No, you’ve got to get that right first. And then it frees you up to be able to be truly transparent and really able to glorify God. And the fruit is going to be so much better, you guys.

All right, thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

We all want obedient and respectful kids but the usual behavior modification approach just doesn’t work very well long term. It’s like pulling weeds but leaving the roots. You’ve got to get to the root of the issue which is your kids’ heart. Do you have your kids’ hearts? Is your focus to get their obedience or to focus on the heart of the issue? Let’s point our kids to Jesus in the midst of conflict. When they disobey you they are disobeying God. When you’re focused on the heart it transforms your whole mindset and approach to correcting your kids.

Main Tips From This Episode:

1. Focus on the heart, not behavior.
2. A changed heart changes behavior.
3. Point them to Jesus especially when they’re in conflict.
4. You can’t change a person’s heart, but God can.
5. Pray for God to work on their hearts.
6. Treat symptoms immediately.

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Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18, and it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the fall. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys, how are you doing?

We are so excited to talk to you about a really crucial but very, very sweet and to the point topic today.

Very practical. Everybody, I think, will love this because at one time or another, we have disobedient children, don’t we?

Sometimes I think everybody does. And while every parent just wants someone to tell them what to do, they’re like, Give me an equation for parenting. My kids are doing X, Y and Z. The reality is, is that it’s not all about their behavior, is it?

No, it’s really about the heart. If you focus on behavior, you’re not focused on the root cause. So it’s like pulling weeds. If you just tear the top of the weeds

And you leave the root,

Then the weeds just grow back. But if you tend to the real issue the root of the problem, the heart. Now you’re getting somewhere.

That’s right, so today’s podcast topic is called heart change, not behavior modification. I think that this is one that all parents, regardless of age of their kids, is going to need to remember over and over and over again. So we could probably put this podcast on repeat. I know this is something that I’ve preached to myself over the years, and I still need to hear it.

I do, too. I mean, every day I’ll do it wrong. I will, you know, let things get to me when they shouldn’t because I’m the parent. I’m the leader in this situation, so I shouldn’t let things get to me. But they do sometimes. And then I don’t look at the situation, the conflict situation with kids in the right way. So it’s so important. So we’ll dive into that in a second. But first of all, thanks so much for being part of the one million legacy movement. It really is just getting going, and we’re so excited about what’s coming down the pike and all the things that God is pressing on our hearts to do to expand the impact of the ministry and also make it able to continue from a thriving perspective in these really weird times.

Weird. I mean, they’re uncertain. They’re uncertain. I mean, what is the tagline raising confident, courageous kids and for an uncertain world? Yeah. And every day we have to live like what? Like today’s our last but prepare as if there’s one hundred generations more coming. Yeah. And so you guys, we are just so appreciative of all the things that the ratings on iTunes, the comments, the reviews, the emails, the text messages that we get from you, it spurs us on. We literally couldn’t do it without you. One of the things that I think I had on my heart just for these next few months and wherever the world is leading is it’s so important that you are in contact with us. We need your email. We need if you prefer text messaging, we actually have text messaging systems that we can do to communicate with you privately. Guys can text Isaac privately, girls can text me, and so we’ll

Put those in the links in bio somehow. Since you just mentioned

It, right? Yeah, there’s like a specific phone number and I know this. They use hashtag courageous mom to the specific. So, so to find that blog post, go to Courageous Parenting Dot, go to the menu and hit on that and then podcast latest episode.

We’ll give you direction on that and all resources. All notes are there, as you guys know. So by the way, if you’ve been along the ride for a while on the movement, sometimes movements can get a little bit stale because we’ve been along the journey, we’re getting refreshed right now. We hope that your refreshed right now and you can come along the journey with vigor and enthusiasm with us to have a major indelible impact for the gospel. Most importantly, in the homes in America and equally in value all around the world. So we’re so excited about that and what’s happening. So why don’t we kick it off with the scripture, honey?

Ok, so we’re going to read in Second Corinthians Chapter five, verse 17, it says. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. And behold, all things have become new. I think this is a crucial Bible verse to remember as a parent when our kids are born. What does the Bible say? What a proverb say what a Psalms say about children, right? That they there’s folly bound up in the heart of the child. It, it says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yes, that means even little kids, right? They sin. At times we see selfishness. Right? I mean, are we going to take our blinders off and be really honest about what we see in our kids lives? At times we love them and we cherish them, but we also need to operate in reality and remove the rose tinted glasses. And this says if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. I think sometimes it’s hard for us as parents to give our kids a clean slate, to give anybody a clean slate, to recognize that they’ve changed, to let people grow. And when our kids become Christians and when our kids are learning about Jesus, we need we. We are image bearers of God, right? God the father in this relationship to them. And he is a forgiving God who gives us clean slates over and over again, and we need to be able to do that with our kids. And so this verse is just so important, especially as your kids are getting older to not let those old sins that maybe they struggled with loom over them in their reputation that they’ve maybe grown or the labels that are in your head about them.

It alters completely the rhythm of communication with people in your family. We take each other for granted sometimes, and we remember all those past ways of somebody and you don’t allow them to grow up, allow your kids to grow up. Remember, kids rise to the level of responsibility you give them, but they also rise to the level of respect you give them. And one thing that I’ve seen work really well is to show more respect sometimes than someone in our family actually deserves. So what does that mean? It means maybe they haven’t displayed a reason to respect them. It’s in an area. But when you do as their leader, they rise. They aspire to be at that level of respect you have. Ok, so it’s always genuine in the way I do it. I’m never like falsely, you know, respecting something that isn’t there. There’s elements of it. It’s be a good finder is a better way to say it, be a good finder. And don’t let the trappings of their past sins catch up every time there’s conflict.

Right? I would say that you are much better at that than me. I’m just even thinking about, you know, some parents listening might go, Wait a minute, you’re showing respect to your kids. Like, doesn’t the Bible say that children are don’t honor their parents and love and respect them? And yes, that’s very true. But we need to model it to our kids and how we treat one another in marriage, but also in how we treat our children right because they need to feel respect and go, Oh, that really feels good. And I love my parents, so I want them to feel that same feeling that they just gave me. And that’s a give give relationship versus a take take relationship. And I know that this is this might sound backwards because this is not. This is stuff that we’ve just learned by trial and error and and evaluating how like even our childhood and evaluating our relationships with other adults over the years and gone. You know what? Respect is a really important thing, and we need to give it without expecting it in return when it’s not deserved. Those are the parts that I’m still working on and need to work on. I struggle with it a lot more than you do.

I think, well, I think I had a lot of practice because I used to lead thousands of college students in the work world,

And I deserve respect.

I just learned that if I assume the best assumed virtue and respect them, they aspire to rise to that. And it’s like a positive vacuum in their identity, changes in a very positive direction and they rise up to it. And I just saw that with so many people that are young adults that, you know, kids, young adults, adults, we’re all human. So I have

To say something, though, because this is a really big deal. There are a lot of Christians who are raised up in the church and they have this authoritarian perspective on parenting. And yes, you are an authority in your children’s life. We are not for like, hey, be your friend, your kids, best friends and don’t be your parent, be their parent. That that did not work. That was like the parenting style of our parents’ generation, actually. And that’s not what we’re saying here. There is you are an authority in your kids lives for sure, and God placed you in their life, and they should respect that for sure. However, like, you can’t force someone to respect you. And so the best way for. Them to be able to respect you is for you to live in a way that is respectable, but also to respect them, and then it’s given in return and I can testify that I’ve witnessed this in how Isaac, parents, the kids and I would say that overall, they have way more respect for him than me, who I don’t know about struggled like, well, I just mean that this has been something that I have personally struggled with over the years and giving respect when they don’t deserve it, necessarily in the way that I’m talking to them. And that’s something that I’ve been constantly working on, and I have to be reminded of this. Why this is a good topic. I think that moms who are with their kids all the time and seeing it and they’re like the issues, the struggles, all the time, it’s hard to be respectful in the way that you talk to your kids, but you need to be because I see you do that and I see them and the way that they respect you and honor you and the kids respect and honor me too. But I’m just saying, you guys, this works. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it powerful in our kids lives.

So well, let’s dive into this and even more. I mean, kids love and respect you because they’re your parents. But what you just said right there, don’t you want them to respect you just because, wow, they really, really respect.

Like, it’s a genuine thing that they don’t have to work hard at because the Bible says to do that, right? Like because they love you and they see then your godliness and righteousness in your life and they want to listen to you because they they trust you and they love you

And your words have that much more weight to them. They care that much more about every word you say. Yeah, that’s why it’s so important. I just posted this. You got to be careful what words you use if we’re trying to capture our kids hearts. Do you have your kids hearts? It might be a good thing to think about.

Do you do you have your kids hearts and then ask the next question who has your kids hearts?

If you’re over delegating someone else might have your kid’s heart?

Maybe the media media is like, This is a thing, right? But there are people represented on the media who and if you’re not influencing your kids, maybe media has your kids hearts and is influencing them. I’ve seen this massively among young adults. Does God have young adults hearts or does the media? That’s a really important question, right? Like, you’ve got all these Christians out there, professing Christianity or professing to believe in God, but yet who do they allow to influence them? Is it the word of God? Is it God that influences them? Or is it the culture and society and media? And so it really important questions.

Now you can’t change a person’s heart. Well, that’s really encouraging, Isaac.

Right? But it’s a biblical truth. Remember, the title of this podcast is heart change, not behavior modification. And so the reality is, is every parent’s going, OK, so are they going to tell me how to change my kid’s heart? You can’t. The Holy Spirit changes a person’s heart. God is the potter. We are the clay. But we have influence and can point our kids towards God, and we have massive impact in that.

So in parenting, what is your number one goal is to nurture a relationship with God to your kids because he is the one that changes their hearts and then therefore makes them much easier to work with in parent. And if you if the heart is fixed, the behavior changes.

That’s right. I mean, it’s literally what we just read in First Corinthians. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things pass away. Behold, all things become new. This is what we want for our kids. We want the old things to pass away. We want there the behavioral sin issues of early childhood selfishness to pass away, if you will, right that they would become selfless and generous and kind, right? That happens when they become new in Christ. So the reality is is we can’t change our kids hearts. So it’s the first thing we do. This is something you can do as a parent. Pray like when you become a realize I can’t change my child’s heart and only God can while I’m going to intercede on their behalf and I’m going to ask God for all things with big faith that he can move mountains, that he can do miracles, that he can make things new, that he can resurrect the dead with that kind of power.

We pray for our kids. And you can pray with your kids now when you put them to bed, for example, do you have a canned prayer you always say, or is there something heartfelt going on right where you’re talking to God in your children are talking to God with you? Is there something real and deep and meaningful? There doesn’t. Meaningful and deep doesn’t mean long. I know we’re trying to get on with other things, but let’s spend some time praying with our kids to write and ask them.

You know, I think that one of the most powerful things is when you ask your kids, I remember the other night I came home from a bridal shower and Isaac was like, Hey, Angie, you want to put the kids to bed tonight? Do you want to read them a book and stuff? Or do you want me to do it? Where are we going to do? And I went in and well, the kids sat and read books with me. We did our bedtime routine and then when I went in to put them to bed and I have this little song that I sing to them that my mom used to sing to me, that’s a psalm, to a song. I think she made it up. And they always want to sing. And then I said, OK, so tonight, let’s pray. But what do you want? What’s on your heart? What do you want me to pray for? And Solomon, of course, always. He’s very thoughtful, and he leads Eli by sharing his thoughtfulness. And I was really just encouraged that he was like, I want to pray for Austin and Caroline. Hmm. And I was like, Wow, you’re just so I mean, how thoughtful is that that he, he recognizes varied.

And he knows Austin’s been working hard. He got a new job, so he’s been gone more. We haven’t seen Caroline a long time because she’s living in Montana, and he, you know, it was just on his mind and on his heart, and I was like, How sweet? And then Eli goes, and I want to pray for Papa. And that’s kind of he always wants to pray for my dad every night, which is super sweet. And so we sat and we prayed for the things they prayed for. And then I had some things on my heart for the boys like attitude things and that they would sleep peacefully and they wouldn’t get sick and just pray for health over them. And it was a really sweet time. It wasn’t super, super long, but I’m sharing that with you because see how you involve the kids and what God is the Holy Spirit like? Do you do you allow the Holy Spirit to be moving in your kids lives and acknowledge it by asking them what they want to pray for?

That’s pointing them to a relationship with Jesus. It’s activating them in their relationship with God. It is so, so powerful. So praying is super key. Teaching to the Bible is such a powerful tool for teaching. I mean, it is incredible, and we just did devotions this morning. I can’t say that our two littles were the most paying attention this morning, but

But they were quiet.

It’s amazing. Even when people, it looks like they’re not paying attention.

You don’t know how much they’re getting.

I think it’s having an impact. It’s having. I just trust. I just trust inside. That’s having impact, whether people look like they’re into it or not. And it’s also cute to be good at it, too.

And how many times has Solomon or Eli said things so clearly they are so good at communicating they have been since early on? Right. And sometimes youngest kids in big families especially have a hard time communicating. But our kids have been talking since they were very, very little, and the words that they use are like big people words. And it surprises people. But the things that they say are so deep. Sometimes I don’t know if you guys listen to Solomon’s very short, but very clear and encouraging podcast on Friday. I think I listened to it five or ten times, which was about obedience. It was a five year old’s perspective on obedience. So stinkin cute. But he you guys his heart. I just love his heart, and he wanted to point people to God and to loving your parents. And I just I think that that his thoughts and the things that he thinks on and meditates on himself are from being in these Bible meetings over and over and over again. They’re like little sponges and they soak up truth.

So two different approaches here. It’s Christian family busy not reading the Bible very often. Not praying very often, maybe not worshiping.

Often, the

Kids conflict or disruption is a disruption to parents agenda. Parents lose patience and they’re not focusing on the heart. They’re focused on the behavior. Short term fix, they try and fix it in whatever way they feel is most important to fix it, which you have to make a decision on, depending on what it is and the kid it is, and you figure out what, what you’re going to do there and then you move on as fast as you can to your own agenda. And bah bah bah bah bah. And then what are you building over time? You’re building a behavior modification approach because I don’t want a wrong mom or I don’t want a wrong dad. And then the

Kids are like walking on eggshells in those.

And then the other. The other approach is to focus on the heart to be disciplined, training your kids, to activating a relationship with God in their lives,

By relationship with you,

By relationship with you as well. And it’s just a whole different perspective. It shifts your focus. It allows you to be more patient. It gives you the stamina to take longer in the process of correcting your kids by. Focusing him on how they’ve wronged God because the Bible says children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And so if we’re not helping them to reconcile with God when they’ve disobeyed us, we’re not focusing on the heart of the issue.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, disobedience, all of these topics are such huge topics. We go in depth on them explaining using tons of scripture in the Courageous Parenting Mentor program, which, by the way, we have another one starting this week soon. So if you have not signed up and done that yet, you, you really need to. You can find out more about that at courageous parenting. But I will say there is an important conversation here regarding, you know, kids, do they obey you because they love you? Or do they obey you because they fear you and they shouldn’t be fearful of parents? And I think that that’s the whole point is like if you’re focused on their heart and you’re you’re aware that how you are talking to your kids is going to also impact your relationship with them and that there are times when you need to reconcile in your human and your grace giving to them. You are teaching them by what you model, which is the next aspect, right? Like, are you modeling a changed multiple heart before God to your kids? So not only do we need to pray for our kids and then teach them what the word says and what got the power that God can have in their life. We need to teach them the Bible. We need to teach them literally what the Bible says about having a heart of clay. You can use Plato as a perfect little role-play example.

You can have that out and go. This is how God wants our hearts to be. Is your heart like Plato to Jesus? Because if it is, then that means that when we read the Bible and it says, obey your parents or it says be kind to everyone or it says, go to your brother first, you know, thinking about just even talking to our teenagers and going, Hey, listen, are you tattle tailing? You need to go to your brother or your sister first, and you need to deal with this situation. This is what the Bible says is your heart, Plato in that palm of God, in the Bible. Like, if if the Bible is God’s hand and your heart is in it, is he able to mould you? Are you being obedient to what the Bible is saying? That’s what’s important now if parents are asking, obviously, when we’re talking about disobedience here, this is for new people who might be listening. Obviously, as parents, we cannot be asking our kids to be doing something that’s going to be in disobedience to scripture. When we are talking about children obeying your parents, we’re assuming that there are like minded parents that are listening that are not going to be leading these little ones astray. Because Bible does say in Matthew six, it would be better for them to have Milsom hung around their

Neck and children should disobey their parents. If they ask you to do something against the Bible or, yes, standing against their for their kids or anything like that.

Absolutely. We’re assuming virtue when we’re doing these podcasts that people who are listening, people who are seeing our posts on social media are like minded Christians. And obviously these parents would not be going against God’s word and what they’re asking of their kids.

Hey, real quick. And we have a final point for you. That’s super important. Would you join us in the parenting mentor program? I invite you. Go to courageous parenting, learn all about it. We have a full session on the heart, which has all the scriptures, tons of scriptures, the parenting packet and the full session, which is just one in part of a 10 plus hours of curriculum at Self-Paced. It is an incredible program over, I think, two thousand parents. Now, if you count, the husband and the wife have been through the program and are literally raving about it, and I don’t take the credit for that. And Angie doesn’t God literally told us to do this.

We’re using this word

Using his word. That’s it. And sharing what he taught us through his people and his word over the years and what we’ve experienced in fruit from raising our now nine kids from ages

Four months old to twenty one.

Yeah, and we’re about to launch our second kid out of the home. And so it is. I just implore you and these uncertain times. Yeah, you’ve got to take the parenting mentor program. Yes. Does it benefit? The ministry does enable us to do these free podcasts and all these things. Yeah, we couldn’t do this unless people were going through the program. But secondarily, most importantly, it is extremely valuable. In fact, the principles in there help us still, because just because you know, something doesn’t mean you’re doing it, but because we’re involved in the parenting mentor program, we’re doing lives on a regular basis. It keeps us sharp, too. We’re in there with you.

I mean, we’re in the trenches, too, like you guys. Yes, in a few weeks, our second child is going to be launching from our home, but we still have seven living with us. And so like, that’s why we’re able to keep being doing these podcasts is that. You know, our first primary jurisdiction is our family. Yeah. As a team, you and I mean, obviously it’s like the Lord, our marriage and then our family, but we’re in the trenches every day. So we talk about things that are relevant to what we’re walking through as parents of babies, toddlers, small children, middle aged children, teenagers, preteens, adults, we have it all. And so I just really want to encourage you guys. The next verse we’re going to share is from Hebrews 4:12, it says for the word of God is living in powerful and sharper than any two edged sword piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow. And it is discernable of the thoughts and intense of the heart.

So that’s this

We were just talking about is your, you know, talking to your littles is your heart, Plato in the word of God, in the hand of God. And this is why, because it’s the Bible knows better than the parents know. Yeah, God knows better than we know. And so we have to be in the word as parents as well to be able to discern how we should be parenting. But we also need to take our kids to the word because it is what is living. It is powerful. It is sharper than a two edged sword. It’ll convict. The spirit of that is inside your child far better than anything you could ever say?

Well, and as your kids get a little older, two and older, it’s important to know what’s in the hearts and minds of your kids, right? There’s a quote great leaders know what’s in the hearts and minds of their people. Well, in this case, your people are your kids and the Holy Spirit when it’s more activated in you, meaning you’re pressing in your relationship with God and prayer reading the Bible. Dwelling upon the scriptures, you’re more inclined to hear the spirit about your kids to be convicted about things and to be proactive in conversations with your kids that you might not otherwise do. Because you’re not. You’re not allowing the spirit to convict you. You’re not paying attention. Yeah, and the spirit will prompt you on what to do with your kids. Even impromptu like, Wow, this kid, I think something’s on his mind. I think you need to go talk to him just out of the blue and then you go talk to him and oh, thank you, God, right? There was something really important to talk about.

Yeah. And on a really practical level, teaching your kids the word what we were talking about. I just want to give you an example. Proverbs Twenty three, twenty three, says my son. Give attention to my words. Have we have we sat down with our kids and had this conversation where we say, this is what the Bible says? Let me read it to you, my son. Give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings, Are you listening to me? The Bible saying, to listen to your parent, do not let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart for they are life to those who find them like, Are you? Are you having this conversation? Like, Are you in the word? Are you talking to your 12 year old and saying, Are you reading the Bible? Because this is what the God’s telling you he’s saying to read his word for their life, to those who find them in health, to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it. Spring the issues of life.

So good, so good. So let’s talk about treating symptoms immediately.

Ok, so you know, one of the things that’s on everyone’s mind right now because of pandemic, but also just because we’re in the fall. It’s cold and flu season. And when your parents, you deal with your kids getting sick, sometimes, right? So if your kid, if if you’re paying attention to your kids and you notice that maybe they like are holding their head like they have a headache, or maybe they’re a little bit more cranky, or maybe they have a runny nose that’s starting. These are all like first hand symptoms that can potentially turn into a more severe cold. Well, this is the exact same thing with behavior and heart, OK? When you see your kids start getting a sniffling nose like, OK, so when I see that I grab the sniffles roller or I grab vitamins while I do both, I grab the vitamins, I get the diffusers going. I have the kids take a nap that day. We treat symptoms right on so that the cold doesn’t get bigger. And this is the exact same thing we need to be doing when we see little symptoms of sin and heart issues in our kids. But a lot of times parents don’t do that.

They don’t want to deal with the the the little things, because then they feel like they’re like nitpicking, right? And then guess what happens over time, that little bit of selfishness? Or those little lies little white lies as my grandparents used to call them little white lies? Well, I’m sorry. It’s a lie. It’s a lie. A lie is a lie, right? And so if we see this as an issue when it’s little and we talk to our kids and we communicate to them about what the Bible thinks about that and how we’re concerned for them and we have a conversation with them versus just ignoring it because it wasn’t that big of a deal. I don’t really want to deal with that. If we deal with it when it’s little, then it’s not going to turn into. This big, huge sin issue, and it’s the same, it’s the same like with weeds, right? Like if you pull the weed when they’re smaller, they come out so much easier and they don’t turn into these enormous, huge thistles that have Polk’s that take you a half an hour to get out. And so he

Allows you to bleed. Here’s the challenge, though it’s disruptive to your agenda and disruptive to what you have going on. So sometimes you literally can’t address it. Let’s say you’re on a phone call or you’re doing something that you can’t stop. You have to be good at remembering and circling back. A lot of parents don’t circle back and go, Hey, this was wrong, but you do want to attend to it as soon as you possibly can. And sometimes it’s just a conversation because it hasn’t blown into something really big. Well, isn’t that your turning to the heart?

Yeah. And it’s so much better to be equipping your kids so that they don’t fall into the pit of bondage like it’s literally bondage. Sin is a bondage. And so if we love our kids, we’re going to warn them about the temptations of sin and what the little things that we’re seeing. And we go, Hey, no, it’s not that it’s not a super huge deal. It’s just something that I’ve noticed. And I really don’t want this to become a big issue in your life. This is a character thing, hun. Like, you see how having that conversation is so much better than the bigger, more intense conversation when they’ve committed some more severe sin with consequences that probably are much more intense, right? Like, maybe they end up losing a friendship over something that was a character quality that should have been talked about when they were younger to not get them to that place.

So well, hey, we hope this was helpful and edifying to you. Hmm. Take it to heart.

And thanks for joining us. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Are you ready to help your family if hospitals turn you away? Tune in to see what the Tolpin’s are thinking about for their own family.

Tune in so that you are more equipped to help your family’s health as the hospitals may not be able to help you. There’s a perfect storm happening to the hospitals with so many Doctors and Nurses quitting due to the vaccine mandate (rightfully so), more patients due to Covid fear-mongering, and the unfortunate situations of people needing serious care due to covid and all the normal health needs, especially going into the fall.

Main Tips From This Episode:

1. It’s important to understand the reality happening.
2. Do all the things you can for the preventative health of your family. (List in the episode)
3. Have conversations with all of your health providers so you know where they stand with health freedom.
4. Build the right team of professionals around you who are like-minded.
5. Be ready with medicines that help with Covid.
6. Be thinking about who can help with bone breaks and doing stitches if hospitals turn you away.

Resources Mentioned In The Episode:

Blog posts:

• Biblical perspectives on Holloween https://courageousmom.com/redeeming-halloween-resources/

Podcast:

• “Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?”

Books: 

• “Prescription For Nutritional Healing”
• “Essential Oils Desk Reference Guide”
• “Illustrated Encyclopedia of Healing Remedies”

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18, and it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the fall. Hey, welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Hey, guys, we’ve got a special discussion today, part expertise and part what we’re working through right now.

Yeah. So if you guys have been listening for any period of time, you know, Isaac and I are on this journey with you. And so sometimes we will teach from what we’re currently feeling convicted on and what we’re working through. And that’s kind of what we’re doing today as we’re talking about a really important topic that’s relevant to heading into the fall season, which is cold and flu season and potentially like more potential lockdowns even, right.

So so we’re going to talk about if hospitals won’t be ready to help your family. So it’s not a hit against hospitals at all or doctors and nurses, we 100 percent believe in medicine and so forth, but we’ll get into it in just a second. First of all, we do have Halloween around the corner. So just real quick, Inge, could you send them to some resources?

Ok. So every year that we’ve done the podcast in the past, we’ve done a different podcast episode. One of them was Should Christians celebrate Halloween? That’s one of our podcast episodes. I cannot urge you enough to go back into season two and season one and take a listen to that. We also have about five or six different blog posts at Courageous Mom. One of them is about if they knock, will you answer? And it’s it’s about talking through scripture that Jesus shares where it’s ask seek knock and when you have trick or treaters coming to your door, how should we, as Christians be responding to that?

So so I think what we’ll do is you’ll get me a list of them. We’ll make sure they get in the show notes, right? Exactly all of the links to all of these resources.

I mean, but just to reiterate, I won’t take a long time, but there are other there’s blog posts that have like a a got a pumpkin project that you can do with your kids. We’re carving out a pumpkin and putting like a cross on the front to be a light, and you’re sharing the gospel message with your kids as you’re carving the pumpkin and the pumpkin seeds and the icky stuff inside represents. So you just have to

Say, though some some of you are like, Hey, we don’t do pumpkins at all, and we would say, awesome. Yeah, and some of you are like, we, you know, do crosses and pumpkins only. And we’re like, Awesome, you know, I don’t think we need to be divisive on this, but there’s really, really good resources there. Biblical point of view. And as with everything, we’re never going to align perfectly on every topic. Do you know how many topics we talked about?

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, so many. And even ones like we are anti Halloween actually. Like we don’t participate in Halloween, but we believe that that day is the Lord’s Day. It’s not Satan’s. He’s not going to have it. We reclaim October thirty first because it’s his day. God made it not Satan. God made pumpkins. Satan didn’t make pumpkins right. And so like, we will have a fall harvest decorations and we’ll have some corn stocks and some pumpkin. That doesn’t mean that we’re celebrating Halloween. So anyway, we talked through all these things in the blog post and on the podcast can’t urge you enough to go listen.

All right. One more thing we got to talk about is the Kids podcast. On Fridays, we’ve had three episodes so far. There’s two already more recorded. Coming soon is Drew talking about the importance of self-discipline and real stories of how he’s done it and what he’s been doing, and the big projects working tips on it. It’s so good. He is really self disciplined and we have Solomon five age five, and I asked him, I go, What would you like to talk about? And he goes, I think we should talk about why kids should obey their parents and how am inside? I’m jumping up and down. I’m like, just keeping it cool, you know? Oh, that sounds great.

It’s a good idea.

So but so he’s it’s going to be short, but it’s good.

I love it. So, OK. So today we are talking about if hospitals won’t be ready to help your family. So if hospitals won’t help you, you need to be ready to help your family. Yeah. And so we’re going to talk about three main points we have. This is our agenda. We’re going to talk about the reality of what’s going on today. We’re going to talk about preventative things that you need to be doing. And then we’re also going to talk about readiness and preparedness. And that’s the section that where we’re going to be transparent in sharing what we’re. Our checklist of things that we want to learn more about and things that we are currently working on that maybe is an inspiration to you. Part of the reason why we’re covering this topic, you guys, is because we’ve been getting a lot of messages from you. Keep those coming. We really appreciate your feedback. So when you leave reviews on iTunes, it means a lot to us. It also helps us to know like what is relevant, what is helpful today for all of you. We don’t want this to be a waste of our time or yours, so please keep those messages coming to us.

And on that, there’s a survey coming out soon the people in the parenting mentor program and getting more exhaustive survey because. We’ve really been running the race with them more closely. But there’s also going to be another survey we need from everybody else, all podcast listeners, and if we don’t have your email, you’re not going to get it, probably. So make sure we have your email, our links and our bios on Instagram have our that. Also, if you ever get an email from us in the bottom is, well, you’d already have your email in that case. So right, right? So anyway, so make sure we have your email, though. All right. So let’s talk about the reality right now. This is so relevant because we feel we actually feel responsibility. In fact, we can read from James here. We feel a responsibility to share this with you because we feel conviction that people need to be thinking about these things as we go into the fall here with what’s happening because doctors and nurses are quitting in the droves around the world with the vaccine mandates. And regardless of where you stand on the vaccine and so forth, the reality is there’s a shortage of doctors and nurses, and it’s only going to get worse. In addition to that, there are there are COVID patients in the hospitals, and some of them have severe issues and real big challenges. Our heart goes out to them and some of them, through the paranoia created by the media, are coming in when they don’t need

To frantic and going into soon. So James, for 17, says therefore to him, who knows to do good and does not do it to him, it is sin.

So we felt a responsibility to do this and you could think about that scripture for yourself too. If you feel convicted after listening to this or already, then you need to act on your responsibilities where the spirit is convicting you. So the reality is that is that literally the hospitals will turn people away because they are full is what they say. But it’s also people are quitting. It’s all the issues we just talked about.

Yeah, it’s interesting because when you talk to people who are, I’m just going to say on the on the left side of things extreme left who are for the vaccination, for all the things that are happening when you when you actually have a conversation with them, a lot of them are blaming unvaccinated people for the issues that are in the hospital. But the truth is is that the agenda of pushing and mandating vaccinations is creating a situation where we have less workers so that surgeries and different things like that can happen.

So what happens to your family, then if something happens to you, right and the hospital won’t take you? So more important than ever, we need to be equipped at home to handle things and we need people around us. We need a team around us. They can help us where we fall short now on the health side of things.

Yeah, and on that point, I just so this is the thing we love hearing from you guys. And I don’t mind helping when I can, but I get a lot of messages from people asking for specific names of doctors. And I just want to say I’m not giving those out of who we go and see. That is a private thing that we’re keeping to ourselves, but I cannot urge you enough to have the important conversations you need to ask your dentist, your doctor, your chiropractor, your physical therapist. You literally think about all of the different people that you go to who is on your team that helps you to keep your family healthy and all the different areas of your life. Write them down. This is what I did. Ok, I’m teaching from out of what I did. You write all those down and you have the conversations with each of them and say, How did you handle COVID in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one regarding masks? And what are you going to do if the government tries to get people to mandate vaccine passports if they try to bring back masks back again in this state, you need to have that private conversation. It’s going to be different all over the country. It’s going to be different all over the world. It’s going to be different state to state, even maybe county to county based upon who you are under as far as local government goes. But you need to have that important conversation. We’ve been talking about how there’s potentially an alternative or underground economy that is going to have to be rising up and it is actually happening all over the world. This is very exciting. And so I say that because if you’re not happy with an answer that you get from your dentist or your doctor regarding these different mandates that they may implement, you need to start looking to reestablish care somewhere else before all the people that would be like minded are filled up.

I know recently one of our kids was going to the dentist. Just a story here is and they said, Hey, we really strongly advise you guys wear a mask when you come in and then then there’s pretty much we want you to wear a mask with the receptionist was saying, and I said, Well, we don’t wear masks. So if that’s going to be an issue, I have no problem finding a new dentist and then they’re like, No, that is no problem. You can come. Without a mask, I go, OK. I just want to reiterate, I have no problem finding a needle.

We don’t want to cause you trouble.

I don’t want to cause you trouble, but

We will not do this.

We to do this. And they were adamant that they wanted us as customers. So that is something you can do. And don’t be afraid to just ask the question of super nice. We’re super great when I came in and everything

Gentle and spirit kind.

Yeah, another. We’re just at Costco recently. It just reminds me of this, and I think it’s a funny story. And your membership was up and I was kind of talking to them. And so they were like, OK, well, to check out, you’ll need to pay them one hundred and twenty dollar annual fee because it was just happened to be up that day. And then that and then we’re like, OK, no problem. And then Angie’s like, Well, wait a minute, what if they this fall they’re going to make make wear masks or we’re not actually. So then I go, Oh, hang on a second, actually. Can we just check out? I’m not sure if I want to be part of the membership because you guys are probably going to require masks this fall because it’s a nationwide thing or. And and she goes, Oh, well, I don’t know if we are or not. And I go, Well, I don’t want to pay 120 bucks and be on it because I may never want to shop here again. And it’s super nice. It’s just a real conversation I’d have. I don’t want to waste 120 bucks and she goes, Well, you can’t check out without it. But here’s the good news and this is a tip for Costco. Up into the three hundred and sixty fourth, a day after you pay your 120 dollars, you can get 100 percent of it return to you.

Yeah, you can get a refund on your membership if you don’t want to continue your membership.

I’m like, OK, no problem. Let’s go. Let’s move forward. Yeah, so but if they get crazy this fall, I’ll cancel my membership.

Yeah. So this is just an important you just need to be aware, like, where are you purchasing? I would even say, like, what is one of the preventative things like obviously, grocery stores are something that you need to be able to go to to get food, to nourish your family, right? Like even potentially where you’re going to get supplements, right? If you don’t order them online, maybe you go to natural grocers, different places like that. I know that they were pretty maski last fall. And so finding alternative local places that sell the raw honey that sell the homeopathy, that sell the herbal supplements that you want, you need to find those locations. You need to talk to them about what their mass mandate was before what they plan on doing in the future, so that you are not caught in a moment of desperation where you have sick kids at home and you’re racing to the store to get something and then you have to compromise your personal conviction. Ok? You don’t want to have to do that. And that’s why we’re having this conversation. We want you guys to be pre. This is proactive parenting. That’s what courageous parenting is all about. We don’t want you to have to be in a reactive situation. So we’re warning you right now and just saying, Hey, this is something that we’re doing, and we think it would be wise for you to do that also.

So part of the reality, too, is you have this hospital situation and then we’re going into the fall where you add on to COVID, the flus and everything else. And it could be a challenging situation for the hospital. So I don’t think it has to be, by the way, opinion here. I don’t think it has to be a challenge for hospitals. I think there’s ways that we could be leading our countries in a way to where there’s more resources for hospitals. There’s we’re proactively thinking about these things and making sure things are in place. We’re not creating a frantic situation where people come in and clog the hospitals that don’t actually need care by creating fear for COVID. Ok, so but there are real situations with COVID patients, we totally get that. So now let’s talk about the preventative. So there’s a lot of things to do preventatively Angie. Could you just reel them off?

So obviously, dental health is a huge thing. I mean, your mouth and your nose, that’s one of the main ways that you would catch a virus, a bacterial infection or anything like that, right? And so you want to make sure that you have good, healthy habits in place with your kids, so make sure they’re brushing at least two times a day. I I hate that I even have to say this, but so many different people. This has been a potential issue for where they’re maybe their kids are busy and it’s like, Oh, that I mean, that’s happened to us, right where we have nine kids. And I’m like to ask if all nine of them have brush their teeth before they go to bed is a bit of a duty. And so you want to train them well when they’re young so that when they’re older, it’s part of their habit. They’re already doing it. Yeah. Another one would be chiropractic, right? Preventative chiropractor. There is. I don’t know if you guys knew this, but your spine is very essential having it in proper alignment. It is essential for your immune system to be working at optimal level. And so if this is if your kids have ever experienced a concussion or they’ve been jumping on the trampoline or they’ve fallen or gotten hit playing football or anything like that, I would say it would be wise to either go see a chiropractor or a cranial sacral therapist and just make sure that they are in alignment so that their immune system is well supported.

Another big preventative? Thing is definitely making sure that your kids are not having too much sugar, refined sugar. That’s something that for many years I would say the first like maybe four years we were parenting. I was in a position where I didn’t really know what I was doing as a homemaker in regards to cooking and those kinds of things. So when we first got married, I was buying pre-made things often. But now things have. It’s drastically different this 22 years later. But it was a process of choosing that as something that I’m going to learn and I’m going to tackle and going, Oh, OK, so having juice every day is not good for the kids. So when I think Kelsey was maybe two years old 20 years ago, we stopped having juice all the time. Yeah, right? And it became a thing that was like just for special occasions. Every now and again, we would have apple juice or orange juice. And so that that is one huge thing. That’s one way that you can limit sugar in your kid’s diet is to not be. Definitely. Don’t be drinking pop or anything like that, right? So preventative is not just what are you adding to your lifestyle to help build your immune system so that you don’t get sick? It’s also what do you eliminate that’s going to actually make your immune system weaker?

I would say you have to be really honest about that because a lot of times we forget the little snack, the little sugary thing in between, the little thing in the car. The thing that you know, it’s just we have to remember that there’s more usually that we’re putting in our bodies than we’re really reflecting on.

Yeah, that can totally be true, especially for your kids. If your kids are not with you all day and you send them to school, sometimes people will throw in a granola bar, for example, or just extra stuff because they know their kids need a snack and it’s harder to send healthy snacks to school with your kids. I get that, but this is preventative. Like, we’re having this hard conversation because, yeah, it is going to take a little bit more work to be a courageous parent to to be building healthy immune systems, be building healthy habits for your kids, so you need to talk to them. Don’t just do it to them. I would say part of preventative is also like if you want your kids to be healthy long term, like throughout their life, recognizing that what you do today is creating healthy habits or unhealthy habits.

And let’s face it, whether someone gets waxed or not, they’re getting COVID variants. There’s more variants coming, and there’s other things besides COVID, the normal things. So these are things preventatively to be ready. So your family’s immune systems are ready and you guys have created something pretty awesome in us called

The immune system. It’s amazing. Yeah, it is. It’s funny. I recently saw me where it was like, I know a lot of people don’t really believe in you anymore, but I sure do and good job being strong. You know, I think that was an Elizabeth Johnson quote, but to be really honest, we have to understand that there’s going to come in a day and age when your kids are going to grow up and they’re going to be preteens and they’re going to be teenagers and they’re not going to want mom looking over their shoulder all the time saying, Did you take your vitamin C? Did you do this? Did you do that? Don’t eat that, don’t drink that. You need to create the habits when your kids are younger, when you are giving them exact direction so that when they’re older, they are making wiser choices and there’s a little parenting tip. It’s kind of like when your kids are littler, it’s more hands on. And then as they grow older, you have to do less like you want to be equipping your kids with knowledge. So the way that you do that preventatively right so that you don’t have teenagers making horrible eating decisions all the time. You want to give them the knowledge you want to equip them and go, Hey, do you guys know that this turns into sugar? And if you have too much sugar, it’s bad for your immune system, like you just teach them these basic things that can be so life changing.

And there’s a lot of evidence that vitamin D is incredibly important.

So being outside, that’s another huge preventative thing. You see doctors trying to post me and saying, Hey, at least just get outside and be in the sunshine for 30 minutes a day, at the least, right? So make sure you are. Go outside, go for a walk. You just need to realize that when we’re doing school, the kids are inside a lot. And so we need to make them go outside and breathe the fresh air and be in the sun.

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

Steve 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 the vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart. We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing dark days

Ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. What else on the preventative side edge? It would be helpful to people.

So this is definitely where you want to start, like evaluating not just your diet, but like what are the vitamins that you’re taking? We’re headed into the fall. So this is the time of year where there’s going to be less sunlight, right? We’re about to come upon. Daylight savings is usually in the fall in October. And so when the sun rises, it’s a little bit later in the day and it goes down. So you’re going to want to be taking a good vitamin D supplement. If you have babies, they make tinctures of it, and it’s important to be giving that. Obviously, you want to have like a good integrated doctor or naturopathic doctor that you can run things by. They usually have really good recommendations for brands. I’m not going to go into that stuff, but you do need to have vitamin D and you have vitamin B, vitamin A, vitamin C, all the basics, but also a good pre and probiotic for gut health. I think that you know this and this is not corona related necessarily, but they’re still going to be a flu. Yeah, there’s still going to be potential stomach flus. Kids sometimes get food poisoning if they’re eating out. Or, you know, so how can you set your kids up to have optimal healthy gut health that’s having a good pre and probiotic being ready with the right oils? I know that for me, I have chosen to use younger living. I keep tummy jai’s on me at all times, for my kids, for car sickness, but also for after we eat out. If they have something that’s a little too greasy, even it can upset some of their stomachs. Or if they’ve eaten something, then they jump on the trampoline right away and they’re like, Oh, my stomach hurts. There’s all kinds of scenarios, right? So having the right products in your home on hand so that you’re not like, Oh, bummer, or thanks for reminding me I’ll have to order that tummy, guys. Sorry, it won’t be here for two or three weeks.

It’s so incredible whenever somebody gets the beginning of something in our family. Angie goes, and she’s back quickly with several things and you think, OK, I can handle swallowing this many things. And and then as soon as you get them down, she’s back with a tea and five more things. And then you’re back with a couple more things and you’re rubbing oils on the kid. And it’s but what’s amazing is it’s attacking whatever the thing is from all sides and it’s gone like, literally you’ve kept her family. So I mean,

We we thank you. I mean, we we try to hit all the different ways, right? So there’s aromatherapy inhaling things, that’s where oils come in. But then you can also use them topically and you can ingest them. But then there’s vitamins like that is a preventative daily thing that everyone needs to be doing on a regular basis. And then when you’re doing that, it’s not like you hit them with like a ton more vitamins on top of what they’ve already taken instead. That’s when you grab like the different tonics that have the raw honey and the cayenne pepper in them, right? You grab the wellness formula that’s an herbal tincture or the wish garden kids immune boost. Or, you know, we have so many different things that are like that that we use with the kids. But then there’s also homeopathy and so like having an awareness. And this is the thing. Like you guys, some of you might be listening going, I don’t know the first thing about homeopathy or herbal tinctures. How did you learn this? You guys guess what? There’s there are so many resources that are available. Do not be dependent upon online. Online things change all the time personally. I prefer the old medicinal books, I like the natural prescription for healing. It’s a great book. I have herbal remedies books. I have the desk reference guide for essential oils, and it’ll show me like, exactly like what ailments are. You can look them up in the back and then it’ll give you a list, a whole host of different ways that you can actually start attacking and treating that symptom that you’re having. And so when it comes to these things that doctors will put big labels on, right, like corona, I look at what are the symptoms because for everybody, it’s different. When we had it, you had issues with your kidneys. I had vertigo. Megan had

An attack where you’ve been weak

Before. Right, exactly. And so like, now that I’m nursing, the place that I get attacked is through mastitis. And so I am aware and I am prepared having the tools that I need to be able to treat those different things from a natural perspective. And lord willing, I this is a big deal. I pray about it. I go, Lord, thank you for the knowledge and understanding that I can treat this stuff. Like, I’ll be praying this even when we’re not sick. Like, I’m just super thankful that I’ve learned what I’ve learned over the years. Are you thankful? Have you recently just given God the glory? Have you prayed on your knees and said, Lord, I really don’t know what I’m doing. Would you provide the right people and resources to teach me? And so we need to be coming from a perspective of like if healing is going to happen, it’s because the Lord has directed our steps and we praise him for that. I’m thankful that he provided the plants that give us the oils and the vitamins and the things that we need to be able to battle these things. And I don’t always know. So I look things up in books, so go seek out good books. Ask your naturopathic doctor your integrated functional medicine doctor. What books would be worth investing in? Or just grab the three that I mentioned

Now, by the way, it just came to my mind you. Did you have a workshop called Healthy Home Mom Hacks? We’ll put a link to that at Courageous Parenting in the blog post for this episode, so all the resources show notes are there. I forgot to mention that in the beginning, including we’ll put make sure that the books you mentioned are there and anything we mentioned today and that workshop, which we really go into it and they get a they get a PDF download with that. But I also want to say I’m preventative. You kind of already mentioned this is really make sure you have your team together. Do you have the right dentist, the right chiropractor or the right doctor? Then maybe not the doctor at the big hospital, but the family doctor that if the big hospital requires vaccines to go in, a family doctor doesn’t because they’re there for medical freedom. So you’re looking for people that are going to be for medical freedom that she already

Talked about, but even asking them, it’s not just so we talked about like the importance of asking the people who are already on your team what they’re going to require regarding the vaccine passport or mask mandates, for example. But it’s you’ve got to take questions beyond that. So some of the other questions are what are you skilled in? Do you know how to set a broken bone? Do you know how to do stitches? Do you know how to do orthodontic? Like, I would ask my dentist, Do you know how to do oral surgery? Do you have a guy that you could recommend if you don’t? Is the follow up question to all of these questions that we would have? Because the reality is, is a lot of times people will go in to get x rays if they have a broken bone. But if the hospital is not allowing you to go in unless you have a vaccine, for example, which could totally happen in other countries, literally and within weeks, knowing that chiropractors actually have x ray machines and it’s like ninety nine bucks at most chiropractors to get an x ray. I remember when we had a kiddo who dislocated their thumb and we were taking him to the chiropractor for regular treatment, and we mentioned it to them. They felt it, and they said, Listen, let’s do an x ray on it. And so we had a cheap x ray done at the chiropractors office. We didn’t have to go into the E.R. and have a twenty six hundred dollar appointment. And so like, what are your resources? Who is your team who can help you with those things? And having that as like you’re like, you know, you’ve already talked to these people ahead of time. So you know, confidently where you’re going to go for treatment is huge.

We’re going to go into some more serious things, especially COVID preparations, you know, from healing, from that kind of thing in a second. Obviously, nobody has perfection on that, but we’re going to just teach you what we’re learning and what we’re planning to do to go into this fall. First, I want to read from first Tim or second Timothy, one seven for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. I just thought that was so important to read right now because you could easily be motivated on all this preventative stuff from a fear based perspective, and you should be motivated from this from a trusting God perspective, but that we’re also supposed to be operating in wisdom and taking action while we’re on Earth. And so, you know, it’s really important if there’s wise things to do to stay out of the hospital, especially if there’s no entrance allowed. Because therefore, whatever this fall, yeah, how do you handle these things? We our jurisdiction is our family. We need to be able to take care of our family in the best way we possibly can, and it takes making early decisions to do so in these uncertain times.

Yeah, I mean, I love that you shared that verse because I even think about here’s another preventative topic that we’re not going to go deep into, but it is definitely in lines with being preventative is being clean, like taking care of your jurisdiction of your home and being a homemaker that’s actually cleaning your house. If you struggle with this, go through the healthy mom home hacks. But I’ll share that. Like when Isaac was reading from second Timothy one seven there, where he’s talking about a spirit of fear and people getting overwhelmed with fear. I think of like the the very real mental disorder of OCD people who are OCD about cleanliness to where they can’t. They’re not enjoying life. Their kids feel like they’re walking on eggshells. They don’t practice hospitality unless their house is completely perfect. I haven’t ever gotten to that extreme level, but I will say that there was a season in my life. I would say maybe the first like, well, from like, maybe year five being married to your 10, where I definitely allowed how clean my home was to affect my hospitality. And I struggled because here I was home schooling and I had a lot of little kids. I had like five kids under seven, and it was a lot of physical work to just even care for a family, always having a baby, nursing babies, having someone in my arms that all the time, right? And so there’s just something that I want to share with you that, yes, you want to be sanitary and you, as a homemaker, want to recognize that cleaning your home as part of your jurisdiction.

But it’s not just yours like you and your husband need to be on the same like you need to communicate, you need to be on the same base when it comes to understanding like who’s going to take care of what? You can delegate things to other people like we currently have, like dish teams, so that that’s getting done so that I’m freed up to do more of the deep cleaning stuff like in the laundry room and making sure the washing machines are clean and working and different things like that, right? And so you guys need to communicate about the different jurisdictions, the need for help, but don’t come at it from a place of fear to where you’re like, Oh, I don’t want people in my home or you have to clean like crazy after you have people in your home because you’re scared of getting sick, right? Because people are just at your home. Like, that’s what that verse speaks to me as a homemaker.

The fear based parents out there, they are raising up a generation of fearing people unlike any generation

Before, and their kids are going to struggle with loneliness

Despair in a negative way. It is going to be very, very tragic what this generation is being raised up in. I’m not saying you necessarily. I’m just saying people who are fear based and there’s a lot of fear out there. It is all over the world.

So you know, on that note, I even think about what a huge ministry your home can be to some of those kids where they feel like they’re walking on eggshells with their family all the time and then they come to your home and it’s like peaceful. They can sense the Holy Spirit, and they don’t even know that it’s the Holy Spirit. Like, that’s a huge ministry that we have being homemakers to invite our kids friends into our home after they’ve been at a sporting event or whatever, and to not be the one that’s like freaking out about cleanliness. Right? Yeah. So I just want to encourage you guys. There’s definitely a lot more that we could talk about regarding the preventative side of having things be clean and sanitary. I’ll just share briefly, like I use these household cleaner and we have these hand sanitizer and all of the cars. I have diffusers in the cars that I have, oils that I use so that when I am out and about, I don’t. I’m not like religious, about using them all the time. But I know that if I’ve been in a bathroom or something, that wasn’t really up, yeah, I’m going to sanitize my kids hands, you know what I mean? And so there are tools that you can get to have on hand that would be wise to use, but you don’t want to, like, put your faith in those things like and allow them to become an idol either.

Another thing is just preventative is shipping channels are destroyed out there because of COVID manufacturing of certain things. I was just reading because of a lack of chips. The auto industry is potentially losing $210 billion this year because they can’t ship cars they can’t finish them without. We still have a table with a table that stuck out in the bay in California in a we ordered

It in April, and here it is, almost October.

Yeah. So you know, it’s just there’s a problem. So what’s you know, Costco is limiting to one pack of toilet paper. And paper towels right now. You know, so be thinking about what are going to be things you need as a family. This isn’t a podcast episode to get you to go hoard or something like that. No, no, no, no. But what do you need to be prepared, especially if you have a large family like ours? We need to think even more ahead of smaller families. Just think about it, you know, it’s like, you know, it takes almost two dozen eggs to make breakfast. So it’s just different. It’s just different. And you have to think about that. So be aware of that now. We’re going to bring it home here with some, some directly targeted things being ready and prepared. Obviously, we talked about this having direct access to like minded professionals in the health industry. That is super important. So worth repeating. But now on the what we’re seeing out there is evidence, tons of evidence that ivermectin, for example, and hired hydrochloric queen and a whole bunch of other things which we’re just now more researching are important to have on hand,

Potentially

Potentially so. So how can you get a supply of things in case your family does get a variant of COVID or something like that?

And and I would add to that not just in case they get the variant of it, but in case you get the variant of it and you cannot. You’re not having success treating it naturally with herbal supplements and things like that and prayer and start that first. You always start that first. And and even if you can, I just say, even if you do have it on hand because I know a lot of people have ordered things like ivermectin, even if you do have it on hand, I would even say, like, see if you can treat it naturally, at least that’s what I would do. That’s what I would do. I’m not a doctor, but I try to treat things naturally. And then you go to the Western medicine if those things don’t work

And we’re not experts in this, but there is enough evidence that this is working for a lot of people and

And it’s been around for a long, long

Time. But you need to do your own due diligence. We have no idea how to keep it out of, you know, how much to take things like that. You need a doctor that prescribes it to you and is willing to do so, you know, ahead of time, right? I believe so. That’s this is these are the kinds of things we’re thinking about. Have we done this? No. Are we going to this?

We’re looking this and prepared.

We’re looking into this right now. These are things we are in process of.

And another big thing as far as readiness and preparedness goes is being trained in CPR and first aid. Personally, I think that every babysitter should be trained in this stuff. I personally also believe that at least one parent, when you have a kid, you should have the training in it. I was a lifeguard for many years, so I’ve done the first aid and CPR training. Like, I can’t even count how many times we had to keep our records up every six months, and I did it for eight years. So for me, like I walk in a kind of confidence that I know I can take care of most kinds of things, choking stuff like that. But a lot of parents don’t, and they don’t think to go get trained in these things. It would be wise to do that. Now when I say, go get trained, it doesn’t mean you actually have to go somewhere. There are a lot of online training programs that you can do that will give you the wisdom, give you the knowledge in how to treat things. There are tools out there that are wise to have on hand. Here’s one As a doula and having used midwives for many years, I have my own blood pressure cuffed. I have my own Doppler to be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat when I am pregnant and to use with the mamas that I’ve served.

Those are the kinds of tools that you don’t have to be a doctor to have on hand, but you do need to be trained in how to use them accurately. And so figuring out what tools you can have on hand for the seasonal life you’re in, but also to bless other people so that you can know what’s going on with your body. I know that for us, like because of what was going on with the coronavirus and hospitals, we chose to have a home birth. So we added finding a midwife that could do a home birth and treat me even if I hemorrhaged was a huge part of our to do list when we first moved here. Now that I have experienced that and I feel really confident in our midwife, I’m happy to give her name to people because I trust her. And for me, like knowing how to monitor my blood pressure when it was going up saved us from having to go to doctor’s appointments. Often it saved money. It also was peace of mind, and that was like my trigger point of going, OK, I got to slow down and I need to do these X, Y and Z what my midwife told me I need to do in order to help myself be healthy.

So do you have a doctor, the family doctor that is pro medical freedom and willing to give you some ivermectin and teach you how to use it in those kinds of things and give you guidance? We are pro doctor and nurse. We were Pro Hospital. Yeah, we’re pro medicine. We just believe let’s heal it naturally first and then let’s use some of those medicines that have already been proven out there for a long, long, long time that have already been proven to be helpful. Let’s have. Those ready in case there’s a shortage of supply and last resort. Let’s go to the hospital, but if we need to go to the hospital, let’s do it now. We’re in a unique situation now where potentially even if you need to go to the hospital, you can’t, right?

So having people in your community that have been trained as EMTs or who have been firefighters or people who have been a part of that industry know how to stitch up cut wounds, for example, or set a broken bone or deliver a baby. I mean, there’s just these like things that happen that are not wild things like they just happen.

Sometimes you can’t run the race alone. You need other people in your life. Some ninety six, two and three is so good. Sing to the Lord. Bless his name. Proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations. His wonders among all peoples for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. So I just this kind of been a heavy topic. So I just let’s just remember that God is good. God is sovereign, God loves us. And if we’re in a worry situation, if we’re running through life and fear and worry, that’s the opposite. You literally can’t be in fear and worry and sing to the Lord. Bless his name. Proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. You can’t be worried and declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples.

So if you’re having a hard time, I mean, one of the things sometimes you get stuck in these bad modes, right? Like where maybe things just seem really heavy or overwhelming. So one of the things that’s super helpful is leading your heart to do that by having worship music on like it’s hard to be full of fear and worry when you’re listening to worship music that’s leading you to worship God. And so this would definitely be a preventative tool, actually, that you can use that. God has called us to do this as Christians, but it also helps you to not go down that road that will lead to depression and loneliness and struggle and fear and OCD and anxiety and worry.

It’s so true in another scripture. First, John five, 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. Let’s not forget that there is evil that the world is being rammed by the power of the evil one, the wicked one. That’s what scripture says. So we should take action. We should talk about politics, we should vote, we should do things and take action. But we shouldn’t be surprised at the way things are going. But we should be proclaiming the good news of Jesus because we’re not trying to live forever on Earth. We’re trying to proclaim the gospel and share the good news, most importantly to our kids, but also to people around us. While we’re on Earth, some more people are in eternity, in heaven where none of these issues exist. And we have that to look forward to so we can have joy in a hope that is supernatural in the midst of challenge that draw people to God.

Amen. So thanks for joining us. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Unchecked selfishness will prevent your marriage from thriving. It’s vital that each spouse recognizes the battle we all have to be too self-focused. If we don’t recognize the ongoing battle, we won’t work on it. Isaac and Angie share their tips for a thriving marriage as they just celebrated their twenty-second wedding anniversary. 

Main Tips From This Episode:

• We’ve seen too many Christian marriages fail over the last 22 years of our marriage.
• Christ must be at the center of your marriage otherwise our own selfishness will be destructive.
• We must each have a growing personal relationship with God. 
• We need people to run the race that will hold us accountable.
• We’ve got to see a bigger vision for our marriage that motivates us to work on it.
• Forgiving one another is a crucial part of a thriving marriage.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

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

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

Hi, I’m Angie from courageous

Mom and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

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

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18, and it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the fall. Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, guys. Wow, a lot happening in the world, but today we’re going to pause from all those things to talk about marriage. Marriage is so important, in fact, the most important team that can change the world, perhaps our marriages.

So true.

So we’re going to dive into that today, and it’s so great to be doing this. Angie, why don’t you share a little bit about the kids episodes on Fridays?

So as you guys know, we just started launching another podcast, a shorter episode. It’s the courageous kids version, and our kids are sharing biblical truths, lessons that they’re learning in through their experiences in life. And this has just been a fun project for our kids to be a part of and for you guys to get to know them a little better. So you can kind of see more of what our family is about because you hear from us and the kids were super pumped and excited. It’s also part of what we’re doing for some schools.

So the first one was Megan. It’s about 10 minutes long and Ethan’s was three minutes last Friday. So they’re super short, but they’re power packed with good wisdom and stories

For your kids

To listen to for your kids. And that’s what we’re getting feedback on is that, wow, I played this for my kids several times because it stirred up so many good conversations. We paused it and talked, and it’s just great to hear that. And just for clarity, it’s under courageous parenting. It’s the courageous parenting podcast. But it’s our kids teaching kids about what they’ve learned in biblical wisdom and so forth. Ok, so this episode, though, is super important. We just celebrated our twenty second wedding anniversary. Woo-hoo. So awesome. What a journey of thriving and surviving and nine kids.

And oh my goodness. Along the way, we’ve how have we put it like this? In the past? We’ve won a lot. We’ve won a lot, lost a lot. And we’re still here praising the Lord because he is good all the time, not dependent upon our circumstances. Amen.

Amen. And we have just stayed steady, deep in love with each other the entire time and praise God

Even grown closer like I was. It was interesting yesterday. I was trying to write a post actually just about our anniversary, just to honor that day. And so many times I wanted to say, like, can I say I’m more committed? Can I can I say that? Can I say I’m more in love? Like, like I think back to that day and you know how couples are on the day that they get married, they’re just like, Well, they’re just so head over heels in love, right? And and I’m like, No, really. I feel like when you’ve walked through hard things together and you’ve seen each other be faithful one to the Lord and then to each other, and you’ve seen each other sacrifice personal things for the other person, for the family, your love grows deeper. Yes. And so that’s kind of what I was, where I was going with that. But it’s not the story for everybody. Yeah, and that’s the sad part. We’ve also gotten to this place in our marriage where. Sadly, a lot of the couples that we knew when we were first married and even in the first 10 years of our marriage, they’re not together anymore.

They’re divorced Christian couples. And yeah, and do you remember, do you remember that day when we’ve referenced this before in marriage seminars and stuff? But when we were sitting in this, it was like a Sunday school kind of classroom with about a hundred different couples that were in the same season of life. And a pastor came in and he wanted to like, rattle us and shake us into reality of like, you need to work at your marriage, you need to try. You don’t want to get so comfortable that you’re not trying anymore. Good wisdom because if you do that, the normal statistics will apply to you. And these are the normal statistics even within the Christian world, that one in three couples will wind up in divorce or something like that. And it was, I remember sitting at a table. I remember the couples that were sitting at the table with us. And today, sadly, only two of those couples that were at that table are still married.

What was it? Eight couples?

Yeah, which is insane. And that was like and I think that we had been married maybe three years at that time. And and a lot of them had been married longer than we had at the time.

So anyways, wild, it’s wild. And the number one parenting tip was love god and put God first. And number two is to work on your marriage. I mean, marriage is so important. And if, by the way, you single moms, single dads listening, our heart goes out to you. That’s a very tough thing. And but you know, this hopefully is encouraging to you too.

You know, before we like fully dive into what we were going to share, I was super encouraged by what you brought to the table about what’s happening in the world today. So you guys know we do our family meetings every day, we try to do them. And it’s like both Bible time and family meeting and all the things. And today you shared some things with us about what was happening in the world. And then we read through a little passage in the Psalm. And I just think that it would be great if you shared some of what’s happening today.

Well, it’s interesting. Sometimes people ask me, Well, how do you know what to read your family? And this morning I had no idea what I was going to read to the family. We are going through the Book of Acts right now, but I’m just going to be honest with you. I couldn’t find my Bible this morning, you know, Mondays and from church yesterday. And so anyways, I just decided to go some to some to you should look it up. I’m not going to read it right now, but it talks about rulers of this age and how kings of the Earth should fear God. And if they don’t, it’s a very big challenge for them. So very relevant to what’s going on today, and I just brought up the current event that the United States, I believe Britain and Australia just made a new pact and left France out of it. France had an agreement with Australia to build submarines for them. They’re already down the road in that. I don’t think it was going great. But as multibillion dollar thing in the United States, Biden comes in and says, you know, well, let’s make a pact together without France and we’ll build your submarines. And basically, France lost that deal in or outside of that grouping of Britain, Australia and United States. Odd stuff. Right now there’s embassies all over the world, right? And France has their embassies. We have our embassies. And usually when you pull out your ambassadors from your embassy, it means that country is an adversary or your concern for their safety, or you just literally hate each other as countries. Well, France is in process of pulling their ambassadors out of their embassies in the United States, and they literally feel like they were stabbed in the back. So just very interesting things, but it had to do with song. I brought that story in as texture into what I read to the family in Psalm two. I have it right. So that’s just an example of of that. Not what we’re talking about today.

But yeah, but I just think that it’s important because this is part of marriages also where parenting and uncertain times, that’s what our ministry is about. You’re in a marriage in uncertain times, and you need to be aware of what’s happening in the world and not. I’ll be honest, as a homeschool mom, I can’t always keep up on like what is happening in the world. So I appreciate that my partner in this life does keep me up to date. And then when we’re reading scripture, it just seems so relevant. And it’s even though it’s sad at times and it can be frustrating. It’s exciting. And so you read from Psalms to I’m just going to read part of it says why do the nation’s rage and the people’s plot in vain? Is that happening right now? Oh yeah. The Kings of the Earth set themselves. They set themselves and the rulers take council together against the Lord and against his anointed saying Let us burst their bonds and cast away their cords from US airways.

And you can read on. There’s interesting stuff in there, so let’s dive in. By the way. First of all, thanks for being part of the one million legacies movement. You mean the. World to us, and we couldn’t do it without you. Together we are impacting million families and their legacies, which is huge. Do the math. It is crazy, you know, right? You probably heard me say this. If you have three kids and you parent them, do intentionally and they come to the Lord. And let’s say each of them has three kids and that keeps happening. It’s over three hundred and sixty people six generations later, not counting spouses. So you’re not really parenting three kids, you’re parenting a multigenerational legacy. And it really, really matters what you’re doing, what you’re not doing or doing really makes a difference. Both make a difference. Ok, so let’s dive in, and we’re talking about a few marriage reflections in twenty two years of marriage. Hopefully, this helps you. First of all, you’ve heard this, you probably know this, but do you really do it? And that is to put Christ first in your marriage. If the most important relationship in your marriage is each of your relationship with Christ, it creates this amazing triangle, doesn’t it, honey?

That’s right. So, you know, over the years, you’re going to experience trials, you’re going to experience hardships, you’re going to experience things that were unexpected. You know, everybody wants to be as prepared as possible for marriage or for parenting. But the reality is as life happens, bad things happen. And really, how you respond, how you react when bad things happen is a reflective of what is inside of you and what is inside of you. There’s this analogy of when an orange is squeezed in your squeezed as orange juice come out, right? Well, as a Christian, does Christ come out when you’re squeezed, when you’re in tight positions? And I think that there are many times in parenting and in marriage and in life where you need to be honest. Take the rose tinted glasses off and go, OK, I’m experiencing something that’s tough right now. How am I reacting? And then what do you do next? The next step, the doing, which is what Isaac’s talking about, is what is so important because you might be reflective in your heart, and that’s great. And that’s good. But being reflective in your heart and keeping your repentance or your apology to yourself isn’t going to help your marriage. But if you verbalize that and you confess what you’re struggling with and you ask for forgiveness, that’s what can make a marriage great.

Yeah, so

You

Do. Inviting God into your marriage is so important. Left to our own devices, our own minds, our own hearts. It’s going to be a rough road. You get two people that are going to be striving for independence separate from each other. Even though you’re together, you’re going to have selfishness, you know, running amuck in both of you, even though one of you might think it’s just another and you have this problem that you need Christ, you need to invite God into your marriage. You need to pray to God and and worship God and read scripture and work on your own relationship, but also to be able to have conversations about God together and have a biblical marriage and pray together and contemplate these things. That’s that’s you have got up here and you have you’re both on the sides and you connect with God connecting you. That was something we understood from the very beginning, even though I was a brand new Christian. As about a year when we got married,

I took personal responsibility,

Took personal risks with God, with God, and we knew not only is that like important and we want to do that because we love God. But it was also important for our marriage to literally to survive, not just not thrive, but to survive and to thrive. Of course,

Yeah. But I do think that, you know, for young couples, I know that we have people who listen to the podcast who aren’t even married yet, actually, which is just amazing to me. They’re not married. They don’t necessarily have kids. And they’re listening courage, parenting

Podcasts and building that foundation of knowledge.

I love it, but I just wanted to those people and to those who are married who need a reminder, like the thing that you should be most in love with with your spouse is their love for God. Like and and it should go the other way, like, are we really living in a way where our spouses like we look at each other and we’re like, Wow, I’m just so thankful for what God has done in your life. And the the reality is, is you could be literally walking through a really hard time. I remember when we were losing everything and the business was going under and we were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And I remember, like Isaac being moved to tears and being like, I can’t believe you’re being so supportive through this. And for us to like, sit and look at each other in the eyes and for me to be like, I’m just so proud of you for choosing God and choosing us during this time. Like, how could I not be?

What an interesting moment where we’re over half a million in debt. We lose everything because we were building a company and it was tied to our finances. So when it went under, it took us financially under in a very, very big way and literally no Plan B.

There would be Plan B’s and C’s had gone into that.

They had got into it. We used we did have them. Yeah, so it was it was catastrophic financially, but it was just this really cool moment. Many moments of. Increased surrender to the Lord, humility drawing closer as a married couple. The kids rallied together and we just I look back at that time and I just remember being so joyous, actually, not always. A lot of broke. There’s a lot of brokenness.

But but Jesus shined through that brokenness. That really is

Truth. One of the things was interesting. Some of you might be dealing with this or changing careers right now is the difficulty of trying to make the business work and being a Christian in a business where there’s a lot of nonbelievers. A leader was so hard in these these days, and I remember when it was gone, even though I had the hardship of finances, it was nothing compared to actually running it and trying to make it happen. So it was like a big relief. It was amazing to to not have that anymore. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night to just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family, no matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to courageous parenting and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything a courageous parenting. And I also just want to share real quick about the parenting mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more at courageous parenting.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children, but Angie and Isaac have done 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 the vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart. We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing

Dark days ahead, but

We’re so excited to raise the

Lights to be leaders

For the next generation. So anyways.

Big burden was taken off.

Yeah, yeah. So let’s move into point two, which is we really wanted to talk today about selfishness because people are born selfish. I mean, we have a selfish nature to us,

You know, as interesting about this, when we were jotting things down, we listed like different aspects of like taking responsibility for owning the temptation for selfishness and that we that’s something that both of us have been like, aware of using a biblical vocabulary and raising our kids. Obviously, we see selfishness from the time they’re very young with not wanting to share all the things right. I don’t want to do this right now or mine or, you know, all the things. And as adults, there are still things that you struggle with, right? Like, you have your agenda, you have your schedule. And when things get like knocked off of schedule and you’re not flexible, that’s a reflection of selfishness in it. And that’s just one example, right? And like for me, being a planner and being someone who takes comfort in having like the day planned well and things running smoothly, like I’ve had a grown in my flexibility. And so like looking over the twenty two years and even looking at hospitality, for example, right? And if things are happening like I used to be so. Really strict about needing to have the House look perfect, right, which was a selfish thing because it was like, how are they going to view me as a homemaker when they come to my home if my home is a mess? And that’s selfish and that’s pride. And like recognizing that that was preventing me from potentially even doing hospitality as often as I could have been.

Would you need fellowship for your marriage, which is important? So selfishness, I think it’s really important just to be introspective and go, Where am I selfish? And we have to do that daily, weekly often. I have to do that and just do that. We both realize where we’re being selfish. I realize that in the moment and then I say a little prayer and I shift gears with my family. It’s like it takes selflessness. Try going out three month RV trip, living together with family of 10, you know, around the country three or four states. You know it takes constant reminder of your purpose. That’s beyond you. It’s what happens is we start just thinking about ourselves. The most miserable people in the world are the people that have time and think about themselves all the time. They are. They’re not busy and they think about themselves

Serving other people. So it’s all about. So it’s just sad.

It’s selfishness is not healthy. It’s not good at all. And we have to root that out of ourselves. We can’t just be pointing at our spouse and go, Wow, they’re so selfish. Ok, maybe they are more selfish than you, but if you’re selfish, you’re potentially perpetuating their increasing and selfishness. You have some part in it, at least, and it’s a lack of surrender to God. It’s a lack of growing relationship with God. It’s a lack of vision and understanding the purpose of marriage.

Well, and truly, if you’re thinking about the downfalls of your spouse more than you’re being aware of your own shortcomings, then that’s a sign to me of needing to be in the word more. Because when you’re in the world more, it humbles you to a place of recognizing your need for forgiveness. Your need for a savior. Your current state of depravity, actually. And that humility is like essential to having a marriage that actually not just survives all of the seven year itch and the different terms that come up. I remember one pastor mentioning, Oh yeah, year 11. That’s the year we find that a lot of people get divorced. And so I remember, like, we got to make it past 11. Like what? Why think like that? Why not enjoy? Like, it doesn’t have to be that way. And so I had to take that thought captive and I had to take the seven year itch captive and go, No, that is not what marriage is about. Like, this is a journey. It’s called life. We’re in it together forever till death do us part. Just like we said on our wedding day, because we actually met our vows, we’re committed to God, we’re committed to one another.

And this year was an incredible year, actually.

Yeah, it was a great year. But the reality is is it’s all in your perspective too, right? And so if you’re the type of person who goes to church service and you’re listening to the pastor and you’re thinking, Oh man, I hope he’s listening to this or oh man, I hope she’s listening to this, you got it all wrong. Like for us, our personal walks with God are so incredibly foundational that like I remember just yesterday going to the church and I’m like, Oh yeah, the baby is sleeping. I got my Bible out, I got my journaling Bible, and I’m like, in it. I’m like, What are you saying to me? Jesus, like, I want to hear it. It was awesome. And like, how many people, though, go and sit and they’re like, Oh, I wish this person was here listening to this, or, Oh, I got to share this sermon with that person or know, like, do you go because you want to meet God?

That’s it. First Corinthians 13, fourth or six, you hear this in a lot of weddings, probably your wedding. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things. Believes all things hopes. All things endures. All things love never ends. And one of the things that happens that’s selfish is manipulation, especially the more high relational someone is wired, overtly relational. Sometimes manipulation is a mechanism, and we perceive ourselves to be being integral in our communication and what we’re doing. But really, we’re manipulating. We’re doing things, we’re whining. We’re exaggerating situations to get our way. And these kinds of things and other people may not be able to pinpoint it verbally. What’s happening to them, though? There’s the spouse, but they feel it. And so we just have to take ownership over potential selfishness that that we have. Are we manipulating? Are we getting angry? Are we quiet and pretending to go along? But inside we’re in turmoil, you know, or. Are we sabotaging the situation by being a critic and so you have to think about those things and go, Wow, where’s that coming from? It might be coming from a root of selfishness because you’re not getting your way or you have a lack of forgiveness towards your spouse.

Mm hmm. I think that another aspect of selfishness is the ability to both open yourself up for self-management as well as giving permission to your spouse to hold you accountable. These are two huge aspects that God has provided for us, like we need to be good at self-governing. It was one of the very first governments that he set up, right? He’s literally telling you in the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not, you know, like there is an accountability that we have to have with ourselves, right? It’s kind of like you used to say, is your word as good as gold? And so is your is your word? Yeah, to yourself. You have to it has to be to yourself first. So if you’ve committed yourself to God, like, are you actually committed to God? And you know, are you being honest about the selfishness that you struggle with in your mind or in your heart, in your attitudes? And are you repentant to God about those? Are you able to coach yourself in those moments? There have been moments in this, even in the last week where I’ve had to coach myself to go, Nope, that’s not about you. This is about what’s best for this kid. So you’re going to let it go or you’re going to make this decision or you’re going to do this right thing and you have to be able to self manage yourself out of selfishness, but there are times when you can’t. We all have blind spots, and those are the times when you need someone that you trust the best, and I really hope that that’s your spouse to hold you accountable. But if it’s not, there’s another huge advocacy that God has set up in your in place, which is the body of Christ. There is a need for you to be a part of a strong community that is going to go, Hey, I didn’t. I just noticed that you were being disrespectful to your husband. Is everything OK? And like you going, Oh whoa, wow, was I?

Or or if you gossip about your husband or you care about another great, another godly woman says, What’s up? This isn’t right.

Yeah. Or are you looking at yourself in the mirror, too? Because there’s always there’s two in a marriage, right? So I often tell people like, I’ll get messages or have counseling calls with people sometimes, and they’re literally like talking about them. Them them, them them. And I’m like, There’s two people in the marriage. Whenever you bring a sinner and a sinner together, guess what you get? There’s sin. There’s more sin. So there’s a need for more forgiveness, more accountability.

Proverbs 11 14, where there’s no guidance of people falls but in the abundance of counselors, their safety. So you could be setting yourself up for very challenging marriage if you don’t have abundance of counselors around you. And now you’re like, well, covered. All the things my church this, I just got a message that in Canada, it’s like, Well, my church just required vaccinations to to show up at a church in Ontario.

I’m out. Yeah, Ontario is really struggling right now. Wow. They have been for a long time, but it is intense, like, look at what the devil is doing. I mean, yes, there’s all these different aspects of scripture, right, where God puts authorities in place. Well, maybe he’s allowed these people who have set themselves in place to be in place because this has to happen in order for end times to continue to get to that place, right? But at the same time, we need to be aware of how the devil is working. The rulers of the darkness of this age are trying to isolate people. And when you are isolated from people who can actually be in your life, hold you accountable, pray for you, walk with you through hard times, remind you of truth. Then seriously, you’ve allowed the devil to navigate the configuration of your community so much that it’s now creating a weight on your marriage. And there’s ramifications, I will say, like Isaac, when you agree that a lot of the couples over the years that we’ve seen on a personal level who have gotten divorced, they all one of the things they all have in common is that they did not have actual transparency with a biblical community. Some of them may have had a facade of biblical community around them, but they were not being honest and transparent and working on their marriage. They did not have accountability from this biblical community. And so it is crucial that you have strong Christian people in your life, or you will likely struggle with temptations and fall.

You have to you have to repent and apologize. You have to be in a position, a posture of humility. You can’t. And it’s I get it. It’s hard sometimes to be in a posture of humility when you’ve been wronged and they haven’t apologized. We’ve come to that, yeah, yeah, well, we’ve experienced it, yeah, so sometimes you have to just have to be the first one at guys initiate husbands need to be initiators. And if they’re not, wives can still initiate and be the first to apologize and absolutely goes both ways. But come on, guys need to initiate. We need to understand that we need to be apologizing quickly. We need to not be angry. We need to repent. We need not have secret sin happening in our lives. We need to not keep secrets from wives. We need to be communicating often a lot. And if not, there’s a growing problem in your marriage and you guys need to get to it. You need to get to a place to talk about. And if you can’t talk about it, you need somebody else to help you talk about it. That’s godly. That looks to the Bible doesn’t look to modern feminism. If if you talk to me about traditional feminism, I’m all for it. But modern feminism is something totally different.

Men, and you see it within counselors. So just to reiterate part of what Isaac is warning you of, this is a warning. If you go and you get counseling for your marriage, make sure that the counselor is not someone who is coming from a modern feminist position that is like immediately right from the get go. He’s bad. Yeah, like, that’s not OK.

So in Romans 12 10, it’s great verse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Oh, sorry. Romans 12 10. I was reading this wrong spot. That’s a good one, too, though. But here it is. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. A lot of times we read these scriptures and we go, Yeah, that has to do with my neighbor and that has to do with my buddies at church. And it has to do with people I go hunting with. And yeah, that other friend of mine that I’m really upset with. I need to love one another brother. Brotherly affection. Ok? And it might be, well, you know this one, you know, maybe you could think of, Oh, this one lady is, you know this and that, you know, I just need to love on her. I just need love on her

Morning to honor her

More. Wait a minute. Why aren’t we thinking of our more important relationship ourselves?

All of these scriptures, we need to. We need to understand if our first ministry is our marriage. In our second ministry is our family that every scripture that talks about loving one another, rejoicing with one another, weeping with one another, serving one another. These things have to be played out first within our family relationships. Our first jurisdictions are immediate, jurisdictions are marriage and to our children,

Sometimes we feel so good showing brotherly love to someone else because they don’t actually know you as well as your spouse. And if they did, they would also be hard to show brotherly love to because maybe you’re in a position of selfishness with your spouse. And so it’s just easier to go do it and be nice to other people. But at home, you’re not nice, and it’s just something to be convicted about, if that’s true for you.

Well, it’s a sin. I mean, there’s this old adage I always think of which is those who can’t do teach. I hate that terminology because it’s like, No, we should be teaching from our fruit, from our experiences. What we live out there should be accountability. I wish you know what I wish I pray for. I pray often that people who are not actually living what they’re teaching, even if it’s Christian, I pray for it to be exposed because people need to be aware that there. Mean, we just read this yesterday and Philippians, beware of dogs, false teachers, people who are faking it, right? I mean, that is why there have been a problem where big, huge church leaders, they die. And then they it becomes known that they fell to massive sin, right? And there was no accountability. I pray for it to be exposed and for God to be glorified, for people to repent, to truly be honest. And there would be accountability in marriages where they’re able to actually do ministry together and you can see full well, what it truth is.

All right, here’s our final thoughts is you got to have vision and forgiveness. You’ve got a vision. You’ve got to see beyond the immediate and you’ve got to see the bigger vision of what God wants to do through your marriage. What incredible things can happen through your teamwork and parenting your kids and doing things other things, as well as a married couple and being a light. God wants to be glorified. What’s the purpose of marriage? Well, one of the major purposes is that God is glorified through your marriage. Do you want your kids to have a marriage like yours? And if the answer is kind of except this one thing, we’re going to be or not at all. Then there’s your most important goal this coming year and starting now building momentum in twenty twenty two.

And can I say regarding vision like this applies even more so to in those times when you are going through really big hardship, like when you were walking through trial disease, suffering persecution, financial issues, dwelling in the in the badness of what you’re walking through, but you have to look up and have vision and realize that what you are walking through, God is there with you in the midst of it. And if it has happened, he is there resolutely essential, like, literally can’t get through it without

It and husbands initiate envision. You don’t have to be a visionary, but vision is required if you’re married, which is required if you’re a parent. It’s important and you need initiated. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it all. You’ve to bring out the whole vision and then just announcing it in lording over your wife and everybody follow me. That’s the weak leadership. Actually, that’s the weakest form of leadership I’ve seen. Great leadership is you might have some ideas that you can use

And some questions like if you’re a person that’s not naturally a visionary, the best place to start is to say, Hey, let’s pray together and ask God to give us vision because this is outside of our skill set. Amen. Being on Emily, what do I need to improve on on our marriage? And then you ask questions and you go, How would we like to go about that? What’s the first thing? What’s one thing that we could change today that would actually help us to grow in that area?

There you go. And just don’t try and do too much at once, but distill damage, forgive each other often and regularly and make sure you have some vision. All right, thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com